Environmental Efficiency

America could learn a lot from Ireland and I'm sure from the rest of Europe in the way that they are set up to save resources.

We came prepared but I am still surprised every time we go to the Superquinn (I love that name as Quinn is Jackie's son!) there are literally no bags. Seriously. If you came without bags you could buy some reusable ones if you wanted but there is absolutely no way you could do what I usually do when I go to kowalskis in Minneapolis and say, sheepishly, "Oops! Forgot my bags!!" There would just be no option... You would walk out of the store balancing your eggs and milk and bread, lamenting the fact that you needed those items more than that four pack of Guinness.

It makes us careful to buy only what we need and to know why we are going. And of course I really realize how many paper bags I've wasted in my lifetime because I was too lazy to remember my usable bags.

Next is their heat.

You can set he temp but the building manager had us program it. With the program it is not up or down in temperature, it is either on or off. We really appreciate it because we're paying utilities here and we literally turn it off at night and during the day. Of course you couldn't survive in frigid Minnesota like that but here, while those middle hours get uncomfortable, particularly on a "soft" day like today, you really appreciate the heat and remember different ways to get warm.

All of their sockets have on and off switches. I've started my toast four times over the past week only to realize that I forgot to flip the switch!

And nothing seems to be unlimited.

Some girls were asking Maggie today whether there really was such a thing as "supersize" and I remembered "small" slushies at thr movies that are bigger than my forearm.

They could be more bike friendly but they can't do much about the rain on that front and Minneapolis would be hard to beat anyhow.

Oh and for those of you familiar with European toilets, I don't need to explain. They are definitely a step up from Turkish toilets but that's it and I'm not sure that's a change we will adopt once we get home again.