Xcel Commercials

Today I couldn't help but smirk when Rick was listening to the Broncos vs Jaguars game because there was this silly Xcel commercial about how much money this guy was saving on his energy bill by decreasing the temperature on his hot water tank and washing clothes in cold water. We have paid $0.00 for electricity, gas, and water in the last year. The earthship has been functioning beautifully and it has been over a year since we had to fill the propane tank which is still at over 50%. We have had plenty of electricity with no outages and have even been running the hot tub totally off the solar electric.

There are so many little things people can do to lower their domestic energy consumption. Tankless hot water heaters, power strips to turn off phantom loads, LED or compact florescent lights, and on and on and on.

Letter to Obama

Dear President Obama, I was thrilled to hear that you are proposing an education overhaul that will enable our schools to prepare our children for college or the work place and that will give them the 21st century skills needed in a 21st century world. The way that will achieve this goal effectively, efficiently, and economically, would be to require every school to have a qualified librarian. Certified librarians (those with masters in librarianship, library media endorsements on teaching degrees, etc.) are well equipped to teach students how to ask messy real world questions, find information (both in print and digitally), interpret and use that information, and create new knowledge with what they have discovered. Please make sure adequately staffed and funded libraries are in your education plan. They can make all the difference to a child or teen.