// newmodernscience

I had an interesting thought about resource management. I’ve been listening to this show on OPB called Think Out Loud, which is kind of a local current events talk show. They talk about all sorts of things from Oregon’s natural resources and local legislation, to bicyclists vs motorists, blogging, and how to cope with rising fuel prices. It’s pretty interesting because they get locals involved in the conversation, and you can call in, or email or post to the blog and they’ll read questions, etc. Anyway, one morning they were talking about gas prices, conservation, and opportunistic spending. I find it interesting that there’s a frugality movement happening, some of it I’m sure because of gas prices. I’ve heard stories of people buying mopeds and using those during the summer weather to conserve fuel. I read an instructible about a guy that converted a an old motorcycle by gutting the engine and tank, and putting car batteries and an electric motor in there, and using that for transit. Gets 30 minutes on a full charge, and it goes 75 mph. Pastor mentioned that some of the mothers at the church have been carpooling to the grocery store  My DIL even traded his Dodge RAM for a more fuel efficient car. The idea of conservation is appealing to me, but the practice is somewhat harder for me to put into effect. I have made an effort to tone town power use at the house; turning off monitors and computers when not in use, being conscious of light use, replacing bulbs with 5 year fluorescents, trying to be careful about water, heat and A/C use. One thing that we always get tripped up on is food. Food is something super easy to justify spending on, and even easier to overspend on. Portioning is something I have to be mindful of, but mostly it’s spending on fast food and opportunistic food spending that I mess up on. It should be easy enough to just think about not getting something quick, knowing that you’ve got groceries at home. I think I’m going to try leaving my debit card at home for a while to curb my spending on fast food, and try to force myself to just eat what we have at home. My intent hopefully is to be more intentional about buying food that we can prepare and eat at home, even though that it’s not as convenient, and hopefully we’ll eat better too.