Because I can't be bothered to edit my previous entry...

[telophase]

...I post anew. Mom's here at the moment: she's flying out at the asscrack of dawn tomorrow* for a weaving conference in Michigan or somesuch, and thus the AC is turned down to Mom-comfortable levels. Which means that despite it being TEXAS in the SUMMER, I am FREEZING MY ASS OFF and wrapped up in an afghan. And *she's* in the coldest room of the house - my bedroom - partly because it *is* the coldest room of the house, and partly because I'm going to end up staying up later than her, and she can have some sort ot peace in which to doze fitfully before getting up at 4:45 to get ready for the flight.

When I go to her house, I bring a sweatshirt even in the middle of summer. I just forgot to dig one out of my closet before she turned out the light, and I don't want to wake her up if she's got even the slightest chance of having fallen asleep, so it's the afghan for me.

I usually turn the AC on occasionally during the day when it gets too hot, then blast it right before I go to bed, turn it off, and run a fan all night, so I'm used to living at 80. She lives at 68-72.

In other news we went shopping and I have many new shirts. And we had dinner at a Mexican place and overtipped the waitress at the end for her lousy service, because we could tell the restaurant was shortstaffed and she was having a really lousy day - she dropped an entire tray of dishes on the way into the kitchen. Her service seemed more like it was a result of being stressed and Murphy's law than her being a lousy waitress, and we figured she probably wasn't going to get many tips from anyone else in her section. :D


* 7:30. But she's getting picked up from my apartment by the shuttle at 5:30.

Comments

[sub-divided.livejournal.com]

Turning the AC off-and-then-on can use /more/ electricity than leaving it at a constant (reasonable) temperature, but since I'm not sure whether that why you're turning it off I'll keep my peace over here in the corner.

I'm freezing in the computer lab right now. TOO COLD.

[telophase.livejournal.com]

Off-and-then-on means most days it gets turned on right when I get home from work for a while (15 min or so), and then turned off again until right before bed. Weekends, add one more time getting turned on and off unless I'm doing lots of heat-producing activities like laundry, dishes, etc.

If I leave it on all the time, my bill goes higher because I get acclimatized to a lower temperature. This way, I stay used to about 80, instead of about 75. My apartment is oriented enough away from and and insulated enough from the sun that it really doesn't get over 83 or so inside during the day.

[rayechu.livejournal.com]

80? Your nuts. But then I guess you are the one paying your electricity bill. I think we have our house set to stay at 62-68 during the summer months. Sometimes my parents try to not use the AC as much, but I tend to get very sick in the summer without it so it usually stays on. I like it being cold enough in the house, you reach for blankets.

[telophase.livejournal.com]

This is Texas in summer. If I kept it 62-68, the bill for power for my one-bedroom apartment would reach something like $130-150. As it is, at 80, it's around $70-80/month. (and that's not too far from my base bill - the month or two in February/March where I didn't have either the heater or the AC on was about $60)

I think part of my bill is due to the hot water heater being set too high - one of the thing on my List for When I Get Around To It is to ask the complex to send a guy to set it a few degrees lower. It's already pretty near to scalding.

[rayechu.livejournal.com]

That is way too much money for comfortable air. This is one of the reasons I am not looking forward to moving out. Do you have a small air conditioner that you installed yourself, or is that price for a setup more like central air, and you just get charged for what you use?

[telophase.livejournal.com]

The apartment's got central air installed, so I get charged for the power to run it.

Back in college - I'd never do this today because I am TOO DAMN OLD* - I shapred an apartment with two other girls in San Antonio. It was in an older building and was supplied with only two window units. And one of my roommates was so INSANELY PARANOID about the bill, she wouldn't let us run the AC except for a short time right before bed. Which means that as she spent the entire weekend at her boyfriend's place, the other roomie and I cranked the AC in the living room on the weekends. We averaged about $30-35/month for power in the summer, but it was fucking miserable to get out of the shower and be instantly covered in sweat.

The summer I worked the evening shift at AT&T was great. I had an apartment about as big as the one I'm in now, and as I was at work during the hottest part of the day, the AC stayed off except for when I came home at midnight. My lowest bill that summer was $30, and it kills me that I can't get anywhere near that here. I need to remind myself that fuel costs are about double what they were then, so there's no way I'm going to be able to achieve that short of turning off the AC on a permanent basis and not using any lights or TV or anything.

* For anyone thingking of jumping in and saying "But you're not old!" ... I love being TOO DAMN OLD to do stupid stuff. :D

[rayechu.livejournal.com]

Well I stilldon't think your that old. How does the roommate thing work out? None of my IRL friends have ever really experienced it to tell me. I would guess that it helps on some bills, but you fight over stupid things like dishes and trash and space?
As for the cost of electricity, I wasn't aware that many homes are actually supplied electricity by natural gas. I thought more places were making use of natural wind/water energy supplies. It worries me that fuel costs have practically doubled, because if something doesn't change I will never be able to afford to move out on my own.

[telophase.livejournal.com]

I am not a good roommate because I am a slob and I never get around to cleaning up after myself until way after the point where it drives everyone else crazy. I roomed with a neat freak. It was not a good scene.

From the financial POV, it makes a lot of sense, but like any sort of relationship you have to make compromises. The neat freak/me roommate situation didn't work out because she refused to compromise her standards at all. I'm willing to compromise but I am also stubborn and passive-aggressive and when someone else refuses to bend, I won't, either. I learned that I should not live with someone else unless it's in a committed relationship. :D

It also didn't help that she never voiced a complaint until it had been seething and boiling inside her head for days, so I would have no clue that something was wrong until she snapped and screamed at me, which would therefore immediately put me into the sort of attack mode where I was enver willing to admit I was in the wrong.

So overall: what's most important is communication style. If you're both able to bring up minor things and to make it perfectly clear what you're like and what your standards are* and if you're both willing to compromise and negotiate to reach an acceptable level of cleanliness/space/dishes/etc., then it can work out well.

Some companies are starting to use wind/water, but not too many. Green Mountain Electricity is one of them, and I used them in my previous apartment, but it was 2/3 the size of my current one and I still paid $60/70 a month, so I switched companies. The kicker was when I was out of the country for a month and the only things running in my apartment were the refrigerator and the hot water heater (because I forgot to turn the fridge off before leaving) and that month still cost me $40.



* The kicker? We'd lived together in the dorms for nine months. She knew my slobby ways! But somehow I was supposed to know wihtou being told that being in an Apartment was Different and magically become a neat freak also. This is an example of bad communication. She needed to have told me before we took the apartment that she expected me to behave differently.

[rayechu.livejournal.com]

Hmmms. I think I would fare better then you in my situation then. My friends and I are very close, (I would say sisters, but she is actually more similar to me then my sister.) The probability of moving out though is very slim, though so I figured I would ask when you mentioned it. I appreciate your opinions because you have been there and done that. Oh, and that reminds me, about PBR! I didn't know they were going to come with the sticker, so we were both quite happy to have them. It was really cool, and ment a lot. Especially since it was a birthday present for her, and I had written to Ursula K Le Guin asking for some (which she offers on her website) with no response.

[telophase.livejournal.com]

:D Just make sure that you talk about space and chores and stuff beforehand, as well as what to do if something happens like one of you gets a job in another city and has to move - *that* happened to me and I had about a week's notice in which to work out how the hell I was going to pay for the apartment on my own once the roomie moved out. Which is not fun.

And I suggest bringing issues up in a neutral place, like a restaurant, rather than in the living room. It tends to make everyone realize that they need to act like adults instead of degenerating into screaming matches or sullen silences.

Glad you like them! XD