August 2022 Chat Thread

[bazookagoof]

Whoops, already almost a week into August! 

I was looking for the thread when I realized it didn't exist yet, LOL!

Just to have something relatively meaningful for this post, I'll mention that kids these days really need a slap upside the head to bring them to reality.

When I say kids, I refer to my youngest co-workers, the ones just out of high school. Some of them are almost useless. 

[3piggles]

I forgot all about the month changing. Shows how on the ball I am!

Some high schoolers work hard, earn good money, and do a lot of things by the time the graduate. Others don't I think the ones working with you fall into the latter category What's worse is, if they're related to anyone who works there, it's likely they didn't do much in school because everyone they know graduated or dropped out and got a job working at one of these places. It's not that it's a bad place, but it's the same mentality as that of children of factory or mine workers. What they fathers and grandfather, probably uncles, etc. did was what they were all going to do when they graduated, so why bother. It's a version of the welfare mentality that says THIS is all there is, so don't expect anything better. Sad, really, because that mentality is part of the disenfranchisement that breeds dissention, uprisings, mass shootings, etc.

[Bean]

Thanks for starting this, Baz!

We're all wilting under another heatwave. This country is not set up for sustained hot weather. We've been away this week, and while car journeys are never usually my favourite bit of trip, we had a blissful 4 hour drive with the aircon on - it was the coolest I've been in a week!

[3piggles]

Glad you got those 4 hours! Our heatwave finally ended. Eight days of heatwave(90F or hotter), with tropical humidity and dew points in the 80s. That gave way to temps in the 80s, dew points in the 70s, and humidity that still made it hard to dry off after getting out of the shower. If we hadn't had the a/c, we would have been sweaty messes. Yesterday was in the 70s, dew points in the 50s, and humidity in the 40s. Same today, and hopefully tomorrow. I know what you mean. Everyone was out mowing lawns and doing things after hiding indoors for at least 12 days. The a/c is off, though not because it's cool enough not to use it. There's a programmable schedule for every day, and I have the a/c set at 75F to start at 6 a.m. and stop at 6 p.m. every day. Sometime in mid afternoon it changes itself to 72F, and the a/c came on yesterday, when we didn't need it. I've checked everything. Hubby's checked everything. We're thinking about getting a new thermostat, as this one has had one problem after another. Now that our electric rates went from 10 cents to 22 cents per KwH, we can't afford to have the a/c come on at random times. It has been nice with the a/c and most of the fans off. So quiet!

I hope you managed to have some fun in all that heat. Is it tropical heat or just really hot temps? Just hot temps, I hope. Otherwise all the fans in the world just move the soupy air from one place to another I feel for you!

[Bean]

We did indeed have fun! The heat (just heat, I don't think it was that humid) made everything involving movement take a bit longer, but we took it easy and enjoyed ourselves.

It's been a few degrees cooler back home, I think we maxed out at 30c/ 86f here yesterday, so I quite enjoyed having a relaxing day in the garden. I got back to a frazzled garden though - a few more shrubs and plants looking more like a pile of crisps than anything living!

[3piggles]

Try giving the fried plants a good soaking watering. As long as the roots are still alive, they'll soak up the water and start showing some life, again.

Glad it wasn't hot. The heatwaves we have have tropical heat, so you can cut the air with a knife The problem is there's so much moisture in the air, sweat doesn't evaporate, so doing something minimal like walking to the mailbox for the mail leaves us soaked with perspiration. No getting away from ourselves. We literally stick to ourselves Our whole neighborhood was indoors for 2 weeks, except for the taking the dogs out to do their business. It was miserable. Daughter said they spent most of it in their pool. I'd have joined them if I hadn't had to dry off to get home

The increased electric rates are a good reason for us, especially hubby who seems to need something to knock him up side the head to change anything, to be a whole lot less wasteful with the electric. We've used electricity as we wanted, not just as we needed. We've also been wasteful, leaving the fridge door open while we did something with the food we got out of it, because we were going to put things back in when we were finished. Now we close the fridge door and open it again when we're ready. Stupid, totally first world issues, but we're taking the rate hike as a wake up call to stop being so wasteful.

Ooh, I bought a washing up bowl off Amazon! I bought WASHING UP BOWL For years my UK friends have talked about washing up bowls, and I had no idea what they were. I googled them maybe 10 years ago, and got nothing. Then I was looking for something to fit in the sink that I could remove and flatten for storage, and there they were, washing up bowls! I posted about it on Facebook, and all my UK friends were saying Yay, while all my US friends were asking what it was. I posted the picture So no more running water down the drain. It goes in the bowl. We are a very wasteful society, so it feels good to know we're cutting back on our wastefulness, and not on our necessities.

[Bean]

I didn't know washing up bowls weren't standard over there - isn't that funny how differently we end up doing the same things!

Aug 15, 2022 11:48:47 GMT 3piggles said:

Try giving the fried plants a good soaking watering. As long as the roots are still alive, they'll soak up the water and start showing some life, again.

First thing I did when I got home - an SOS mission! I'm sure some things will revive, like the better established shrubs, but there are others that probably don't have good enough root structures yet to have coped. Time will tell! If we go away again this summer, it'll only be for a night or two, so I should be able to keep hold of everything that's left!

[3piggles]

SOS mission. I like that Some go dormant in drought conditions, so hopefully you have a few of those

Our Hostas(Planten Lilies) are burned. I think it's from the heat of the heatwaves, which got into the triple digit temperatures for several of the 8 days, and while maybe the main places where temps are recorded didn't have more than 8 days of heatwave, the rest of us had about 12. Everything got watered, but the heat just wouldn't quit. Even overnight. I did notice Vic started to remulch that flower bed, but only did part of it. I think everything needed more cooling for their roots.

[Bean]

Teebers was talking about netting you can use in strong heat, to protect plants from the burn. But that's probably beyond what I'm willing/ able to remember to do - I'd rather just have plants that can cope with whatever our weather throws at them, so a more limited range if this year's weather becomes a more regular occurrence.

[3piggles]

I watch enough Australian TV shows I think of him often

Yes, there is netting, and we might try that next year. The only problem with netting is you have to plant things together than need the netting. Otherwise protecting one type of plant with it hurts another type of plant. It's meant for garden rows of all the same plants.

We were discussing possibly moving some of the plants with the worst burning to more shady areas of the yard. The worst burning was on plants in the front yard, so not really candidates for netting. I'm sure the neighbors would have some choice things to say about that, lol

We're passed the worst of it, and starting to get into cool nights the tell the plants summer is ending. I also told hubby I want some different watering done next year. The worst burning is on plants we could water with a soaker hose, and water more deeply, to help those plants through the heatwaves. He didn't run the irrigation lines to the window boxes until summer was half over, and once he did, everything in the boxes, that were all dying, came back to life and grew like crazy. Next summer he will be retired, so no reason not to get the right watering to the right places. He also never finished mulching the front garden, and if he had, the water would stay with the roots and not just evaporate, so he needs to finish that, too. We also went from watering daily to watering every other day about two weeks ago, drought protocol for the hood, and when he was watering every day, he only watered for 15 minutes. When that became 15 minutes every other day, it wasn't long enough. He'll change that next year, too.

[Bean]

Aug 17, 2022 19:49:36 GMT 3piggles said:

I'm sure the neighbors would have some choice things to say about that, lol

You'd only have to out it on for the hottest few hours, would they not just think 'Oh I understand why they're doing that and am glad I get to look at their lovely garden the rest of the year'?! If not, what grumpy sods!

We've dropped about 10c this week, so it's been much better for being out and about. But we're having some of those days where when the sun is out, it's baking, but as soon as it goes behind a cloud, the temperature drops massively. I was outdoors a lot yesterday and lost count of how many times I took my jumper on and off!

[3piggles]

I tried to get in a short walk while the sun was behind a cloud, yesterday. Some situation. If the sun was behind a cloud, it was nice. Sun came back out, and it was really hot. We just don't cool down enough when the sun is behind the cloud to need a jacket or sweater. Next month

We're in the heat again, but not the humidity. Rain coming Monday, and the humidity is suppose to rise again. Not sure for how long, but I'd rather have dry heat than cooler humidity. Still, we need the rain. We got 1" in the last set of rainy days, and are still in a moderate drought. South of us, where we use to live, is in a severe drought, so we could really use some good, steady, soaking rain. We didn't get a lot of snow last winter, so not much of a melt to fill the reservoirs. Probably going to be the way it goes with the climate change.

Oh, I was reading an article about the Arctic in Alaska, where the tundra is thawing at the fastest rate of any place in the world. The white pine tree, that used to grow up there before the last ice age, is reclaiming the area. In some ways that's a great advantage. Instead of tundra releasing methane, we have trees helping put oxygen in the air. Let them grow!

I'm not cooling until 77-78F, though the last couple of days I let it get up to 80F in the house. When it hit 81, it was too much. I'm staying under the fans so I'm cooler, and wearing my bathing suits. I even cooked hardboiled eggs outside this morning, so I didn't heat up the house. Nights have been cooler, though, which is nice. Gives us a chance to pull in some cool air before we have to close up the house against the heat. We've had the a/c off more than on the last 4 days, so hopefully we've saved some money

[Bean]

Sounds like you're managing with the heat pretty well. I can't see another hot spell in our long term forecast, but the last one came out of nowhere, so who knows!

[3piggles]

I know we're at the end of summer. Just as we get days in the 80sF in the spring, followed by a freeze, we'll continue to get hot days, but they'll get less and less humid, then less and less hot. We've noticed the sun setting much earlier. We go to bed around 9, and it used to still be light out. Not anymore. Fall is coming. It's my favorite season. There's a clean, crispness to the air we don't have in any other season.

We did laundry to hang out to dry, today, because next week is hit or miss with rain and T-storms. It was good. We had a full load, which we don't usually have. We should be set for the next week, which could change, weather-wise, and be completely different than the current forecast

[Bean]

I can always send you some spare washing if you ever need a bit extra to fill a load!

[3piggles]

Lol It's been more about washing between bad weather days, so we had to wash whatever we needed to wash at the time, not a full load. Definitely did a full load yesterday!

We've been debating getting a smaller washer and dryer, possibly one of those apartment setups with the washer on the bottom and dryer on top. That would probably mean doing laundry daily. Question is, is it more economical to a lot of small loads, or to run a big washer and dryer for a small load? I'm doing some research Not sure if the little washer/dryer would wash a set of queen sized sheets

[Bean]

I know that running larger capacity machines on a 'half full' setting doesn't save as much energy as you might think. I'm not sure on the stats of it all though - only that we definitely need a larger capacity machine right now!

I'd go for a bigger capacity machine and not do any washing until I had a full load. Most of us have enough underwear that we can manage a week without doing any washing if the weather's rubbish! And once we get to the weather where it won't dry outside, it doesn't make a difference what it's like out there.

[3piggles]

Our machines are so big, even a week of laundry doesn't always fill them. Granted, I'm talking summer weight clothes. Winter weight clothes always take up more space in the washer/dryer. We do have a lot of cycle options, probably too many, and I'm trying to get hubby to only use the minimum cycle we need for our clothes. It's also a front loader, so there's only so much water ever in the washer, and the more clothes that are added, we're supposed to increase the length of the cycle. Using the short cycle saves a lot of money. I'm less concerned about that than about the space the washer/dryer take up. We looked at stacked versions of what we have, and I couldn't bend enough to access the washer on the bottom, or reach inside the dryer on the top. We had thought about getting someone in to stack the washer/dryer we have, which is still an option, it will just take some physical changes for me, or having hubby load and unload the machines.

[Bean]

Ours supposedly weighs it and adjusts the water and spin power depending on what's in it. In the manual there's usually a chart showing how much power and water each cycle uses, at least in newer machines.

But yes, you want to be able to get it in and out by yourself, I can see much opportunity for frustration if you have a set up where you have to wait for your husband to do the honours!

[3piggles]

I'm surprised you didn't get the same mental image hubby got of my feet sticking out of the dryer while I tried to reach the clothes at the back of the dryer, lol

We're still considering options, and for now, I think we're going to get rid of the furniture and possibly the two mini fridges, and put the freezer in the office. That way it will be inside with the a/c in the summer, and not outside in the soaring heat. If it still runs up the electric bill too much, we'll look for other options, but nothing immediate.