In light of the fact that one of things I admire in Japan is the level of energy efficiency consciousness, when it came time to buy a new washer and dryer yesterday I decided to put my money where my mouth is and bought a high efficiency washing machine. It was a few hundred dollars more, but it qualified for a $50 delivery charge rebate and a $50 dollar rebate from the state for buying an Energy Star appliance (hey man, my appliance is a star!). It uses far less water than regular washing machines and I've seen savings quoted as being somewhere around $100 a year. So I went for it.
I have a thing about writing about washing machines. I wrote about it the last time we bought one in Otsu. This one here rocks. I notice that the electricity is stronger here than in Japan. Everything's more amped up, myself included.
It's Tuesday afternoon now and this week I have already found a teaching job for the fall, sent in Rachel's health insurance application, called and arranged for an exchange phone for the prepaid cell phone we got last summer that we couldn't use and left sitting for months, signed up for a long distance calling plan for the home phone, ordered stuff to make us wireless, printable and webcammed, taken delivery of our stuff from Hawaii (lots of books! and car parts...), bought and taken deliver of the above mentioned washer and a dryer as well, helped clean out the nasty nasty basement full of mouse poop so the new washer and dryer would have a suitable place to reside, raked about 1/3 of the lawn that needs to be raked. We are located in a leaf gathering spot so there's no way I'm going to get obsessive about it, but the piles from last fall were left sitting through the winter (grrrr, bad renter. never doing that again) need to be dealt with so I' m tackling them as I can. It's about 86F(28C) degrees today suddenly and it's too hot for that right now.
Oh yeah, I also went to two animal shelters with Rachel on Sunday to start the search for the dog.
I have to babysit for a few hours for Stef and Mat tonight and then at 9am tomorrow at Rachel's new school. Guess I'm not really slacking yet.
Basically we have our communications systems well in place and soon to be completed. A part time lecturer job teaching Japanese at UNH is a good and lucky start in the career department. I've got an answer to the "what do you do?" question now-- "I teach Japanese at UNH." Yeah, whatever. Itching to practice more with Bolt, but Stef is also getting ready to open her store, so I can't really push on that.
Today's reality check: Pretty great!