Meg vs. The Energy Bill

I am really starting to appreciate PG&E. I will assuredly be singing a different tune when the next bill comes around, but for now I will just be thankful. They sent someone out for free to check on all of our appliances, light pilot lights, and make sure they were safe. Then they sent out someone else for their Energy Savings Assistance program to evaluate what we might need to cut back our energy bill. I guess that is one of the perks of being poor-- you get help! A couple of fellows came yesterday and installed two new light fixtures, left a new torchiere lamp to replace an old one that the last owners had left in the garage (perfect for the dark corner of the playroom!), put new energy-efficient bulbs in all of the above, and checked out our appliances again. This time they noticed that the exhaust pipe from our water heater wasn't high enough, and they are going to send someone out to fix that, then come do some weather stripping and caulking to keep out the cold. It is nice to have someone check things off of my to-do list for free (well, technically not free; I guess I should say for no additional charge).

 Not the prettiest by far, but no uglier than our old fixtures, and much easier on the wallet!

All lit up.

Since I was in an energy-saving mood, I tried to switch out the bulbs in our very ancient chandelier to compact fluorescents.

Unfortunatly, this is on a dimmer switch, which requires special bulbs. So when I put in the regular ones the fixture and the wall switch started buzzing. Oops. So I'll throw that back on the to-do list. Also, cleaning the chandelier.