Thank you Chad & Erin!

For my renewable wind energy card! I asked for something green for Christmas and, being that they are from the eco-friendly state of Colorado, they knew what the heck I was talking about so I got one of these:


Which means this:

This is a renewable certificate product. For every unit of renewable electricity generated, an equivilent [sic] amount of renewable certificates is produced. The purchase of renewable certificates supports renewable electricity generation, which can help offset conventional electricity generation in the region where the renewable generator is located. You will continue to receive a separate electricity bill from your utility. This product matches up to 100% of your estimated electricity usage. The product will be made up of the following new renewable resources averaged annually.

The site also did the math for me and, according to them, Chad and Erin offset my annual mileage by 1,116 miles, which is, coincidentally, happens to be almost exactly how many miles it is from our house to theirs! I like the subtle hint!

Really, more green than red

Wow, holidays just came and kicked me in the butt this year.

In order to avoid being caught off-guard by the impending holiday season, the happy couple concocted a continuous reminder of the upcoming festivities in the form of a plant draped with electronics and doo-dads. Feel free to follow our festive lead.


How does it look? I'm very pleased with the whole set-up. The lights are low-energy Phillips LED lights in the "soft white" color. Being a complete green-compulsive that I am now, I was unable to just go with regular lights. These are $12 at Target, not anymore than regular lights, and, according to the general hype, use 80-90% of the energy. That's enough to switch if you already have a set, that's for sure.

The interesting thing you will notice about these lights, despite the strange things they do to your eyes when the lights or your head is moving, is that they emit no heat whatsoever. Grab the bulbs and you feel nothing but room-temp plastic. This is where all the energy savings is coming from and, when you understand this, you begin to understand some of the energy waste that plagues our, well, world.

Light bulbs certainly don't need to emit heat to light our way, only photons. Same goes for your car engine; you don't need all the heat of a combustion engine to get from one place to another. The heat, in fact, is a bad thing for our cars (particularly turbocharged ones like my VW). Heat, in many instances, is just a byproduct of the process required to get energy out of a substance/material. Find a technology that gets rid of an energetic byproduct (heat for lighting your house or light for, say, welding metal) and you save energy.

Anyways, I'm 100% satisfied with the LED light purchase and would recommend storing as many strands of regular lights as you can afford. Save some dough, save some electrons, and lower your risk of fire. Also, pick up a glass pickle ornament while you're out:



Wiki says:

The Christmas Pickle is an American tradition related to the Christmas tree. In this tradition, a family decorates its Christmas tree with ornaments including one glass pickle. On Christmas morning, the first child to find the pickle on the tree would get a special gift and would supposedly have a year of good fortune.

No kids here and I'm not a particularly traditional American but the thought of a random, glass pickle on the Christmas tree was simply too enticing to ignore.