A Second Look--October 15, 2014

Seems like I've been very busy these days--both with some good stuff and with some not so good stuff, but busy enough that my regular routine has been non existent. Among all of the busyness, I've still tried to keep up with both my Second Look posts and my Thankful Sunday posts because I realized that they are very good for me. My stress level goes down as soon as I go outside to see how things have changed during the week. Also, taking time to think about what I am thankful for helps put things in perspective. So without further ado,

Here is this week's Second Look.

This is a volunteer petunia in a pot where I had purple basil planted. It bloomed this week for the first time.

Coreopsis

This spider played hide-and-seek with me on this celosia plant. Every time I tried to take its picture, it would scurry around to the other side of the plant.

Begonia

We had several rainy, cool days and the mushrooms were popping up everywhere.

These mums are not planted in the right spot for maximum blooms, but they are still a colorful addition to an otherwise bare area.

Notice the covering brown oak leaves behind the Rozanne geranium.

The maple leaves are also starting to fall.

Every year I marvel at how this maple tree loses its leaves from the top down.

Thankful Sunday--October 11, 2014

I am thankful for our 

wind chimes.

Yesterday was a chilly, rainy, and breezy day. Just plain dreary you might say.  However, among all of this gloominess, the wind chimes rang out with beautiful sounds. For this, I am thankful.

A Second Look--October 8, 2014

Here's what I found this week

 during my Second Look.

A few more mums on this plant are blooming. The other plants are just budding.

Coleus

I think this group of mushrooms is sprouting on an old tree stump, but I didn't look too closely to find out. The poison ivy that you see in the upper left held me back.

As a nice surprise, I found this sedum blooming.

The dogwood trees are always one of the first to turn in the fall.

Under one of the oaks, I found several freshly eaten acorns.

This day lily hadn't bloom in a while, so I was surprised when I saw this blossom.

In our yard, we usually only see bluebirds during breeding season, so I was very excited when I saw this one the other day. It is a lot fatter than the ones I saw in March.

Granddaddy Long Legs trying to get in.

Thankful Sunday--October 5, 2014

I am thankful for gatherings of friends and family.

Yesterday we had a pig roast at my father-in-law's house. Friends and family gathered for tasty food, good music, silly dancing, and fun games. But best of all was the genuine friendship and caring that was shown by each and every person there. For all of this, I am thankful.

Vampire Electricity--Part 2

I've been wondering about vampire electricity (electricity that is drawn by something when it's not in use), so I borrowed a Kill-a-Watt device to see for myself how much electricity is actually being used by various items around my house. In August I gave the device a try and reported on five random things. Since then, I have measured our DVR player usage which is supposed to one of the worst offenders. I have read that it uses more electricity than a refrigerator. So I also measured our refrigerator. Our DVR is part of the set top box for our cable TV service. Our fridge size is 14.4 cubic feet, was built in 2004 and doesn't have an ice maker--which means that it's not very big and fairly energy efficient. I've added the results for these two items to the ones I measured before. They are highlighted in blue on the chart below.

Item	KWH/24 hours	Cost/month	Cost/year
Toaster with display	0.02	$0.07	$0.87
Outlet only	0.03	$0.11	$1.30
Lamp-off, plugged in	0.03	$0.11	$1.30
Coffee pot with display	0.04	$0.14	$1.79
Computer Monitor	0.36	$1.30	$15.55
Laptop-large	0.47	$1.70	$20.30
DVR	0.78	$2.80	$34.16
Refrigerator	1.45	$5.22	$63.51

 (As with last time, I used $0.12/KWH to figure costs.)

As you can see, the DVR player costs $2.80/month and the refrigerator costs $5.22/month to run. At least in my case, the DVR usage does not come close to the refrigerator usage as I had read. Both numbers are fairly low in the big scheme of things but large enough to see if we want to do anything differently with how we operate them. Upon first examination, we are pretty good with our refrigerator usage. We don't open the door much and rarely stand with it open for long. Also, we keep the freezer pretty full, so it can run more efficiently.

As far as the DVR goes, this is purely a luxury item, but it does provide a fair amount of entertainment for us. We record most of the shows that we watch so that we can view them essentially commercial free. This saves us both time and aggravation. However, we rarely record or watch anything during the night, so I think we'll try turning it off during that time.

Now, what to measure next? Maybe it will be our desk top CPU's. We'll see.