Since we have been having such extreme heat with little rainfall that people are turning to rain water barrels to harvest water for their yards and gardens. It seems that rain harvesting has become a positive effort to help the huge “Green” effort that is going on these past few years. You can find some pretty interesting rain barrels for sale on the Internet. Amazing the variety of rain barrels that have come on the market for today’s rain harvesters.
These dry summers are really starting to become a struggle each year. Mother Nature is certainly not happy with us. Winter was hard and then we went straight into the 90’s and higher. We didn’t even get one day of nice spring weather. I can only hope that we get some type of fall weather before the snow start falling once again. Next thing you know it is going to be the holidays and all that goes along with that each year. Isn’t that a pleasant thought to think of right now?
I have to say that summer is a mixed blessing. Yes, we have nice warm sunny days that we don’t have to worry about snow and ice and heat bills. The flowers bloom, and the smell of freshly mowed lawns is like a preview of heaven. The flip side of the coin, however, is that we get a lot of severe electrical storms, and lots and lots of tornado watches.
I’m glad that I’ve never actually seen a tornado come towards me; I think that would terrify me to no end and give me nightmares for years! I don’t know if there is any place on earth where one can live without fear of some natural disaster or another, but if there was, I’d try my best to live there!
I really had not had the opportunity to learn a lot about the the offshore oil platform’s explosion. All I really knew was the it had exploded and some people died and that there are millions of gallons of oil being dumped into the Gulf of Mexico. And that all attempts to stop the gushing oil have failed so far. Well, tonight I had the chance to watch one of my favorite television news shows – 60 minutes. And I learned a lot about the who, what, where, why and how of the whole thing and it makes me furious that the employees of BP were so interested in speed that they endangered the safety of their employees, and the environment.
I don’t normally buy BP gasoline anyway, because the BP prices are usually more expensive in my town, but if I WAS a regular customer, I’m not sure how that would affect my loyalty to the brand. All I know is that there was a lot of greed and stupidity involved here, and I hope that someone takes responsibility and makes restitution and cleans up the mess. Finger pointing is just a waste of time.
Last night I was watching television. Almost everything was reruns, so I decided to watch the History Channel. It was a show about how so many different people/cultures have predicted the end of the world. Supposedly that will be happening right around the Winter Solstice in 2012. I think it is fascinating that so many predictions revolve around that date. I wonder if it has something to do with the numbers – for example the date will be 12/21/2012. So many 1s and 2s. The show certainly was quite convincing that the end of the world really might be coming! I’m starting to wish I had just gone to bed!
Have you ever had a calculator that gave you the wrong answers from time to time? I have a solar-powered calculator that seems to have “lost it” somehow. When I was given this calculator, I was thrilled – no more replacing batteries! But lately I’ve been getting a lot of wrong answers from it. I’m certain that I entered the correct data, so maybe one of the key pads has died. So I guess it’s time to throw it away, but I hate to throw away an electronic gadget. It’s bad for the environment, you know? But I can’t keep on collecting dead electronic junk either! I wonder if there is a local place that I can take this to….. I’ll have to do a little research on that. If you know of anyplace that takes dead calculators, let me know!
In our attempts to keep our electric bill as low as possible, we have been thinking about installing ceiling fans throughout the house. I’d like to have one in every room except for the bathrooms. Keeping the air circulating will allow us to raise the temperature on the thermostat but still be comfortable. And of course, using less electricity helps the environment! It might also help my wife’s dry skin problem I mentioned in my previous post – less air conditioning will lessen the dryness of the air.
Last month I installed two Hunter ceiling fans in our living room. I chose them because they have the reputation of being quiet, and I don’t want to have to turn up the television any higher to hear it over the noise of anything mechanical!
I’d also like to install a couple of outdoor Minka aire fans on our porch. Having the air moving out there while we are sitting outside would make the porch a much more pleasant spot to sit and socialize. Especially for my wife, who loves to sit outside and look at the flower bed and watch the dogs playing with each other.
When we first moved into this house I went up into the attic and saw that we had an attic fan. I couldn’t figure out how it was supposed to work; everything that I tried to make it run didn’t seem to have any effect. Well, finally I got around to having a handyman service come out to the house and take a look at it. I hated to admit defeat, but my wife was reminding me frequently that we really should be running it to help keep the costs of cooling the house low. Well, it turns out that the motor was burnt out. No wonder it wouldn’t run! We determined that it was cheaper to replace the motor than to replace the entire fan, which was surprising, but good news. So we replaced the motor and now it runs just fine. I hope we will see a difference on our electric bill next month!
I was reading that the Golivemobile is expanding their overseas operations in the upcoming months. I’m sure that those countries will be thrilled to have Golivemobile over there. For the most part, it is a technology company, which doesn’t usually have a large negative impact on the environment. So for those countries that is a good thing because so many other American companies do a lot of polluting. And I’m sure that the jobs that will be going over there will be high paying jobs by their country’s standards. Low by American standards, but that is the whole point of sending jobs overseas, isn’t it?
Environment and green, Gadgets and Technology, Home and Garden, Shopping | Dean | 
August 24, 2010 5:48 pm | 
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