My Daily Impact: August 22, 23, 24, and 25, 2011

My Daily Inpact: August 22, 23, 24, and 25

This is the tenth entry in my blog.

On Monday night, August 22, I drove the truck downtown to meet my friend Bret for dinner. I drove the truck for two reasons: It was threatening rain, and Bret often lets his roommate borrow the car. The plan was to go to Sweet Tomatoes, but we ended up having food at the center. There was a buffet set out for the HIV testers, and I was invited to join in. There was a nice pasta marinera, and fried, breaded chicken breast. This piece of chicken would be the first meat I ate since the big bar-b-que I finished on Friday afternoon. We went to Pei Wei Friday night where I had a meal with tofu and vegies. Saturday was Sweet Tomatoes, and Sunday was Jason's Deli for salad bar. I like to have such yummy vegie offerings.

Monday's grid power use was 18 KWh, and this did not include charging the truck. This is about average for a hot day with no rain. There was a little rain in the evening, but it did not cool off too much. There is also a problem with the central A/C unit. If it is allowed to turn itself on by the thermostat, it will not cool.

Unfortunately, on Monday evening, I neglected to shut the unit off before leaving the house. The fan ran the whole time, and caused about 3 KWh extra use. I will have this repaired soon.

Tuesday, August 23

I was back to motorcycle training class at the Harley Davidson dealer at 8 AM. I was able to ride the e-scooter  and plug it in there. Since it is only about 3.3 miles from my house, I apriximate less than 100 watt-hours of outside power use. I was responsible for some use of gas because we were on the range training with the motorcycles. We used 500 cc Buell motorcycles, and judging by the way they ran, are not very efficient. We were also just idling most of the time, and the exhaust stunk of unburned fuel. I would like to see a nice electric motorcycle produced in our country.

When I got home, I plugged in the truck, and turned on the A/C. I stayed home most of the rest of the day except to get some stuff from Publix, and get some chicken moggets from Mac Donnalds. I again rode the e-scooter, and was able to keep overall power use down for the day. Total KWh for Tuesday was 25 which included 10 KWh for the 24 miles driven in the truck.

Wednesday, August 24

Back to the Harley dealer for the last day of Motorcycle training. More gas, and more nasty exhaust. The same extra power use for plugging the scooter in there, and three Mac Donnald's hamburgers for dinner. I also had some Green Giant frozen vegies, a banana, and various packaged snacks. These snacks consisted of granola bars, gummy fruit, and some peanuts from a big container. It is hard to avoid packaging when dealing with snack food. I do try to minimize it whenever possible, but it seems that everything has so much wrapping.
Total grid KWh use for Wednesday was 14. There was a nice cooling afternoon rain whiched helped keep this number down.

Thursday, August 25

I took Astro for his morning walk, and his best girlfriend Snickerdoodle was out in her yard ready to play. She is confined to her yard with an invisible fence, but her yard is large enough for her and Astro to play without her getting zapped by the collar she wears.

It was time to wash my whites today. I was out of socks, and almost out of underwear. Because we have had so much rain lately, the water in my rain barrels is clean enough to use for wash water. This cuts the 36 gallon normal use of water down to about 18 gallons. I use the electric dryer to dry my socks and underwear, but today, I was able to catch the dryer before it ran too long. Three KWh got the load almost completely dry. I laid out all of the socks on my bed to let the elastic part of the socks dry completely.

After doing laundry, I e-scootered over to Ikea for breakfast. One napkin in the trash, and a plate, spoon and fork to wash. I used my mug for my coffee. I guess I could get my breakfast without bacon, but it tastes so good. I am trying to reduce my impact not trying to have no impact.

My friend Herb is having surgery on his shoulder today. I offered to drive him to the surgery center, and bring him home. I was going to use my truck to do the full trip, but because he is having work done on his right shoulder, I thought it would be better to use his car. Using his car means using gas, but it also allows him to buckle into the rear seat without having the belt go across his right shoulder. I am at the doctor's office now writing this blog. I did have to drive the truck to his house because there is the threat of rain all day today (thanks Hurricane Irene).

While waiting for Herb to have his work done, I walked over to Subway for a sandwich. I got the Buffalo Chicken Sub to eat there. The person behind the counter automatically started to put the sub into a plastic bag. I was able to stop her, and also return 4 of the 6 napkins she gave me. The sub was wrapped in a wax paper sheet, and that was plenty. It was a sloppy sub, so I got full use out of those two napkins.

After driving Herb home and getting him settled, I went home and had some of those Green Giant frozen veggies that I got on sale. I watched a little TV while the house cooled down, and went to bed. Total grid KWh use for the house was 17 which included 3 for the dryer. I only used two small chargers on the truck, so that probably accounted for about 1 KWh.

This morning, I got some good news. My wind generator has been shipped. I ordered it about a week ago, and they had to wait until they got one in before shipping it out. It will make a maximum of 400 watts, and be a welcome supplement to my solar array. If that thing was on my roof today, it would be making lots of power, again thanks to Hurricane Irene. I am looking forward to installing that windmill next week!