The Simple Bare Necessities

This afternoon Julie and I were watching some Oprah, as usual, and she had an intriguing piece about living on just the necessities. She challenged two families to live a week with severe cut backs on spending, no use of cell phones or ipods allowed, and only having an hour of TV or computer use. The first family consisted of three teenagers, a materialistic mother, and a tool of a father. As you can imagine their achievements were superficial at best. The Gallant family, however, had a complete reformation. They went in being complete TV addicts and came out closer than ever.

As with every episode of Oprah, this got me thinking. How can Julie and I make better use of our resources? The game plan for moving up here was to return, if not be introduced to nature. Yet, so far our time here has been a reunion with cable television*. There have been strides though. This afternoon we jogged nearly three miles with only two pauses! But enough gloating, back to the subject at hand.

To conserve my alloted computer time this post was drafted on paper first, as to leave time for something like, but not entirely pop-cornography. For those of you who don't know what "paper" is, it is a thin leafy material made from wood. While it is debatable whether this method is really all that frugal, as long as it appeases Oprah it must be good for the world.

You may notice that this post doesn't contain as much humor (or as I refer to it as "silly bits"). That is only because being away from my computer I can't listen to my Bill Engvall CDs for inspiration.

Other ways we've cut back are by opting for baths in the pond as opposed to showers, instead of watching TV we use telescopes to watch the neighbors, and to save money on air conditioning and laundry we've done away with clothes altogether. All in all I think we're well suited to hop on this going green bandwagon. Technically it should go right along with one of my favorite recreational activities anyway. Though giving up fast food will be rough.

I must note however that even after an hour of Oprah preaching about putting away the cell phones and video games, to have a commercial about her grand summer giveaway where she'll be giving away hundreds of TV, iphones, and computers is more than a little hypocritical. For shame Oprah, for shame.

*see next installment "200 Channels and there's something to watch..." to find out more!