Carbon be gone.

In our effort to reduce the impact our destination wedding will have on the environment (50 or so people traveling hundreds of miles), and because we like the organization and the idea, we have made a donation through Trees for the Future. This nonprofit has been promoting sustainable agroforestry around the world since 1989.

We have adopted the village of Bethel in the community of Cabaret, Haiti, which has been devastated by deforestation and global climate change. The project we have sponsored will plant more than 5,000 forestry and fruit trees. The trees are fast growing and permanent. According to the non-profit's executive director, these "beneficial trees will protect the fragile lands and assure that families can continue to live in dignity. Each year, these trees will remove several tons of pollution from the global atmosphere [...] while protecting lands and assisting the natural return of past diversity." Only three percent of Haiti's original forests remains, leaving it brown and barren. Haiti is the poorest country in the Western Hemisphere, and the deforestation leaves its people vulnerable to flooding and mudslides, which kill many and wash away what little fertile topsoil remains. Eventually the hillsides turn to rock and cannot be farmed.

Trees for the Future fits its program to what best suits each community, teaching people how to better use the land by integrating the elements of their daily lives — trees, people, animals, agriculture — into a system that is self-sustaining. They also train people to spread the knowledge they have gained.

Since the idea is to offset all our upcoming (June 2008) travel, the donation is basically in the names of everyone attending the wedding — so, in a sense, it is your donation as much as it is ours. At 5,000 trees, that's roughly 100 trees per person. Check out Trees for the Future at www.treesftf.org.

Jason

PS: I had two trees survive my planting of the "Save the Date" seeds, a redwood (left) and a sequoia (right). Here they are at about 10 weeks. Anyone else have any luck?

Goodbye November.

Well, the last six weeks have kind of gotten away from us.

As is our custom in the fall, we took on way too many obligations at work and school, so in the lead up to the semester ending, we typically have no choice but to dig in — so if you haven't heard from us or seen us, we've been dug in. Sarah's been working on final projects for her classes in the evenings after work and on her days off. It's all due next week, so we're bowing out of two holiday events we wanted to attend this weekend to make sure that she has enough time to complete her work. I've been steeped in grading during this time. I've been conducting and grading finals and filing grades this past week, with everything looking to wrap up next week around the time Sarah finishes. I also took a French class, which had been going well until the last two weeks or so, when it had to take a back seat — that final was ... not my finest work.

Amid all this, we devoted our time to one more pursuit — we bought a house! We had convinced ourselves and come to peace with the fact that we would have to leave San Diego in order to afford a home, but with the help of Sarah's moms, we were able to become homeowners. We bought the house that we had been renting from Sarah's step mom, Kat, during the past year and a half. It is a 1950's two bedroom, two bath with a huge yard and a pool, located in Allied Gardens (a great neighborhood across the freeway from San Diego State University). Kat happily lowered the price to one we could afford, selling the property under value, and Sarah's mom, Pam, generously payed for our closing costs and our first month's mortgage. The purchase has special meaning for Sarah and her family because her grandparents on her mother's side lived there, as did her dad, Jim, and Kat — so it's a family house, which will now stay that way.

Progress on the wedding has been slow going (see above), but we did manage to get our wedding coordinator up north squared away. Her name is Sarah, and she's very cool. We also ordered the materials for our formal invitations (100 percent recycled, tree-free products — of course), and we will be working on getting those out over the Christmas holiday. There has been wedding dress and reception site drama, but all of that has quietly worked itself out.

From this point forward there should be plenty of activity, so check the site and the blog. We're at about six months out — starting now.

Jason