I'm often the first one awake the morning after a house party, so I end up picking up all the empties, which I don't mind, because it means someone else will do the mopping. Also, I like how beer bottles fit so nicely back in the cases from whence they came. It's interesting that people leave their drinks in such random places. Like, the third floor bathroom. It's kind of like an Easter egg hunt.
After doing what I felt was my share of the cleaning this morning, Lorin and I headed down to the Mall to check out the Solar Decathlon houses. We only got to tour one, because the lines were long and a lot of them were closed for judging, but it was cool to see all of these compact little self-sufficient houses constructed on the Mall. I want one... but they're all a little expensive. I think I remember reading that one of them cost $800,000 to construct, and that doesn't even get you the land to put it on. Tim reminded me that Matt Ritter is on MIT's team, so I stopped by to say hi.
Between the Solar Decathlon and the Green Festival last weekend, I keep picking up these pamphlets on how to make your house more energy efficient. Unfortunately, almost all of the tips are only relevant to homeowners (buy Energy Star appliances, put in insulation, double-paned windows, etc.). It's a little depressing to feel like there's nothing we can do, especially since I know how ridiculously drafty our house is.
When I got home, I was still sort of in a cleaning mood, so I took out my air conditioner and put it away in the closet, moved my bed back to its normal position, cleaned all of my windows inside and out, and then decided to see if the corner hardware store had any of that plastic wrap that people apparently put on their windows in the winter. I bought a box with enough plastic for nine windows, and so far have covered two of the windows in my room. Overall, it looks a lot better than I expected it to. There were really only two complications. the pre-cut sheets are about 8 inches too short for my windows, so I had to tape on an extension. The other unexpected thing is that since the plastic gets attached to the window frame, there's no way for me to hang my curtains outside of the plastic. I really didn't want to take my curtains down, so I just put the plastic on top of them. It looks a little strange, yes. You're supposed to use a hairdryer to shrink the wrinkles out of the plastic, but I found that waving a space heater at the window worked just fine.
I recently started mentoring a couple of 7th grade kids and tutoring them in math once a week after work. Actually, we haven't done any math yet. We had one night of training, one night of meeting the kids and doing some sort of "visualize your life goals" exercise, and last week there was no center because of parent/teacher conferences. But on Tuesday, we will supposedly be doing math. I think we're doing exponents. My kids seem really sweet, which is lucky. There are some kids in the program that I wouldn't know how to handle.
Liz bought pumpkins and we carved them before the party. Mine was supposed to be a cannibal, but we didn't have a little pumpkin, so he's eating an apple instead.
After doing what I felt was my share of the cleaning this morning, Lorin and I headed down to the Mall to check out the Solar Decathlon houses. We only got to tour one, because the lines were long and a lot of them were closed for judging, but it was cool to see all of these compact little self-sufficient houses constructed on the Mall. I want one... but they're all a little expensive. I think I remember reading that one of them cost $800,000 to construct, and that doesn't even get you the land to put it on. Tim reminded me that Matt Ritter is on MIT's team, so I stopped by to say hi.
Between the Solar Decathlon and the Green Festival last weekend, I keep picking up these pamphlets on how to make your house more energy efficient. Unfortunately, almost all of the tips are only relevant to homeowners (buy Energy Star appliances, put in insulation, double-paned windows, etc.). It's a little depressing to feel like there's nothing we can do, especially since I know how ridiculously drafty our house is.
When I got home, I was still sort of in a cleaning mood, so I took out my air conditioner and put it away in the closet, moved my bed back to its normal position, cleaned all of my windows inside and out, and then decided to see if the corner hardware store had any of that plastic wrap that people apparently put on their windows in the winter. I bought a box with enough plastic for nine windows, and so far have covered two of the windows in my room. Overall, it looks a lot better than I expected it to. There were really only two complications. the pre-cut sheets are about 8 inches too short for my windows, so I had to tape on an extension. The other unexpected thing is that since the plastic gets attached to the window frame, there's no way for me to hang my curtains outside of the plastic. I really didn't want to take my curtains down, so I just put the plastic on top of them. It looks a little strange, yes. You're supposed to use a hairdryer to shrink the wrinkles out of the plastic, but I found that waving a space heater at the window worked just fine.
I recently started mentoring a couple of 7th grade kids and tutoring them in math once a week after work. Actually, we haven't done any math yet. We had one night of training, one night of meeting the kids and doing some sort of "visualize your life goals" exercise, and last week there was no center because of parent/teacher conferences. But on Tuesday, we will supposedly be doing math. I think we're doing exponents. My kids seem really sweet, which is lucky. There are some kids in the program that I wouldn't know how to handle.
Liz bought pumpkins and we carved them before the party. Mine was supposed to be a cannibal, but we didn't have a little pumpkin, so he's eating an apple instead.
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I bought a thermometer today, which may be helpful in convincing our management company to act. I think DC law has some requirements about indoor temperature in the winter, and our kitchen rarely gets above 50 degrees (would be my guess).