Once again, I woke up late. I had two slices of toasted local bread and a huge cup of non-local, but fairly traded coffee. I read the newspaper much more slowly than usual, probably because I didn't have the television on in the background. I walked to a nearby restaurant to meet a friend for lunch (and I forgot my dorky pedometer - damn!). I was trying to avoid restaurants this week, but my friend is moving to the West Coast on Tuesday and we wanted to celebrate. When I returned, Albert and I borrowed a Prius from Philly Car Share to run some errands. Since we were out, we stopped at Trader Joe's for to stock up on some goods. Although the stuff we got was not quite low impact, we thought it would be better than taking the car out again at a later date. One of the items we bought was Dr. Bronner's Magic Soap. We have gone from conventional liquid soap to J.A.S.O.N. liquid in a large plastic bottle to Whole Foods bar soap wrapped in plastic and now we have reached fairly traded organic soap wrapped in recycled paper. Will we ever make our own soap? I kind of doubt it, but who knows.

When we returned, we made a truly fantastic meal: Caesar salad made with locally grown romaine lettuce, cheesy garlic bread made with Claudio's local mozzarella and Sarcone's local bread, and pasta in a sauce made from local tomatoes and mushrooms (and onions and peppers of unknown origin).

I decided to plug the TV back in to watch the Democratic presidential debates and I didn't feel guilty about it because it seems like a good way to watch TV. I read about the debates in the morning paper and decided it would be worth my while. (It wasn't — no one said anything interesting.) When the debates were over, I unplugged the TV again. I am going to try to keep up this TV routine all summer. Not because I think there is anything wrong with TV, but because I am uncomfortable living in a quiet space, and I'd like to give that a try.