Just a 46-year-old mom of 2 in Northern California. My kids are Monkey Monkey(MM) and Drama Llama (DL). I am married to Monkey Hubby (MH). Well looking at my weather thing it is indeed raining and it is probably 52 degrees outside. Probably lowest it got all night. When I woke up the house was sitting at 68 - woohoo. I am looking forward to my next heat bill. 
Still no electric bill in sight. Maybe our usage was so low it was just not worth billing - hehe. I doubt it - they fell asleep over there or something - just weird. Too busy to call and ask where my bill is - but maybe if I don't get January's bill in the next week or 2. Since the bill is in the $20 range I am not too worried - not screwing up my budget too much or anything - just annoying me! Since I pay electronically I could always shoot them $20, hmmmmmm. Probably would just create more confusion. Well no december bill, we'll see what happens to january. I haven't received the electronic bill and I logged into their website over the weekend and there was no new invoices.
That reminds me though, we have a city-owned electric company and they came out to my office yesterday and I could overhear them telling my boss that they would replace ALL of the lightbulbs in the buildings for free, and something else, some term I was not familiar with - some part of the light fixtures I guess, AND it would save us $1k/year on our electric bill. I have no doubt that is true since we pretty much don't pay for electricity in our house - certainly hardly the lights. Our electric bill - the usage portion generally hovers around $15/month and we cook and do laundry every day, etc. But these light bulbs are just the BEST ever. Plus t.v.s and computers on all day, etc. We certainly do not pay for the light bulbs - pennies it seems.
Anyway, they are just trying to get businesses to cut down their consumption. I already give my electric company 10 kudos, but let's make it 20 judos after that - LOL. I Am just so impressed. They are trying to work out the logistics because they want to wait until after tax season, but it's like if they don't do it now they might have to wait until next year. They have budgeted so much to upgrade businesses, and the money may run out soon. So we'll see if we get new lightbulbs or what.
I am excited though.
We actually moved to recycling all of our paper a few months back and our dumpster is now merely for recycling, I love to bring over all my big boxes I can't get rid of - into the recycle dumpster.
& we are moving on storing everything electronically instead of on paper.
IT feels good to see these measures at work. You don't know how appalled I Was when I started my first accounting job and how much paper is wasted. moving to all electronic storage of files will make big strides in helping the environment...
Electricity
February 7th, 2007 at 03:05 pm
February 7th, 2007 at 03:14 pm 1170861262
February 7th, 2007 at 03:36 pm 1170862617
February 7th, 2007 at 07:40 pm 1170877235
Wasn't it CA that is going to outlaw the sale of incandescent lights in the near future?
February 7th, 2007 at 08:30 pm 1170880223
Our house had to meet certain standards to meet energy efficiency under the city and I am very impressed. IT still throws me off that the assumption we are very wasteful in our big new houses when they are so cheap to light and heat, etc. Everyone just assumes we have a giant energy bill when it usually hovers around $50 most of the year. That is with people home 24/7 and washing diapers every day, etc., etc. Oooh, when the kids are out of diapers and everyone is off at school and work - it may just be a lot lower!!!!