The sweet smell of French fries

This story goes back a while. It started on a Saturday afternoon, working on Rose's car. Without going into details, the car had a list of things it needed done, and I was having trouble justifying it all. The car didn't owe us a thing, and with Rose on the hiway all the time, I didn't want to push our luck going into winter. So, Rose started car shopping.

Yes, there was a lot of debate, but really there was only one choice. It had to be diesel, and that meant ein Deutsches Auto (a German car). There were not many to be found, but Rose finaly bought a wonderful 2001 VW Golf TDI.

Yeah! She even lets me drive it! (But only if I'm good, and I can come up with a really good reason)

So now it's time to get on the Bio-Diesel band wagon. With the falling temperatures of winter, and the fact that the little car hardly uses any fuel at the best of times, I'm not jumping the gun to start collecting waste oil just yet. For now, we have been using the Costco bulk canola oil. Just a touch over $1/L so it's not too spendy. A little left-over methaol and lye, and boom, we have some home-made bio-diesel. With just 1 liter in the tank, you could smell the diffrence at the tail pipe. Stick it to the man! The first steps to getting off the juice.

I'm working on improving my "stil", but that will come with a little time, and a shopping trip in town. For now, I can still do small batches.

The new Biodiesel decal has arrived for the back of the car. When it warms up, I'll have to put it on.

Okay, I've only made a few liters, and at best we're only talking a B5 blend in the car. Compare that to my neigbour who runs his truck for 1/2 hour before he goes to work every morning, I'm saving the world.

--------------

Sorry I haven't said too much here in the last little while. Sometimes life get's in the way. But I hope that when the dust settles from the last few weeks, it will all be worth it.

A new colour?

Well, I think this entire blogging thing has gone to new heights. Thanks to a blog, the politics of Canada may be in for a treat. I'm sure most of you by now have heard of Garth Turner. In case you haven't, I'll give you the readers digest version of the story. Ol' Garth is a politician. Up until recently, he was a member of the conservative caucus. Not normally a politician that I would pay much attention to because a) he is an MP for a riding in Ontario, a long way from where I am in Alberta, and b) he's a conservative. However for a torie, he doesn't seem to fit into General Harpers goose stepping, gay bashing, gas guzzling, tree cutting corporation of a government. And he isn't afraid to say it. http://www.garth.ca/weblog/ As a matter of fact, he seems to enjoy telling people that he isn't a puppet of Mr. Harper. America's buddy Steve, doesn't like it when his rank and file don't do and say as they are told, so Garth is not allowed to play in the blue sandbox anymore.

Especially this week, when the Rona Ambrose announced the new Clean Air plan. (If you look real close, you can see Harper pulling the strings to make her talk!) Seems that Garth didn't like this plan, and he said so. Thankfully, this plan is such a joke, that none of the opposition members like it either, and none of them are going to vote for it. In fact, unless you write the cheques at Exxon, you won't think very much of this plan. So at least this gives us the ability to continue with the status quo, rather than adopt some George Bush pleasing answer to environmentalism.

As for Garth, it looks like there are a number of other playgrounds that are willing to let him in. At first you would think that the "Major" parties would come into question. Red or Orange. Why not? Liberal, hey, they need a boost right now, and being kicked out by Harper would look good on a Liberal CV, but the floor crossing thing would come up again, and if more people keep jumping back and forth between the red Liberals, and the Blue conservatives, the house will looke like a police car on a chase. So the NDP? This front has been very quiet from where I look. Maybe Jack Layton doesn't want anybody more radical than him in the party?

But Garth has been ousted for a Green cause. (among others, a tell all blog didn't help) Hmmm, green eh? There has been a great deal of talk about Garth Turner joining the Green Party. Would that mean that Canada is on the cusp of having it's first Green Party member in the House of Commons? Garth is a bit of a loose cannon, so he may not be the first choice, but do you want the first Green MP to be a hippy green-peace type who is hand cuffed to a tree? Or should it be somebody in a suit who knows how to play the game, and might be able to make some change?

...............

In my last paystub from work they had the monthly company news letter. In it was an application form to join the conservative party of Alberta. Okay, I'll admit to mixing federal and provincial politics here, but hear me out. This was bugging me. I don't think it is the place for an employer to be handing out that kind of thing. If, as a business, the owner want his company to support a political party, or as a business owner, he wants to make the kind of support, that's fine. But don't bring it to the employee. The employee should be free from that kind of political bias, from someone in a position of authority.

So in retaliation, a co-worker and I are trying to sum up the balls to have them put a membership form for the Green party in the next news letter. We'll see how it goes... hopefully I'm not looking for a job next month.

.........

But not all blogs are changing the face of the country. I know mine won't. My good friend Jan has a blog. http://beatonho.blogspot.com/ For those of you who read this, and haven't been to Beaton, you can learn what this mystical place called Beaton is all about.