Last friday night was a little different than I had imagined. It started out with my probability final, a quick bite and drinks with classmates at Mad Mex and finally a trip down to Gooski’s to watch the Electric Jellyfish. But the night didn’t end there. After the show, the night continued with the band crashing at my apartment and playing Rock Band till 3 in the morning. Haha. Good times.
It took me 2 years to finally watch The Inconvenient Truth and while I know that I’m two years late, I know I’m not the last… only because my parents haven’t yet. But I just solved that problem by buying them the DVD and shipping it to them. Hopefully they take Al Gore’s message sans politics. I understood that the climate crisis was real but didn’t realize the severity of the problems and how urgently we need to change.
I heard from a classmate that there was a recent video of Gore from the TED.com series on “A Greener Future?” recorded in March 2008. Sadly, it was much of the same message even two years after The Inconvenient Truth even with the progress that’s been made. He calls for “bold moves” by society. Hopefully we’ll see that soon.
I don’t have any bold moves up my sleeves just yet. But I took a small step in the right direction by picking up a bunch of CFLs (compact florescent lightbulbs) from Costco today and was trying to figure out how much money I’d save or how much it would cost to use these instead of the 11-60 watt incandescent bulbs I’ve found in my apartment. Each of the bulbs I bought output the same amount of light as a 60 W bulb but only use 13 W of electricity. The bottom line: we’ll be saving a ridiculous amount of electricity and more than pay for the new bulbs. For example: if I ran my room light for 1 hour every day for one year, the cost of the 4 bulbs in my overhead fixture would be $11 versus the $2 I would pay with the new bulbs (assuming $0.12 per kWh). In other words, buying CFLs to replace every single bulb in your apartment or home is the way to go - both financially and environmentally. Why are they still selling incandescents at all? I hope I wasn’t the last to figure that out too.
74degrees and overcast - pretty nice conditions for a run considering it’s still summer in PA. A classmate told me about www.mapmyrun.com the other day where you can plot and save your runs on google maps. It calculates the mileage, elevation change and can even download it to your gps (no, I don’t have one of those, I’m not that hardcore). I’ll have to try some other people’s routes when I get a chance but for now, I’m just happy with being able to see how far I’ve gone. And also that I’m in ridiculously bad shape. I’ll have to do something about that. Haha.
I guess since classes have officially started and I’ve finished building all my Ikea furniture, I can officially say that I’ve settled in. It’s been a long four weeks since arriving in Pittsburgh (PA not CA) but a whole lot of fun. The weather has been really great but unfortunately I hear that means the winter will be especially hateful. We finished off orientation with volunteering in East Liberty, playing team building games at Seven Springs and white water rafting down the Youghiogheny River. Yeah I don’t know how to pronounce that either.
My list of PA gripes:
1. Lack of real food (and Yelp): seems like bar food is the staple around here and Yelp reviews are minimal. Pittsburgh is not a foodie town.
2. PennDOT: no DMV is ever run as efficiently it should… Pennsylvania’s is no different
3. The Roads: there was no planning involved when laying out the roads in Pittsburgh but thankfully someone invented GPS
4. Drivers: bumping cars while parallel parking is generally accepted, as is driving when you really shouldn’t be
5. Beer Distributors: beer must be bought from a beer distributor. in other words, the supermarket and Costco do not carry alcohol - my biggest gripe.
My list of nice things about PA:
1. The weather is great in August (which will not last)
2. The bar food is rather delicious
3. The beer is cheap
4. Housing is relatively cheap
5. People are nice
A short 2 days after getting back into the Bay Area from Asia, Jen and I made a trip out to New York to go to Girish and Angie’s wedding and to play. It was my first trip to New York outside of winter and even though I was still sick from my return trip from asia, I had a great time helping Jen eat our way through New York. The Iroqouis New York made the stay really excellent. It’s a small but very well run hotel just a short walk from Times Square. We hit up Joe’s Pizza (from Spiderman), the Clinton Street Bakery, two different dumpling places on our “dumpling crawl,” Shake Shack and a bunch of other places. Avenue Q was a nice addition too. =) So what do you do with a BA in English?
