My Journal Entry, Week 1

I chose electricity, food, and water consumption, respectively:

Day 1 - I woke up around 2:30pm very sick, but slept most of the day, so the lights were mostly off; also, I tried to hang out in places where the lights were on anyways – like my dorm hall – to avoid being in my room where I’d have to inevitably turn my own lights on.
I had nothing but crackers, granola bars, peanut butter and tea all day; nothing heated, cooled, meat-related. Kind of sad, but also kind of convenient...
Since I was really sick, things like not washing my hands as much and taking a cold shower were kind of out of the question, but I tried to be conscious of the water I DID have to use, and cut my shower down to four minutes.

Day 2 – I slept a lot again --- I still felt too sick to do much of anything except venture out for meals and go see the nurse, so the lights were off in my room most of the day. Thankfully, my roommate doesn’t bother a lot with the lights aside from her desk lamp, so if I wanted to keep them off, she didn’t fuss. I felt like I was killing two birds with one stone --- I got to sleep and help save the world at the same time!! Hehe....
I slept through breakfast time...for lunch, I slipped up a little --- I had the chicken noodle soup and the fish because I heard that fish is good for you if you’re sick, but I stayed away from any beef products all day. Dinner was a little better --- still had the chicken noodle soup out of the sick-person excuse, but I had no meat at all otherwise. Aside from that, it was crackers and tea for me.
This day, I cut my shower down to three minutes and still emerged a clean person. Other than the normal hand-washing, teeth-brushing, etc., I didn’t use much water at all.

General Electricity: Since I do a lot of things late at night, I tried to challenge myself to only have one light on at a time (there are four in our room), so if the main light was on, I’d turn off the doorway light. If the doorway light was on, I’d keep my desk light off (unless completely necessary)...you get the picture. And any time I saw that my suitemates left the bathroom lights on, I’d rush over and furiously shut them off. I hope they didn’t think I was crazy.... ;)

General Food: Being ill made for a very temptation-less two days in regards to eating meat, aside from that chicken-noodle soup. I’m curious to see what will happen when I’m NOT sick and they have good meat-involved stuff in the commons...coming from a Filipino family, I’m used to having a lot of meat products in my diet, so being a temporary vegetarian will be quite interesting... Note: aside from the one mug of hot tea I had on Day 1, my tea is the bottled Lipton kind that doesn’t involve me using heated water.

General Water: Any way I could try to conserve water I did; I had to clean a sticky plastic bag with hot water, so instead of running it under the tap, I just filled a cereal bowl with hot water and washed it in that. I was also really happy with cutting down my shower so much while it still being a good shower --- I have a strong fondness for hot showers, and it’s the most water I use at one time per day, so that’s where I felt I made the most difference these past two days.