I can't say the same for some of the newer appliances in my life. I recently had to buy a new chest freezer because my old one finally gave up the ghost after over twelve years of good service to us and who knows how many years of service to the lodge before it was given to us. They were going to throw it away because the guides at the time kept overloading the poor thing and then forcing the lid closed, so it was all bent and warped and the plastic inside was all busted up. We fixed all that and it worked just fine. Our new freezer is maybe a third the size and we had to get a bigger generator to run it.
Energy efficient - I wonder if these new engineers really know what that means. In my book, 'energy efficient' means that it takes less energy to run it. Apparently that is not the case. Our little generator would run it as long as it was running, but as soon as it started to cycle, the poor little thing didn't have a chance. More often than not, the starting up of the freezer would cause the lights and TV to blink completely off. It's a good thing our computers were always run on the inverter. Plus I do believe the generator doing that messed up our battery charger too, but I'm not sure. We needed a new generator anyway, and it was a hard decision whether to get another one like we had or go bigger. Bigger meant more gas - ugh - well you know that cycle.
But I digress
Back to the clock. Last spring one of the things on my shopping list was a radio we could wire into our house battery bank (12v). A car radio was the goal but little did I know those things are EXPENSIVE!!! So I opted for a 12v boombox. It's a little thing - less than a foot wide and that's with two speakers. It gets pretty good reception too, for way out here. The only trouble is, it gets 0 reception anywhere close to the inverter (where the house batteries are), SO it sits over by the kitchen sink on the other end of the house. Not so far away as far as hearing is concerned, but way far away as far as wiring it to the battery bank, so it runs on 8 C batteries. As with most modern 'energy efficient' things these days, it doesn't take this little radio very long to burn up 8 batteries. Knowing this (but obviously not well enough) I bought what I thought was enough batteries to keep us in a few hours of audio every day until we either went to town or could order a plane of supplies, which ever happened first.
By the time I got down to the last of the batteries, I was short ONE C battery - only ONE - Gaaa. This shortage prompted us to search through every flashlight we had and dig through every dusty corner in the house in search of a single C battery that might have some life left in it. The trash was soon filled with exploded batteries and dead flashlights, and we now have several ancient flashlights in working order that hadn't been touched in years. NO C BATTERY IN THE LOT!!! Well actually there was but nothing worth saving.
So what did I do? You guessed it. At 2:37 I took that one battery out of my faithful clock and put it in the radio. I mean really out here my days are clocked by the sun or by the battery life on my computer or by the battery life on the house batteries. We never really looked at the clock anymore. I got it down twice a year to change the time when daylight savings came around and left, and she got dusted off then too. We could do with out for a little while.
BOY WAS I WRONG!!! Every morning I'd glance at the clock to see what time the dog got me up. Usually somewhere between 8:30 and 9:30. Now I get up at 2:37. My husband had the generator timed. He knows that if we start it at or after 5:00 in the evening, I'll need to top it off by the time I go to bed or at least somewhere around 11:00. Now we start the generator at 2:37, and somehow 10:00 or 11:00 never come around so we have to top off the generator around 2:37. The other day, the generator actually ran out of gas because it was only 2:37, no where near time to top it off, even though it had been dark for hours. At night, I prefer to go to bed by or near midnight, now I go to bed at 2:37. Afternoon chores like splitting wood need to happen before dark, so once again we're watching the clock in order to be out there before 5ish, but it's only 2:37. My husband now tells me I contributed to his insanity. Who knew we still looked at the clock so much? It's not something I ever noticed. What time it was never really mattered that much, not until summer when I needed to be out the door by 7:00 in the morning having finished my advertising and checking my emails.
Now, my husband has brought my alarm clock into the living room and enthroned it in front of the TV.
So - how many times do you look at the clock? Do you know? I certainly didn't.
