No more about Moscow!
[Editor: It might be 5° warmer than Moscow, but the koshki and koty are not happy campers. Sox is attempting to absorb as much heat from the electric radiator as possible. For those wondering: Income, Excise, Sox, Dot, Property, with Ringo in the back.]
On-line Opinion Magazine featuring annoyed rumblings from the leading edge of the Baby Boom firmly tied to a reality-based world.
Established: 21 November 2004
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16 comments
I’ve heard of a “three dog night”…but it must be pretty cold to warrant a “six kitty night.”
.-= last blog ..Wish it were MY Nepenthe! =-.
i’ve had a larger-than-usual contingent helping me blog.
shhhhh, don’t tell anybody that they’re really just soaking up heat from the lamp. yes, i still use incandescent bulbs; the cfls cost $5 apiece and don’t last any longer. i use them in the closets, where i can just leave them turned on, so they last a little bit longer, but everything else is old fashioned and carbon-crazy.
.-= last blog ..My inner cryptobiologist lol’d at this one =-.
Ah where there is a heat source, there you will find a cat or cats…. koshka is one of the few words left from my schoolboy Russian. One of my favourite words for a cat, along with the endearments Kiska and the Farsi word Pishi
.-= last blog ..Ted is not impressed by the world’s most dangerous animals =-.
Wait….these are Not feral, right?
.-= last blog ..Open Wallet, Pull Down Yer Pants =-.
Not really, Jill, it is a matter of this house was designed for cooling, not heating. It is great for air conditioning with the shade from the trees, but that makes it very hard to heat, so when the temp hits 40° outside, the cats gather.
Yeah, Hipparchia, the starters in the cheap CFLs die rather quickly. I have had several outside lights that have burned continually for 10 years, but some of the interior bulbs have only lasted a couple of months. They seem to want more heat venting than many light fixtures allow.
Jams, koshka is a female cat, while kot is a tom. Unless you get them fixed, the koty do tend to get a bit pishi about the house.
In strict meaning, these are not feral, Moi, although the term does take a beating if a fly or moth enters the house.
Ah, I see that the global warming conspiracy has gathered. Hey, look, a conspiracy of cats is just as likely as a conspiracy of scientists, so it’s an apt illustration anyhow ;).
– Badtux the Snarky Penguin
.-= last blog ..A conspiracy of cats =-.
Even in this gathering, Ringo, the mother of three of the group, remains somewhat separate. If it gets a little colder she’ll join in.
Aha! A kitty litter! 😆 😛
We just had all our bulbs changed from incandescent to the Phillips EnduraLED bulbs courtasy of a new Gov energy saving/greenhouse drive. Didn’t cost us a cent to replace 14 bulbs, (and a new high efficiency shower head which is also part of the water saving deal).
EnduraLED Solid State Lighting Retrofits
I must say, they are pretty darned good! 🙂
Phillips have the Genie energy saving bulbs bulbs that are supposedly guaranteed for 10,000 hours or 8 years. Supposedly 😉
In the US, they simply make everything else unavailable and require you to pay for the new technology yourself. Any aid will be in the form of a tax credit that is meaningless to 90% of the population.
I understand. Sad really. *sigh*
the program we were involved in was one of several actually run by the energy companies. Of course, I was highly sus that an energy company would do anything for *free* and would want to reduce homes energy consumption! 😉 I’m not a cynic… just realistic! 😆
Turns out, every home they do counts towards their carbon tax trading deal. So, the more homes they make efficient, the less they have to spend making the power plants more efficient, and the less they have to put towards green energy initiatives. And the World returned to normal, and I smiled knowing that I wasn’t in dreamland where corporations suddenly simply did something good and decent just because it was *the right thing to do*! I knew there had to be either a huge carrot or stick involved. 🙂
This is one of the programs. The vid on the front page is good, and mostly accurate. 🙂
Enviro Saver
HOWEVER… There is a price to pay for saving a bit of energy. The bulbs mostly use mercury, and if you break one, stop breathing, get the hell out, and wash your hands! Also, there was a story here early this year about the Chinese factories where they make most of the cfl globes:
Deadly cost of ‘green’ light bulbs
Yeah… I’m not a cynic. I wish I was sometimes. *sigh*
Oh!! And the Daily Telegraph picked up on something about this deal I found highly amusing! 😉 😆
The world’s strangest laws
In Victoria Australia, only a licensed electrician is allowed to change a lightbulb.
Yup! Actually true! 😆
If a normal person get’s killed or harmed changing a light bulb (even falling off the ladder or whatever), the insurance (if any) doesn’t have to pay a cent, and you may even get prosecuted!
This one, however isn’t true (any longer! It was, once!) 😆
In Victoria Australia it is forbidden to wear pink hot pants after mid-day on a Sunday.
And… one for you Bryan:
In Miami, Florida, it is illegal to skateboard in a police station.
😆
Legislators have nothing better to do, obviously. What a screwed up World we live in! *sigh*
All florescent bulbs use mercury, and not just the CFLs, so I have been used to dealing with them a long time. The LEDs that are finally coming out are a better choice on a number of levels, including the environment. Now, if the price would just come down the the CFL level, I would switch to all LED, just as I switched to CFL when they came down. I actually used a lot of florescent lights in utility settings, because they were a better choice for what I was doing, and they were generally in locations where changing lights meant climbing a ladder.
That Victoria law sounds like something the electricians unions bargained for, or it was passed back the early days when you had to kill all the power to change a bulb. The earliest electric lights involved changing the entire fixture, and the wires were bare and run on glass or ceramic insulators. I’ve run across a few of those in the attics of old houses in New York. All of the switches were “knife-type” with bare copper bars and a ceramic grip. Pretty exciting to work with.
Ah, but Kryten, how MANY licensed electricians does it take to change a light bulb? (Insert your own punchline here.)
My grandparents’ farmhouse had those glass or ceramic insulators, which held the bare wires perhaps 2″ from the ceiling (or occasionally, the wall). As a young child I was scared to death of them; I knew electricity could be dangerous, but I didn’t quite understand that it wouldn’t simply leap from the wire to get me. Believe me, though, no licensed electrician put in those wires! In fact, that house burned down perhaps a year after the family sold it after my grandparents’ deaths… probably, IMHO, because of that wiring, though the family all said it was arson by the new owner, and maybe they were right.
You were smart to be afraid of them, because I would doubt that even today some of them are still live. I never went near them without obvious signs they were disconnected, and I would still check with a volt meter to be sure.
Some people used the attic lines to run into the in-house fuse box, as they were fairly heavy gauge copper. I did not like them.
Those are gorgeous kitties. They sure look contented. It would be very warm and cozy to have a nice bed full of kitties, like that.
.-= last blog ..Friday Cat Blogging – Two Boys =-.
It is often a bit too cozy, OWL. Property can wake you with her stare.