from my wife and i: we relatively recently received some free bikes from a colleague of mine. i’m fixing one up myself to be an ultimate commuter, but my wife said she didn’t really want the other one - so we’re fixing it up to give to a fifteen year old we know who needs reliable in-town transportation. it should be done this week, and he’s getting it on Friday. i hope he likes it!

also, we’re decorating for the holidays but in a sustainable, old-fashioned kind of way. my wife is a really good fabric artist and has crocheted a long holly vine that wraps around our living room. it’s well off the ground, and so that’s where we hang our ornaments so our two energetic kitties don’t succumb to temptation and danger. we did hook up house lights this year, powered by rechargeable batteries that i recharge using our Jackery and a solar panel. it’s small things, but it’s a start.

i’ve mentioned it before but we’re still planning on our community building chili feast, we’ve just had to move it to January due to our schedules. and we still host weekly zazen (Zen Buddhist meditation) at our house. we have four folks outside our family who come almost every weekend, and last weekend we did our first all-day sit on Saturday, from 8am to 5pm. i just launched a website for our group, in the hopes that anyone in our rural western Colorado locale that searches for “meditation”, “Buddhism”, or “Zen” and our city name will find our site and, if they feel like it, join us.