Equal Time, Arresting Walks, Front Lines

Before we embark on today’s missive an aside:

Do you think Republican presidential hopefuls will demand equal media time for all the TV and radio mentions of the Clinton Correctional Facility in upstate New York? After all, as showman George M. Cohan observed some 100 years ago, “I don’t care what you say about me, as long as you say something about me, and as long as you spell my name right,” Hillary Clinton is enjoying daily impressions of her surname since two convicted killers escaped from the Donnemora, NY, facility. Moreover, if Mad Men taught the public anything it is that repeated mentions of a product’s name (in this case a presidential candidate) helps secure consumer acceptance.

Just wondering …

And while we are on the subject of incarceration, do you know the difference between prison and jail? Prison is where you go for any sentence exceeding one year and a day. Less than that and you’re confined to jail where you also sojourn pending your trial. Just thought you’d like to know. (And there’s no difference between prison and a penitentiary.)

I thought Gilda and I lived in a rather ordinary, common suburban neighborhood, if you accept the argument that a neighborhood encompasses your walking surroundings even if you cross the border into another community, as we do living just two blocks from Scarsdale. My fantasy world has been shattered two times.

Twice in the last six months or so police have arrested the residents of homes we frequently walk by in the evening (both are in Scarsdale, I hasten to say). The first arrest was of a woman allegedly running a marijuana mill in Queens. She was renting a rather stately, newly constructed home off of Saxon Woods Road just inside the Scarsdale line. Last week a Manhattan doctor and his office manager wife were arrested for allegedly running a “pill mill,” selling about $77 million worth of black market oxycodone prescriptions over a six year period. In their unremarkable second home along Black Birch Road in Scarsdale (they also have residences in Hawaii and Florida and are building a house in The Philippines), police found $600,000 in cash. One of the more fascinating aspects of the doctor and his wife’s story is their age. He is 77, she 79. 

Who knew drug dealing was a senior citizen activity? I always thought as you age you wind up taking, not dispensing, drugs. 

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And now a word from our sponsor, so to speak. Our second ConEd bill since we went solar arrived. For May it came to $19.78. Last year it was $231.49. After paying the monthly $92.97 fee to SolarCity, we saved $118.74 for the month. Two months’ savings: $210.09, and some 2,000 ConEd kilowatt hours. 

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Front lines everywhere: Recently, President Obama said the 450 support troops he is sending back to Iraq won’t proactively engage the enemy. They will not be on the front lines. 

If the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan have taught us anything it is that the “front lines” of today’s conflicts are fluid. They can be anywhere. Anywhere the enemy is, which is everywhere. Everywhere U.S. troops are. 

So let’s not pretend our soldiers will be shielded from harm. Our enemies have amply and repeatedly demonstrated—going back to Vietnam to Lebanon to the attack on the USS Cole in Yemen—that non traditional combat foes can strike even the most fortified and presumed secure locations, inflicting dozens, even hundreds, of casualties.

Solar Power Lowers Electric Bill

Perhaps you haven’t been waiting for this news, but I’m pretty excited about our first ConEd bill since we went solar.

Last year our electric utility bill for April was $209.33. This year’s ConEd bill—$25.01!!!

Now, we had to pay SolarCity a $92.97 monthly rental fee for the solar panels, but that still means our combined electric bill was just $117.98, a savings of $91.35!

Last year we purchased 939 kilowatt hours (kWh) from ConEd. This year just 35. The sun provided the overwhelming bulk of our electric needs. 

I must admit, it’s a giddy feeling looking at the ConEd meter and seeing the kWh usage decrease day to day. When ConEd read the meter on May 1 it read 1,594 kWh. On May 6 the meter showed 1,548 kWh. 

Oh, happy day and let the sun shine. 

Good Morning Sunshine, But Another Painful Day

Let the Sun Shine In: After receiving the go-ahead from ConEd this morning, at 3:45 pm Friday, we went solar. Naturally, it’s been an overcast day, but I have confidence the sun will come out tomorrow, or the next day, or the day after that and we will get the bulk of our electric power from solar panels. I’ll keep you updated on the SolarCity system’s efficiency.

False Hope: My hope to be kidney-stone free has been dashed. After days without pain a slight twinge poked my back Tuesday afternoon as I drove around. The pain has not returned again but my doc says the stone probably is still there, so keep peeing into the strainer and hope it shows up.

Meanwhile, I am beset by a different excruciating pain. I’m a teeth grinder. I wear an appliance while I sleep to protect against a loss of enamel from the grinding. I’ve been wearing a mouthguard for more than 20 years. I even wore it while commuting on Metro North. My friend Lloyd always knew it was time to stop the banter when I slipped the appliance into my mouth on the ride home from Manhattan. 

Grinding also puts excessive stress on one’s jaw muscles, resulting, in my case, in temporomandibular joint  disorder (TMD). Pain starts in the middle of my lower right jaw and travels up beside either the front or back of my ear to the top of my skull. I’m not sure why TMD has suddenly flared, but the pain can come, and go, at a moment’s notice. The pain can last for hours. Our dentist (a reader of this blog so I’ll have to be careful what I say—just kidding, Mitch) is taking a conservative approach. We’ve eliminated the idea the pain is tooth-related. We’re hoping a slight adjustment to my mouthguard will, over time, reduce and eliminate the cause.

If you’ve gotten the impression I bounce from one pain to another, imaginary and not, let me assure you you would not want to suffer from these real aches. Still, Gilda has challenged me to keep a pain log for one month. Today’s entry has TMD.

Pain of Another Sort: If you think my pain is stressful, imagine how Ted Cruz must feel if any of his would-be supporters clicked on the following link: tedcruz.com.

There’s a presidential candidate not ready for prime time in this digital age. His chances of being the second bi-racial, Harvard-educated, two year-freshman United States senator to mercurially climb to the presidency is more remote than my going through a full month painless.

Doing Our Part to Save the Planet

There was snow on our roof but that didn’t stop the field crew from installing solar panels on our house last week, Gilda’s and my latest attempt to be responsible citizens of the world.

According to our provider, SolarCity, during the course of our 20-year, no money down, lease we will offset 381,219 pounds of carbon dioxide. That’s the equivalent of driving a car 409,434 miles, or the CO2 absorbed by 206 trees, or the use of 96,134 gallons of water to make electricity.

Of course, we also will save thousands of dollars we would ordinarily be sending to ConEd during the next two decades. SolarCity estimates the panels on our southern facing roof and on the east-west sides of the garage will produce 87% of our power needs. 

We are waiting for final White Plains Building Department inspection and approval before we go live, sometime in the next few weeks I hope.

Solar panels are the latest artillery in our battle to live a more ecologically healthy life. We’ve reduced by about 50% our garbage production, and thus landfill contribution, by composting almost every bit of natural, uncooked waste from fruits and vegetables. Last year I built two compost pens at the side of our yard while Gilda bought a compost bin at a Westchester County-sponsored environmental event at Croton Point Park.

Raw produce is mixed with leaves I shred each fall. Like people you see collecting discarded empty cans and bottles, I scavenge our neighborhood, scooping up leaves piled up in the street, usually about 16 33-gallons bags each foray. I chop them up in a funnel-shaped shredder bought from Craig’s List before putting them in the compost piles where the mixture will eventually turn into black gold for Gilda’s garden.

I’ve previously written about Gilda’s hybrid car, a Ford C-Max that even in this frigid winter is conveying us at 44.2 miles per gallon.

Coupled with lower thermostat settings during the day—yes, I wear extra layers indoors, sometimes even a baseball hat to keep warmth inside my body—and a more energy efficient oil burner that replaced a 35-year-old unit, we are burning less fuel to heat our home. We also replaced most incandescent bulbs with LEDs or fluorescents.

A final healthful tactic is more personal than environmental. As much as possible we have eliminated plastic containers, even ones claiming to be BPA-free, replacing them with glass. That includes how I quench my soda habit. I now buy Diet Coke in 8-oz. glass bottles which has the added benefit of influencing me to reduce my consumption of soda with each meal.