Yesterday, the forecast said today would be partly cloudy and Wednesday would be sunny. Today (Tuesday) instead was mostly cloudy and the forecast for tomorrow, Thursday, and Friday was rain.
Based on yesterday’s forecast, I cooked a load of famous no-packaging vegan solar-powered stew, draining a lot of the battery, even with the ways I’ve developed to save energy with the pressure cooker. The big challenge: I have two podcast episodes scheduled for Thursday! I don’t want to run out of energy for them.
Solution: I switched from a lot of computer work today to catching up on reading and writing by hand (in particular, sketching the new online course I’m creating). I also noticed a break in the clouds this afternoon, normally giving too little power to merit climbing eleven flights twice, but worth it this close to the solstice when I can’t catch much light. Also after eating and drinking more calories than usual at my friend’s Christmas Eve dinner (despite being more tired than usual after rowing on the rowing machine yesterday for the first time in a while).
Also: I’m keeping this post short to minimize energy on the computer and phone. Also reusing a picture from a couple weeks ago showing that it’s cold on the roof, though today was in the 40s F, so not as cold as the day I took the picture below.
Lots of ways to save energy without losing productivity. Saving energy means polluting less, which means hurting people (and wildlife) less. What do you value more than alleviating suffering of innocent people who would suffer from your behavior if you didn’t change it? What is more human?
How do you heat your appartement during winter?
The best I can figure out how to do is seal the windows and doors the best I can and not turn on the building’s central air and heating, then wear extra layers. If you can figure out what I can do better, let me know. Overall, as long as I seal my windows optimally, since I understand heat loss depends on the temperature difference between the building and the air, my apartment being cooler means the building loses less energy resulting in slightly less pollution and slightly lower cost for my neighbors.
I recommend this article from one of my favorite sites: Restoring the Old Way of Warming: Heating People, not Places: Most modern heating systems are primarily based on the heating of air. This seems an obvious choice, but there are far worthier alternatives.