Valentine's Voodoo

The featured article on WikiHow this Valentine's Day morning was "How To Make A Voodoo Doll." That made me laugh. The New Orlean's style doll looks a lot like a couple I purchased in a touristy souvenir shop last time I was down that way.

I finished up Michael Pollan's excellent book The Omnivore's Dilemma today and I can't recommend it enough. It's a thoroughly enjoyable read and a thought-provoking look at what (and why) we eat.

Finally, I saw where the City of Cincinnati is considering rewarding people with coupons for goods or services based on how much they recycle. I have been recycling in Cincinnati since the seventies. I want my thirty years worth of coupons, dammit.

Night Lights

I have never been able to sleep throughout the night; I'm usually up and prowling around at least once, more often twice during a typical sleep cycle. Because of this I have three night lights placed in strategic locations. The one in the bathroom up and died recently, so I purchased a light sensitive LED plug-in unit to replace it. I quite like its bluish, icy glow. I also ordered some LED replacement bulbs for the rest of the night lights. I think that leaves me with just one light bulb I've not converted to CFL or LED. The last hold out is a bare bulb, suspended by an ancient cord, that lights the pantry. I've not changed that bulb in the six years I've lived here; I'm just wondering how long it will last at this point.

The weather forecast is calling for an ice storm and other assorted nasty weather tonight. The city is going to be trying out a beet juice formula on the icy roads tonight. Sadly, it's not going to turn the roads bright pink in the process.

I may take a snow day tomorrow, depending on the conditions of the not-pink roads and my overall mood. I've put some cranberry beans on to soak overnight - bean soup is on the menu for dinner tomorrow. I almost always make my bean soup with tomatoes; I'm going to try using tomatillos instead this time and see what the results are like. I'll report back.

Finally, Jim Butcher will be posting the first four chapters of Small Favors, Book 10 in the Dresden Files series, which is due out in April. Chapter One is up now, with a new chapter to be released over the next three Tuesdays.

Wicked

As part of my personal effort to reduce my energy consumption, I've been hanging my clothes to dry rather than using the coin-operated dryer in the basement. Since I live in a one bedroom apartment, this does take up a fair bit of living space on wash day. I have one of the Frost drying racks from Ikea; I can get about one and a half loads of laundry on that, then I have a clothes line in the bedroom and another folding wooden rack. Since this takes up most of my bedroom, I turn on an electric box fan and aim it at the drying clothes to speed up the process a bit. On a normal day, everything but for the thickest socks and sweatshirts are dry in about four hours. This had me thinking about the energy savings (was I really saving energy by eschewing the dyer but using a fan?), so I used this calculator to tab it up. If I run the fan only for drying clothes, it tots up to 1.6 Kilowatt hours per month (about 20 cents worth at Duke Energy prices,) versus using the electric dryer for the same amount of laundry - 40 kWh/mo or $4.80. So I am saving both energy and money. That's cool.

I went to see the musical "Wicked" at the Aronoff matinée today. The stand-in for Elphaba was on stage today, Ms. Donna Vivino, and she was incredible. What a voice. Somehow or the other we scored box seats and it was a thoroughly enjoyable afternoon.

Ninja Shirt Folding

This is so cool. I can't wait to try it out on my laundry this weekend:



If you head over to the fold-your-shirt website, they have step by step directions available. Or you could search YouTube for "Japanese Shirt Folding" and find a laundry basket full of other videos that slow down the action.