Well I have not updated this blog for a while... got busy with a life and a job. We have decided to end the Great experiment for the winter while the girls started school. They need the light to study and the computers for doing their home work. The only problem with the girls is that we cannot stop them from reading. We do get requests for movies that they have send and that they want to see.
We will consider to do it again next year. We have brought the laundry lines inside and still tend to hang our laundry. It smells better.
Well that is all for now.
Sunday, October 24, 2010
Sunday, August 22, 2010
Further updates interview and going to work in the dark
Wow it has been a bit since I have said anything... I guess that is the way with blogs.
Well it has been about five or six weeks for the Great experiment. Changes are that we now have five hours on Saturday and five hours on Sunday to get our computers running and update if we can other people. We were recently interviewed by Gary Graizzaro to publish us in the Pascack Press. Another new thing is that I have gotten a job that is about an hour away and starts at 6 AM.
The interview was done by phone with all of us sitting around MiL's cell phone. We got rid of our land line as each of us was working a couple of years ago. The interview was pleasant with stories of other people's reaction to what we are doing and some of our point of view about what we are doing.
MiL is also giving speech's, so far only in church, about the great experiment. I think that she is open to being interviewed by TV and by Radio so if your interested please contact us. Else, she is learning C the programming language to help her sister in her company.
My new job starts in the oh dark morning of OMG! OMG! I do not turn on the lights but find it pretty and peaceful. The hardest part is finding the matches so that I can burn a candle to make my cereal. No toaster or oven or stove top for Monday through Saturday. (Come to think of it I missed my eggs and onions today on Sunday.) Other than finding the matches, I have to put together lunch, by candle light and lay out my clothing the night before so that I can find it at the base of my bed and hopefully not put on the shirts inside out. I work with a bunch of guys so that they would never notice even if I had my shirt on inside out. This is one of the hazards of dressing in the dark, including putting on the incorrect shirt. I usually start out about 2 AM but have been known to sleep in a bit till 2:30 AM. I do not like to feel rushed so I prefer 2 AM to wake up. This puts my sleep time at about 8 PM to 9:30 PM just about dusk to full night. If I stay up any later, I get kind of cranky.
It could be worse.
DD8 is starting to show some displeasure at the Great Experiment. DD12 is starting to learn how to cook breakfast, which is why I was missing eggs and onions but got waffles which my daughter cooked. DD8 looks on with envy and will probably cook breakfast next year as she did when she saw DD12 reading and knew that she had to read as well as her sister.
Still for the forseeable future we will be doing the experiment. I sometimes wish that we had a better knowledge of the base of what we were using before as far as electricity and gas. If you begin you should monitor both before starting this "experiment." Even the knowledge of starting will probably make changes in the usage of both Gas and electricity.
Well it has been about five or six weeks for the Great experiment. Changes are that we now have five hours on Saturday and five hours on Sunday to get our computers running and update if we can other people. We were recently interviewed by Gary Graizzaro to publish us in the Pascack Press. Another new thing is that I have gotten a job that is about an hour away and starts at 6 AM.
The interview was done by phone with all of us sitting around MiL's cell phone. We got rid of our land line as each of us was working a couple of years ago. The interview was pleasant with stories of other people's reaction to what we are doing and some of our point of view about what we are doing.
MiL is also giving speech's, so far only in church, about the great experiment. I think that she is open to being interviewed by TV and by Radio so if your interested please contact us. Else, she is learning C the programming language to help her sister in her company.
My new job starts in the oh dark morning of OMG! OMG! I do not turn on the lights but find it pretty and peaceful. The hardest part is finding the matches so that I can burn a candle to make my cereal. No toaster or oven or stove top for Monday through Saturday. (Come to think of it I missed my eggs and onions today on Sunday.) Other than finding the matches, I have to put together lunch, by candle light and lay out my clothing the night before so that I can find it at the base of my bed and hopefully not put on the shirts inside out. I work with a bunch of guys so that they would never notice even if I had my shirt on inside out. This is one of the hazards of dressing in the dark, including putting on the incorrect shirt. I usually start out about 2 AM but have been known to sleep in a bit till 2:30 AM. I do not like to feel rushed so I prefer 2 AM to wake up. This puts my sleep time at about 8 PM to 9:30 PM just about dusk to full night. If I stay up any later, I get kind of cranky.
It could be worse.
DD8 is starting to show some displeasure at the Great Experiment. DD12 is starting to learn how to cook breakfast, which is why I was missing eggs and onions but got waffles which my daughter cooked. DD8 looks on with envy and will probably cook breakfast next year as she did when she saw DD12 reading and knew that she had to read as well as her sister.
Still for the forseeable future we will be doing the experiment. I sometimes wish that we had a better knowledge of the base of what we were using before as far as electricity and gas. If you begin you should monitor both before starting this "experiment." Even the knowledge of starting will probably make changes in the usage of both Gas and electricity.
Sunday, August 8, 2010
Been doing this for a month and still not knowing what is going on. We've been keeping track of the electric flow per day. But with no idea what we are saving or not. This month's bill was only ten dollars cheaper than last month. I figure that the historical data that the electric company has on us is against us. We hope to do better next month as their average per day is a bit more that what we are doing day by day and even when we average across a week.
MiL gave a sermon/speech/homily on the great experiment. She was very scared but did a fine job once she had her mike aligned with her mouth. She of course spoke of the Great Experiment. She is available to speak for a nominal fee at your club to explain to you some mistakes and attempts to adapt to a non electric life style.
Her favorite, I think, is doing without the ironing. She pulled a pair of pants out of her closet that needed an ironing. Alas, there is no iron allowed to be used because of the great experiment. She remembered that her husband who was in the Navy put his shirt and the pants under his mattress on board the submarine to iron them. She had her daughter hold the mattress up with one hand and a candle to see in the other. MiL straitened and straitened the pants and finally allowed the daughter to put the mattress down. The next morning, she retrieved the pants only to find that the pants were still wrinkled.
Some things work and sometimes the things that you think will work do not.
Of late DW is cooking up a storm with the grill. As I mentioned before, she has cooked pizza and various other things that you would not believe could be cooked on a grill. So far she had tried biscuits, regular bread (a round bread that she puts on a stone) and corn bread. The only trouble that she has is maintaining the correct temperature. The grill tends to burn too hot so she thought about it and found a temperature rock. You might ask what a temperature rock is and as would I. She knew that the the grill was burning too hot. Wondering what to do she looked around for a prop to keep open the lid of the grill. What to use? What to use? Well she found a small rock that looks like a potato and propped it to the side of the grill to keep the lid open. This then became the temperature rock maintaining the correct temperature through the process.
That is it for now, we are on our fifth week, this week.
MiL gave a sermon/speech/homily on the great experiment. She was very scared but did a fine job once she had her mike aligned with her mouth. She of course spoke of the Great Experiment. She is available to speak for a nominal fee at your club to explain to you some mistakes and attempts to adapt to a non electric life style.
Her favorite, I think, is doing without the ironing. She pulled a pair of pants out of her closet that needed an ironing. Alas, there is no iron allowed to be used because of the great experiment. She remembered that her husband who was in the Navy put his shirt and the pants under his mattress on board the submarine to iron them. She had her daughter hold the mattress up with one hand and a candle to see in the other. MiL straitened and straitened the pants and finally allowed the daughter to put the mattress down. The next morning, she retrieved the pants only to find that the pants were still wrinkled.
Some things work and sometimes the things that you think will work do not.
Of late DW is cooking up a storm with the grill. As I mentioned before, she has cooked pizza and various other things that you would not believe could be cooked on a grill. So far she had tried biscuits, regular bread (a round bread that she puts on a stone) and corn bread. The only trouble that she has is maintaining the correct temperature. The grill tends to burn too hot so she thought about it and found a temperature rock. You might ask what a temperature rock is and as would I. She knew that the the grill was burning too hot. Wondering what to do she looked around for a prop to keep open the lid of the grill. What to use? What to use? Well she found a small rock that looks like a potato and propped it to the side of the grill to keep the lid open. This then became the temperature rock maintaining the correct temperature through the process.
That is it for now, we are on our fifth week, this week.
Saturday, July 31, 2010
Day 20 - challenge was to not use the oven
One of the hardest challenges is to keep a house cool. The oven produces a challenge as while your cooking the oven is heating the house. We like hot food so we grilled when we were not doing salad. We did pizza and fajitas on the grill. We have a pizza stone. DW put the stone on the grill with an oven gauge. First pizza came out charred as we set the grease in the grill on fire. DW got the water sprayer and sprayed the flame out. Pizza was black on the bottom. The next three came out better as DW became more experienced... Despite the grill from hell food was good.
Wednesday, July 28, 2010
Day 19 - tomatos every day
Yes we have a tomato plant forest and is is giving us a sizable chunk of tomatoes for dinner and lunch. Not so overwhelming that we have to can some... though there are plans to can some stuff. We did fill some apothecary jars with various herbs that were dried over the weekend.
The day is nice but dry and I am not doing so well with my allergies. The dryness is not very good for me so much so that I think if I had a choice I would live in a rain forest. I do not want to travel to Arizona for example.
Pretty much regular, though I am going to use electric Sunday to print out an Algebra sheet for Marisa to fill out if she can for AP Algebra. I think that for this year she is already in for whatever math they have although they did "complain" that most of the students are advanced and would have to open perhaps two sections for advanced math. We still do not know if she did well on her end year tests. You have to plan when you do not use electricity at the house every day.
The day is nice but dry and I am not doing so well with my allergies. The dryness is not very good for me so much so that I think if I had a choice I would live in a rain forest. I do not want to travel to Arizona for example.
Pretty much regular, though I am going to use electric Sunday to print out an Algebra sheet for Marisa to fill out if she can for AP Algebra. I think that for this year she is already in for whatever math they have although they did "complain" that most of the students are advanced and would have to open perhaps two sections for advanced math. We still do not know if she did well on her end year tests. You have to plan when you do not use electricity at the house every day.
Tuesday, July 27, 2010
Day 18 - experimenting with electricity and gas
Well the Idea to measure the electricity and gas has entered into the equation. We would like to see what happens when we are in the dark compaired with in the electricity on Sunday. MiL will monitor the electric meter each day at the same time and then we will get an average saving.
Of course the high tech solution would be Ted: http://www.theenergydetective.com/news/ted-featured-nbc6-news/ for $200 dollars but you could use your internet connection to see what is happening from anywhere. I think that it would really be excellent when you have a house that is far away from you and you wanted to monitor electricity. Anybody staying there would or might turn on the lights if remote enough. I liked the video explanation.
The experiment goes on. We are getting a reading on thursday from the electric company so any saving would be reflected in our bill... if the electric company shows up.
Of course the high tech solution would be Ted: http://www.theenergydetective.com/news/ted-featured-nbc6-news/ for $200 dollars but you could use your internet connection to see what is happening from anywhere. I think that it would really be excellent when you have a house that is far away from you and you wanted to monitor electricity. Anybody staying there would or might turn on the lights if remote enough. I liked the video explanation.
The experiment goes on. We are getting a reading on thursday from the electric company so any saving would be reflected in our bill... if the electric company shows up.
Monday, July 26, 2010
Over the weekend, since we had electricity, some spices were dried. What you see is the top rack of Basil and underneath we have the rest. We have a dryer that uses electricity. Also, four loaves of bread and four of zucchini bread were made.MiL just realized that she likes the sun to her back when hanging clothing. We chose the side for the clothing line because we have a strait shot to our basement to the tree. Easy to load things from the driveway to the basement and bring clothing up from the washer. It was an accident that the line happens to be on the west side of the building. Therefore we have learned a lesson to put the clothing line on the west side of the building with a strait shot to the basement.
We are also being more diligent in disconnecting unnecessary lines of power. Clocks were disconnected from the power grid and as always the computers are off and disconnected from the power source. Even when you have a disconnected inverter there is still some power going through the phone charger so that also is a good thing to only connect up when you have to power a battery device. Now if only I could figure out where the google house power reporter is... google has a widget that directly monitors power usage from the house. I do not know if this is active on the east coast but it is worth investigating. That is it for now!
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