The tree is decorated

Thursday, Ann and I went to three places before finally settling on the right tree for the right price. It looked great at the tree lot and only cost $40. People say that you could get a nice artificial tree for a bit more than that and that it would last for years and not cause damage to the environment by cutting down trees. My argument has always been, well, when you get rid of that fake tree eventually, how long is it going to take to decompose in the landfill. One thousand years? Ten Thousand? Besides, most real Christmas trees these days are grown on farms for the exact purpose of becoming Christmas trees.
We got the tree home and of course, it doesn't fit in the stand as is, so I had to remove some of the lower branches, in addition to about an inch of the trunk so it would absorb water. The tree seals itself off after cutting so you need to make the cut and then get it into water within a few minutes or it will not take up any water and thus become even more of a fire hazard than it already is as a real tree.
Once the lower branches were removed, one side of the tree didn't look perfect any more. But see, that doesn't really matter. Even Charlie Brown's tree looked beautiful once it was decorated, and we knew we could fill in the gaps and open spaces with dangling ornaments and lights.
I put the lights on Thursday night, and Ann got a lot of it decorated while I was at work on Friday. When I came home, she was beat and I finished decorating it. And really, it looks pretty nice. Now we can relax and enjoy the glow.

Going green: The EPA, Animas River, and Ikea

On August 5th, the EPA inadvertently released over a million gallons of contaminated mine water into the Animas River, causing the PH to lower, threatening fish and other wildlife--in addition to farmers--all along the waterway which eventually flows into the San Juan River and the Colorado.
The EPA during the Obama Administration has been a bunch of clowns who are basically dictating, with no Congressional approval, a plethora of strict regulations designed to protect the environment. These folks tour the country looking for someone to fine for undue greenhouse emissions or other "violations" of greenhood. Prior to this incident, they've potentially caused billions of dollars in job loss for thousands of people by restricting development of fossil fuels etc. Now, they are causing perhaps millions of dollars in loss of income for people who depend upon the Animas and the San Juan for their livings, including many miles of the Navajo Reservation. The Navajo Nation is understandably, up in arms.

We cannot fine them--it would just come out of the tax payer's pockets. The cost for the cleanup alone will be in the millions, if not billions, of dollars. So what can be done to punish those responsible for this potential ecological disaster? Fire them. Since they get their marching orders from the man at the top--President Obama--he should be fired too. Corrupt crooks only understand one thing and that's losing their jobs over the mistakes they've made.
So what does this have to do with Ikea. Not much except for the hypocrisy behind the "green" movement. Ikea, which doesn't even provide shopping bags that you can take home with you (unless you purchase one), in the name of keeping plastic grocery bags out of the landfill, sends out millions of half inch thick catalogs each year. For the amount of paper used in the creation of these things, they would have to kill an entire forest. Now that's really being green.
I'm all for protecting the environment, but there needs to be some kind of balance. People's lives  and livelihoods shouldn't be compromised in sketchy schemes that supposedly will stop global warming.