Lots and Lots of News

Looking back to reference the post I did about not coloring my hair anymore, I was a little shocked to find it was all the way back in June! Can one be "a little shocked"? Anyway, I was surprised. It's been six months! And my hair wasn't awful; the red had washed out and I was left with just some kind of inoffensive orange. It wasn't bad, but it was also noticeably darker than my new growth.

Typically, this wasn't a huge problem. But sometimes, mostly when I was with my parents and so one of them took a picture in which I was bent down talking to Mal, so that all of my hair fell forward... well, there was a lot of roots going on.

I LOVE THE ROOTS. It is this sable brown with the occasional silver strand. I did not love the contrast of the colors, which most people assured me was not grotesque. I think I've been helped by the fact that dark roots are in fashion right now (I even noticed that in the final Descendants movie, the kids with purple and blue hair also had... black roots. They did not in the first two films; it was all color all the way.)

Anyway, I was fortunate enough to get some input from my neighborhood on NextDoor and found Megan at Hair's to You.

A hair salon in an RV, you say? Perfect for me! Long story short, here's the final product. Hopefully the brown will stay with me for months to come. We just used a color-depositing dye, no stripping, and she didn't color ALL of the top layer, so my washed-out color kind of acts as highlights.

Here's a picture of me last week versus today. Again, not looking at the crown, it's not as dramatic as the reality; you'll just have to trust me.

Also, because I think the second picture, which has a noticeably-darker under-layer (which I dig), is still a little light, here's another angle. The one above was taken during daylight, and the other later at night. You get an idea of how much darker it is here.

Okay! Enough pictures of me!

In other news, our heater gave up the ghost last night.

That's not entirely true. It works-ish. What happened was that it got VERY cold (and snowed!) and after cycling nonstop between the heat pump and auxiliary heat, it froze up and shut down. When that happens, apparently our stupid Nest "smart" thermostat doesn't charge because its charging relies on the heater or a/c to be functional (??!!). SO we woke up in a cold house and with no thermostat. I quick-charged it a few minutes with a USB cable, checked the breakers (they were fine), and then plugged the thermostat back in.

It was 58 degrees in the house, and the heater came on when the thermostat was back in working order. It stayed on so long, though, that it drained the battery of the thermostat very quickly, and so I started doing a little routine. I'd set the heater to one degree above whatever it was. When it caught up, I'd take the thermostat off and plug it in a few minutes. Then I'd put the thermostat back on and raise the temperature another degree.

Doing that, I got it back up to 68 in a few hours. I could tell, too, that the heater had gone out at about 2:00 AM, so it did work part of the night.

We've known that we needed to replace the unit. It's had an inordinate amount of problems since we bought the house (like the a/c guy shouldn't need to come out twice a year... something I learned after we replaced the inside unit of our heater in Sherman, too... we'd sunk SO MUCH money into repairs), so last December, we'd gotten an estimate to replace it and had budgeted to do it in November.

However, I did not want to repair what happened last night, because I don't think it's fixable long-term. Additionally, the unit is old enough that the refrigerant can no longer be sold as of January, so if we got a leak, we'd be at the mercy of hoping someone had some left over in their inventory. Also, there's some questionable repairs already done, like someone installed some kind of jumper that is only supposed to be there temporarily, but since it works, the serviceman hasn't wanted to mess with it. I'm pretty sure it's original to the house, which was built in 2007.

So, on Monday we're getting a new heat pump. Hey, did I mention spending a ton of money recently? Oh, and the company has a 12-months-same-as-cash finance deal going, so we can actually pay for it in November and that will be cool. I know a lot of people caution against "same-as-cash" offers (and the interest rate is 18% after that!) but we WILL pay it off within a year.

Finally, I've been thinking a lot about a vacation we're taking later this year in which we'll be flying. We don't fly often; I think we've averaged once a year since we've been married, and I had only flown once in five years or so before that. I understand the environmental impact of flying is high, even though I've never seen a breakdown of how it differs from driving if you have to top two nights and stay in a hotel where linens have to be washed, etc. I always just see a gas comparison.

Anyway, when I was trying unsuccessfully to find a comparison of ALL of the associated factors, I came across an article on how to lower your impact if you do "have" to fly. One tip was to take a nonstop flight, which we are doing. I basically will not take a trip, especially with a kiddo, if I have to layover. I realize that if we ever want to go to Montreal, we'll probably have to (or we could drive, but that seems like torture). But, anyway. So we're good on that front.

The person who wrote the article also mentioned that you can go online and calculate the carbon footprint of your flight (ours is just under 2.5 cubic tons -- YIKES). I found a couple of reputable places where you can buy carbon offsets for different projects, and I did that. They have a lot of them that recapture methane from landfills, but a lot of those were fully funded. We did one that helps clean up boreholes in Rwanda so that water doesn't have to be boiled before people can drink it.

I heard on the radio today, specifically regarding airlines, that they're going to have to change how they operate. The lady said, "They can't just buy carbon offsets and continue to do business as usual..." And I realize this about our lives, too. It maddens me beyond belief when politicians point to the economic impact of things like the Green New Deal as a reason not to support it. Reversing the climate impacts we've wrought on the earth will take sacrifice from people like myself who are imminently accustomed to being comfortable. I get that. I'm willing to do it. Our economy is not more important than the poorest of people who cannot deal with increasing temperatures. They don't deserve to die so our GDP stays high.

All of THAT to say that we will be looking more seriously at future trips and might forego flying at all (though we did put a deposit down on a vacation in 2022 that requires a flight... and we might just forfeit the deposit? We'll have to see), but the carbon offset is a way to mitigate it a bit for the time being.

Also, the new heat pump is more efficient, so even though we're on all green energy at the moment (even with the stuff we buy from PEC), in case the next owners aren't, that'll be something, too.

#workinprogress