[Part of my challenge to give something away every day for 29 days, again]

This challenge has become less about giving something away each day for 29 days and more about giving away 29 things at random intervals during a 29-day period….

Gift 18: A glass of white wine for Gina at Bodega wine bar — to welcome her back to L.A., at least for the summer while she’s taking a break from engineering classes at MIT.

Gift 20: A lemon drop plus dinner and a movie ticket for Sarah, who had a birthday last week! To celebrate a bit belatedly, a group of us went to see Sex & the City at The Bridge. We picked that theater because it has a bar — but the service was sadly really horrendous. Still, the movie was fun –

I got a gift too, from Kristen, for getting my PhD. She gave me a lil figurine — I think because I got a bit obsessed with hers the last time I went over to her place.

I’ve named her Miel (for mini Siel) — She now dutifully blogs beside me –

Gift 19, BTW, was the Wednesday freebie!

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A twice-weekly sharing of eco-shwag.

Today’s giveaway is a Heal the Bay beach tote that commemorates the nonprofit’s Back to the Beach benefit dinner, which happened last month.

The tote comes with a detachable coin purse and is made of cotton — which appears to be conventional — by Macher. On the upside, it’s cute and looks like it’ll be pretty durable.

Comment or email by Sunday to get into the drawing, which’ll happen Monday. US addresses only.

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[Part of my challenge to give something away every day for 29 days, again]

A few days ago, I wrote about the Take Back the Filter Campaign, an effort to persuade Clorox, owner of the Brita Products Co. in the U.S., to provide a recycling option for consumers who use their products.

As a part of the campaign, Take Back the Filter’s asking you to send in your old filters, to be used as a visual showcase of sorts towards the effort. So I’m sending in mine to be used for the cause!

I guess this is an odd “gift,” since it’s technically trash — but this lets me highlight the Take Back the Filter campaign again. All Brita filter users — Get involved!

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Update, 11/18/08: Brita’s new filter recycling program will begin Jan. 2009.

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[Part of my challenge to give something away every day for 29 days, again]

A little White Coconut Creme tea from Art of Tea — along with a couple honey sticks — goes to Streetsblog LA‘s Damien Newton, as a thank you for being a great contributor to the Emerald City blog.

Damien’s guest posts were mostly about HOT (high occupancy toll) lanes, which have been a hot topic of discussion lately, as Metro’s recently accepted federal funding to try out HOT lane programs.

Damien also made a case against the summer gas tax break plan — which both Clinton and McCain backed. Most recently, he interviewed Erik Knutzen of the blog Homegrown Evolution about urban gardening and farming.

Damien happens to be one of those strange people who drinks tea but not coffee :P Art of Tea, which I’ve written about in more detail here, offers very yummy teas and tisanes that’re mostly organic and sometimes fair trade certified — though I wish the company’d be more clear about which teas are certified fair trade and organic and which are not to make my shopping process easier. If they did, I’d shop there more often –

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[Part of my challenge to give something away every day for 29 days, again]

There are bicycle people who own like 10 bikes and pick one out for the day the way I pick out shoes. I am not one of these people, because even just having two bikes kinda stressed me out a bit — though they look like cute friends in the pic above –

But I’m really a one bike kind of girl. After I got the chainless Dynamic bicycle to review a few weeks ago, I started having trouble sleeping at night because I was afraid a bike’d get stolen: twice as many bikes = twice the chance for theft. Okay — I didn’t really have trouble sleeping, but theft issues did cross my mind more than usual –

I’m also someone who thinks the bike should just be there for me to serve my needs, as opposed to someone who enjoys looking after the bike, maintaining it, even dusting it. I do those things once in a while, but somewhat grudgingly…. and two bikes meant twice the work.

Anyway — Today I took the cool black-n-white chainless bike down to Bikerowave, the awesome DIY bike shop that helped me put the bike together to begin with — and donated it to the Bikerowave cause. I was going to keep it longer, but honestly, I wasn’t using the second bike — I never even put batteries in the front light that Bikerowave helped me install, opting instead to just take my pink townie out at night. The Dynamic bicycle is a v. cool, quiet ride — I just already had my basket and lights all set up on my townie and I guess I’m a creature of habit –

What Bikerowave will do with the bike: According to Art, one of the inventory people at Bikerowave, “The Bikerowave plans on keeping this bike as part of our “stable” of shop-bikes (ideally we want to have a variety of about 5 or 6) that we’ll keep around to loan-out or rent, etc.” I’m not quite sure who these shop bikes get rented or loaned out to — but hopefully it’ll be used to make good things happen.

Thanks to Dynamic Bicycles for letting me try out the bike, and for agreeing to donated it to Bikerowave.

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Update, 10/17/08: StreetFilms put together a short film about the 3 bike co-ops in the LA area, including Bikerowave.

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