Heating Oil Prediction

We finally got a nice day in central Virginia. Sunny, and the temperature reached 72°F.

I mowed the grass for the first time this year. Exactly a week ago it was snowing. In fact, if you scroll down this blog to the post titled Spring Snow you can see a photo I took from a front window. You can also see that the date on that post is March 25. Today is April 1. Today is Monday, and the weather people are saying that by Friday the high temperature may not get out of the 40s. The temperature has been up and down, which is not unusual for central Virginia in February. But this is early April. The weather should be settling down.

For Richmond, the usual March average high is 60°F and the average low is 37°F. But this year the March high averaged 53°F and the low averaged 33°F. March was cold. My boiler burned a lot of heating oil. When the boiler is running it burns a gallon of oil per hour. The last time I bought heating oil, the price was $3.90 per gallon. When the boiler runs I’m burning money – like a lot of people. Ten years ago, heating oil cost me about $1.85 (in 2012 dollars), which means the price increased 110% between then and now. So, naturally, I wondered what the price will be in another ten years. If the price of a gallon increases by another 110% over the next ten years, the price will be $8.19 per gallon (in 2012 dollars).

That’s an average annual increase of 7.75% due only to supply and demand – or manipulation by OPEC, or by oil companies, or by futures traders, or by whatever your favorite conspiracy group happens to be. But suppose the price of oil is not driven higher or lower but stays constant at today’s price, except for inflation. And suppose we have the same amount of inflation over the next ten years as we had over the last ten years. Then in ten years, heating oil will cost $4.94 per gallon. That’s a 27% increase in price due only to inflation (2.4% annually).

So if heating oil increases in price over the next ten years by the same inflation-adjusted percentage as it did over the last ten years, and if inflation stays the same, then heating oil will cost just over $10 a gallon by 2022. Of course, the future isn’t predictable and the price of $10 per gallon is just a middle-of-the-road, “if-things-keep-going-as-they’ve-been-going” prediction.

Just saying: heads up.

And So It Goes

The older I get, the clumsier I seem to get. My graceful days, if they ever existed, may be behind me now.

I opened a can of black beans, put half the beans in a bowl, added onion and cayenne pepper and chili pepper, and heated it for part of my evening meal. As I cleaned up the kitchen, I bumped the remaining half can of beans and it tipped over. I saw it falling and grabbed for it, but missed. My hand hit the toaster, knocking it off the countertop. Black beans and bean juice poured onto the kitchen floor, spattering everywhere. After a ricochet off the wall, the toaster hit the floor hard and half the plastic on one end broke off, revealing the mechanism inside. I stopped still and looked at the mess I had suddenly created, and I thought, “This is not good.” In my younger days I would have thrown in a couple of juicy expletives. I’ve made too many messes to get that upset any more. Once, when I was painting the walls and ceiling of this very same kitchen, I tipped over a half gallon of paint onto the floor. Not just onto the floor, but onto the brand new, just installed, vinyl flooring. Oy.

After cleaning the kitchen floor, I decided to bathe. So I showered, toweled dry, and went to my bedroom to dress. It’s evening and I’m not going out, so I put on a warm-up suit and thick, crew socks. That’s when I noticed I was down to my last pair of clean socks. I pulled them on, making a mental note to wash the laundry first thing in the morning. Feeling thirsty, I walked to the kitchen to get something to drink. I like to use a large plastic mug that holds about 3 cups. I filled the mug with water, added a squirt of lemon juice and some sweetener to make lemonade. As I turned to get ice cubes I bumped the mug on something which caused it to spill a quarter cup of lemonade onto my left foot. Oy, again. I stared at my wet sock. Should I leave it on or take it off? I don’t have another clean sock. This one will dry faster if I leave it on. So I do. As I type these words, my right foot is toasty warm while my left foot is cool on top and feels a bit icky.

And so it goes: the life of the single man.

Spring Snow

It has been a colder than normal spring in central Virginia. High temperatures have been in the low 40s whereas they should be in the mid 50s. Yesterday, five days into spring, we got snow. For several hours the snow fell thickly. It looked really beautiful as it fell.

I went to a window and shot a photo through the window. When I looked at the photo I laughed. I hadn’t even noticed the window screen, but the camera’s autofocus had locked onto it perfectly. I went back to the window and shot a photo through the glass in the upper sash, which lacked a screen. This time the image was not marred by a screen; instead, it was marred by small drops of water – former snowflakes that hit the window and instantly melted.

But even had it not been marred, the photo would have been nothing spectacular. A photo taken while snow is falling looks gray, because at a distance the millions of snowflakes are not visible as individual flakes. Instead, they serve to reduce the picture’s contrast. The sky is light gray, the ground is an even lighter-gray, and everything else is some other shade of gray. None of the photos were worth posting. Here, I’ll show you:

<< In this photo, I increased the luminance to brighten the image, and tweaked the hue to make the white’s a little whiter. Yes, I bleached the photo to rid it of a pervasive off-color fog. Even so, the photo still looks most unremarkable.

I had a weird wakeup from sleep this morning. I woke up and went to the kitchen. I fixed breakfast and ate, and did some other morning-type things. Then – I woke up, again, and realized I had still been asleep the first time I thought I had awakened. Once again I went to the kitchen and did my usual morning activities. And then – I woke up, again. This time, for real.

I hope.

Lucky Egg

I cracked open an egg this morning and found it contained a double yolk. Are double yolks lucky? The last time that happened to me was on September 30, 2010. I know because I posted a picture of it.

I read about someone who cracked open a jumbo hen’s egg and found inside it not only a double yolk but another egg complete with shell: an egg inside an egg. I have to ask, “Where’s the quality control? These chickens are getting out of hand.”

Egg shells are not just white or brown; there are varieties of hens that lay eggs in other colors: blue, blue-green, green, turquoise, and lavender. Regardless of the shell’s color, the yolks are yellow-orange. Good thing, too. Dr. Seuss may enjoy green eggs and ham, but I would have to pass.

It’s time for a roof update. I hired a new roofer named Timothy. He’s the third contractor in thirty days to examine my roof for a leak. The first was Jesús, the man in charge of the crew that re-shingled my roof. He diagnosed the leak but would never return to make the repair. Next was Ed, who came to my house three times to squirt caulking here and there but did not stop the leak.

Timothy tells me what Jesús told me, which is that the L-flashing along the dormer wall must be replaced with step flashing. I agree that L-flashing should never have been used in that location. Furthermore, everything Ed did with the caulking gun has only made matters worse. Openings in the dormer trim that are there to allow rainwater to drain out from behind the trim were caulked over, damming rainwater behind the vinyl where it will find a way into my house instead of running out across the shingles. Timothy said he can fix it. He gave me an estimate and said he will be here tomorrow, Saturday, to do the work.

Maybe my double yolk will turn out to be a lucky egg; maybe I’ve found a roofer who is both competent and keeps his word. Maybe I’ll have a roof that is both new and doesn’t leak. I have my fingers crossed.

[Update: It is noon Saturday. Timothy and a helper arrived at 9 AM. They worked on the roof for three hours. They’re confident they have fixed the leak.]

Sink Drain Lesson

I took time off from my day job as Internet Philosopher to attack my kitchen sink leak. The sink was installed by Home Depot not many years ago. What do I know about fixing sink drains? I’m an Internet Philosopher, not a plumber. But I went at it anyway.

First, I removed the pipe connected to the sink drain (which I soon learned was called a sink basket.) There was a honkin’ big locknut on the bottom side holding the sink basket in place. I intended to remove the sink basket, put plumber’s putty on the underside of its rim, and re-install the sink basket. I spent a good 15 minutes trying to remove the locknut with a hammer and screwdriver, tapping at the tabs on the locknut, before I realized there had to be a better way. And I was right. A trip to Home Depot’s plumbing section revealed these two items.

This handy gadget is called a Basket Strainer Locknut Wrench. It’s adjustable to fit different size sink baskets. It fits onto the little tabs on the locknut and gives you plenty of leverage to turn the locknut.

But what happens if you turn the locknut and the sink basket turns with it?

That’s where this next handy gadget comes in.

This is called a Basket Strainer Wrench. It fits into the sink basket strainer (the opening through which water runs out of your kitchen sink). Using this tool, you can keep the sink basket from turning as you turn the locknut.

I also believe I found why the sink was leaking around the drain. The douchebag gentleman who installed the sink left out one important component: a thin, cardboard washer.

During installation, the sink basket gets a bead of plumber’s putty under its rim and is placed in the sink drain opening. Below the sink, a rubber washer goes onto the basket, followed by a cardboard washer, then a locknut. The rubber washer seals the drain to prevent leaks. The locknut holds the basket in place and, by squeezing the rubber washer tightly against the bottom of the sink, prevents water from leaking out. The cardboard washer, which looks quite unimportant, goes between the rubber washer and the locknut, and it’s smooth surface allows the installer to tighten the locknut tighter. Without the cardboard washer, the locknut would have to be tightened against the rubber washer, which would be much harder to do. Rubber offers more resistance to something sliding against it than does slick cardboard. So from the beginning the locknut was never tight enough. The sink drain was watertight for a while, until one day it wasn’t – because the installer threw out the cardboard washer. It’s the “I’ve-been-doing-this-for-twenty-years” mentality. (See The Electrician.) It’s the kind of mistake that, in different circumstances, might bring down an airliner. “Oh look, a leftover part. It must not be important.”

I hope we’ve all learned something from this.

Sara Jackson-Holman

The song is Freight Train from Sara’s second album Cardiology. The video was put together by Olivia Paige.

Life Path

"Every man is born as many men and dies as a single one."
– Martin Heidegger

Heidegger stated the obvious. Or perhaps it is obvious only because Heidegger stated it. I suppose it appears we make choices. But maybe choices are made for us. Maybe all the days of our lives exist in a single instant, like a motion picture film. You can hold the reel in your hand and it’s all there – the beginning, the middle, the end – all at the same time, existing in a single moment. You must run the film through a projector, frame-by-frame, to experience its reality, just as we must be born, live day-by-day, and die in order to experience our reality. Can the people in the movie make choices? At any given moment it appears to us that the people in the movie are choosing their paths. But at the same time we know that their destinies are already decided, and not a bit of their reality can be changed.

Maybe we step into the lifetime that best challenges our weaknesses. Isn’t that how we grow?

Looking forward from our beginning, our path seems to run past many doors. Some doors open but most never do. The doors begin to close early. Geography, family connections, environment, nurture, physical and mental aspects of our being: each unlocks some doors while firmly locking others. With the perspective of time we look back and see that many doors never were accessible to us, despite well-intentioned clichés about positive thinking and being all we can be; catch-phrases that assure us we can do anything, be anything, if we patiently persevere. It’s an illusion, a sleight of hand, a deception that allows us to credit ourselves for our successes and blame others for their failures, even as those others were locked on their own unswerving paths.

“Every man is born as many men” – to his doting parents and grandparents, maybe.

What Next?

I have definitely offended the water gods. First, my roof which I re-shingled 2 years ago springs a leak and damages my ceiling, and the guy who took my money says, essentially, “tough beans.” Then last night I walked into the kitchen and found water on the floor. I opened the cabinet under the sink and it had water in it. A quick inspection with a flashlight revealed my kitchen sink is leaking around the drain. It just started leaking all by itself. I think I can fix the kitchen sink. It’s just … annoying.

And, I’m out of food. I don’t feel like going to the grocery store because it’s a cold, gray, rainy day. Actually, I’m not totally out of food. There’s always “cupboard detritus” – the odds and ends left in the cupboard when you run out of stuff for meals. I do a pantry inspection and find I have a couple apples, a couple bananas, lemons and limes, tuna fish, a pint of cow’s milk, a quart of almond milk, a jar of peanut butter, a half jar of almond butter, a half dozen celery stalks, a couple cucumbers, a bag of kale greens. Ooh, summer sausage and jalapeño cheddar cheese, both unopened. I can make fruit smoothies and vegetable smoothies and snacks. Life is good.

The Long, Slow Fadeout

I went to my shrink this morning. I go every six months. He never knows who I am.

I enter his office and sit opposite him with his ginormous desk piled high with paperwork between us. “How have you been?” he always asks.

“About the same,” I always reply. He studies the results of the MMPI that I took when I first visited him. After that, the conversation runs something like this:

Shrink: “Your main problem is OCD.”
Me: “I don’t have OCD.”
Shrink: “According to your MMPI you do.”
Me: “And the MMPI can’t be wrong.”
Shrink: “It can be, but …” He studies the test results again. “You did answer several questions wrong …“

That was an odd thing for him to say. The MMPI test has 567 multiple choice questions. The questions are about “you”, such as, “Do you drink too much alcohol at least once a week?” If someone asks you a question about yourself, and you answer as truthfully as you can, how can the answer be wrong?

“What’s your favorite color.”
”Blue.”
”That answer is incorrect.”
”Uh … what?”

Color me puzzled.

Shrink: “You don’t rehash things over and over in your head?”
Me: “What kind of things? My PSA is high and it causes me to sometimes worry about whether I have prostate cancer. Is that OCD? Isn’t it normal to worry about some things?”

I look around his office. One wall is decorated with many official looking documents, each in a small, black frame. One of them declares his membership in some organization devoted to the study of OCD. I guess it’s true: To a hammer, everything looks like a nail.

The doctor wants to give me a prescription for an OCD pill and becomes frustrated when I tell him I don’t need or want an OCD pill.

“Then why are you here?” he asks. I explain that I’m here so when the pharmacy calls to renew the prescription for the med he’s already got me on, he’ll know who I am. But as I speak the words I know they’re b.s. This guy never knows who I am.

I tell him I don’t need a prescription this time because I have enough refills to last six months. He ignores me and performs some incorrect math on his fingers, after which he decides I need a refill, and he writes it out and hands it to me.

“See you in September,” I tell him.
”September,” he says in agreement.
”I hope things go well for you until then.”
”Likewise.”

I leave, knowing that when I return in September he won’t know who I am. He’ll look at his little MMPI printout, and he will tell me I have OCD and try to get me to take a pill for it. He always does.

The grocery store is on my way home so I stop and pick up a half dozen meal items. When I get home I unpack the bag and discover an ice cold bottle of Dasani. I don’t buy bottled water, so where did the Dasani come from? Did I pay for it? I look at the receipt. Nope, the Dasani is not listed. I suspect the lady who was directly ahead of me in the checkout queue is, right about now, discovering she doesn’t have her Dasani.

I have a leaky roof and I’ve spoken with Jesús several times about it. Jesús re-shingled the roof, thus causing the leak. I called him last Thursday and he said he would come to my house the next day at 1 PM. At 2 PM the next day I called him and he said he would be at my house at 3. At 4:45 I called him and got no answer. I finally got him to my house on Saturday. He inspected the roof and assured me he would return on Monday, if not sooner, to repair the leak. I reminded him that the forecast called for rain Monday night and Tuesday and stressed the importance of fixing the leak before my ceiling was completely ruined. He promised to return on Sunday or Monday. Now it’s Thursday and I’ve heard nothing from him. So I call him.

“Jesús, this is Wayne. The last time we talked you said you were going to come by on Monday to fix my roof. Did you come by Monday?”

Long silence. Then Jesús says, “Who is this?”

It’s just a part of the long, slow fadeout. First you become invisible; waiters, waitresses and store clerks can’t see you. Then, after a few more years, you become conveniently forgettable. Oh, you may be young now, but the long, slow fadeout – it’s waiting for you.

Doldrums

I’m stuck in the doldrums. Doldrums – the word itself connotes, suggests, even sounds like a Sargasso Sea of the Soul. Is it the time of year, is it the weather, or is it me?

I arise at 9 AM. Breakfast. Two eggs fried in a puddle of grapeseed oil accompanied by the last two sausage patties in the fridge – pre-cooked courtesy of Jimmy Dean and company. Lately, I sometimes fry food in coconut oil. Coconut oil is 91% saturated fat. It has more saturated fat than beef fat, which is about 50% mono-unsaturated. (Yes, folks, half the fat in your rib-eye steak is the same kind of healthy fat found in olive oil.) Coconut oil is solid at room temperature. It looks like paraffin. It melts at 76° F.

I check my email: nothing much there. I check Skype and see that my amigo CyberDave is online but his status is Invisible, which means he is busy. There is an icon for Busy, but he prefers Invisible. So I don’t hail him.

After a while I lie on the couch. The house is cool, but I leave the heat turned down. Eventually I fall asleep and have a fitful sleep with dreams. Several times I awaken and I think, “I should get up”, but I don’t. I need to wash laundry; that’s my only reason for getting up.

Eventually I get up, but now it’s 1:30 PM. I make a raspberry-banana smoothie, to which I add almond butter and lemon juice. I drink half of it before I remember I didn’t add the ground flaxseed I intended to add. That’s ok, I’ll add the flaxseed to something else. When I want to use flaxseed I grind it in an old coffee mill I found in the garage. I cleaned the mill and it works fine for grinding flaxseed. I could buy ground flaxseed, but ground flaxseed goes rancid quickly, so I prefer to grind it when I need it. It only takes seconds.

Unlike peanut butter, the almond butter in my smoothie is made from a nut – the almond nut. Peanut butter is made from a legume. That’s right; despite cans of nuts on store shelves that proclaim “Mixed Nuts” on their labels and contain peanuts, peanuts are legumes, not nuts. If you eat a lot of corn or peanuts or peanut butter, you may want to read about aflatoxin. Corn and peanuts are particularly susceptible to being contaminated with aflatoxin. It’s a bigger problem in Third World countries, but even in developed countries you will be exposed to it at low levels. Aflatoxin is a potent carcinogen, especially for the liver, and it is so toxic it sometimes kills livestock and, in poor countries, people.

At 5 PM I eat a spinach salad. I put broccoli and cauliflower and sliced beet and black olives and green olives and Bell pepper and chopped scallion and bleu cheese dressing on it. And, it gets a tablespoon of ground flaxseed which is not only healthy but adds a nutty flavor.

I follow up the salad with a rib-eye steak. I bought and cooked two rib-eyes yesterday. Here’s how I cooked them.

First, I left the steaks on the counter for at least half an hour to come to room temperature. I put a cast-iron frying pan on the stove and added oil. As the pan heated, I sprinkled salt and freshly ground pepper onto each side of a steak, patting it firmly into the meat so it won’t fall off in the pan. Using tongs, I placed the steak into the hot pan. It sizzled for a couple minutes, then I turned it over. After two minutes I turned it over again. I poked at the steak with the tongs, judging the amount of doneness by the firmness of the meat. After five or six minutes I removed the steak onto a plate and let it rest for two minutes to finish cooking. Then I repeated the process with the second steak. One steak I ate and one steak went into the fridge. It was perfect – seared on both sides and medium to medium rare inside. I don’t often eat steak because “they say” that too much red meat isn’t good for you. I don’t know the truth of that. It seems, depending on who I listen to, that nothing is good for me. Eat, drink, and be merry, for tomorrow we may die.

It’s almost time for the nightly news. I’ll tune in to see what manner of mischief the world’s leaders have perpetrated upon the world’s people today.