Saturday, November 14, 2009

Cityscape

This is the view from my kitchen window.



This is the view from my living room window. A couple years back I was organized and planted some flowers on the fire escape. I guess it's illegal but I needed some life in all the concrete.



I have since brought all of the African Violets I had at home into my office. They stopped flowering at home and I have a window in my office so I put them there. They are all flowering again. Sometimes my apartment can get a little dark. 

I get about an hour of sunlight a day inside my apartment...when it's actually sunny out.





Today it is cloudy once again and we have the remnants of a hurricane/tropical storm eroding our beaches up and down the coast. Hello sea level rise.


The radiator in that picture goes on in October (actually this year it came on a few times in September) and doesn't go off until May. I keep a window open through most of the winter. If I don't it will get to about 80 degrees inside. I spoke to the super about turning it down and he said it is set according to what the law requires. Even if it is supposed to get to 70 degrees outside the radiator is on. 


This is part of the reason why we're heating up the planet...because we have laws that require radiators to be on during certain time periods, regardless and we don't have laws that require upgraded systems that detect temperature variations well enough to be efficient. Then people like me, who can't stand heat, are forced to open their windows and let all the heat out, thereby wasting all that energy and causing increased emissions, blah, blah, blah. Sigh.


This year I got way too busy and didn't plant any flowers. I just have empty planters out on the fire escape. It was a little depressing. I'm bound and determined to plant them in the spring.  We'll see how that goes.

2 comments:

AliceSin said...

Your fire espace reminds me of west side story.

About the heat, this has long been a complaint of mine about apartments. Ironically NYers have the smallest carbon footprints in the country. Just imagine how small that footprint would be without all of the waste we do have?

Robin Madel said...

West side story...absolutely, only about 100 blocks north of where that was shot.

Do you have a source on that stat? I'd be interested in reading that.