links for 2009-07-02

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Conserve, or Not

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Northwest North Carolina was in the grips of a monster drought until the beginning of this year and the message we residents received was, "Conserve water."  And honestly isn't water conservation a good thing even when there isn't a drought?  That's why you have to scratch your head in wonder when you read that Winston-Salem is raising its water rates because usage is down by 10%.  Somehow I think it would be a better idea to reward conservation rather than punish it, but they have their reasons:

Saunders said the city must pay $100 million in new construction for projects like the $55 million water plant currently under construction off Martin Luther King Drive. Saunders said raising water rates is the only option to recoup those costs.

"We wouldn't need a rate increase if we could increase sales by 20 percent, but we can't do that. We can't market the water (usage)," Saunders said.

But here's my favorite quote from Mr. Saunders, who is the utilities director:

"The less you use, the lower your rate increase will actually be," Saunders said. "Even with these rate changes, Winston-Salem still has the lowest cost of water than any major city in North Carolina."

Uh, unless I missed something his first sentence there is a little wrong.  No matter how much water you use your rate increase is going to be the same, but your gross increase will be less than it would be if you used the same amount of water.  And I guess if you look at this from a purely economic theory standpoint you will probably promote conservation by raising the rate because people will have to use less water in order to keep their bills down.  Still, it doesn't sound good when you have to introduce a rate increase because your moving less water even if our rate is still the lowest in the state (which I DO think we should be thankful for).

Oh, and please don't think I'm not thankful every day for the fact that I can turn on a spigot in my house and have clean water whenever I want it, whether it's to drink or shower or wash dishes.  Also, after dealing with our septic problem I'm keenly aware of how much water we use on any given day and how inconvenient it is when you can't use it.  I really am very thankful that we have Mr. Saunders and his crew doing their thing, and from what I can tell they do a good job.  So let's say I absolutely understand the need to keep up their infrastructure, but boy do I wish they didn't have to raise rates to do it at a time when they could be bragging to the rest of the world that we are actually using less water around here.

Life With Riley

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So a couple of weeks ago I get a message from Esbee begging me, and I mean B-E-G-G-I-N-G me, to give a certain puppy at the pound a look-see to see if we'd be up for adopting it.  Then she sent a picture of quite possibly the saddest dog I've ever seen, and I showed it to Celeste, and of course that meant that within an hour we were headed to the animal shelter.

At the shelter Celeste pretty much ignored the sad puppy and immediately latched onto a black lab that was listed as being one year old.  We visited with him in the magic-adoption-hypnosis-room and watched him pee, shed and occasionally lick one of our hands.  Celeste was smitten. Before leaving we filled out the adoption paperwork and crossed Celeste's fingers.

That was on a Saturday.  On Monday we got the call that the dog was ours and he could be picked up on Tuesday from the vet that was going to de-boy him.  Celeste and the kids seemed joyful and Celeste announced that the dog would be named Riley.  Yippee.

Of course I flew out to Vegas on Tuesday so I wouldn't see the mutt for close to a week.  The first indication I had that something might be amiss was when I talked to Celeste and she let me know that the dog was a pisser, literally, and that despite being recently rendered nutless he'd been able to defile Mia, our other one year old dog who had managed to remain a virgin until Riley's first day in the house.

On a side note, I worry that North Carolina's esteemed abstinence-only sex ed program may not have been too informative.  Celeste mentioned that Mia had done a little bleeding as a result of Riley's attentions, but when I talked to my kids who are midway through high school they seemed to think that Riley had popped a stitch.  When I informed them that their mother had checked and Riley was fine they seemed confused about where the damage could have possibly been done.  I see an uncomfortable parent-child conversation in our future.

Anyway, back to Riley.  In addition to his less than gentlemanly ways Riley also seemed to be poorly housebroken, if housebroken at all.  Add to that the fact that he's already strong as an ox, and if his paws are any indication he's nowhere close to being done growing, and that he thinks any barrier constructed to contain him is something to be annhiliated, and you have the recipe for household destruction. 

All of this I learned via various phone calls and text messages received from each of my family members throughout the week, and this accumulated knowledge weighed heavily on me as I flew home from Vegas.  What I learned once I'd been home for a day and had a chance to spend some time with Riley and the family is that he's also slightly cross-eyed and if you throw something at him he invariably misses it a couple of inches to the left.  Obviously he was not bred from an esteemed family of retrievers and I suspect there may have been a little incest involved, if you know what I mean.

So what do we have?  We have a cross-eyed, peeing, indiscreet, dumb and destructive oaf of a mutt who will probably cost us hundreds, if not thousands, of dollars in the foreseeable future. He'll fit right in.

links for 2009-07-01

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links for 2009-06-30

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