OK, somehow, I made it! Last Friday my brother, cat, dog, Toyota Camry,
U-Haul trailer and myself took off to begin my newest adventure. With a
short detour in Wisconsin for camping and Costa Rican rum consumption ("but why is the rum gone?!"),
we made it to Minneapolis Saturday afternoon. Each day since then has
consisted mostly of socializing, room decorating, dog walking, and
getting lost trying to make it into the cities (thanks for nothing,
Siri).
I won't bore you with more details about my somehow incredibly smooth
transition from country roads to city sidewalks, but I do need to get
mushy here for a sec and send out some heartfelt thanks. To my parents
and family, for their remarkable and unwavering support through every
chapter of my life. To Kerrin O'Brien and the MRC,
for making this last year of opportunities and self-discovery possible
for me. To my friends, because I can still feel their love from here. To
my new roommates, who took me in no questions asked. And finally to my
brother, for being my courage and my pride when I can't seem to find
any.
Alright, ew. Now we can get to the exciting stuff. First of all, this city is amazing. Pedestrian friendly, dog friendly, earth friendly. The only things I miss about Michigan are Kroger, Meijer, and the bottle deposit law. I guess Target, Trader Joe's and awesome recycling will have to do. When I say awesome recycling, I mean it. I have a single stream recycling cart sitting in the alleyway behind me that was emptied by the city on Tuesday; today is Friday and it's already full again. My roommates already recycled, and have been 100% receptive and supportive of doing more. We now have 6 bins for recycling in the kitchen, and compost in the works.
My personal trash can suffered minimally from the move, additions mostly
consisting of 3M Command strips. I'm keeping it in my room for now to
avoid confusion and chaos.
Brother and I spent some quality time with tools this week, making new compost bins:
And here we have Tommy Mac, modeling this season's latest trend in poop composters
This was SO easy. I don't know why I bothered with making them from pallets before. I picked up two 32-gallon "trash cans" from the store, about 20 bucks each. For the food scrap composter, we drilled aeration holes around the sides and the bottom, and I placed it next to the vegetable garden today. The poop composter used the same concept, but we cut off the bottom of the container, as demonstrated in the last picture (don't worry, he's actually wearing pants). Assuming it doesn't rain tomorrow, I'll be digging a hole in the yard to sink this into. Keeping it underground should control odors and aid in the composting process...but I've never done this before so it should be a fun experiment.
Well, there you have it. Of course I'll continue my regular update here, but follow me on Instagram for picture updates from around the cities! @alittlegreenlife
And so begins the rise of my many suns...
