Okay back on January 12th, I graphed my water usage over a period of two years, with the final point on the graph showing an average use of water for me at 58 gallons per day for that billing cycle.
Since then, I have really cut back on flushing my toilets (every third or fourth time of “number ones,” but always after “number twos”—sorry, but I’m not willing to get gross to conserve water), and I’ve been very cognizant of all water use—rinsing the dishes with the water on very, very little; not turning the water on until I’m ready to rinse my mouth after brushing; and continuing to have the water on as low as it can go and still spray a shower on me. I’ve also been turning the water level one notch lower than the wash cycle when on the rinse cycle.
Yesterday, my latest water bill arrived, and they’re actually calculating your average daily water usage for you now and showing it at the top of the bill, which I appreciate.
After all of that care, my average usage for this period was 54 gallons per day—a difference of four gallons from the last bill. At first I thought, “That’s so not worth it.” However, after letting the emotional reaction pass, I decided, “Well, four gallons a day on average over 70 days is still 280 gallons that I saved. And at an average of 54 gallons a day, that’s a little over 5 days worth of water.”
I still don’t think it’s at all reasonable to get down to the 35 gallon-per-person-per-day average that the mayor was calling for a couple of months ago.
I met Kevin (av8rdude) at the gym, where we worked out from 10:00-11:00.
I decided to mix things up a little today. I’ve been wanting to try a 30-minute treadmill workout followed by a 30-minute elliptical machine workout, but haven’t really wanted to face the reduction in calories burned that I knew that routine would bring. However, since tonight’s a dance night, and I’ll get about 30 minutes of aerobic exercise in doing that, I thought today would be a good day to go for it.
On the treadmill, I didn’t get my heart rate up nearly as high as I do on the elliptical, so the calories burned were less, as expected. I did try jogging for just a few minutes, which did raise my heart rate up into the aerobic range, but at my age I’m not willing to sacrifice my knees for a long period of time to maintain that rate, when I can do it with lower knee impact on the elliptical, so I just accepted the lighter workout on the treadmill for what it is.
Today’s workout statistics:
Type |
Duration |
Burned |
|---|---|---|
|
Treadmill |
30 |
265 |
|
Elliptical |
30 |
553 |
|
Total |
60 |
818 |
Kevin talked me into (twisted my arm exactly one millionth of a millimeter) to join him for a bagel at Bruegger’s afterwards, where I had one of their Pumpernickel bagels (330 calories) with their Plain Light cream cheese (100 calories) on it. Hmmm, let’s see 818 – 430 makes my workout an effective 388 calories burned.
At 12:30, I met my friend Gregor (wild_sun) at Helios for coffee and to catch up on what’s been forever since we’ve seen each other.
In an e-mail from him yesterday, he had asked me if I’d possibly be interested in joining the Board of Directors of Manbites Dog Theater, so I’d asked for today’s meeting with him to get a picture of what that commitment might look like.
We had a great discussion about the play Dying City, and then he filled me in on the Board position. I’m going to think about it.
I prepared a “Welcome to ‘Chez Martine’ script” about dinner and dessert for Robert and left it by the fridge. He came over to eat while I was doing my volunteer stint.
I volunteered for Equality North Carolina tonight, where three things happened:
- I went a little bit out of my comfort zone by doing so,
- I gained empathy for phone volunteers for nonprofits, and
- I met a LiveJournal and Facebook friend, Tony (whomeynot).
What was out of my comfort zone was: calling people on the phone, for a couple of reasons—(1) I hate talking on the phone, and (2) I hate receiving phone calls myself from organizations.
The reason I decided to volunteer, though, was that this wasn’t a fund-raising effort; that is, no donation request was being made. We were just calling to make sure that ENC had current contact information for its 3000 or so members.
I would estimate that I called about 180 numbers in the 2 hours and 15 minutes I was there. I would further estimate that about 33% were disconnected numbers, about 52% were no answers, reached voice mail, or the person was no longer at that number. That would mean I reached about 5% of the people I called.
Three responses of note:
- When asked if he was interested in providing us with an e-mail address, one man replied, laughing, “I am computer illiterate.”
- Me: “May I speak with Debbie or Julie?” [not real names] Julie: “Debbie has passed away.” Me: “Oh, I’m so sorry. Are you interested in staying on our distribution list, Julie?” Julie: “No, I’m not. Thank you for asking, and please remove me.”
- I think I knew one of the people I called, and I will confirm with him the next time I talk to him.
Dancing was a bust tonight—very few dancers and even fewer (percentage-wise) bar patrons.
Carl did teach a lesson tonight, though: Backstreet Attitude, as Bill wanted to learn it.
At the end of the evening, I had a nice, slow two-step with Rick. Back in the saddle again—yay!
At home, after showers, Robert and I worked on a quite difficult Indy crossword puzzle before being “done with it!”