All wrapped in one

For those of you who know me, you know how passionate I am about NASCAR (sometimes, I think I need to bridle that passion and direct it to another portion of my life.) For those of you who remember (those who don't can find a post about it under the month of December), I find caring for the environment is an important issue. There were a pleasent surprise for myself when I was doing my daily browse of NASCAR's website.

NASCAR is starting a new line of environmental programs, one which is called NASCAR Green Clean Air. This is a program that plants 10 trees for every race that is in the Sprint Cup schedule, which totals to 360 trees a season. This program is not the only green thing that NASCAR is starting to do either.

"There are strong waste management, land conservation and bottle-and-can recycling programs at NASCAR-sanctioned race tracks; all oils and car fluids used at the track are recycled by Safety-Kleen; Goodyear recycles all tires used in racing; Exide provides a recycling program for racing batteries and all NASCAR offices have introduced a recycling program aimed at 100 percent recycling, while two new NASCAR office buildings, the 20-story NASCAR Plaza in Charlotte, N.C., led by NASCAR and the new headquarters building for ISC and NASCAR in Daytona Beach, Fla., will qualify for LEED certification, an important and relatively rare distinction making them "green buildings."

Aubrey is one happy green NASCAR camper.

(To read the article, go here: http://www.nascar.com/2009/news/headlines/official/06/12/tree.planting.program/index.html)

Remaining summer fun :)

Needless to say, this summer is going to be a great one. The start of it was just plain old amazing--thanks Mom and Dad for lugging my butt to Europe. I really really really enjoyed it! The remanider of my summer vacation is going to be amazing, and I'm very excited. Time with the people I'm closest to, working, and doing a lot of other fun things that the summer brings. I think the things I'm most excited about are...

I'm baaaaaaaaaack!

That's right; Aubby Girl has returned from her vacation overseas. There is too much to type about for this, so I'll leave it up to my mom who will most likely write various posts about that once she's back from her Rotary conference in England. Anyway, it was the most beautiful greenery I have ever seen, besides Alaska, and it was fannnnnnnnnnntastic!

Want an idea what it looks like? Watch Lord of the Rings. The Shire looks like parts of Scotland and Ireland. Forests look like where the Ents resided near Isenguard. The hills looked like Rohan. Edinburgh castle reminded me a lot of Helm's Deep, too. Sorry, no Mordor (guess I'll have to go to New Zealand to walk the path to Mordor--Uncle Brian, you in?)

I have to admit, besides the Middle Earth-y scenery and visiting family, my favorite part of the trip was the birds I got to see. One bird in particular, the Jackdaw, I saw every single day except for the first 2 days of the voyage. They reminded me of the bird in Sleeping Beauty that Maleficent has. We called the birds "Aubrey's Birds" because everytime I saw them I freaked out and screamed for joy. I love these little buggers.