Month: February 2013

The Lambasting League

/ D. Lara Smith / Leave a comment

When you read articles online, do you have a tendency to zip through so you can get to the comments section at the bottom?

Okay, I confess… I do.

And I don’t know why. I always come away feeling as if I need to reshower for the day. It seems a good many of the commenters go out of their way to be snarky or downright nasty. You have your few positive-thinking souls, and those who lead with logical arguments, but it seems the majority want to create a new national sport of lambasting anything and everything within their sphere.

I’m glad these lambasters aren’t judge, jury and executioner, or we’d suddenly have a population deficit.

It seems there are a lot of frustrated wannabe critics in the world. They aspire to influence huge swaths of humanity… and the only way they can think to do it is to thrash and trash something. One of my other favorite places to read scathing comments are those reviews you find for restaurants. You may have just wanted to look up how late some local establishment is going to be open, but then you see a couple of highlighted stars and a number of reviews and you think… what is it I don’t know about this place that maybe I should know?

What you read is enough to keep you inside living on rice and eschewing all human contact.

I don’t care if some of these folks are reviewing their local dollar burger joint… I can almost visualize them, their noses stuck in the air so high it’s a marvel they can see their computer screens to type. They are just sooo deadly serious and foo-foo in their reviews. I often have to double-check the website I’m on: did I click on a back issue of Bon Appetit or a come-one/come-all review site?

“The ketcup packets had a slightly squished consistency that suggested the high fructose corn syrup was heated just below the range of sugar before carmelizing into a smear of red paste…”

Welcome to the Lambasting League of Life Haters. By the tone of this post, I think I may have inadvertently joined the ranks!

 

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Energy Efficient Appliances… Is it Me?

/ D. Lara Smith / 2 Comments
courtesy of renjith krishnan/freedigitalphotos.net

courtesy of renjith krishnan/freedigitalphotos.net

I am all about taking care of Mother Earth and better stewardship and doing my part. I own an energy-efficient washing machine and dryer. I even received a tax credit for purchasing appliances that were “energy star” or some-such.

Joke is on me. And I’m sure I’ve more than spent that credit… on the electric bill. Not to mention, I think I’m failing at the “better stewardship” part.

I’m trying to figure out where the “efficiency” is, particularly with the dryer. Set on 60 minutes, the timer buzzes when it’s done. I open the door, reach in, and everything is wet, maybe just rung out a bit but wet. So, another 60 minutes… and we’re getting closer… but not before another 40 minutes or so tacked on top of that.

The efficiency part is that it uses less electricity–obviously–but I think that in order to save energy, you’d have to resign yourself to cutting your losses: take your wet clothes out and hang my stuff on chairs and throw it over the bannister and shower curtain rods.  But if I were to do that, what’s the point of having a dryer in the first place?

If I’m missing something, drop me a note… Otherwise, I’m debating going to find an old “energy hog” that gets the job done in 40 minutes. Somehow, I think that’s more efficient in the long run. At least it would save me from running up and down the steps to check one load of laundry, interrupting whatever creative thought I’m desperately trying to cling to and eke out into written form.  It’s these little things that can kill your creative flow, little annoyances from these appliances that were created to “serve you better.”

Not to mention, the energy inefficiency… such as when I forget about that load in the dryer-designed-to-serve-me-better and those wet clothes sit too long and start to get that nasty smell.  Then I’m having to start the process all over again, all the way back to the washing machine.

I guess some things sound good in theory, but it always comes down to the execution… and a little full disclosure on the front end, that maybe the money invested in a dryer would be better spent on purchasing clothes lines to hang between trees outside.