Afraid of the lights

When I was a kid, I was afraid of the dark. Who knew what horrible monster was waiting to snatch me? Now, that I'm older, I'm more afraid of the lights. What's brought on this 180? Baltimore Gas and Electric, aka BGE.

June 1st marked the beginning of the 50% rate increase BGE customers are now paying. Already expensive bills are now 50% more. Our elected officials, who spent most of last summer campaigning and promising to stop this rate increase, spent last winter doing absolutely nothing to help their constituents. I believe they were all on vacation June 1st when the rate increase took effect. I'm pretty angry about it, if that's not obvious.

Nevertheless, I'm stuck with this rate increase and now a new phobia. I've been walking around the house, turning out the lights in every room. I cook in the dark, only allowing light in the kitchen after I burn myself. Halogen light bulbs, programmable thermostats, whatever it takes. Light-Nazi.

I've put a heavy blanket over the bedroom window to prevent the sun from heating the room. The bedroom is the hottest room in the house because it gets the most exposure to the sun. Luckily the house tends to stay cooler than the temperature outside, but I keep the AC set at 80 degrees to make sure it's not running all day. Typically that setting is sufficient, but when I came home yesterday, the air was running. It was that hot!

BGE says try not to use appliances during peak hours, so I wake up around midnight to start the laundry. Also, I set the dishwasher to run in the middle of the night.

Did you know that computers are energy hogs? I've changed the settings on my laptops to reduce power usage. I don't really need to see the screen all the time anyway.

Global warming isn't helping either. It's rained maybe two times in the last two months. The drought has parched the grass and plants. And the lack of clouds hasn't given the sun a break in a long time. I've got a book on Native American rain dances. I'll be practicing that later.

Onto another topic, I have three cats. This is going to sound like a commercial, but I've struggled with litter box odor. It seems like no matter how often it's cleaned, the litter box always makes my basement stink. Since the basement is also like a den and I spend a lot of time down here (trying to stay cool), that smell drives me crazy. I typically don't like sprays because they are too perfumy and don't mix well with litter box odor. Well, I found something that works great! It's Oust Air sanitizer. I'm not kidding. It's supposed to eliminate odor and it really works. And it smells good. I bought the outdoor scent and it smells so good. It's my new favorite thing. I highly recommend it.

Finally, coffee tip #4. It's hot outside and you want a refreshing iced latte. When you make iced latte, pour the milk over the ice before putting in the shots of espresso. If you pour the espresso over the ice first, the ice will melt and water down the coffee. Or you could pour the ice into the already prepared latte, but I find that to result in splashed coffee.