Tag: oil

A Sun Diego Day

kirbyfullyloadedLeave a comment

I don’t think I’ve worn shorts and a tank top since October.

But it was sunny today on my vacation in San Diego so I broke out the summer wear and it was amazing.

I bought some rosemary and olive oil bread from a little place called Rustic Breads and it was absolutely marvelous.

There was a lot of glare so I couldn’t take a picture of it but this was the next thing in the display case and it looked just as delicious:

Then by the power of Ross Turner himself, I got to see my friend, Rose Hart, from CIMI!!!

She happened to be singing with her choir group on the U.S.S. Midway, fifteen minutes from my hotel.

I pulled into the parking lot and walked straight into her choir group (purely by chance) about a minute and a half before her tour started and she got onboard.

Rose Hart

After our extremely loud reunion, I walked around Downtown San Diego with my sisters and dress shopped for their graduation.

We headed down to La Jolla Shores to eat lunch at my favorite store in the world, the Cheese Shop.

I think we bought up half the stuff in there…seriously.

Then we walked down onto the beach and we saw a bunch of sea roses tangled up in the sand.

They still smelled sweet, mixed with salt and fresh sea breeze.

As we walked down further I saw three guys flying 200-foot-long kites.

Good thing it was windy…

I was very confused as to how these massive kites got into the air and I was lucky enough to see a guy launching his:

It was a very good day.

Add that to the fact that I got to see Ursula and Greg, two of my best friends ever, it was fantastic.

I love San Diego!!!

Environmental Policies

therightliberalLeave a comment

I often question others sanity. Chances are it is me who is insane, but on occasion it seems that others are far off their rocker.

It was proposed, years ago, to build an oil pipeline from the oil sands in Canada, all the way down to the refineries in Texas. Luckily Obama delayed the building of it, but it is still being pushed for.

The reason for the proposed pipeline is far from surprising: money. And money in all sense. It increases the price that the oil sands companies get paid, it increases the refinery work in Texas and on top of it all, with all the transport, the overall price goes up.

But it is not the bogus price hike that will come from the ludicrous transportation; it is the environmental cost.

The whole process is full of pollution and dirty business. Tons of tar and other unhealthy things are pumped into the atmosphere as well as polluting water.

Oil is great, don’t get me wrong. I wish we could just keep using oil and not worry about it. But two things make that not possible. The first is that we are quickly running out and the second is that we are destroying the planet we live on.

And yet, we have no clear cut solution. Ethanol and biodiesel have to potential to replace gasoline usage for the most part. But that requires a lot of investing in switchgrass and distilleries.

There are other potential ways around oil but they all require us to change how we live everyday. With ethanol and biodiesel, we can keep our cars the same and we would not need to come up with a whole lot of new technology.

By doing these simple things, we can work to cut our dependence on oil as well as working to make the world cleaner.

But the key thing is that we need to wake up. It is not fun to admit but we are almost out of oil. We can choose to deny the facts and face a very harsh future or we can prepare and make the transition easier.