March 23, 2012

slowly becoming a grown-up

February 26, 2012

things that surprised me about sherlock holmes' london:

  • holmes & watson take the subway. (the london underground began operation in 1863!)
  • holmes spots a vegetarian restaurant. (the word 'vegetarian' gained general use after the founding of the vegetarian society in ramsgate in 1847.)

    these two unexpected events occur in the adventures of sherlock holmes (specifically adventure ii: the red-headed league).

  • February 14, 2012

    happy valentine's day!

    flowers from my main lady, lauren. <3

    "Nothing is known of Saint Valentine except that he was buried on the Via Flaminia on February 14." --wikipedia

    January 22, 2012

    how we reduced our home electricity usage by 67%

    (context: we live in a ~560-square-foot one-bedroom apartment with a gas stove and radiators. we don't have a television, microwave, or electric coffee maker, and we use our building's shared washer and dryer.)

    after spending a significant portion of my workdays reading about home energy displays, i wanted to know how much energy my own home was using. my utility's online billing system made it easy to collect my monthly electricity usage data (thanks, nstar), which is plotted above.

    what stands out the most is the huge increase in the summer months of 2010 (we paid $70 july 2010, compared to our usual $30), but what's more exciting to me is the decrease in the last eight months.

    i started my internship on march 15, 2011. the initial drop in april might be partly from me not being at home using my laptop during the day, but more importantly, the reading i did at work about trying to get people to use less energy motivated me to want to save energy at home. one easy change i made was turning our refrigerator temperature up (from 9, 'coldest', to 5, 'normal'). it still keeps our food fresh, but it uses less electricity.

    what helped a lot was learning about the kill-a-watt. i borrowed one from our local library and went around our apartment testing everything that plugs in. i learned that my iphone charger does not use any discernible power when it's left plugged into the wall. our toaster also wasn't using any standby power, so i stopped unplugging it when it wasn't being used.

    however, i did identify some big power hogs. we had a water boiler that we used for coffee and tea that turned out to account for nearly one-third of our monthly electricity use, so tyler agreed to start boiling water on the stove. the kill-a-watt also inspired tyler to get rid of one of his two stereos. (luckily for me, tyler is a very conscientious apartment partner -- apartner?) and finally, i got a remote control power strip that we've been using to turn off the stereo we did keep when it's not in use because according to the kill-a-watt, it draws the same amount of power when it's just sitting there as when it's actually playing music.

    this summer we replaced our ancient dorm-hand-me-down air conditioner with a brand new one and we were a lot more judicious about its use. we bought an electric fan to help with that.

    now we pay about $15 to 20 a month for electricity and that's with a higher rate per kilowatt hour to support wind energy (4.791 cents extra per kilowatt hour). i am extremely proud of our energy savings, which is why i wrote this blog post. :)

    January 15, 2012

    2011 in pictures

    01 - boston, ma
    02, 04, 10, 12 - cambridge, ma
    03 - somerville, ma
    05 - myles standish state forest (~plymouth, ma)
    06 - minuteman bikeway(~arlington, ma)
    07 - lake pend oreille, id
    08 - portland, me
    09 - plymouth, nh
    11 - charlottesville, va

    May 29, 2011

    andré has writer's block

    May 12, 2011

    joan zawoiski lewis

    june 5, 1936 - may 7, 2011


    (in the white blouse)

    thank you for being the best gram apple a girl could ever have.

    March 13, 2011

    ras na heireann 5k!

    this morning. 29:38.

    February 13, 2011

    v-day x-word!

    in honor of the day of saint valentine, i made my first crossword this weekend. it is only a mini crossword (11x11), but it was still dang hard to construct! i couldn't have done it without onelook.com's wildcards and crosswordtracker.com for clue suggestions.


    (click for larger version)

    (and yes, i should have either italicized "to the lighthouse" or put the daily show and return to the ___ in quotes. it will haunt me for eternity.)

    edit: and apparently i left off the last two down clues!
    31 Bikini top / 34 Illmatic rapper

    edit ii: and this is why i needed my valentine to test-run the puzzle before blogging it. i forgot to assign a number to the second to last down answer.
    31½ Geologic period

    January 12, 2011

    snow day

    me: you know
    you could help shovel the driveway too
    Nora: qwerwserwer--- wait kate i can't--asfdfsdf--- i thinke were---fda
    me: ...
    Nora: were breaking--hhhhhhhhh
    Nora: fdgsfghfgshsfhsfghsfg

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