Groundhog's day of destiny
I thought I'd offer a QUICK update, to prevent assumptions of abandonment to this noble blog.
Groundhog's day (Feb 2) represents the point of mid-winter (astronomically February 4). Sun means six more weeks of winter, which takes us to the Vernal Equinox. (March 20)
As a quick summary, I lost my car on Feb 2 to an accident, WITHOUT collision insurance, so my "no car" experiment (did I plan one recently?) has been moved up a few months. I donated my newly unpretty car to a charity that auctions car. I just couldn't bear to spend money to get an assessment that my car will cost more to repair than it was worth.
Being car-free in Minnesota in February isn't a good bet, even with a nice bicycle AND bus service for commuting to work. Last weekend we peaked into record highs - 50F+ temperature, and the roads are cleaned up for the moment. We'll see how long that lasts.
Next monday I'll be giving a speech on the subject of "world peak oil production" - so it'll be nice that I won't be driving a car to make this prediction.
A second update, my furnance had a cracked heat-exchanger, and after 2 weeks of running 2/3 capacity, I replaced this 40-year old furnace with a 94.1% efficient natural gas Bryant, plus a 14.0 SEER A/C. Both of these met the highest standards for gas/electric rebates for efficiency.
I've also got 2 roommates moving in on March 1 to my currently empty house (besides me), so my costs will be offset a little more, even with below market rent.
Lots of changes, much good. The tasks of sorting stuff at home continues, not fun, but necessary and valuable.
I think I can still fill another 6 months of "weekly tasks lists" that I've been doing since August. What I do is on Sunday I make a list of items I want to get done, assigning a point value to each. The "approximate" value comes out to 10 points/hour, and I try to reach 100 points or more each week. Specifically I've succeeded with 19/24 weeks. (almost 6 months). I averaged 124 points on (19) successful weeks, and 66 points on (5) unsuccessful weeks.
The points are a game of course - subjective and manipulatable as I choose. They are not perfect - don't force me to do HIGHEST priority items first, although I played with at least token "demerits" for undone tasks. Still, they help me get a little more done than I would otherwise.
The key lesson each week is strategy - taking a large list of tasks, and deciding how I can get a little done each day. Ideally by Saturday I'm nearly done, but often I'm not, and imagining 100 points as basically 10 hours of work, if I've done nothing by Saturday, I've got a hard day left.
Well, hopefully I'll write again before Equinox, but no promises. Maybe 6 week updates is the best I can hope for here.
Be good!
Groundhog's day (Feb 2) represents the point of mid-winter (astronomically February 4). Sun means six more weeks of winter, which takes us to the Vernal Equinox. (March 20)
As a quick summary, I lost my car on Feb 2 to an accident, WITHOUT collision insurance, so my "no car" experiment (did I plan one recently?) has been moved up a few months. I donated my newly unpretty car to a charity that auctions car. I just couldn't bear to spend money to get an assessment that my car will cost more to repair than it was worth.
Being car-free in Minnesota in February isn't a good bet, even with a nice bicycle AND bus service for commuting to work. Last weekend we peaked into record highs - 50F+ temperature, and the roads are cleaned up for the moment. We'll see how long that lasts.
Next monday I'll be giving a speech on the subject of "world peak oil production" - so it'll be nice that I won't be driving a car to make this prediction.
A second update, my furnance had a cracked heat-exchanger, and after 2 weeks of running 2/3 capacity, I replaced this 40-year old furnace with a 94.1% efficient natural gas Bryant, plus a 14.0 SEER A/C. Both of these met the highest standards for gas/electric rebates for efficiency.
I've also got 2 roommates moving in on March 1 to my currently empty house (besides me), so my costs will be offset a little more, even with below market rent.
Lots of changes, much good. The tasks of sorting stuff at home continues, not fun, but necessary and valuable.
I think I can still fill another 6 months of "weekly tasks lists" that I've been doing since August. What I do is on Sunday I make a list of items I want to get done, assigning a point value to each. The "approximate" value comes out to 10 points/hour, and I try to reach 100 points or more each week. Specifically I've succeeded with 19/24 weeks. (almost 6 months). I averaged 124 points on (19) successful weeks, and 66 points on (5) unsuccessful weeks.
The points are a game of course - subjective and manipulatable as I choose. They are not perfect - don't force me to do HIGHEST priority items first, although I played with at least token "demerits" for undone tasks. Still, they help me get a little more done than I would otherwise.
The key lesson each week is strategy - taking a large list of tasks, and deciding how I can get a little done each day. Ideally by Saturday I'm nearly done, but often I'm not, and imagining 100 points as basically 10 hours of work, if I've done nothing by Saturday, I've got a hard day left.
Well, hopefully I'll write again before Equinox, but no promises. Maybe 6 week updates is the best I can hope for here.
Be good!
posted by Ares Olympus at 7:13 PM
0 Comments:
Post a Comment
<< Home