Domestic Questions and Rising Temperatures

I've been trying to avoid using the air con all day. I have a nice efficient little air con system, this apartment is only two years old after all. It does not really cost me much money in the grand scheme of things to have the air con on most of the summer. But I think that government response to global warming is eventually going to force the cost of electricity way up to the extent that people will really have to think about whether they use electric driven air con, or open the windows. That come as a shock to most people here, but I think it's inevitable.

However, air con is just a great thing! There was a huge heatwave here last year and for a week, the temperatures were over 35c. I just shut the door and has the air con on all the time. I stepped outside of the apartment and thought I had entered a sauna, but my own little world was fine. Lots of people had power cuts then, as the electric supply here does not really cope in heat waves when everyone has their air con cranked up, but the supply here was fine. I would have just died in that heat, if I had no air con.

However, if you want to be more environmentally friendly, you can get away with no air con here some days, if you have all the windows open. So I struggled on through my boring Saturday domestic chores in the heat.



But I had to give up when the temperature reached 83f inside here.



Look at that. Seems the outside temperature in the afternoon was over 30c (apologies for my mixing of Celsius and Fahrenheit, I really only understand Celsius, but my air con controller only understands Fahrenheit!).

I feel pretty bad tonight, for no reason I can put my finger on. Apart from maybe all those domestic chores I did in the heat, or general exhaustion after all my travel.



Air con was pretty new to new to me when I came to America, there are only one or two days, at most, when you may have needed air con in Scotland. However, the gadget that causes me the most worry here is the waste disposal unit. I didn't realise I had a waste disposal unit when I first came here, I only discovered it a bit later. I never had one before, so I'm a bit wary of it and not too sure how to use it. There was this HORRIBLE bit in the opening episode of "Heroes" (the only one I have seen to date), where one of the characters puts her fingers down a waste disposal unit and gets them all mangled. I secretly fear that'll happen to me one day. It seems a kinda dangerous gadget. And I'm not too sure what is supposed to go down it. Old vegetables I think are fine. But do tea bags go down it, or used coffee filters? Is that more environmentally friendly than chucking them in the bin? I need to know.....