Daily Impact: September 9, 2011

This is the 18th posting to this blog

This Friday was a good day for low power use. It was fairly cool all day, it rained in the late afternoon, and it was cool at night. I was able to catch up on some missed sleep from the night before by taking a nap, and it was cool enough to do that with only having the fans on.

Thursday night, I had slept with the windows and doors open. It had been quite a while since I had done that. There were a lot of various noises that I was not used to hearing, and Astro was also a little antsy. He spotted something outside which made him bark at 2 AM. It seemed that I had just gone to sleep, and I had a hard time getting back to sleep after that interruption. There was also a mosquito that buzzed me several times during the night, so sleep was shallow and seldom.

My Friday afternoon nap got me feeling much better, and I was able to get some  stuff done in the afternoon. I made a trip on the e-scooter to the library and to the barber, and was able to fully recharge with solar power. For the evening trip downtown, I rode the Honda. I got into some rain by the time I got about 3/4 there, and had to put on my rain suit. I did eventually dry out, and had a nice dinner with friends. Carbon Dioxide output from the Honda was probably about 5 pounds.

We went to Little Saigon, and I had a double order of summer rolls. Each roll had two shrimp in it for a total of eight shrimp. That was the only thing that I ate that day which once had a heartbeat. The rest was peanut butter, bread, or cereal. Eating out of course meant that my dishes had to be washed, but I managed without a napkin.

When I returned home, I decided that I would sleep in the A/C. I wanted to get a good-night's sleep. The air was damp, but I opened the windows in the main part of the house to get some cool air in that area. I used the small window unit A/C in my office to cool the east part of the house which includes my bedroom.

I do not know if the windmill made any power when the storm blew through, but I did not see the blades spin yet. I will be sure to make a short movie when it does, and post it here.

Surprisingly, the total grid power use for the day was only 4 KWh.