I’ve had two articles published in the January edition of Technically Speaking… One of the articles is entitled: “The Goal of it All: Graduation” (on page 1) and the other is, “Redefinition: Who is the Technical Communicator?” (on page 3).
Today’s affirmations come from Andrew Armstrong’s article in said publication… That article is at the top of page two, and it’s entitled, “New Year, New President.”
The North Carolina drought has generated a lot of talk about, and interest in, water consumption. To that end, I charted my water usage over the last two years. The mayor is asking everyone to try and reduce down to 25 gallons per day per person per household.
I personally, don’t think I “waste” water at all. I run the dishwasher, probably two-to-three times per week, the most. And I run it on the “Short Wash” cycle.
I have three toilets in my house, and one—the one I use most often—is one of those newer, “water saver” types.
I wash clothes at the lowest water levels possible, usually on low, or medium—rarely, if ever on high. And I would say I average a load a week, two the max.
I take 3-minute (or less) showers. And yet, this is my history:
Note: The Y-axis, should actually say, “Average Gallons Per Day.”
I’m not sure what else I can do for a couple of reasons:
- I don’t understand the component contribution of my usage; that is, how much of my consumption is due to the dishwasher versus my showers, versus my clothes washer versus my toilet habits.
- I don’t understand the wide variability in usage over each period, as I am very much a creature of habit, so don’t understand how I used 84 versus 55 versus 33 over those last few periods when I don’t sense that I did anything differently, or more, or less.
- For instance, during the second to the last period, the 83 gallon spike? I was gone for 12 days of that period on my trip to Australia; so that peak makes no sense to me.
So anyway, about the only thing I can do on the “list of suggestions” is to put a brick in the toilet tanks of the other two toilets in my house; but then again, those are the two toilets I use the least, and I can’t imagine that making much difference.
Robert dropped off Joe and I at Southwest airlines tomorrow, and our flight from RDU to Orlando was uneventful. The flight was not at all full, so we got a three-seat row to ourselves and used the empty middle seat for our junk.
We had a four-hour layover in Orlando, but because we planned it that way. For this trip, we booked a roundtrip flight on Southwest between RDU and Orlando, going today and returning on Sunday, January 20th. We then booked a roundtrip on Delta between Orlando, today, and Key West, returning on Thursday, January 17th, because we’re going to spend three days at Disney before we head back to Raleigh.
What was weird about this was that we had to remember to pick up our bags from Southwest in Orlando and take them over to our Delta check-in.
The four hours passed rather quickley as 1) they had free wireless acess in the airport, and 2) we had a delicious dinner (with two killer Bloody Marys involved) dinner at the airport Outback restaurant.
Our flight to Key West was also uneventful, and quick at 40 minutes. It was beautiful flying in over the Keys, and then it was a short taxi ride to our accommodations, which is The Island House.
We laid out on the deck for an hour, hour-and-a-half, during which I started on In Cold Blood, which I’ve been looking forward to “reading” ever since I got it. Robert bought me the audio book, probably a year-and-half ago now, and it’s one of those things I’ve been looking forward to doing after finally graduating.
I’ve uploaded it to my i-Pod, so I had the first ten chapters read to me. Glorious. Thank you for the gift of a book, my sweet.
Later, we took advantage of the “Happy Hour,” which is actually two hours, and during which all the alcohol you can drink is complimentary—including beer, wine, and well drinks. I, of course, drank Bourbon and Diet Coke.
After several drinks, we decided to have something to eat right where we were as it is the combination pool, bar, and restaurant, and we had some most delicious Conch Fritters. They reminded me of the clam cakes we used to get in New England, which I love. We also split an order of Chicken Quesadillas.
At about 7:30, we headed for an hour walk, ending up down on Duval Street, with a first top at Bourbon Street Pub, where we had one drink each and sat in the window, people watching.
After that, we walked across the street to 801 Bourbon Bar, where we had several drinks, and then enjoyed the 9:00-10:00 drag show.
The show was pretty good, and I particularly like on medley done by one of the drag queens, which included two out-takes from Mommie Dearest, and one other number by another drag queen, which was the song Popular, from Wicked.
On the way back, we stopped at the Upper Crust, where I got a slice of the “pizza slice of the day” (chicken, feta, broccoli), and Joe got a slice of pepperoni. He ate his on the way back. I put mine in the fridge, “for later,” but ended up not eating it. Lunch tomorrow.