…and it will be mine soon! Thanks woot!!
…and no, Mom, I am not becoming an alcoholic!
She was worried.
Yesterday was pretty uneventful….
…but we did have a very nice dinner at Bottleworks with some people from church. This was my last beer of the night….first a Pear Cider, then a No. 15, then a Cherry Cider. I think I should have watched the alcohol content on my choices a little closer….but oh well!
(sorry for the terrible photo quality…my camera battery was dead so I used my phone)
A Three Hour Tour…
Brooke and I went on a float trip over the last few days… Sunday to Tuesday seemed like the best time to do it, as we’d be avoiding all the crowds, and it wouldn’t be in the dead center of the week, which would just disrupt all kinds of other things. We went down to Jacks Fork River, near Eminence, MO for a 24 mi, 2-night trip.
The weather was absolutely perfect. The high was supposed to be in the upper-80s or lower-90s, but it never felt like it really got above 85 F while we were along the river. The sun was out the whole time, it never rained, there was a distinct lack of humidity, and there were no mosquitoes (although, there were plenty of other flies and gnats…not as big a deal, though). I’ve posted some pictures up on Picasa if you want to check them out.
We got started Sunday afternoon and floated for a few hours, then spent most of the day floating on Monday (around 9:00 am to 4:00 pm). On Tuesday morning, it only took us 45 min or so to get to our final destination, indicating that we’d gone 23 of the 24 miles by the end of Monday…which pretty much rocked. It got us back to St. Louis in plenty of time for Brooke to grab a shower and relax before heading off to teach her ACT Prep class.
As you’ll see in the photos, we had quite a bit of fun taking pictures with the new camera. (Note: we were quite careful with it…taking it along in a water-proof container and only taking it out on shore…never whilst in the boat) We got to toy with the shutter and aperture settings, which are things I’d never really experimented with. The ability to take as many pictures as you want on an 8 GB card makes it easy to toy around and see what you can make happen. We took, like, 50 pictures of the fire on Monday night while messing around with those settings (I’ve only posted a few of those, though).
Anyway, it was an excellent trip and we’ll probably need to do it again! Likely not this year, but who knows…
We’re back….
…from 3 days of floating on the Jack’s Fork near Eminence. We had a great time and didn’t get too sunburned. More pictures will be on facebook once we finish sorting through them!
3 posts in one day???
…it must be a record! I’m just giving you something to do while Andy and I are gone for a few days. Here’s how we spent our evening:
This will do…
…for a great float/camp trip for the next few days!
Thanks Elizabeth!!!!
…and thanks to everyone else who made my b-day awesome!
I was always bad at geography…
…but I got the “Geoquiz” right today! That never happens!
Energy Efficiency
We’ll thank Maya and Morgan Moody for the idea, but it was suggested last year at Josh and Sharon’s wedding that we consider getting a single-room air conditioning unit for our upstairs bedroom. As many of you know, we live on the second and third floor of a brick building in Soulard, and one problem with living on the third floor of a brick building is that it gets hot up there and stays hot, even past dark. Having our central A/C maintain a comfortable temperature on that third floor (when the thermostat is on the second floor, mind you…) means that it’s running almost constantly, along with fans, etc. in the bed room to make sure I can sleep.
Well, we received a “personal energy report” from AmerenUE yesterday in the mail, telling us how much power we’d used over the last few years living here. As the graph above indicates, in the warm months of June, July, August and September (average temperatures ranging from 71 F to 81 F…but we’re talking about 100 F days in there, too…), we decreased our average energy use by a few hundred kWh. In our monthly billing statements, this translated to a savings of $101.33 over July – September.
We bought the single-room A/C unit in late-June 2008. We spent a little less than $100 on the A/C unit.
I think we made our money back. 🙂