Two Confessions and Some Bragging

1) The fridge has been plugged back in as of last evening. I started to worry about my Swiss Chard and life is too short to worry about the health of one's vegetables. In my mind, wasting food I've already purchased is worse than using electricity for assuring it isn't wasted. So there you have it.

2) It is time to disclose the daily water war that goes on in my building: It's a house that's been converted into 5 apartments, so the shower situation is a little... precarious. If I don't get in by 8am, the undergrads wake their sorry asses up en mass after 9 and bombard the shower till there's no hot water left. At that point it's hit or miss: If someone needs to wash a mug I'm blasted with frigid water, but if no one uses their sink while I'm in the shower, all is well. Now I don't know how or why the water heater acts this way, but it has a hierarchy system. If you turn up the hot water, it assumes you're the priority and gives you the warm water rather than giving it to the other twit. Sweet victory is yours for 30 seconds until the aforementioned twit ups their water use too and you're left in the cold again. This can go back and forth for minutes until the last person who ups the hot water before the knob is turned all the way wins and gets all the hot water. If you're dealing with an experienced opponent however, the water war doesn't end there, oh no. It continues because when the other person turns the water off completely, the winner gets scalded. Then they turn the water on full blast, and the person freezes.

You see where I'm going with this... it's childish and wasteful and it can last for 30 minutes if both parties are determined to make the other suffer. Sometimes I indulge. I feel I'm owed a nice warm shower since I've been up since 5 working and they went to bed around 5, boozing. And winning can be sooooo satisfying.

Ok, now is the time for the bragging:

I did NOT engage my opponent in the water war this morning! I shivered and washed the soap off and hopped out of the shower lickety split. Euphoria (or maybe it was just hypothermia) washed over me as I lept across the apartment to find a clean towel. My concern for the enviroment had won over my vindictive nature! (If you know me, you'll know this is a significant moment in my fiesty history.)

Furthering the bragging vein, I still haven't bought ANYTHING! It's been a month! I was feeling the burn last night while gazing at gorgeous spring dresses, but it's less than the pain I usually feel around this time of year. Wahooey!

Killing the Fridge

I've been notably absent the past few days. Thesis-writing is taking over.

Taking a writing break to report on the latest phase of the project: Killing the Fridge.

Average household fridges use a little over 1000 Kilowatts of energy per year, which costs about 90$ . The fridge sucks the most energy in your home according to the US Department of Energy (assuming you don't have something ridiculous like a spa pump in the backyard.) I know 90 bucks isn't a ton, but it's better than nothing. And over the course of a lifetime, it adds up.

The door to my kitchen is remarkably narrow so my fridge is tiny anyway; anything larger wouldn't fit in the room. Still, it's a huge electricity waster. The temperature gauge is shot, so if I don't open the door for a few days everything freezes because it gets too cold inside. I've been doing without a freezer for more than a year since every time I defrost the thing it's filled with hard ice again within a day. While taking a hatchet to the ice block can be good for stress on occasion, it's just not worth it on a regular basis. The insulation around the door is practically disintegrating from age, so I'm sure the cold air seeps out (unfortunately, not quick enough to not freeze anything kept on the top shelf.) It's age is also a problem because refrigerators get more efficient each year and mine is at least 20 years old.

When you think about it, I don't eat much that needs refrigeration anyway: Butter for baking, but that lasts a few weeks at room temperature. So do eggs (those, I've started buying a few at a time from a house down the street that has chickens in the backyard.) I need milk for making cheese, but I boil that. I'll just have to buy dairy the same day I'm planning on getting crafty. What do I get from cold veggies anyway? I just cook them later to warm them back up. I'm a little concerned about lettuce wilting and the like, but i'll try to keep it in water to delay the process. When I make yogurt, I'm worried about that spoiling. Still, I can always deposit stuff in the fridge in my office. It's working constantly whether I put crap in there or not. The biggest anticipated problem is that I get two weeks worth of produce at one time in my delivery and I might not be able to eat it all before it goes bad.

Still, if the experiment doesn't work I can always plug the sucker back in later in the week. Tonight i'll be baking something with the last of my heavy cream and pulling the plug.