Comments (16)

By kilax, March 3, 2016 5:39 am

• Yay! My snister and her husband booked flights to come out here in late April! I am stoked to see them and show them the house! And have my snister give me her interior design advice (I only pretend to be an interior designer – that is actually what my snis went to school for). Counting down the days!
• My snis is in Arizona for work (schweet) and gets to go to TWO Royals Spring Training games (SCHWEEEET!!!). I hope Steven and I get to go to some Royals games this year – we’re ready!

Our jerseys were Christmas presents from Steven’s dad!

• My bathtub is here!!! Isn’t it beautiful? Ha ha. I am not sure when it’s going to be installed/when the bathroom renovation will happen. Our contractor is still pending permit approval. I hope SOOOOOON! I miss my epsom salt soaks!

• We had our fire place inspected and chimney cleaned out on Tuesday. It’s looking good, um, minus the fact that we don’t have a chimney cap? Oops? That would explain why the starter is a bit rusty. And why there was an empty bird nest inside. We’ll get a cap and all the equipment so we can use it next season. I am looking forward to that! I bet Data will LOVE it!

• Add this to the list of things we didn’t realize was missing from our house – a mailbox. Another OOPS. We put our mail on hold the Tuesday after moving in but it was too late – the post office had already rejected a card my snister sent to welcome us to the new house. Sad. Luckily, it went back to her (and she resent to us). Steven and I tried to install a mailbox on one of the warmer weather days and it did not go well. Now is not the time of year to install a mailbox on your own. It just isn’t. We hired someone to put one in and it should be installed soon. I am excited to stop making trips every other day to the post office to get my mail (and I’d love to stop getting all that fake “URGENT MORTGAGE INFORMATION” mail – don’t even get me started on how much it all pisses me off).

ALL SO URGENT AND IMPORTANT! You know, insurance offers, offers to sell me a copy of the deed to my house…

• Apparently Data didn’t know moving to Zion included country cat duties… we had a mouse get to some of our food and Data did NOTHING about it! So disappointed. Ha ha.

Lazy city cat!

Link to Random Thoughts Thursday 88

Comments (25)

By kilax, March 2, 2016 5:53 am

When I told a friend I was moving close to the Pleasant Prairie Power Plant, he said “That’s where my kids think clouds come from.”

How cute! I can totally see that:

Sometimes you can’t tell where the factory starts and the clouds begin!

I’ve been affectionately calling it the “cloud factory” since, and told my parents about it when they helped us move. They thought the story was adorable. Now I send them text updates on cloud production status:

Ha ha.

But since I’m an adult and have to live in reality (booooo) I decided to actually look up what is being burned there, to create all that steam.

Coal! And lots of it! 13,000 tons a day (according to a potentially outdated wikipedia page)! Maybe that’s what’s on all those trains.

I was curious, so I got a few more stats from the Wisconsin Energy Corporation’s (WEC) 2014 (the most recent available on their site) Corporate Responsibility Report:

• The plant generated 6,231 GWh of electricity in 2014 (the Oak Creek Site generated 11,148!).
• The plant emitted 7,120 1,000 metric tons of greenhouse gas emissions (CO2) in 2014.
• A chilled ammonia pilot project is (was?) used to reduce CO2 emissions as it escapes the flue gas (this pilot began in 2008… I think it’s still going on?).
• I’ll just have to quote this one: “Pleasant Prairie Power Plant (PPPP) and Oak Creek Power Plant (OCPP) units 5-8 have been retrofitted with selective catalytic reduction systems for NOx emissions removal and wet flue-gas desulfurization units (scrubbers) for SO2 emissions removal. These projects, along with additional measures taken at other facilities, have resulted in more than an 80 percent reduction in SO2 and NOx emissions combined when compared to 2000 emissions.”
• Now it gets interesting! Falcons were living at their power plants, so in 1991, they released “15 captive-bred peregrine falcon chicks in support of the Wisconsin Peregrine Falcon Recovery program” at the Pleasant Prairie location. Since then, they’ve installed nesting boxes on power plant chimneys (I am interpreting this to mean across multiple locations), and 200 falcons (20% of the population in Wisconsin) have been born at them!

• WEC provides its combustion products, including from the Pleasant Prairie landfill location, for use in building materials and used 102% of its systemwide products in 2014. They’re also re-burning combustion products at the Pleasant Prairie location (meaning less coal needs to be purchased).

Don’t worry – this isn’t some sneaky sponsored post – I am just interested in learning what is going on where I live, and like sharing what I learn, here!

And the other good thing about the plant? I see it every time I leave my house for a run and it lets me know how challenging the wind will be that day. If the steam is going out horizontal from the chimney? That’s a bad sign. I want to see this (straight up!):

Ha!

Comments (32)

By kilax, March 1, 2016 6:23 am

Awhile ago, a vegetarian asked me “what do you do for cheese?” (I’m vegan and don’t eat cheese.)

I didn’t know what they meant. I tried to ask – “Do you mean cheese substitutes? Or what I eat instead of cheese to get calcium? Or how to make vegan cheese?”

Oh no. They didn’t want to discuss it at all. They just wanted to preach to me about how they stopped eating cheese and how much better they feel and how you don’t need cheese* and so on and so on.

Data says “Don’t even try giving me one of those BS pieces without cheese.”

Um, yes. You are preaching to the choir. I feel great on a vegan diet. You don’t have to convince me… I’ve eaten this way for many years.

But it was ANNOYING. Annoying enough, that I actually said to this person “the vegan diet doesn’t work for everyone – some people, like you and me, feel great on it – but not everyone does.” (I strongly believe that about the vegan diet.)

Dude. SHUT. UP.

Ha ha.

It’s pretty bad when you are preaching to someone who more or less eats the same way as you**, or does anything the same as you, and they want you to shut it.

There is NOT a thin line between being passionate about something, and preaching about it, if you pay attention to your audience. It is not difficult to NOT go too far when you are talking to someone about something you care about. DON’T preach it. Discuss it.

(And in that occasion where someone is telling you something they are passionate about and not preaching it… but you don’t really GAF? Be nice. Ask questions. Don’t judge them because they have different interests than you.)

I don’t have the personality type to push my interests and way of living on other people, but we can all think of people who are like this. And wonder, why do they care so much how I live my life?! It’s not that they care that much – they just want more people to be like them.

Odd. So odd.

And yes, I see the hypocrisy in my preachy post about not preaching!!!!! I guess I do have the personality type to say how I think people should behave! Ha ha!

*You don’t have to comment with how you couldn’t live without cheese – I know many people feel this way, ha ha. It’s never been something I care for, so it’s not a big deal for me.
**I won’t say “believes the same as you” since they said “I am not doing this for the animals,” which is why I do it.