My life definitely seems to be in flux this year. Lots of big changes.
Everyone in my house is on a diet. Well, o.k. the cats are on weight loss maintenance since they achieved their weight loss goals last year. However, Pugly was told by the vet that he has to lose 4 lbs — 1/6th of his body weight! How do you explain to a Pug, who thinks he’s starving 24/7 on any given normal day, that he has to cut back on his in-between meal snacking and meal portions?
Meanwhile, I’m doing Weight Watchers@Work with 23 other hapless souls. Since I managed to lose 55+ lbs on WW back in 2002/2003 rather successfully by applying strict OCD methods, I figured I can manage to lose the 45+ I regained living in Maine. Actually, I’m trying to do it without the OCD part as that was a bit scary — no weighing myself 3 times a day for instance. I’ve lost 6.2 lbs in 8 weeks so far, which is pretty healthy and I’m mostly feeling good about the choices I’m making about what I eat. It’s much easier to follow the program during the work week however with all the cult members around. That’s exactly what we’re like with our bags of baby carrots and our navel oranges and our discussions of Points and Lean Cuisine — which I don’t eat, by the way. It’s very hard to find a variety of vegetarian frozen dinners that aren’t over -salted to cover the lack of flavor and under-sized.
So that’s body.
My house is going through a lot of changes too. The roof suffered some damage from the Winter weather thanks to all of those back to back storms this past year. Ice dams also did some inside damage. So, I’ve just hired a contractor to do $5,000 worth of work. It was really hard signing those papers. However, the main house will be getting a new roof, there will be a steel door between the dining room and the garage, there will be drywall repair in the bathroom, kitchen and living room, and all three of those rooms are getting painted new colors and even the kitchen cabinets are getting repainted so no more awful green — and green is one of my favorite colors but that was just ugly. I’m going for toffee orange in the kitchen and living room since they have an opening to each other and Cayman blue in the bathroom.
I’ve also finally bought a nice plain dining room table but no chairs. I plan to strip the awful color on the front stoop and just stain it a natural weather-resistant wood color and I’ve been working in my garden, planting flowers and wildflower seeds. It doesn’t look like much yet, but I have a botanical dream.
The biggest change is going to be the switch from oil heating. I was getting physically ill at the thought of next year’s heating bills. Last year’s bills of $600 a month were just horrible and that was before this latest daily increase in oil prices. Then I got my letter telling me that I needed to lock in my discount rate for next year — the one I get as an employee for my work through my oil company — $4.59/gallon, a full 30¢/gallon cheaper than everyone else. My brain might have actually melted. For the year 2007, I used about 850 gallons of heating oil and my usage for the first 4 months of 2008 went up about 30-40% due to the harsh Winter. Despite having been a math minor, the daughter of a CPA, and an IT professional, my brain simply couldn’t even begin to do the math; it simply couldn’t face it.
But I got to thinking about my options and I remembered hearing about Les Otten on NPR and the local news. Otten is this crazy guy who was trying to get the state legislature to give tax credits to people who bought furnaces that burned wood pellets. Well, I know a couple of people who recently bought wood pellet stoves but I’d never heard of a wood pellet furnace so I looked it up and it turns out that it’s a European thing. Mr. Otten is bringing the first 100 wood pellet furnaces to Maine this summer and promising to have them installed by Winter. He’s hoping to convert 10% of the Maine homes currently burning oil (that’s 44,000 residences) to wood pellets in 5 years.
Four out of five homes in Maine are heated with petroleum products, the highest share in the country.
By switching to wood pellets, Otten calculates, the average Maine home could be warmed for half the current cost of oil. If 44,000 homes made the switch, residents could save $78 million a year on heating bills, based on current costs. [Home Heating: Otten bets Mainers Will Warm to Wood Pellets]
So, I checked out his company’s website: Maine Energy Systems.
And let’s face it, the first thing I checked out was the cost and most particularly, the cost comparison between wood pellets and heating oil. Let’s assume I use 900 gallons of oil and I’ve locked in my discount rate at $4.59/gal; that’s $4,131 for a year. Apparently the equivalent amount of wood pellets would be 6.73 tons and MES’ rate is $250/ton, so that comes out to $1,684. That’s a huge difference — $2,447 annual savings. (O.K. I’ll be financing the new furnace but still.)
I love that the whole thing is automatic. It just has to be cleaned once a year. Plus, it’s environmentally friendly. Most wood pellets are made from by-products of other wood manufacturing processes and the ash create makes excellent compost. Plus, oil is not a replenishable resource and wood is, though it should be harvested wisely.
Anyway, I put my deposit down and now I’m waiting for that contractor to come out, have a look see at my current furnace with its big rusty hole and its current set up, and discuss the refitting so I can be one of Mr. Otten’s pioneers.
And now that my checking account is tied up for the rest of the year, I believe I’ll be sitting at home admiring the construction on my house and my wildflowers and my pitiful food portions and trying not to do anything else that’s going to cost anything.
