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the darkness so far
May. 1st, 2012 03:48 pmSo, we began our no electrical lights experiment last Sunday.
In no particular order:
God damn, is our apartment gloomy. We’ve been trying not to use electric lights during the day except when necessary, and Christ it is dark and depressing at my place. Also, even in a room that is not very sunny, candles during the day are also pretty depressing looking.
The baby got a terrible cold and subsequently another ear infection. It was probably unrelated to the experiment, though. Poor baby. He’s feeling better now.
It turns out that if you want to actually use candles for illumination, buy tapers. We bought a bunch of pillar candles because you don’t need holders for them, you can just put them in a saucer. But the flame in pillar candles sinks down in the middle, becoming hidden behind a rim of glowing wax. Very pretty, if you want to create atmosphere. Fucking useless, if you want to read or cook by it. Tea lights are better than pillar candles because they don’t sink as far before you replace them, but they still sink. Tapers are the way to go.
One interesting feature is that I can’t help being aware of how many resources we are consuming in order to produce light. Intellectually I know that turning an electric light on burns, um....coal....or gas...or something in a factory far away, which is, like, bad...for the Earth. And will cost me money a month from now. But it’s deceptive like Amazon Kindle app 1-click ordering, really what happens as far as I can perceive is that I flip a switch and light pours out of my house inexhaustibly for free. Whereas with candles, I see how far the candle burns down in an evening. I know how often I have to replace the tealights. It’s obvious.
I will be interested to see what happens to my power bill these two months. (We started last week so that we could do this for a full four weeks before Memorial Day weekend.)
I am not getting to bed as much earlier as I had thought. The baby goes to bed at 7:30, and then I get in my half-hour of computer usage, and then I still have to cook and eat dinner, and clean up, and do a chore maybe, and talk to Mr. E for a bit, and pump, and hello, it’s 9:30 or 10:30. Wasn’t I going to get some reading in before I went to sleep?
We had people over for boardgames by candlelight this past weekend! It was fun! But it is REALLY hard to distinguish colors. We had to not use the green pieces (of Ticket to Ride) because it was impossible to tell them from the blue ones. And it was quite hard to tell the difference between orange and pink.
Unsurprisingly, turning off the computers at 8 is an even bigger deal than turning off the lights. Oh god, I miss you all so much.
My phone is an even bigger deal than the computer. I do a lot of casual reading on my phone: while waiting for water to boil, while snacking, while nursing the baby, most especially while pumping, I’ll be reading Twitter or a book on my Kindle app or something. And now I can’t. Pumping is the worst, because it really is awful without something to distract me. And I can’t really read a book while pumping, because I can’t get enough candles set up to give me enough light. Maybe I can get another taper holder and rearrange shit next to the sofa sometime this week.
I think Mr. E and I are talking more now that we are prevented from staring at our separate computers all evening, though. And it’s nice! I actually had a bit of worry that we’d drive each other mad if we were locked up with each other for several hours each evening with no computers and it being hard to read. :) Actually yesterday he came home and told me of eavesdropping on three younger women on the bus to work who had been talking about how awful it would be to be married: dinner with the SAME PERSON! Every day! And maybe on the weekend you go out on a date, but you go out with the SAME PERSON! Argh, how dreary! But somehow it is working out okay for me.
Anyway, I have to go pick up the baby, and I also just accidentally drank a whole cup of regular coffee. Shit. So tonight should be interesting.
In no particular order:
God damn, is our apartment gloomy. We’ve been trying not to use electric lights during the day except when necessary, and Christ it is dark and depressing at my place. Also, even in a room that is not very sunny, candles during the day are also pretty depressing looking.
The baby got a terrible cold and subsequently another ear infection. It was probably unrelated to the experiment, though. Poor baby. He’s feeling better now.
It turns out that if you want to actually use candles for illumination, buy tapers. We bought a bunch of pillar candles because you don’t need holders for them, you can just put them in a saucer. But the flame in pillar candles sinks down in the middle, becoming hidden behind a rim of glowing wax. Very pretty, if you want to create atmosphere. Fucking useless, if you want to read or cook by it. Tea lights are better than pillar candles because they don’t sink as far before you replace them, but they still sink. Tapers are the way to go.
One interesting feature is that I can’t help being aware of how many resources we are consuming in order to produce light. Intellectually I know that turning an electric light on burns, um....coal....or gas...or something in a factory far away, which is, like, bad...for the Earth. And will cost me money a month from now. But it’s deceptive like Amazon Kindle app 1-click ordering, really what happens as far as I can perceive is that I flip a switch and light pours out of my house inexhaustibly for free. Whereas with candles, I see how far the candle burns down in an evening. I know how often I have to replace the tealights. It’s obvious.
I will be interested to see what happens to my power bill these two months. (We started last week so that we could do this for a full four weeks before Memorial Day weekend.)
I am not getting to bed as much earlier as I had thought. The baby goes to bed at 7:30, and then I get in my half-hour of computer usage, and then I still have to cook and eat dinner, and clean up, and do a chore maybe, and talk to Mr. E for a bit, and pump, and hello, it’s 9:30 or 10:30. Wasn’t I going to get some reading in before I went to sleep?
We had people over for boardgames by candlelight this past weekend! It was fun! But it is REALLY hard to distinguish colors. We had to not use the green pieces (of Ticket to Ride) because it was impossible to tell them from the blue ones. And it was quite hard to tell the difference between orange and pink.
Unsurprisingly, turning off the computers at 8 is an even bigger deal than turning off the lights. Oh god, I miss you all so much.
My phone is an even bigger deal than the computer. I do a lot of casual reading on my phone: while waiting for water to boil, while snacking, while nursing the baby, most especially while pumping, I’ll be reading Twitter or a book on my Kindle app or something. And now I can’t. Pumping is the worst, because it really is awful without something to distract me. And I can’t really read a book while pumping, because I can’t get enough candles set up to give me enough light. Maybe I can get another taper holder and rearrange shit next to the sofa sometime this week.
I think Mr. E and I are talking more now that we are prevented from staring at our separate computers all evening, though. And it’s nice! I actually had a bit of worry that we’d drive each other mad if we were locked up with each other for several hours each evening with no computers and it being hard to read. :) Actually yesterday he came home and told me of eavesdropping on three younger women on the bus to work who had been talking about how awful it would be to be married: dinner with the SAME PERSON! Every day! And maybe on the weekend you go out on a date, but you go out with the SAME PERSON! Argh, how dreary! But somehow it is working out okay for me.
Anyway, I have to go pick up the baby, and I also just accidentally drank a whole cup of regular coffee. Shit. So tonight should be interesting.
