[strider3700]

Feb 19th - another week spent working two jobs. The getting up at 5:15 to go to the gym thing has changed my internal clock. I slept in till 6:00 this morning....

I did get up and sign up for a powersmart challenge put on by our local electric company. If we reduce our usage by 10% compared to last year (adjusted for temperature) they'll give me $75. THats about which is about 1160 kwh. I'll also save $86 so $160 for pushing my hobbies a little further. I wish I had signed up before the last bill though. December January is our highest use period and I managed to drop it by 600 kwh from the previous year and it was even colder using HDD to compare the two. That would have made the rest of the challenge pretty easy to accomplish. INstead I've got this heating period of relatively high usage and then mostly just summer where the total usage is only 1300 kwh every two months to lower usage.

For comparisons based on house size, all electric, number of people in my area the utility tells me the average house uses 18600 kwh/year I used 11700 last year. I've got a ways to go but the trivial obvious changes are already done.

I then got dressed and went to the local nursery and picked up my order of mason bees. I got them for christmas from my brother who won them at an auction with a small wooden house. I'll have to put them in their tubes and hang the house up soon.

After that was done my daughter and I went in the back yard and I planted a 10' 4x4 post in the ground then put last weeks bird house on in with the bait hive on top. Paint never happened so it isn't the prettiest thing I've ever put up.

Finished the day out by pruning the peach tree and tying it back into shape since I'm trying to train it against a wall.