There oughta be a law...

We live in a really nice, quiet, little neighborhood. We're 2 blocks from a beautiful lake and have nice houses around us.

Then there's "The Shack"... A little old lady lived in this dump. It's kind of sad, really. All this time, I thought that the people that lived behind her were her family. They mowed her dirt and when she died, they were over there gutting the place and putting new windows in. The ridiculous thing about that was, this house didn't deserve new windows! The damn place leans...We can sit on our front porch and can see how it leans. The place is a teardown and should have been bulldozed as soon as her body was removed from the premises!

We later found out that she had no family and the people behind her took her to the store and doctor, mowed her dirt, stole her money and her valuables and pretty much just waited for her to die. When she did, they got her house and property. They were sorely pissed when they found out that she left her 25k to her church and not them.....They are despicable people.

God stepped in and dropped a tree on the roof of that house during that huge windstorm we had in early September. We smiled and thanked God for his little gift to the Cretans.

But, to assure that no other tree would fall on the house, they proceeded to cut down over half of the trees in the yard. One tree they cut down, has a 30 ft high stump!! This tree was a healthy beautiful tree and they turned it into a 30 ft stump!!

It's Christmas time and they decided to decorate for Christmas...A half dozen blow ups are in the yard and lights are all around the broken fence. They strung lights on the "stump" and placed a Santa Claus and the North Pole on the branches of the "stump". Oh yeah, they put Santa, his sleigh and reindeer on the roof that still has the blue tarp on it, since it hasn't been fixed yet.

We live in a really nice, quiet little neighborhood, but, then there's The Shack".....

Click on the last 3 pictures to get a better view of this preview of the next Parade Of Homes!!

Recycling

Do you? Do you recycle?

We do..we started about a year ago, not to go green, but to save money...We started by changing out all of our lightbulbs w/the CFLs. They use a 1/4 of the power of a regular light bulb and they last at least 5 yrs! We've had one CFL in the yard pole light for over a year now. It gets turned on every evening and then gets turned off every morning and it's still going strong. Our electric bill has gone down 3 or 4 dollars a month, that is, until the cold weather set in and the heater came out...They say if every home in America put in 1 CFL, it would be like taking a million cars off of the road....WOW!

After that we started w/the scrap metal and cans, only because we could turn them in for cash. We have been saving all of our cans for over a yr, again..we haven't turned them in yet..When we get 2 or 3 hundred pounds of them we will. So far, 2 50 gallon trash bags are filled w/smashed aluminum w/6 or 7 paper bags of unsmashed ones waiting in the garage for Patrick to smash when he comes home from school this Christmas from California.

When we started doing the cans, we noticed how little trash we threw away and decided to go a little farther w/the plan of eliminating our trash pick up bill all together. So, then we started to recycle plastic, paper and now even glass. The only thing left of our trash now is food scraps and some soiled paper and unrecylclable plastics. I don't compost, but, that's in the plan next.

There's a recyling center in Thornville. Once every 2 weeks or so we take our plastic, glass and paper and drop them off and it feels good everytime we do it, knowing that the stuff we dropped off will not be going into a landfill.Every little bit helps, you know. We're just one family, but, when we go to that recycling bin and see how full it is, we know we aren't the only ones.

1% of all of earths water is drinkable...So why waste thousands of gallons a year flushing the toilet? Stick a brick or a plastic bottle filled w/rocks or sand in the tank of your toilet, it will cut the amount of water used almost in half.

When you dry a load of clothes, stick a dry towel in the dryer. THEN set your dryer to HALF the time you usually set it to...Your clothes will be dry! I don't know how or why this works, but it does..I do it myself. You'll save money on your electric/gas and you'll might even help save some natural resources. Don't leave phone chargers plugged in when not being used..they are using more energy being plugged in doing nothing than they are when they are charging your phone.

Stop buying bottled water....If you do, at least recycle the bottle, but, your tap water is just as good, and if it isn't, get one of those tap water purifiers. We have a well and we HAD to get a water softening system...I filled a couple of bottles up w/tap water and put them in the fridge..Old man never knew the difference. If you want to take water on the road w/you, get one of those stainless steel bottles..they hold water, soda, coffee, soup..whatever..Take it w/you when you buy a cup of coffee and put your coffee in that instead of one of those damned styrofoam cups..Those things DO NOT biodegrade in the landfill, they stay there for hundreds and hundreds of yrs.

It started out w/trying to save money when Mike lost his job. Now, it's for the planet and all that we can do to save our natural resources. I am not a "global warming" advocate. I'm not convinced that that is a problem, but, I do think we can do a whole lot more to save our resources by throwing less away and recycling and using less energy to save our fossil fuels. IF we had the money, I'd have solar panels, a wind turbine. geo-thermal...anything I could get to get as far away from "the grid" as I could. But, since we don't, we are doing what we can do. I would love to replace the windows w/double pane windows, I would love to have insulation blown in underneath our siding, but, for now, we can't afford it, but we are doing what we can to lower our dependence on electricity and gas.

It's not hard...give it a try.

Keeping Heating Bills Down

We have a widdle house..1134 sq ft..2 bedrooms and last year our highest gas bill was $327.00!!!!! And that is w/the thermostat turned down to 68! I walked around freezing my arse off all winter. Our winter wardrobe is sweatpants, thermal socks, tee shirt and a longsleeved something on top of that.

The first year here, we bought little room heaters...our electric bill shot through the roof along w/the high gas bill!!

My daughter brought us a heater last yr to try to keep us warm, and it didn't raise our electricity bill too badly, so, this year, we had a plan. Electric blankets!! Battery operated socks!! (couldn't find any, so we bought hunters socks) And that heater that Kelly let us borrow!! I vowed to keep the thermostat on 60.

I just drag that heater around from room to room w/me. It's in here right now in the office (not on yet, though). It's on an extension cord that is plugged in in the living room. When I am done working, I grab the cord and pull the heater out to the living room. If it's still too cold in living room, I turn on the electric blanket and wrap myself in it on the couch. When it's bedtime, I pull my little heater into the bedroom.

So far, the thermostat has dipped to 58 at it's lowest point. I haven't turned the furnace on yet and it got into the mid 20's last week. We got our first electric bill of the season and it was $94!! I know it's going to get higher and we will eventually have to turn on the furnace, but it will NOT go above 60!

Our goal is to get insulation blown in under the siding, but, until that happens, the heater and the electric blanket are our best friends right now!

God help us, if that thing breaks!!

Working at home

Yep, I work at home! I've been home for 8 yrs sitting here at my desk coding away and becoming a hermit....
I don't get out much....Mike's days off are Mon & Tues. My days off are Fri & Sat. I may go grocery shopping w/him, or to the bank and once in a while, if I get done early enough, we'll take a ride on Mon evenings or go and have a beer and dinner at the local dive here. But, that's about it. I've got my monthly meetings at the hospital and once in a great while, I will take him to work and use the car and go see one of my friends.
That's the worst thing about working from home. I miss my friends. I miss the socializing we did when I worked at the hospital. That's who most of my friends are, the girls at work. First Riverside and now Grant. I used to see them a lot more till we moved out here to the south shores of Buckeye Ocean. But, it's not as easy for them now to just stop by, like they did when we lived in the big city of Columbus. It's a "road trip" now... It's an overnighter, now and has to be planned well in advance......sadly they are few and far between...
Ask me if I would ever go back to working in an office? NOT ON YOUR LIFE!!! We are saving tons of money by me working at home. Gas, wardrobe, lunch and mileage on the car are all moot points w/me working from here. I don't have to get out of my pjs, I can smoke and I can even do some house things while I'm working. If I didn't work from home, there is no way in hell we would have moved soo far from Columbus...there's no way we could afford it! And I LIKE being able to walk from the living room 20, 25 feet and end up at work! I LIKE being able to walk 15 feet or so to get to the front door to sit on the porch and have a cig. I don't miss rush hour traffic!! I don't miss the BS in an office setting, the back stabbing and the oneupmanship of that place! But....I miss my friends..