Picking up black walnuts to Bring Down THE MAN!

(WARNING: This post is Not Safe For Work if you're Al Gore.)

Yay! Hooray for me! I'm done with walnuts for the year! After probably ten hours of work, I cashed in my walnuts today, and received as a reward for my work a grand total of $6.57.

That wouldn't be much, if the story stopped there, but it doesn't.

I took my walnut money and bought two of the little pull-chain light socket adapter thingies that let you turn off a light bulb without flipping the power switch.

I put them in the bathroom, so now I can burn only one bulb when I need only one bulb, which is the vast majority of the times I'm in there. The only time I really need to burn all three is when I'm shaving. With the pullchains, I can turn on the two over the mirror at the sink if I need them, and turn them back off when I'm done. Previously, with all three running off the same switch, it was all or none.

Awhile ago, I had already switched out the 60-watt incandescent bulbs for 23-watt CFLs, so now instead of running 180 watts whenever I went into the bathroom, I'm only running 23 watts, less than 13% of what I WAS using.

(Pause here while Al Gore needs a moment of "alone time.")

I may ... MAY ... switch out the one bulb for a 10-watter from the kitchen. That'd be a 94+% energy savings.

(Pause here for Al Gore again.)

If I wasn't effectively trading walnuts (which are of no real use to me) for the adapters, I don't know how long it'd take for them to pay for themselves, but I don't think an estimate of "years" is all that unreasonable. So I don't know how cost-effective this is for real-live, actual humans. But once they save enough to pay for the three bucks or so per adapter, everything else will be just gravy.

(Now someone please get Al Gore a baby wipe!)

P.S. The less electricity you use, the less money you're paying the utilities in rates, and thus the less money you're paying the government in sales taxes. Just one little way to help Starve The Beast.

(Now Ron Paul needs a baby wipe too!)

Now, just to review -- Yay! Hooray for me!

ECOCAPITALISM - Reduce, Reuse, Recycle, Recover Expenses.

I can finally ditch the hippie bag. Besides making me look like some tree-hugging granola muncher, it was a pain in the ass to keep up with. I had to remember to put it in the car, and I didn't have it with me for impromptu stops at the store, and if I was getting more than a case of soda, I'd have to get some plastic bags anyway, so it kind of defeated the purpose.

I'd always quasi-assumed that stores got their plastic grocery bags for free, especially those small stores that give you bags from other stores. I guess I thought they were overstocks or misprints or the wrong size or something that the store's suppliers just handed out free like poppers at a gay dance club in the '70's. Turns out I was wrong.

A week or so back, I asked Mildred, the owner of Lane's Grocery, if she got her bags for free or if she had to pay for them. Not only does she have to pay for them, they're pretty pricey and getting worse. I thought to the Big Bag of Bags that was sitting on my kitchen counter and volunteered to bring them to her the next time I came in.

As a child, I had a similar arrangement with Fran the elderly lady that ran the little bodega up the road, only back then the bags were paper and she'd give me a free candy bar for every Bag of Bags I brought in.

Mildred didn't offer up any similar arrangement, but if I can keep her costs down, maybe she won't have to raise prices on me. The Ferengi call it the Great Material Continuum, a great river which carries all goods, services, and money. I call it the Circle of Thrift.

So over the weekend, I uncrumpled them all and sorted out the ones with holes in the bottom. And Monday, I dropped them off at Lane's.

A hundred bags reused is a hundred new bags not needed is a hundred bags kept out of the landfill is a hundred bags worth of plastic not taken out of the petrochemical supply.

But more importantly, it's a hundred new bags Mildred doesn't have to buy, which may delay any further markups she might have to make, which makes my shopping there continue to be inexpensive.

Anything worth doing is worth doing to save money.