Weekend Update

We had another "cabinet meeting" Saturday morning. Our builders have been compiling pricing from the three kitchen cabinet companies we met with last month, and all three of them came in over our budget. So Dane scheduled a follow-up meeting with one of them to see what, if anything, we could do to bring the total costs down. It was a beautiful day, so we felt bad that Dane had to sit through what turned out to be 3 hours of us discussing the minutiae of door styles, stain colors, and drawer construction. (Even I was starting to get bored after a while.) But it was a good thing Dane was there, as he asked some good questions and came prepared with a set of plans. Hopefully we'll be able to make a decision on the cabinets by the end of the week.

Sunday there was a big Earth Day event on the Mall, so Josh and I took the Metro into DC to check it out. It was cooler and cloudy, but there was a decent turnout. They had a bunch of tents with different organizations handing out literature and free stuff -- mostly canvas tote bags, but also a lot of shiny, useless crap like buttons, magnets, frisbees, and bookmarks -- and a big stage for speakers and performers. I already have a ton of tote bags, so I passed those up, but I did score a packet of seeds, a pen made of recycled plastic, and a carabiner keychain. Planet Green had their own tent, and since it is a Discovery network, I saw a couple people I work with, including my boss. There was a huge line to get into the tent, but my friend Rob let me in through the exit. I discovered that Steve Thomas, host of the Planet Green series Renovation Nation, was signing autographs in the tent, so I went over to introduce myself.

I haven't mentioned this before, but the producers of Renovation Nation had actually expressed an interest in featuring our house on the show, since they were scheduled to be filming in the DC area this spring. Unfortunately, the timing didn't work out -- I think we'll already have drywall up by the time they are here, so many of the cool green features will be hidden. Anyway, I mentioned this to Steve Thomas, and he explained that they only have a 2-week window to film in any given location, so it's catch as catch can in terms of which projects they are able to include. It was quite loud in the tent as Los Lobos was performing on the stage and there was a huge speaker right outside, so we weren't able to have much of a conversation, but I did get an autographed photo:
I saw him again with the Discovery crew filming a segment in the Energy Star 'house' they had built on the mall, and Rob said he might use Josh and me as extras (he was the one filming), but he either changed his mind or we had moved on to the exhibition tent by the time he got around to it. That tent was like a graduate school science fair, with a bunch of grad students presenting their research on very specific environmental topics -- many of which were way over my head. I did have a few interesting conversations about permeable driveways and green building certifications, though. We also watched some of the events on the stage, where Chevy Chase was the emcee (sucked!), and speakers included Philippe Cousteau, Matthew Modine, and leaders of various environmental groups and government organizations. Los Lobos, moe, and the Flaming Lips performed as well. Based on what the speakers kept saying, anyone in their 20's is part of the "green generation." I must have heard that catchphrase a couple dozen times. I wonder what that makes us?