Asha Anujeeva

I recently bought a magazine at the store called The Green Guide. It is put out by National Geographic. What attracted me to the magazine was the headline Green Made Simple, and a smaller headline Go Green Save $60 a week. Well, I’m all about saving both the environment and money, so I bought the magazine. All in all I thought it was a good magazine; most of the tips I already was doing, so I was both proud of myself and disappointed in the magazine that they didn’t have many “new” tips for me to use. However, there WAS one new tip that I have started using – instead of paper napkins, use cloth napkins. They claim that I can save $1.68 a week by using cloth napkins, and it is easier on the environment to use cloth instead of paper. So I’ve bought some cloth napkins and we will be using them unless we are eating something tomato based that will stain.

I’ve decided that this winter I am going to buy thermal underwear and wear it under my regular clothes at home so that I can turn the thermostat down a couple of degrees.  I’m concerned about the high price of heating the place this winter, and I think that by investing in some thermal underwear that I will be doing a good thing for the environment and a good thing for my checkbook!  I’ve found some thermal underwear that is smooth and silky to the touch that is only $7 for a top, and $7 for the bottom, which seems like a very good price at the local big discount department store.

I don’t like the waffle-weave thermal underwear because it is always too small, no matter how large a size I buy!  The pants only come down about half-way between my ankles and knees; I like the pants to come all the way to my ankles.  The kind that I like used to be called “Cuddleduds” but now it seems they’ve been renamed to “WarmWear.”  I don’t care – they will be comfy and help keep me warm!

With the economy as bad as it has been, and the fuel prices soaring, I have been giving some serious thought as to selling my gas-guzzler car (or just garaging it for a while) and buying a more fuel-efficient car.  In order to buy a more fuel-efficient car, I would need to get a Car Loan to help pay for it.  My brother suggested that I check out the bestleadinglenders.com website to see what kind of competitive loan I could get through them.  They are a leading online financial services company that provides student loans, car loans, credit cards, and Payday Loans.  They give credit to consumers with good credit, or bad credit, and they do not charge any application fees.  I like that they don’t charge application fees, it would really be upsetting to have to pay an application fee and then get turned down for the loan!

I love to keep a flower garden.  I don’t bother with a vegetable garden, it is so much hard work and so time consuming.  For the amount of veggies we eat around here, it is just more cost effective to buy them at the farmer’s market or grocery store.  Besides I don’t want to deal with trying to protect my food harvest from all of the garden pests that think that my garden is an all-you-can-eat buffet!

In our area, a lot of people have problems with pests coming into their gardens and eating up all of their hard work.  Deer and rabbits seem to be the worst offenders around here, although an occasional raccoon has been known to help himself to the corn crop!  I like the Havahart products that help to deal with unwanted animals in a humane way.  They sell a defence animal repellent spray online at their website havahart.com that repels rabbits and deer.  What repels them is the smell, so they are not harmed in any way.  These sprays are organic and will not damage the environment in any way.  If I were to decide to try to grow veggies I would definitely use this product to try to protect my garden from being eaten up by the deer and rabbits!

I was reading a BBC.com website news story today about how 48% of the world’s primate species are facing extinction.  The article explains that a large reason for that was the deforestation of the world; people are cutting down and/or burning the forests that the primates live in.  That was depressing news.  But what really surprised me was to read in the article that the extinction is being exacerbated by hunters who are hunting the primates for food!  I did not realize that people considered monkeys as edible!  I don’t know why, I just never really thought people would eat monkeys.  That makes me especially sad, since I consider primates to be so closely related to humans that it almost seems cannibalistic to eat them!