Month: March 2013

  • Why Buy An Electric Car?

    When we bought our new car last year, we compared the cost of owning an electric hybrid vs a conventional car.  Let’s say gas is $4.00 per gallon, savings is 25 miles per gallon, and you drive 12,000 miles per year. Your savings in gas will be $1,920.00 per year.  If the difference in the cost of the cars is $15,000, it will take 7 years and 10 months to break even; and that’s if you pay cash.  If you finance the car, it will take even longer.

    But, let’s say you bought the electric car to save the planet!

    A 2012 analysis in Journal of Industrial Ecology shows that almost half the lifetime carbon-dioxide emissions from an electric car come from the energy used to produce the car, especially the battery. When an electric car rolls off the production line, it has already been responsible for 30,000 pounds of carbon-dioxide emission. The amount for making a similar conventional car is 14,000 pounds.

    Electric cars recharge using electricity overwhelmingly produced with fossil fuels. For every mile driven, the average electric car indirectly emits about six ounces of carbon-dioxide, and a conventional car emits about 12 ounces per mile. To make matters worse, the batteries in electric cars fade with time, and require more and more recharging.

    If a typical electric car is driven 50,000 miles, the initial emissions from manufacture means the car will actually have put more carbon-dioxide in the atmosphere than a similar-size gasoline-powered car driven the same number of miles.

  • It Wasn’t My Fault

    That Irish woman was upset with me this morning because she dreamed I was dancing with another woman. In the first place I don’t enjoy dancing, especially with anyone else.  I can’t win.

    Any dream analysts want to explain this to me!.

  • THE LEG MYSTERY

    Yesterday there was a leg of a small animal in the driveway. It was a leg, complete with bones, meat and fur. From the size and color of the fur, I assume it was from a rabbit.

    As I was examining the area, Libby assumed it would make a nice snack and ran off with it.  She wasn’t going to give it up, so I had to chase her down and take it away.

    There was no blood on the ground, so the act of separation from the body must have happened somewhere else.  There are coyotes and foxes in the area, but this had to have happened during the day because they almost always never hunt in the daylight and usually take the food back to their lair.  I assume a hawk or some other bird of prey dropped it from a tree or the roof of the house.

    And that was the highlight of our day.

  • Doggone

    I let Libby out last night and didn’t realize the gate was open.  She isn’t bothered by cold or rain or snow so she sometimes stays out for an hour before she’s ready to come in. There’s always a bark at the door when she wants in so I pretty much forgot about her. It was just about dark when we discovered she wasn’t in the back yard.

    I found her tracks in the front yard headed for the side street.  Corey, our neighbor down the street had her. She was in the house playing with his preschoolers, Lily and Jack. He had broken up a fight between Libby and a pit bull mix he was taking care of.  Luckily, the other dog wasn’t hurt. He couldn’t let us know he had her because his phone was broken.

    We rescued Libby when she was four years old so we don’t know her history, but she loves people and doesn’t like dogs.  I don’t know if she is vicious or if she is just showing domination. I’m afraid that someday she’ll pick a fight and no one will be there to stop it. Corey’s dog Marley is the only animal since Josie that she won’t attack.  It took several meetings with Marley before she stopped snarling at him and became friendly.  Corey and I raise chickens and garden together so the dogs have been together quite a few times.

    Anyway she’s back home, and after being thoroughly chastised by the angry Irish woman (the dog for running off and me for letting it happen), every thing is back to normal. (She over looked the fact that she left the gate open).

  • REMEMBERING THE WAR

    I don’t remember when I realized we were at war. I do remember though, when I was four my dad came home with the news that he had been given the choice of being in the Army or the Navy and he chose the Navy.  He was thirty years old with a wife and one child (me) when he was drafted.  Reflecting back, I can’t picture my father as a soldier in the Army and trying to kill another human being.  He was such a quiet, gentle man.

    For me, World War II was just a pleasant adventure.  I got to ride on a train for the first time, all the way from South Dakota to Norman Oklahoma with my mother.  Dad was stationed at the Navy Base near Norman for the duration of the war as a cook and we lived in an apartment house with other servicemen and their families.  So our lives weren’t much different from the way they were before the war as far as I was concerned.

    I do remember some changes from before, but they didn’t affect me much. For instance, saving grease drippings and taking them to the local butcher.  I don’t remember if mom was paid for the grease or given credit for something.  I remember the ration stamps and things being hard to get.  Gas was rationed, but we didn’t have a car anyway.  We never had a car until several years after the war.  We either walked or got a ride from someone.

    I started school in Norman and attended kindergarten and part of first grade by the time the war ended and we returned to South Dakota.   I acquired a little Okie accent to bring back home, but it’s long since gone.  Strangely, it comes back a little when I’m around southerners.

    I have more recollections from Oklahoma, but maybe that’s for another time.

  • …And So On!

    I almost shut down this blog site.  I came awfully close a couple of weeks ago, but I decided to wait and see how I felt after a while.  It’s been a long time since I submitted anything personal, so for the  most part, I’ve been cutting and pasting or posting pictures, etc off the web.  I’m going to give it a try again, and this time I’ll put a little more effort into it. 

    I have a strange obsessive, compulsive disorder. I become totally consumed with something for maybe two or three years and then it becomes secondary to the next compulsion, and so on.  That’s what has happened with Xanga.

    Anyway, I’m back!