Sometimes even Nightstalkers drink decaf

I don't make a habit of drinking anything decaf... I'm a Nightstalker, for Pete's sake! My normal routine is a cuppa tea before going to work, and then a second once I arrive at the office so that I can be calm whilst reading my email. Tonight, thought, is the tail end of a three day weekend, so I'm not a Nightstalker. I'm more closely related to Mr. Mom than anything,

Before I get to the Mr. Mom thing, though, I'd like to talk a bit about tea. Quite literally, before Jennifer and I got married, I was the quintessential comic book/cartoon knuckle-dragging Neanderthal tea brewer (those readers who are from areas where there is a strong tea heritage might want to skip this part, or have one of those inflight distress bags handy. In fact, you might need a trash can). Back in my bachelor days, my morning tea ritual went like this: get a shallow sauce pan and fill it with cold water. Bring the water to a rolling boil. Without reducing the heat, carefully drop in one Lipton tea bag. Continue boiling until you can see a brown ring which marks the original "full" level of the pan. Turn off, discard teabag, and pour into a cup. Add a teaspoon of sugar. What were the attributes of this tea? Well, most lava flows in Hawai'i were less viscous that this stuff, and NASA has black holes on record that emitted more light than this tea reflected.The "flavour", if one could describe this brew, was somewhere between "turmoil" and "despair".

I'm not certain of what exactly it was that caused my tea preparation habits to change, but when I got married I went from Neanderthal to tea snob. My tea tastes have broadened quite a bit, although I generally still drink mostly black teas from the likes of Lyod, Tetley and Thompson's- as well as one or two Indian brands. For the most part, though, all of them are prepared in a similar fashion. Prepare cup by adding a teaspoon of sugar then the tea. In the case of bagged tea, it goes in the cup before the water. For loose tea, I have a red tea filter that is very close to the red that the Swiss company Bodum uses in their tea and coffee products. A rounded teaspoon of loose tea is placed on the filter, and when the water reaches a boil, it is poured into the cup- on top of the bag or through the filter. A timer, which has been set to one minute, is then turned on. When time has expired, the teabag is retrieved from the cup and given a gently squueze to coax the last of the amber liquor from the teabag; for the filtered tea, the filter handle is given a slight tap, and then it is allowed to drip a bit into the cup before being cleaned out. I have a slight variation to these procedures at the office. Although I have a filter and loose tea, I generally drink bagged tea- primarily because the coffee machine (which has the hot water dispenser) is on the opposite end of the office.So, in lieu of a timer, after the cup has been filled with water, I put a lid on it and walk back to my desk. With the pouring of the water, affixing the silicone lid, walking back to my desk and seating myself, approximately a minute has passed, so I remove the lid, give the bag a loving squeeze, and I have my beverage of choice.

So, decaf? Yessir, yessir, two cups full. Jennifer is still out of town, and while Mr. T has been quite good at emptying the dirty clothes hamper, he hasn't really bothered notifying me that the laundry is full. So, tonight I had three loads to wash and dry. In my defense, we've had a fair amount of rain the past few days, so I've had to wait for that to abate.

But I digress.

Some of you may be familiar with the saying, often attributed to Mark Twain or Benjamin Disraeli, but actually coming from an article by Leonard H. Courtney: "There are three kinds of lies: lies, damned lies and statistics." Truer words have probably been spoken, but as frequent readers may be aware, the unifying thread of this blog is data. And with that, ...

I received a letter from Commonwealth Edison, our electrical utility. Now, ComEd, like most if not all utilities, is trying to be "green". It's a sensible position to take, quite practical, and makes them look like good corporate citizens. As someone who is keenly interested in data and applications thereof, I read the letter with great interest. Now, I've received letters from them like this before, and they're quite interesting. A couple of graphs, some numeric comparisons, and some helpful suggestions on doing your part to conserve energy.

Judging by the graphs and numbers, we're energy pigs. According to their statistics, we used 84% more energy than our neighbors last summer.

We're just plain bad, right?       

Well, maybe. Maybe not. You see, our family is different from the other families in our neighborhood in a couple of significant ways which the lies- er, stats, cannot reflect. With few exceptions, there are two types of families in our neighborhood (and in our neighborhood, all of the homes are free standing, single family houses). One type is a young family with school-aged children (grades K-12), and the other type is retirees, including singles, couples, widows and widowers. Our family has four adults; the two adults who work outside the home have very nonstandard hours. Our older son works in retail, and his schedule can have him working any day of the week, sometimes getting up as early as 0530. I work nights, and usually get home around 0500, but often later. Because of the strange hours, my wife usually does not get to bed until 0100 at the earliest. So, during the week, our house might see four to five hours of "normal" nighttime. During the day, two or three individuals will be awake and active.

How about the other families? Mom/Dad get up at 0500-0600 to get the kids off to school and get themselves off to work. Dinner ~1800, bed for kids 2000-2300, bed for parents 2200-0000. These homes will have a "normal" nighttime of closer to seven hours.

Singles and retirees? Similar to the family hours, with retirees probably closer to eight or more hours of normal nighttime. Also, much less cooking, laundry and climate control.

All things considered, I don't think we're doing badly at all. In fact, given the additional information I've considered, there aren't really that many "efficient" neighbors that are actually efficient. Just one example for your consideration: in the past week, I think I've done five large loads of laundry; I'd bet that the widow down the street may have done one small load in the same period. Who's more efficient?

For truth in data, I've got a few speeds and feeds from my growing Lego database to share. From a development standpoint, it currently consists of four datasheets- I've done nothing so far with the fourth, as it is going to be the summary page. I'm fairly certain that I'll be adding a few more worksheets- what I currently have are basic bricks, plates and Technic. The current grand total of all elements (parts) is 6,475. In the For What It's Worth Department, I think the highest count I've ever gotten is 24,000.