Silent Monks sing Hallelujah

I'm stealing this from my friend's blog, but I thought it was too good not to share. Enjoy!

Brian is going green!

So, I keep hearing in the media that I should buy some screw in fluorescent “energy efficient” lamps for my house. I happened to be in a lighting store the other day (O.K. I guess that isn't too hard to believe since I work in one) and saw some of these on the shelf. Sure enough they did say, “screw in fluorescent”, and “energy saving”. So I decided I would do my part for the environment and bought a couple to try out…

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Here they are after screwing them in my front room fixture.

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I’m not sure they will save me much energy but I do feel closer to nature now that the sun is inside my front room!

For reference to understand the pictures below here are some figures:


Light is commonly measured in foot candles (fc). Some common light levels are:


An overcast day will produce an intensity of around 1,000 fc

An operating table will be around 1,000 fc

General, Open offices 50 fc or 30 fc for offices where a lot of computer work is performed

Warehouse 10-30 fc

Pro Basketball court 125 - 300 fc

Hotel Front Desk 50 fc

Hotel lobby 10 fc.

My meter can't read over 1,000 fc so I had to be a few feet away to get a reading under 1,000.

Light level on the couch.

Bradley taking a reading near the floor. It would have been higher if he would have held it level.

Just a post

I figure that I should probably post something so we're not stuck on Halloween pictures forever. The only problem is, I don't really have anything particular to post. So, you're going to get a quick update.

We are all doing well and staying healthy despite the mounds of snow and arctic temperatures. Brian and Bradley recently celebrated their birthdays. We kept the celebrations pretty low key this year, but enjoyed the events anyway. Bradley was particularly excited about opening presents and was more than glad to help Brian on his birthday. It was also nice to have my mom in town for Bradley's special day. Her trip wasn't meant for his birthday, but it was a nice coincidence that she was here anyway.

Daniel is a handful. He is such a happy baby, and brings so much joy into our home, but he keeps me busy. He is growing so fast, you can hardly call him a baby anymore. He has been army crawling since the end of October, got his first two teeth and perfected sitting in November, and is now faster and stronger and all over the place.

As for me, I'm learning what it feels like to wake up really early again. I've started running with a couple of people that I met through my book club, but the best time for us to meet is 5:30 in the morning. It is so nice to get out and run again, but it is especially nice to have people to run with. They keep me motivated and have talked me into some crazy races in the spring.

I guess that's enough of an update for now. It may be a month before I get around to blogging again, so in the mean time, enjoy your holidays. Merry Christmas and Happy New Year!!!