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How often do you take showers? Once a day? Twice a day? Once every two days? How about 3 to 6 times a month? Lately, it's been just that. The reasons come down to these (in order of their impact with the worst on the top): 1. I'm always cold. The biggest reason is, when I'm done, I'm almost always cold for at least two hours after it and I hate it. When dry, I'm most comfortable from 75 to 77°F air temp (95% certain). When wet, this increases to 80 to 83°F or so (80% certain). When I get done with my shower, air conditioned rooms are my main enemy as 70°F, even when dry, is a bit chilly for me. I know because I have a thermometer. I recall a case where I got done taking a shower then went outside in 90°F+ air temps with a fairly high humidity, inside a car that has been sitting in the Sun all day. It was blistering hot to my parents, but I could handle it quite well although I do have my limits. During the summer when the air conditioners are running at high and during the spring and fall (usually from mid April to before June starts and from mid September to before November starts) are the worst of times for me to take a shower. My room is the warmest place in the house at any time of year, reaching 85°F during hot summer days (once even reaching 90°F) and hovering around 72°F during the coldest winter days, almost always 5°F warmer than the rest of the house. 2. Serious waste of time. It takes me 45 minutes to process the task of taking a shower in full and that's with shortcuts. It takes me about 5 to 7 minutes to find and check my clothes, 25 to 35 minutes for the actual shower itself, and about 8 to 10 minutes to dry off. I then remain cold for about two hours after it so in effect, it actually takes 3 hours total. Why does it take 25 to 35 minutes for the actual shower rather than 10 to 15 minutes? For one, I have timed this and it is quite consistant so I know the 25-35 minutes value is correct. Because the temperature knobs are very touchy, it takes much longer to get the temperature set, about 3 to 5 minutes right there. Even moving the knob 1/32 of an inch causes a 3°F temperature difference at the good zone and I have to maneuver the knob to a precision on the order of 1/100 of an inch for anything reasonable and it takes a lot of effort to get it that fine. It takes me about 1 to 3 minutes to adjust to the water and get used to it. Then it's about 5 to 7 minutes for the shampoo (the full process - warming it up first (this doesn't apply during the winter) getting it out of the bottle, spreading it around and washing it off in full - I do one round at it but use quite a bit of shampoo to cover otherwise two rounds at once to speed things up). Then it's about 8 to 12 minutes of using the body wash (warming it up especially (this takes nearly twice as long as the shampoo does, a good 3 to 4 minutes), moving the shower curtains so that they don't get in the way (I use water as a paste to "glue" the sides of the tub, otherwise they get annoying and in the way adding to my time), spreading it around, then washing it off). Finally, I spend another 2 to 4 minutes rinsing off before turning off the water. Then it's about ten minutes to dry off. It actually faster to dry off without a towel than it is for me with one. The reason is that almost all towels are stained in some way and when this was going on, I noticed that 15 to 20 minutes went by to find a towel that wasn't stained. Without the towel, it takes about 10 minutes instead, yet another reduction. To help with this, I have other tricks up my sleeve for further reducing the time - squeezing the water from my hair then going top to bottom removing whatever I can. This otherwise reduces the time by about 40% of what it would normally take. I get dressed after that then spend two hours fighting to keep warm by the time I'm back to normal again. Then, quite often, my mind drifts off which quite often adds an additional 5 to 10 minutes to my shower time. This is something that's hard to prevent from doing and it occurs at any time, whether driving, using the forums, typing, working on my game, eating, watching TV, etc.. With doing this every day, the amount of "wasted time" really adds up - a whole days' worth (well, 22 1/2 hours as a grand total versus my current 3 3/4 hours per month). I can do a lot with 18 3/4 hours freed up. I can do two whole mountain ranges in my 2D game (and that's about an 1800x170 image on average). I could watch an additional 30-minute educational TV show each day with a bonus every 4th day. I could type up a story about three times longer than some of the longest stories on my website. I could update my website in my usual way with 3-weeks' worth of details (dreams and my blog mainly) and still have time to spare. That's a lot of time and it adds up. 3. A less significant reason is that my parents say water costs 10¢ per gallon and 13¢ per gallon now. I've asked them 3 times and they have said this with great consistancy. I recently (around August 7, 2006) ran calculations to find out an approximate average and I think my parents can't read the decimal point. It's not 10¢ or 13¢ per gallon, but more around 1 to 1.3¢ per gallon. Note the decimal - "one dot three". I even checked how much they are spending and this checks out, still triple of what many are claiming it to be. As my calculations go, I use 75 gallons of water for a shower. With 4 showers per month as my average at the moment, that's 300 gallons. Adding in my parents taking showers daily at 25 gallons per shower each, that's 1500 gallons. Then you have the sink and dishwasher which adds another, say, 300 gallons. The washing machine adds about 500 to 800 (we'll call it 600; I don't monitor it as much). The toilets take 4 gallons per flush on average, and with likely 8 flushes per day (I use most of them), that's 1000 gallons per month there. Do note that these are approximations and have about a 15% margin of error. Adding up all this, that's about 3700 gallons per month. The bill seems to vary from $38 to $43 per month which works out to 1.027¢ per gallon on the low end to 1.162¢ per gallon on the high end, about a tenth of what my parents have been claiming. Since I use 75 gallons (my showers last 30 minutes (±5 minutes), the showerhead mentions 2.5 gallons per minute maximum (which seems about right)), and using the average of about 1.1¢ per gallon, this works out to 82.5¢ per shower which seems okay meaning about 412.5¢ or so per month. If I took a shower every day, this would add on an additional 2062.5¢ per month. Earlier, from my parents' old claims, it would've run into the hundreds of dollars. Since I've otherwise proven them wrong to some extent, it's much more encouraging. 4. Low compatibility and low motive. The first reason alone has a huge negative impact on the compatibility with it. The second reason also has a considerable negative impact. The cost thing used to be until I worked out the math myself and disproved my parents' claims of the price per gallon of water. At the moment (as of August 13, 2006), my compatibility with showers is -12 with motive at -17. It'd take quite a bit of complaining from my parents before this motive actually gets above neutral or if I have to go grocery shopping or out somewhere. In the case where I was going to the lake, although it was only 4 days since the last shower rather than my usual 7, the motive was above +20 so in that case I didn't mind it. If I'm unable to go to the grocery store due to not being awake at any decent time, it'd only be my parents' annoyances that cause the motive to break past neutral (and since I can withstand a lot, it takes an even stronger effort). When I need to go somewhere, my motive increases but rarely high enough to get just above neutral. With my parents complaining, it adds even more of an impact, enough to get it past neutral, adding about 4 times the impact (which turns 110 into about 220), but not as much when it comes to needing to go somewhere, even the simple grocery store. I once been without a single shower or bath for a whole month.
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Jul 2, 2015 14:32
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| # ¿ Apr 28, 2024 06:25 |
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