Sun and Storms

CWs: finances, mental health, horror movies, EV rambling

Life has been a little weird lately. Uncertainty with jobs (my spouse’s, seemingly moreso than mine, but mine has been a little iffy lately). Applied for student loan repayment to start again. Haven’t heard anything. We’ll see how that goes, dies docebit. It’s been a hot, dry summer, although we’ve gotten more rain lately. Way too many wildfires in the state, but thankfully none near us at this time. I feel like we need a day off soon, but we have Labor Day off, and then next Friday off for a little getaway.

Assuming things stay even-keeled, I think I’d like to get the electrical panel/breaker upgrade done, partially so we can charge the car a little faster, and also so that charging in general isn’t a major drain on the electrical system. I like the idea of it. I still think that charging the car and paying for electricity is much cheaper than filling with gas. Think of it this way. We get on average 4mi/kWh. The car is 85kWh capacity; we usually keep the charge between 20-80%. 100% charge (not recommended) would get us roughly 340mi.

Our electricity, after a base charge, is $0.16/kWh. 80% of 85kWh is 68kWh = 272mi

• Let’s say we charge from 60-80% for a session: 51kWh to 68kWh = 17kWh.
  • 17kWh @ $0.16/kWh = $2.72 USD
  • 17kWh @ 4mi/kWh = 68mi
• The average gas tank is 16gal, and (generously) assuming 20mpg (miles/gallon), one would get 320mi out of a gas tank with any luck.
  • 80% charge gets us about 260mi. Gas is anywhere from $2-4 USD/gal. Full tank, then, is anywhere from $32-64 USD.
  • 80% of that $32-64 USD is $25.60-$51.20 USD and 256mi (320mi x .8)
• Let’s slice that up and imagine we’re paying to fill up 20% of the tank with gas = $6.40-$12.80 USD.

If we look at pure math, charging 20% of the EV = $2.72 USD. I could be wrong, but that price seems a lot better to me. Of course, it was more of an upfront cost, but we’ve had the car for almost a year now and I absolutely love it. We’ve had to do a little more planning in terms of our trips, but it hasn’t been insurmountable. The math just makes sense to me and I kinda like calculating this stuff.

OK, enough EV geeking. I wish we didn’t have to have a car, but we’re about 16mi each way from work and public transit is not ideal for getting back and forth. As I’ve probably said before, I feel like the EV is harm reduction at least. It makes me happy.

I’m listening to music now. I am going for another deep dive in a treasure-trove of vaporwave music. Vaporwave involves a lot of sampling, almost sound collages, and heavily draws upon nostalgia, retro samples, TV commercials, TV shows (especially that ever-welling fount, The Weather Channel), and other stuff. It’s the most beautiful sludge you’ll ever hear. That particular link has thousands of albums, and somehow I set up my browser so it won’t let me lose my place (fingers crossed) in the numerous, numerous Internet Archive spontaneously-generating “pages” of results. I also want to buy a couple of albums off of 7Digital that I’ve been wanting for a long time. So there’s that!

I’ve been obsessed with the Borderlands game series lately. I played 1, 2, and 3 on my friend’s console years ago, but I barely remembered any of them, since I mostly played them out of context, albeit for long stretches. The first game was just fine. 2 was probably the best, but The Pre-Sequel, which I just finished, was very nice. I’m looking forward to shifting gears and checking out the Tales from the Borderlands games. Apparently 3 is “a miserable slog” according to a good friend, but I’m still going to try to play it. I bought the “Pandora’s Box” bundle during the Steam Sale, and well, I paid for it, so I’m going to check it out. I deselected a lot of the DLC, though, to decrease the download size. Game companies think people have more disk space than sense, but hey, I am working with a 1Tb HDD here, nothing super ridiculous.

I’ve also been reading a lot, which is usually my goal. I am reading the first volume of Proust, Swann’s Way, and it is incredibly trippy. Everything is told in such minute detail, it is simultaneously lovely and fascinating and also extremely overwhelming. But I’m sticking with it, almost 200pp in, and there’s about 3000pp total. I think I am in it for the long haul, it is just gonna take me a very long time to get through all 3 volumes. But I am reading other stuff in the meantime: a massive collection of African-American poetry, which is also slow-going but very good; and I am soon starting The Four Agreements, which is kind of a self-help book and was recommended by a fellow student in one of my trainings at work. So we’ll see how that goes; the latter will be a quick read. I also expect to have my hold for the latest Saga of Recluce book, Sub-Majer’s Challenge, come into the library, so I’ll drop everything for that once it does. (I always get a little anxious about library books, even though I know I can renew them; I don’t want anyone to have to wait on account of me!).

I haven’t watched many movies lately. I’d like to watch I Saw the TV Glow with my spouse before our HBO Max subscription expires, since I think they would really enjoy it. I loved it. Speaking of that, my sister is visiting in mid-October and we’re going to a Twin Peaks event in Denver with a lot of the cast, and that will be lovely. I am really excited to see her, and for the event too for sure. I need more weird horror in my life. I got all excited recently because I thought Terrifier 4 is coming out this year, but it’s actually a year from now, but that’s OK. It is going to be a complete disaster and you know I’ll be in the theatre for it. I watched the first 2 on streaming, then saw 3 in theatres, and a lot of those scenes still stick with it. Those movies are like the “video nasties” of the ’70s and ’80s, just a nightmare through and through. I told my sister recently to check out the bizarro German horror film The Burning Moon; I watched it at one of my friend’s “horror movie nights” and we really enjoyed it. We watched a lot of bizarrely depraved movies on those nights, including Nekromantik, Der Todesking, Martyrs, Megan is Missing (one of the tamer ones), and others I can’t remember. Really unique stuff and my friend has quite an encyclopedic knowledge of horror, so that was very cool.

I’m looking forward to this long weekend. We’re gonna do the usual errands, but also fun stuff ideally, and just relaxing. I’m hoping to stay up lateish tonight too, enjoying some music and maybe more videogames. All of this got way more rambly than I intended, but that’s OK, here we are.

I hope y’all are well and taking care of yourselves, and others, as well as possible. I’ll write more soon. Thanks for reading, friends <3