The Ukrainian Project/Український проект:Day/ День 60, Fluency/Швидкість 8%

Український дуже складна мова. Це найважчий мову, який я вивчаю. Я знаю тільки прості речення. Найголовніше про це в тому, що вона вчить мій розум читати інший алфавіт.

Translation: Ukrainian is a very difficult language. It is the most difficult language that I am learning. I only know simple phrases. The most important thing about it is that it teaches my mind to read in a different alphabet.

It is near the end of the second two month period of learning another language. This time, I chose the hardest of my set of six to practice. It is strange to progress from the easiest (Swedish) to the hardest in the repertoire, but that's how the random selection worked for me; plus, all the other remaining ones in the set would look easier after doing this one. So, why is Ukrainian one of my target linguistic ambitions? Like for the last language project (The Swedish Project), I provide this summary of reasons:

1. It's one of the languages of my heritage - One weird fact about me is that I taught myself how to read Ukrainian alphabetical script before I ever really learned any of the language. My grandmother used to share our family's post office box with my parents, and after she died, her issues of the "Ukrainian Voice", a Ukrainian language Canadian newspaper, still came in our mail. I figured out the alphabet by myself when I was in a more precocious phase of my adolescence, merely out of the interest of being sneaky and trying to "break a code". And I did it, using only a copy of this newspaper and a bit of pattern recognition (I was a weird kid!). As for learning to actually communicate the language, it was sadly lost upon me. I never got to learn and understand anything from my paternal grandparents, and by the time I started getting a better aptitude for it, sadly, both of them had already passed away. Even if they were still alive when my interest in learning the language may have peaked, they weren't exactly scholars themselves, and I don't think they would have had the patience to teach me at that age. I do this to sort of honour them. It's a shame that out of all their grandchildren, I'm probably the only one who could find their tombstones in the cemetery they are interned at, since the engravings on them are all in Ukrainian. This leads me to the next point . . .
2. To not lose my knowledge of the Cyrillic alphabet - I find it strange that my Dad, who was immersed in Ukrainian in his youth as his first language, can read cursive written Cyrillic script but not the alphabet printed form itself (or it at least doesn't come to him as instantly). He may have once, but somehow it didn't imprint itself well enough, and it became lost in the lapse somewhere between his ages of eight and his eighties. I suppose it's proof of the adage, "If you don't use it, you'll lose it." I hope not to have that same deficiency as I age. This is the practice I need to avoid such illiteracy. Personally, I really like the Cyrillic alphabet for the fact that all the consonant sounds in Ukrainian are presented with single letters; no strange couplings or illogical looking diphthongs, or tricky silent letters are there as in English (ch, sh, th, kn, ough). You'll realize how superior it is to the Latin alphabet when you compare it to a Slavic language that doesn't use it, like Polish. The consonant sounds made in Polish sometimes need up to four Latin letters strung together (like "szcz") to represent the same sound that is written with one letter (Щ) in Cyrillic. That, plus along with using the horrendous montage of accented characters Polish has would make typing it a nightmare. Polish and Ukrainian, given that they are neighbours geographically, have many similar cognates, except the same sounding word in Polish may be written with eight Latin letters whereas the one in Ukrainian could probably be spelt with four in Cyrillic. Ukrainian has a tough vocabulary and a bitching hard set of grammatical rules, but once one is acquainted with the alphabet, it becomes at least a relatively easy language to spell despite some of the tricky pronunciations. For me personally, knowing this alphabet has already been useful in garnering employment in the past, working at a museum and cultural centre, so it validates and verifies to me that it's not such a useless thing to learn.
3. It's a true survivor - It's impressive and simply amazing that this language still even exists at all given the tumultuous history of Ukraine itself. The etymology of the name of Ukraine itself derives from a something akin to meaning "borderland". The region has long been a route for traders and invaders, given its ease of access with much of it being flat steppe land, meaning that it has long been a disputed land and a target for conquest from the early Eurasian groups like the Huns, Mongols, Tatars, Turks, and other Eurasian steppe tribes , to the Vikings, Poles, Lithuanians, to this last century of Austro-Hungarian Imperial rule, and of course ending off  with Russian Communism, and hostile Russian expansionism up to today. So many of these empirical forces, coming at all sides of it from Europe and Asia, either by brute force, or slower forms of assimilation, could have washed away this language off the face of the Earth and making it extinct, like what has happened with so many aboriginal languages on this continent. But, the Ukrainian language remains alive, despite all the historical upheaval of conquest and subjugation of the darker political forces. The resistance and resilience of the people and the culture and language of that region pretty much sums up what Skinny Pete said in the movie, The Italian Job, that being: "If there's one thing I know, it's never to mess with mother nature, mother in-laws, and mother freaking Ukrainians".   
4. For simplifying and softening the introduction to Russian - Ukrainian is closely related to Russian, which is one of the other of the six language modules I'm learning this year. Russian is the more unfamiliar one. I'll explain more as to why I'm learning it in the entry I'll give about the future progress with that.
5. To have an avenue of some connection with potential ancestral ties - It's doubtful that I'd ever step foot into the "Old Country", given the political unrest occurring there, even for the sake of taking a genealogical tour to get to sense of what my roots of one half of my heritage are. I'm far too estranged from whoever there are left of the relatives that live there now. That's a real shame. The insular nature of Communist rule severed the contact we could have had with each other. However, I won't discount the chance to somehow reconnect with any relations there, just as there is some contact made with my Mom's relatives in Britain now.
6. Learning tough grammar cases helps to better learn (or at least question) those noted in my own language - The sobering revelation one [an Anglophone] gets through learning a language like Ukrainian is understanding how stupidly ineffective and imprecise English can be in comparison, and how dastardly difficult it is for others to learn it. There is lots of English grammar that is technically imprecise, and heavily reliant on context. I cite this following example: if you were Ukrainian  and just learning English for the first time, and heard the spoken words "mother's milk", what must go through your head if you had an especially analytical mind?* First of all, just hearing (not reading) the words "mother's milk" with the Ukrainian ear isn't enough for this listener to define which case is being used. It could be: 1. mother's milk: (singular genitive) - like the mammary secretions from a nursing mother, 2. mother's milk - like a glass of milk belonging to mom that is going to be used instrumentally for consumption, 3. mothers' milk (plural genitive), milk from more than one mother, (except in Ukrainian it may be corrected by perhaps pluralizing the word milk to "milks" because logically, more than one mother doesn't make the same milk in one collective breast), 4. mothers' milk - where more than of a set of mothers share the same container of milk to use, 5. same case as 4. except there is more than one glass of milk involved, and then 6. let's not forget that milk is also a verb in English, so another question that can brought to mind to the Ukrainian listening is, "What are the mothers milking?". All those noun cases can be indicated with the single oral utterance of "Mother(')s(') milk**" in English, but yet the words are not orally/aurally differentiated to represent each one of them accordingly. However, in Ukrainian, that isn't so: the declension of the nouns between singular and plural genitive, instrumental, accusative, dative, locative, and vocative cases make each one of those situations I mentioned a lot more defined and accurate grammatically, or at least pertinent enough to better distinguish whether it's some mother's glass of milk, or her actual breast milk on the table, along with a more exacting degree of plurality. Out of all the languages I'm learning, Ukrainian has the most (confusing) case declension forms to deal with. It's very daunting, I must say.

The things I find challenging and difficult about Ukrainian is a very long list and would be too exhausting to explain. I will focus on the positive though. For now, at least I can: a.) readily identify if something written in a Cyrillic alphabet is Ukrainian or not (as opposed to Russian, Serbian,  Kazakh, Belorussian, etc.) b.) figure out the verb conjugations with a bit more intuition, and c.) at least know enough for a few manners, to explain that I don't understand well, and to politely ask a person to speak slower.

Now for the list of my favourite words, or at least the one's in Ukrainian that I find interesting. I'll transliterate them to the Latin alphabet for your ease of reading:

1. Туман - Tuman - It means "fog" or "mist", but more colloquially, I learned from my parents that it's also a word used to mean something like "fool" or "dummy" (they didn't use it on me as far as I know). I would guess that the relationship is derived from the same sense as we would say in English that we are trying to think with a "foggy mind".
2. Птах - P'takh - It simply means "a bird" or "the bird"***. It's funny to me because, if you are acquainted with the Star Trek universe as I am, you'll note that it's pronounced the same way as a frequently used Klingon insult. If you ever saw the comedy film, You Don't Mess with the Zohan, the same sounding word, presumably from Hebrew, was used to suggest some context or action involving the union of genitalia. Ukrainian takes a word that sounds profane or vulgar in other languages (fake or real), and makes it mean something a more neutral and natural.
3. Пю - P'yu - The first person present conjugation of the verb "to drink", as in "Я пю" (I drink, I am drinking). I like it because it's one of the more useful and shorter words in Ukrainian, like "go" and "do" are in English, despite the fact that with my English speaking brain, it sounds like you are doing more stinking than drinking. It's probably purposely made that way as a matter of convenience, and thus indicative of how drinking is a culturally popular thing for Ukrainians to do.
4. Дякую - Dyakuyu - It simply means "thank you" (it literally means "[I] thank").
5. Літак -Litak - A very unique word meaning "airplane". Unique, as in most European languages borrow and incorporate the common initial word (Like airplane/aeroplane/aviation, or things like telephone, or computer) to describe some invention or machine that is so relatively modern in relation to the language. The word for air is in Ukrainian is "povitrya" ([stuff/substance] of the wind), and the word for craft or vehicle is something else very long; they don't compound together to make some single word to mean aircraft. The only other unique language variants for airplane of my set of languages I'm learning that I know of so far that isn't derived from scientific Latin (air/aero/avian/aviation), is flygplan in Swedish, and German's Flugzeug (literally meaning "flight tool")
6. Розумний/Зрозуміти - English kind of denotes the verb "to understand" and the adjective "smart" as two different concepts. However, Ukrainian somewhat depicts them as sort of stemming from the same thing. Rozumniy (розумний) means "smart", and the verb Z'rozumity (зрозуміти) actually means "to be (become) smart with . . . " to reflect and equate to the infinitive of "to understand". "I want to be (become) smart with Ukrainian", does essentially mean the same thing as "I want to understand Ukrainian."
7. Сто - Sto - My favourite Ukrainian numerical word: a nice short word one meaning a hundred, having as many letters to spell it as the number has digits. I just wish the rest of the numbers in Ukrainian were so short with non-tongue-twisting syllables.
8. Хочу, можу, буду - 'I want', 'I can', and 'I will', respectively. Three modal verbs, when followed by a verbal infinitive, save me my lots of time and agony struggling to think of the correct conjugation, and allow me at least limited ability to express future tense.
9. У мене є - oo meneh yeh - It's a rather peculiar alternative way of saying "I have". Я маю машина, literally means "I have a car" whereas the other form (у мене є машина) roughly translates to "(in/at/of/for) me [there] is a car. Weird stuff there.
10. Голодомор - Holodomor - Like on my last language project list, I reserve spot number 10 for the most foul and depraved words, in my opinion, of that language. Even though it technically isn't a form of profanity per se, the word for "famine" draws up a perverse and horrible historical memory in this culture. When this word is said, it instantly is associated with the man-made famine, in the 1930s in Ukraine, imposed by the Stalin regime in that region that killed millions, some speculate even a number equal to that of the number of Jews killed in the Nazi death camps. The word doesn't just mean famine, it means something more akin to "murder by hunger". What could be more profane than a word expressing a political will to reduce millions to starvation by confiscating all their food? The fact that Ukraine at that time was part of the Soviet Union made awareness about the event virtually unknown to the West, either because of the insular and secretive nature of Stalin's brand of communism, or there was no interest or collective sympathy for any human beings living under communism, or because the Soviet Union was needed later on to take pressure off the western expansion of the Nazis, and needling Josef Stalin about this issue at the time wasn't a good measure of diplomacy to gain his involvement as an ally. So, attention about the matter of Holodomor in the Ukraine was purposely and conveniently kept out of the news to placate the tyrannical bastard, who throughout his life, was responsible for exiling and killing more people through his rule, mostly his own citizens, than his rival, Hitler. 

The adventure of learning and collecting new words continues from here onward. In summery, between learning Swedish and Ukrainian, I've been practicing one or more language modules each and everyday since the New Year began, roughly 120 days straight. I've just opened an envelope and revealed to myself the random pick of the next intensified language project to do. The next two month quest for improved linguistic proficiency . . . German! Thankfully, it's something a little more familiar, with the advantage of me knowing someone who could tutor me through some conversation.

*- Looking at language learning through this reverse perspective, I'm a lot more forgiving to my paternal grandparents for not learning very much English. They didn't have the advantage of something like an Open Door Society at the time when they immigrated. Knowing this, I am more empathetic to other newcomers here whose language is vastly different from English, and who are trying to rebuild their lives away from something oppressive.
**- I just noticed that putting the apostrophes in parentheses makes them look like a couple of upside down breasts with an "s" between them. This milk example is creating an obsession.
***- Like languages like Latin, Russian, and Chinese, Ukrainian doesn't use doesn't use definite or indefinite articles like "the" and "a/n". It's convenient in some ways, but not for others.

Sweet and Sour Cherry Spare Ribs (Crock Pot Recipe)

Generally, I view cooking spare ribs in a slow cooker as some form of sacrilege, but I'm trying to be open-minded. Given that this Sunday is too cloudy, cold, and gloomy to make me want to tramp outside and tend to a grill, I thought I'd experiment with a slow cooker, but I'm doing it on my terms by concocting my own version of a sauce that I think would go well with them using this method.

My objective was to get cherry flavour penetrating the meat on all taste dimensions (salty, sweet, sour, and bitter) and to rely a little less on the more piquant seasonings that I usually prefer. So, here it is: one of the very few recipes that I've created in which I bothered to write down.

Ingredients

1.7 kg - Pork Spare Ribs (I used side ribs), cut into 2-3 rib sections

1 Cup - Sour Cherry Jam (found at the Saskatoon Farmers Market)

It tastes great in Vodka too!

1/2 Cup - Pickled Sweet Cherry Juice*

15 - Pickled Sweet Cherries*, halved with stems and pits removed

1/2 teaspoon - Fee Brothers Cherry Bitters cocktail flavouring
1/2 Cup - Coca Cola
1 Tablespoon - Creamy Horseradish Sauce

1/2 Teaspoon - Chinese 5 spice powder

1/2 Tablespoon - Coriander seeds, lightly cracked in a Mortar and Pestle

1/2 Tablespoon - Pink Peppercorns, lightly cracked in a Mortar and Pestle

1/2 Tablespoon - Red Chili Pepper Flakes

1/2 Tablespoon - Kosher Salt

1/2 Teaspoon - Cayenne Pepper

After sectioning the ribs, combine all the rest of the listed ingredients in a bowl and mix thoroughly to make the sauce.

Dip each rib section in the sauce, coating them completely, and place them in a slow cooker crock. Pour the remaining sauce over the ribs, put the lid on the crock, place it in the slow cooker, and then set on medium for eight hours.

The Result

It actually turned out more sweet than sour, so in the future I may add either white vinegar, or red wine vinegar, to give it more balance to improve its tanginess. I would guess that the same sauce could be possibly used with browned chicken thighs, and roasted or slow cooked as well.

*- This is one of my own homemade condiments which I also have the recipe for, so you kind of get a bonus. For making Sweet Pickled Cherries, the process is as such:

1.75 Cups - White Vinegar

1.75 Cups - Granulated White Sugar

0.75 Cups - Water

2 - 10 cm long, cinnamon sticks

2 Teaspoons - Whole cloves

1 Teaspoon - Whole Allspice berries

1 kg - Dark Sweet Cherries (with the stems)

Combine vinegar, sugar, water, cinnamon sticks, cloves, allspice, in a saucepan. Bring to a boil, reduce the heat and simmer gently uncovered for 20 minutes.

Sterilize three 500 mL canning jars, and pack the cherries into them.

Remove and discard the cinnamon sticks and pour in the hot syrup over the cherries to within 1.5 cm from the rim of the jar. Seal the jars and process them by immersing them fully in a boiling water bath for at least 10 minutes. Wait 2-3 weeks before using.

Earth Day 2017

Earth Day, for me around here, is the more official beginning of spring, in that it prompts me to commit to a better lifestyle not available for me for most of the winter months. That is: less vehicle use, a move to a healthier lifestyle, more engagement with my community, breaking through a bad seasonal trough of depression, and having better intentions for living well in general. That’s a challenge to do around here in Saskatoon from the beginning of November up until the first half of April. Earth Day marks some sort of pivotal point of true alleviation from the stresses of winter.

This is my personal snapshot of conscientiously lowering conspicuous consumption, and basically an audit of the footprint I leave on this region of the planet for this day when I decide to note how to tread lightly on it. Taking account of just how much we really consume in utilities like our power, water, fuel, and the money and resources for which we are using and wasting for these things in our households, and in our communities, is something I think everyone should be responsible for doing, and Earth Day seems like the perfect day to be mindful for doing it.

Earth Day for me is the reminder of the pervasive perversion of what I call the Double F destructive cultural forces we humans indulge in that are killing our biosphere. The first destructive Double F culture is the Fossil Fuel culture, and its role in climate change, and the lobbying by their proponents to make movements towards renewable energy illegal in some cases. The second is the Fast Food culture, and its role in not only making us a toxic, devolving, weakened species of obese diabetics and cardiac disease patients, but it is also an overwhelming source of pollution in terms of discarded containers (bottles, cups, wrappers, straws, etc.) all for the sake of our selfish and foolish sense of convenience, and wasteful and unethical mass production practices which are under the control of a handful of corporations whose ultimate goal is to control all elements of growing, processing and distributing food on the planet, and squeezing out practitioners of ethical animal husbandry, organic food production, and removing natural genetic biodiversity in our food stocks. I could add a third destructive Double F cultural force: the Fascist Fathead culture, of seizure of political control by cretins like Donald Trump, aided by a population so ignorant to allow that to happen, who are not only climate change deniers and not only taking inroads to making this planet worse environmentally, but getting us uncomfortably closer to some reality of an approaching world war. I won’t comment anymore on such things, but I will comment on my initiatives for this day, and see if they lead me to action for a happier place to be.

Morning: Woke up. Washed up. Fed the dog, then fed me. We walked outside after breakfast out to our neighbourhood park and back. Like on previous Earth Days, we took some effort to be mindful to transfer stray bits of litter in the public spaces to a trash bin*, and collect whatever discarded recyclables to cash in along our walking circuit. This year, I must say that the area looks much cleaner. I suspect several positive and negative factors at play:

·         The laws cracking down on DUI drivers in the province, may mean less vehicular boozing, and hence there have been fewer beer cans tossed on the street

·         The earlier thaw this year got people out earlier to do their spring cleaning and less wind strewn litter has been coming out of the yards

·         The City’s street sweepers came through recently, hoovering up the extra stray human made debris

·         The kids from the nearby Adventist school perhaps went early on their own Earth Day programme to help clean up the park and surrounding area

·         The wretched oppressive austerity budget from this government is making people trying every means to save cash; buying less pre-packaged junk/fast food, hence less wrappers, and saving their bottles and cans for SARCAN refunds.

·         More indigent people around who are reduced to picking up waste recyclables as prices/(sin)taxes get inflated

Ella and I still found plenty of litter, but not one bottle or can was spotted along our walk. Mostly paper and plastic drinking cups. A 20 liter bagful was collected and cleared off our path and trashed. A small move for some better karma I hope.

I then cycled to the Farmers Market, bought a local product, and then returned home.                                                                                                                                                                                                                                           .

Lunch Hour: Made a pizza – using the ingredients that I’ve either already had here, that were extras from other cooking projects (just like the way the original traditional pizzas in Italy were made, i.e. repurposing leftovers) or bought piecemeal through the week from a shop on the same route as my commute from work, thus no extra fuel expended for a special dedicated out of the way shopping trip for one project.

Afternoon: Reading, napping, daydreaming/meditating, doing sudoku, some house cleaning, language learning, dog-walking, attending a March for Science Rally (too briefly, but I at least got to sign some petitions), I went to the library to make returns and check out more new material. Except for the household cleaning, and language lessons, all of those things required neither power, nor fuel, nor water, nor extra money to do for the day. I’m writing this I suppose to tell those who are Millennials and younger that it is indeed possible to have a life for a large part of the day without electronics.

Evening: Drinking homebrewed beer, ate left overs for supper, more reading, listening to tunes (mostly bass-intense, shoe gaze Indie), writing this entry.

Power Used: Actively deployed power usage that I opt to turn on and off (apart from the constant utilitarian use of electricity like fridge and freezer operation, Wi-Fi router, etc.). One kitchen light, one bathroom light, one hallway light (combined 20 minutes of use), a toaster, 15 minutes of magnetic induction burner use (very efficient), kettle boiled, smartphone charge, 40 minutes of oven use at 170 degrees Celsius, ran the dishwasher, 2 minutes of microwave oven on high, my Bluetooth sound bar for music streams and running my laptop to write this blog (both for 90 minutes). I opted not to use the TV at all today (too much bad news). I read my books by natural day light. Including all my constant essential appliances running (fridge/freezer), I would guess that I used about 5-6 kWh today so far in total for my total power consumed if I interpolate the readings right from my last utility statement. The average Canadian, according to one statistic, uses  around 4500 kWh per year. Sadly, we are the highest per capita users on the globe, for the fact that we use power almost as liberally as the Americans do, but yet additionally have a climate that demands extra heating for homes, and more vast spaces to transmit power between centres where there is a significantly increased line loss. If my personal average use nudges up to close to 10 kWh per day, i.e. 3650 kWh per year, I'm still below the per capita national average for consumption of power.

Gasoline Used: Zero – I walked or cycled to everywhere I went today. As chilly and gloomy as the day was during the time that I was biking, I at least had the invigorating fresh air to breathe, the uncrowded Meewasin trail to use, the peace of not having to hear the awful screeching noises emitted from under my car’s hood (time to change some belts), and not having the annoyance of having to hunt for and pay for a place to park a vehicle.

Water Used: Health and Hygiene (brushing teeth, sailor shower**, and two toilet flushes, so far***), reloading the dog’s drinking fountain, making coffee, making ice, personal hydration, running my dishwasher (on economy setting as always), cooking and kitchen clean up. An estimated 40 litres used, or two brewing carboys’ worth. It’s good to know of this quantity should there be any planned water shutoffs for maintenance, like I already have been warned about coming in the summer months.

Personal Waste: As it is now, after three days, my 15 liter kitchen garbage is one third filled with stuff that is 85% compostable refuse (mostly fruit and vegetable peels and egg shells). I regret that there is no sort of composting station around here, and I wish my condo could be provided with one of some sort so I could reduce this waste volume further still. I’d use the matter to make enough soil to grow my own herbs. I buy very little canned food, but my building at least has the convenience of a recycling bin for such things when I do.

Purchase Today: Just ten dollars at the Farmers Market, for a jar of Sour Cherry Jam. I’ve been hunting around like crazy for this stuff (I have a special project in mind for it, which I may blog about later). It may be much more expensive than other commercial jars of jam, however from the perspective of living happily on the Earth while doing it a favor, and building stronger communities:

·         This is a unique commodity that I have not found anywhere else but the Farmers Market. For today, it seemed right to get something that came from nature. And it is delicious. Never willingly buy anything that doesn’t fix a problem, doesn’t educate you, or doesn’t give you pleasure! That is the essence of frugality.

·         It would still be more expensive if I were to try to make it all home, plus I’d still have to wait until the cherries were in season, if I ever actually had the time to commit to make this stuff (home economics issue)

·         It was made here locally, from produce from a local orchard, and not trucked in from a half a continent away, or from someplace across either ocean (fossil fuel conservation issue)

·         You support a small business and not a giant corporation (corporations which are generally polluting on an industrial scale, and you directly help them to do it by buying their products)

·         An added bonus is that I have gained another reusable Mason jar to fill with my own crafted canning recipes later this year

The cost break down of my day is actually very different once I tabulate the information on my SPL Check Out Receipt. It tells me the monetary value in savings I made by loaning the books instead of outright buying them. I saved $81.89 today, adjusted to $71.89 subtracting the cost of my wares at the Farmers Market. I’ll whittle down that figure again accounting for the real cost of the ingredient proportions for the pizza I made, and the beer I brewed myself ($6.50 for the pizza, and $0.67 for the beer) the savings of the day is now $64.72. Let’s compare that with the likes of an impulsive spender, let's call him Joe Schmuckjob, who is probably the same kind of stupid bastard who's living in my neighbourhood and throwing his cups and food wrappers all around on my block. Let's pretend he is going to have himself the same sort of “cheap” weekend of entertainment as I am. He buys the $81.89 worth of books (though I doubt he really reads, we could substitute that material with the same value in dope and video games), he spends another $25.00 for delivery of the same quantity of pizza I made at home, drops another $20.00 for a six pack at an offsale place, for his beer ration, and let’s not forget the yummy $10.00 Sour Cherry Jam. His cheap weekend is turning out to be costing him $136.89 so far, and I haven’t even factored in the fuel his lazy ass is using, and all the extra trash he is making, which has an extra civic cost to clean up and dispose. Sloth, blended with impulsivity and stupidity, is expensive. Bringing all these facts to mind is making it a happy Earth Day for me.

I don’t want to get too sanctimonious about these measures I used, because I’m certain there are areas of improvement I could still work out, especially for my water usage and power, plus I also still lazily exploit food services at times when I don’t want to cook – I just don’t do fast food or delivery. This factoring of the SPL receipt also makes me pissed off even more that the Sask Party is taking measures to defund library services throughout this province as an austerity measure, hence my effort to sign petitions.

*- I’m like the average typical Canadian who thinks you’re a scum of the earth if you openly choose to litter.

**- Moistening the body first, shutting off the water, scrubbing down thoroughly with soap and a loofah, and turning water back on only long enough to rinse off shampoo and soap. Less than six litres used with a high pressure-low flow system.

***- Sadly, I don’t have a low flush volume tank.