“Anti” Septic
Short homeowner rant: If you don’t live in a city with a water treatment plant, your waste water (and all that includes) is taken away to a tank in the ground. 
It’s all very natural, biodegradable even. The stuff which we won’t discuss here is broken down by bacteria and flows back into the ground. It works most of the time.
We’ve had more than 5 inches of rain in the last month and the wet ground is putting the kabosh on the process. No major disasters here yet, but the drains are definitely running slow. If we have several days of dry weather the ground will dry out and all will be well. I’m going to have to call a septic service and get the tank pumped. It’s another expense of homeownership.
Peak Oil?: This energy crisis, if that’s what it is, is different than the two back in the 70’s. I believe that the first one in 1974, there was actually plenty of gasoline in the US deliberately being held back to jack up the price. People limited their travel because there was a real risk that somewhere along the trip, you wouldn’t be able to find an open gas station. There were “NO GAS” signs everywhere. And I guess it worked because we did that same song and dance in 1979.This time around though, you can get gas if you can afford it!
The Future is Now? There was a piece on AP news yesterday- run in lots of Sunday papers- http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20080525/ap_on_re_us/environmental_survivalists_3
I’d like to talk to the first lady mentioned. It said she lost 70 pounds- good for her. The article doesn’t clarify if she lost weight because she gave up processed food, or if it was intentional because when a person gets to a certain age,it sets them up for health problems (gulp!) It also says she gave up television, it didn’t explain why. No time? Wastes time? Cost of the energy?
How Then Shall We Live? One thing I took away from the book, Rumspringga, the book about Amish young people I read last month: television drops the world into your home. There’s good stuff, but there’s bad things too. If you have kids, they’re going to see people doing things that you would in no way hope to see your own children doing. We’re all manipulated by advertising. When I took sociology back in the day, we had a unit about advertising. The first tenet of a successful commercial is to create a need. The people selling the widget, want you to feel the need for the widget and rush out and buy it. There aren’t a whole lot of commercials for banks- “come in and save your money, we’ll give you 5%” LOL!!! (there used to be savings bank commercials, back in olden times) More common to see “use your MasterCard and then you can have it now” commercials.
INCREDIBLE SHRINKING FOOD!!! Have you noticed what’s happening to food packaging? I’m noticing that with some name brand items, the price hasn’t changed but the quantity in a package, or even the size of the package is shrinking. Some of the cereal boxes are downright skinny! The other day, we bought some ice cream, and the half gallon is now 1.5 quarts. The tub is cute and all, but noticeably smaller!
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May 27th, 2008 at 11:28 am
We have that whole septic tank/drain field thing to deal with here. Most of the time it is okay, but when it decides to act up (twice in 15 years), it can be a huge pain.
I read somewhere once that Kissinger and Nixon convinced the Arabs to raise the price of oil so that they could buy more weapons from us. Not at all sure if that was true or not, but it certainly wouldn’t surprise me one little bit.