1. Take a flier on fluorescents. They no longer buzz, flicker or turn faces blue — and they represent one of the brightest ideas yet for cooling down the atmosphere and your electric bill. Compact fluorescent lights (CFLs) approximate the glow of incandescent bulbs and use 75% less energy. If every U.S. household replaced just one incandescent bulb with a compact fluorescent, the emissions savings would be comparable to taking three million cars off the road for a year. Don’t let the price of CFLs — as much as $7 each — turn you off. The lights not only last ten times longer than incandescents but also save up to $60 in electricity per light over their lifetime.

2. Vanquish the vampires. Remember James Thurber’s story about the aunt who worried that electricity was leaking out of the wall sockets? She had a point, of sorts. Appliances that include a clock or operate by a remote, as well as chargers, are all sucking electricity even when you’re not using them. Of the total energy used to run home electronics, 40% is consumed when the appliances are turned off. The obvious way to pull the plug on so-called energy vampires is to do just that — pull the plug. If you don’t want to keep rebooting your PC, you can reduce the juice to it by putting both the monitor and the computer itself in sleep mode when they’re not in use. Computers operating on snooze control use about 95% less electricity than those running on full power.

3. Harness the wind. Once you’ve cleaned up your own act, help clean up the power grid by buying so-called green energy — electricity generated by wind or solar power or a blend of renewable resources. You’ll pay about a half-cent to a few cents more per kilowatt-hour for green-powered electricity compared with electricity generated from nonrenewable resources.If companies in your area haven’t yet gone with the wind, you may still be able to pay a small premium on your utility bill to support green power elsewhere. Or you can subsidize it separately, with so-called green tags or renewable energy certificates.To find certified renewable-power sources in your state, as well as programs that sell green tags or renewable energy certificates, go to the Green Power Locator at http://www.epa.gov/, or to http://www.green-e.org/.

4. Insulate your water heater. The newest electric water heaters have plenty of insulation. But if you have one built before 2004, wrap it in an insulating jacket (Thermwell, $20 to $30 at http://www.amazon.com/) and save 10% — about $30 — annually on your water-heating bill.

5. Cover the hot tub. Hot tubs lose heat even with the top on. Float a plastic thermal cover ($32 at http://www.hottubessentials.com/) under the hard cover and cut energy use by one-third.

6. Service the furnace. Have your furnace tuned every two years and you’ll save about 1,250 pounds of carbon dioxide and 10% on your heating bills.

7. Turn down the heat. For every degree you lower your home’s temperature during the heating season, subtract 5% from your bill, according to the Alliance to Save Energy. An Energy Star programmable thermostat ($70 at http://www.livingincomfort.com/) saves more than twice its price within a year.

8. Set the washer to cold. Use cold water to wash your clothes and save 50% of the energy you would otherwise use for hot water. Set your dryer on the moisture sensor, not the timer, and cut energy use by 15%.

9. Dim the lights. Install light dimmers, which cut electricity use by the same percentage that they lower the light.

10. Stop drafts. As your father would say, don’t heat the great outdoors. Put weatherstrip around the frames of your front and back doors and save about $30 per year in energy costs.

11. Lower your water temperature. Set your water heater at 120 degrees F. If your heater does not have a temperature gauge, dial down until the water feels hot, not scalding. (Before going too low, make sure your dishwasher has a booster heater, which gets the temperature back to 140 degrees F, necessary for proper cleaning.)

12. Insulate pipes. Wrap precut pipe insulation around exposed hot-water pipes, including pipes traveling through crawl spaces.

13. Use timers on lights. Install occupancy sensors or timers on lights in areas you use only occasionally and for exterior lights, which tend to get left on during the day, says Crissy Trask, a green-living consultant in Spokane, Wash. The devices start at $25 per switch at http://www.homecontrols.com/. Anyone with basic wiring skills can install them.

Don’t leave this blog without ENTERING THIS GIVEAWAY! or THIS ONE!

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Here’s another way of looking the situation:

1. 1. Do not walk behind me, for I may not lead. Do not walk ahead of me, for I may not follow. Do not walk beside me either. Just pretty much leave me the heck alone.
2. 2. The journey of a thousand miles begins with a broken fan belt and a leaky tire.
3. 3. Don’t be irreplaceable. If you can’t be replaced, you can’t be promoted.
4. 4. If you think nobody cares if you’re alive, just miss a couple of car payments.
5. 5. If at first you don’t succeed, skydiving is not for you.
6. 6. If you lend someone $20 and you never see that person again, it was probably worth it.
7. 7. Duct tape is like ‘The Force.’ It has a light side and a dark side, and holds the universe together.
8. 8. Before you criticize someone, you should walk a mile in their shoes. That way, when you criticize them, you’re a mile away and you have their shoes.
9. 9. If you tell the truth, you don’t have to remember anything.
10. 10. The quickest way to double your money is to fold it in half and put it back into your pocket.
11. 11. Experience is something you don’t get until just after you need it.
12. 12. Never miss a good chance to shut up.
13. 13. Never, under any circumstances, take a sleeping pill and a laxative on the same night.

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1. It rained so hard our yard and driveway flooded and we couldn’t get out.

2. The kids built a fort in the dining room using every single blanket, pillow and throwcushion in the house.

3. I had “the allergy thing” going on.

4. I didn’t cook a thing all day.

5. I did 4 loads of laundry – even folded, hung, and put them away.

6. I worked on my new project – you’ll find out very soon what it is.

7. I picked up and instructed others to pick up toys about 79 times today.

8. Decided to scrap the idea of putting a bunch of stuff on eBay and instead bagged it up to go to our local battered women’s shelter.

9. Spent most of the day holed up in my room – doing laundry and working on that new project.

10. I slept in until 10:30 after going to bed at a near-decent hour of 1:30 am.

11. Thought about cooking and cleaning, decided that it could wait until tomorrow. That’s what PB&J is for.

12. Had unexpected company come over and invited them in anyway – to a dirty, greasy, smelly house (or was that me?)and enjoyed them in spite of it.

13. I won the most amazing RAK ever from Your Challenge, Your Change, You Inspired.

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I am a sucker for some weird news – here are some of the latest headlines that have caught my attention:

1. Pregnant woman uses train toilet, baby slips out

2. Snake Eats Family Dog as Kids Watch

3. The Man With No Face

4. Interpol unscrambles photo to ID pedophile

5. `Fowl’ language upsets some in Pa.

6. Grade students searched for missing $5

7. Spiked haircut gets Ohio kindergartner suspended

8. Driver Unaware of Missing Wheel

9. The world’s first eyeball tattoo (not for the squeamish)

10. Seatbelt subterfuge kills driver

11. Meet the Brit teen who can only eat Tic Tacs

12. New bride dies in her love’s arms during their first dance This is way more sad than weird.

13. The girl who could die from shock just by watching a scary film

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The following is a series of excerpts from a book entitled Anguished English. The book is a compilation of malapropisms and misspellings that have appeared on student examinations at the secondary school level. Here’s a chance for those of us who did not pay attention in school to learn it all once again…

1. “Ancient Egypt was inhabited by mummies, and they all wrote in hydraulics. They lived in the dessert and travelled by Camelot.The climate was hot and dry so they had to cultivate by irritation.”

2. “In the Olympic Games, Greeks ran races, jumped, threw the java, and hurled the bisquits.”

3. “Julius Caesar extinguished himself on the battlefields of Gaul. The Ides of March murdered him. Dying, he gasped out the words, ‘Tee hee, Brutus’.”

4. “In midevil times, people were alliterate. The greatest writer of the futile ages was Chaucer. During this time, people put on morality plays about ghosts, goblins, virgins and other mythical creatures.”

5. “It was an age of great inventions and discoveries. Gutenburg invented the Bible. Another important invention was the circulation of blood. And Sir Francis Drake circumcised the world with a 100-foot clipper.”

6. “The greatest writer of the Renaissance was William Shakespeare. He was born in the year 1564, supposedly on his birthday. Writing at the same time was Miguel Cervantes. He wrote Donkey Hote. The next great author was John Milton, who wrote Paradise Lost. Then his wife died and he wrote Paradise Regained.”

7. “One of the causes of the Revolutionary War was the English put tacks in their tea. Eventually, the Colonists won the war and no longer had to pay for taxis.”

8. “Soon the Constitution of the United States was adopted to secure domestic hostility. Under the Constitution the people enjoyed the right to keep bare arms.”

9. “Abraham Lincoln became America’s greatest Precedent. Lincoln’s mother died in infance, and he was born in a log cabin he built with his own hands. Lincoln wrote the Gettysburg Addresss while traveling from Washington to Gettysburn on the back of an envelope. He also freed the slaves by signing the Emasculation Proclamation.
On the night of April 14, 1865, Lincoln went to the theather and got shot in his seat by one of the actors in a moving picture show. The believed assinator was John Wilkes Booth, a supposingly insane actor. This ruined Booth’s career.”

10. “Johann Bach wrote a great many musical compositions and had a large number of children. In between, he practiced on an old spinster which he kept up in his attic. Back died from 1750 to the present.”

11. “Handel was half German, half Italian, and half English. He was very large.”

12. “The nineteenth century was a time of great many thoughts and inventions… people started reproducing by machine. The invention of the steamboat caused a network of rivers to spring up. Louis Pasteur discovered a cure for rabbis. Madman Curie discovered radio. Charles Darwin wrote the Organ of the Species. Karl Marx became one of the Marx brothers.”

13. “The First World War, caused by the assignation of the arch-duck by an anahist ushered in a new error in the anals of human history.”

Aren’t you glad you now know what really happened?

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1. A box of chocolates, clumsily rearranged in an attempt to hide the fact you ate all the caramel ones.
2. Lingerie that you think will look almost as good on her as on the Victoria’s Secret model.
3. Any clothing item with the words ‘push-up’ or ‘slim-down’ on the label.
4. Any food item with the words ‘diet’, ‘light’, or ‘high fiber’ on the label.
5. Any video starring Sylvester Stallone, Jim Carrey, or Jenna Jameson.
6. Flowers from a hospital’s gift shop–or worse, a mortuary’s.
7. Poetry, no matter how heartfelt, that starts out ‘There was once a girl from Nantucket…’
8. Anything you ever gave another woman, including your mother.
9. Any household appliance, power tool or other item from the harder side of Sears.
10. A gift certificate.
11. Cash.
12. Anything you could have bought at the gas station mini-mart on the way over, even if you didn’t.
13. An apologetic look and the words ‘That was today?’

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