Friday, January 16, 2009

Secrets and Lies.. and spinach

It has come to my attention this week that we're all a little bit guilty of game playing (and only 1 1/2 months into our little challenge!).

I'm a serious offender - sneaking about in the kitchen, inserting no-go vegetables, such as spinach (which brings back supposedly hidious childhood memories for Johan)into food. Spinach is currently bountiful in our garden and I've been adding it to salads and hot meals. Last week I snuck spinach into a veggie lasagna, and have being strategically chopping it up fine in mash potatoes so he can't avoid it. He's been remarkably good humoured about it.

Yesterday, mid-cuddle with Johan I felt an unusual hard lump under his shirt. After a brief wrestle (I won!) I discovered it was a brand new, quite pricey, magnifying glass (So much for not buying anything new for four months!!!). Many excuses were given (Jake - age 5 - lost the last one, it was a work expense, he's getting older so he NEEDS it to see, it was an unfortunate result of having to pick Katelyn up from the dentist wich was above an optic shop... and so on, and so on...).

I must admit my main reason for feeling slightly peeved about it was that during the last few weeks I've been wrestling with my own hypocrisy having signed up to get a new in-built storage space (I have lots of 'reasons' too - but I'll save that for another time...)I'd been to-ing and fro-ing, asking Johan what he thought I should do, whether it was too much given this journey we're on.... and here I was discovering that he was up to the same sort of caper, albeit a less expensive one, but he's chosen to conceal it (sort of)... after much teasing of each other I think we're back on the straight and narrow (:

On a more positive note: I'm really pleased with our latest energy usage - we've used less thatn 3kw per day over the last fortnight - so I'm confident that if we actually get a bit of sunshine this summer we'll get to grid neutral.

Another big achievement is that last week I completely paid off the $7500 approx investment in solar energy. I had planned to pay it off within 12 months but managed it within 5 months - yippee! - a great feeling to be debt free on it.

Of course my little consumer self immediately went into planning the next stage - another 6 panels - which could make us completely self-sufficient for power next summer - at a cost of $8000.... spending in my mind already... how long does it take to break that habit????

2 comments:

Unknown said...

Am also seriously considering the solar power. Pay off, do you mean a loan or can one pay it off to Aurora?? I keep saying I will look into it but havent done so as yet. I also like the idea of knowing how muh power one does use as well.

Well, what can I say? Hmmm..One has to be able to 'see' and one has to have 'storage's space! Feel better? LOL,,,keep at it . Oh, yeah and spinach. I love it and so do my chooks! My othe rhalf would not be impressed if I snuck it into anything. He does not eat it at all!!!

Jen said...

Hi Michelle!

Thanks for the words of encouragement!!! I paid off the loan (aka credit card!)for the solar power and hot water. Laurie Port from Residential Solar Systems installed our grid connect system... he's a good source of advice and info... there's a lot of information out there to get swamped in! Good luck - happy to share info I have with you if it helps... Cheers, jen