Just got a message from our banker: Our application for a loan to fund a solar electric installation has been approved, pending appraisal. So here we go.
I decided some time ago that I’d blog the whole process if we got approval. We’ve talked about doing it for years, but only got serious when a former neighbor, who now works for a solar outfit called PositiveEnergy, came by to invite us to a presentation.
We went that next Saturday to a terribly nice place with airplane views in the hills above town. They had about 7,000 watts installed on the roof, and only had an electric bill in December. Plus they got 40% of their capital back as a tax rebate, and the electric company pays them 9 cents for every KWh they generate in addition to buying all their surplus. We were sold.
We had Taylor from PositiveEnergy out to the house the next Monday. He looked at our needs and our site and recommended a pair of ground-based tracking arrays that should generate an average of 7300 watts, or 55 KWh per day.
You may wonder about the cost. Don’t ask.
Hence our trip to the bank. The tax rebate seems to have swung the deal for us. We do have to get the house appraised, but given prices in this area it would be a serious shock (no pun intended) if we don’t exceed the needed figure.
Fingers crossed. Stay tuned.
All posts by DrClint
Weather
Weather isn’t the same thing as climate; the latter conditions the former while the former only generally reveals the latter. Yet as I sit here shivering through a cloudy, windy, mid-May day that has seen snow flurries and not much else, I gotta wonder: What’s going on?
This has been the wickedest Spring for weather I can remember. We’ve only had about 5% of normal precipitation for the year, and the wind has been endless. My dad’s garden in Texas has been blown out four times.
A single swallow does not make a summer, and one bad year doesn’t herald a dozen. But if this keeps up, we’re gonna be in serious trouble.
Presents!
Black Friday is coming!!! Time to start thinking about presents!! And speaking of presents, get up on the Internet some time and search on “Worst Christmas Gift ever.” The results are both hilarious and harrowing, and you could spend a few days reading through what comes up. I’ve done so, and find that it all falls into a few broad categories.
RE-GIFTING
Recipient got something that the giver had actually received the year before. If food, the item is spoiled. (Hickory Farms is evidently not forever.) If clothing, it’s ugly and doesn’t fit. (Pink XXXL NASCAR sweatshirt for petite ballerina.) Alternatively, the recipient got a random item or items from the giver’s house, like a small bag of Flamin’ Hot Cheetos rubber-banded to a can of Diet Pepsi or half a tangerine. BONUS POINTS if the gift was ‘wrapped’ in a grocery sack or a plastic garbage bag or if the giver got hungry on the way to the gift-opening and ate it OR if recipient actually gave gift to giver the previous year and giver forgot.
HOUSEHOLD APPLIANCE
Wife/Girlfriend wanted/expected diamond ring/earrings/tennis bracelet and instead received vacuum cleaner/iron/washing machine/fish-gutting knife from clueless hubby/boyfriend. BONUS POINTS if recipient then got divorce papers for the giver. Which naturally leads to:
DIVORCE PAPERS
Recipient comes home from bad shift at second job on Christmas eve to find spouse has departed for Cancun with new flame and has left divorce papers on pillow of bed the two slept in before leaving. BONUS POINTS if recipient later realized this was actually the best Christmas present they ever got, too, and that former spouse neglected to cancel credit card before jilted spouse could use it to buy self diamond ring/earrings/tennis bracelet.
WHINY TEMPERAMENT
Original gift came from parents in form of bad genetics/upbringing leading recipient to complain bitterly and sarcastically about expensive gift from loved one that was in some small way not exactly the right thing. BONUS POINTS if 8,000 other blog posters respond that WHINY TEMPERAMENT should eat shit and die and that they lie awake at night dreaming of getting something as nice as WHINY complained about.
THERE BUT FOR THE GRACE OF GOD
These are not even funny, and it would be additional cruelness if you made fun of them in any way. And it’s like passing a severe auto wreck on your way to church; you can’t look away, though you also can’t help feeling somewhat superior. Recipient made some sort of mistake and pays for it by being neglected or given awful retributive gift at Christmas. Or recipient loses loved one/s. Or has to watch as siblings/cousins get fabulous gifts while he/she opens package with six pairs of underwear. No bonus points here. Major source of respondents to WHINY.
SADISTIC GIVER
Recipient is pining for latest hot toy. Giver has filled and wrapped up box approximately same size and weight as hot toy, then stands by to burst into demonic laughter (all dutifully filmed) as recipient excitedly opens package to find four pairs of tube socks and a Mason jar full of gravel. BONUS POINTS if actual box for hot toy is used, intensifying the disappointment and the fun. Dante placed such givers in a special part of Hell’s 9th circle.
WTF???
Gift is either never properly identified, never understood, or never something the recipient would dream of using/wearing/eating in a million billion years. One year, after complaining about how cold it was at the high school football games he attended, my grandfather received a crocheted ‘pickle warmer’ from some friend or other. Seriously, it was a sock for his penis. It disappeared in about five seconds and was never seen in public again, although I think my uncles were given private showings over the course of the next hour or so. We commemorate this event at my house by having on our tree a German glass pickle ornament dressed in a little blue sock, hanging on a twirling motor with flashing LED lights. I am not making this up. BONUS POINTS if giver is astounded that recipient didn’t like gift.
By the way, if you compare threads with ‘worst gift ever’ to ‘best gift ever,’ you’ll find the post ratio is about ten to one. I dare you to do better this year.
Eat here
Recently a good friend of long standing, who lives in San Francisco and with whom I exchange a lot of letters about food, sent me a flyer for a ‘locovore’ food event that was to be held in the Mission district. Locovores, of course, strive to grow, gather, and eat much if not all of their provender from as nearby as they can get it. The flyer was interesting. I really can’t say that I saw anything on the proposed menu that was particularly appealing–we seem to be eating a lot of wild radish seed pods–but I suppose the advanced prep can be fun.
At the risk of sounding hopelessly behind the times, I confess to being less than 100% with the locovore movement. While I love fresh ingredients (Tuscany taught me that fresh + simple = better), I’m not so keen on the principle that everything has to come from nearby. With the exception of a few earnest and committed individuals, the social scientist in me thinks that what we see in locovorism is another instance of commodity fetishism as practiced by the avant-garde nouveau bourgeoisie. That is, the locally produced ingredient is being elevated into an object of devotion by urban hipsters flush of cash.
This might not apply to someone who is growing or gathering local ingredients and thus converting his/her own labor into consumable goods. However, anyone who would pay $80 for the privilege to sit down to such a meal as described in the flyer has to be guilty as charged.
I grow tomatoes–and go through the attendant expense and hassle–because one cannot get, even at the Santa Fe Farmer’s Market (which is now fabulous), a tomato like one can grow. On the other hand, wild purslane (verdulagas in Spanish) grows in profusion over my septic tank drain field. I am told that it’s edible and can be steamed. I decline, having once sampled it and found it vile. I also do not bother to harvest the pinon nuts from my many trees, although that’s mainly because the ravens always do it several days before one actually would oneself. Pine nuts are okay, but they just aren’t in my repertoire.
I like our New Mexico grass-fed beef because it tastes better, is raised by local ranchers whom I would prefer to have my money over IBP, and generally has less junk in it (antibiotics, hormones, etc.) It is, however, expensive, so that I only buy it for a treat.
I wish I could go to the trouble of keeping bees and raising honey like my San Francisco friend does. Actually, I simply wish that a close neighbor would go to the trouble so I could be assured of the best pollination for my orchard. The ladies were a little sparse this year, and I wouldn’t mind supplementing their numbers if I could afford the money or time.
Back in the 1980s I used to say that if the Soviets threatened to drop the bomb, we’d head to my grandmother’s house in Texas, because she had about five years’ worth of canned goods in her pantry. In the event of something truly apocalyptic I think I would still try to head that way. My dad can grow just about anything–potatoes, onions, green beans, peas, okra, tomatoes, corn, cucumbers, squash, melons, strawberries, peaches, plums, apricots, beef cattle, poultry, and wheat. With a solar powered pump on the (very shallow) water well, I think we might do okay.
In the meantime, I’m going to buy the freshest I can get or have need for, grow whatever high-value-added stuff makes the most sense, and make do with the rest. A fresh tomato can be awesome, and wild strawberries are precious, but I don’t feel like bowing down to either of them.