utenzi

I received my electricity bill from Duke Power in my Email today. Ow, ow, ow, ow! This is the first time in the 8 years that I've had my house that my bill went over $100. And it cleared that hurdle quite readily with a "score" of $143.31. That's 45% more than any other bill I've gotten from Duke Power and more than 50% higher than the bill I had last December. Ouch! Admittedly this is by far the coldest winter that I've experienced since I moved down south 25 years ago so it's not surprising that the electric bill went up. But 50%? Yikes. And January is starting off to be colder than December so this month's bill will probably be up around $150 also. At least this is normal weather for January; it's supposed to be cold now. December was freakishly cold for this part of the country. And don't get me started about snow!

This is becoming a theme here. Bad weather. Today started off sunny and very warm. Julie and I went to Chapel Hill early in the morning to avoid the heat. We went there to recycle my empty bottles and cans to get them out of the way and also to pick up some hamburger and veggies for grilling. Good thing, 'cause it hit 80f by around 9:30am. I normally like to wait until June to turn on my A/C but this year I'm making an exception. In a slight plot twist, unbeknownst to us, temperature relief was on its way. Around 5pm the wind picked up and quite quickly wind gusts were tossing boxes and garbage cans around the neighborhood. My next door neighbor lost two of her Bradford Pear trees. And then the sound of thunder approached as the rain and lightning hit---and the power went out. And Duke Power didn't restore the juice for nearly 5 hours. As a result, we used the grill for dinner and ate out on the deck. By that time the sky had cleared up quite a bit as you can see in this p...

I feel very dirty today. Due to time constraints, I skipped taking a shower yesterday so I really needed one today. Bad timing, I'm afraid. For some weird reason, the area I live in has frequent power outages. It's a very rare month when the power isn't out at least once, often there's several short ones in week. They usually don't last for long but today was an exception. I had just gotten in the shower when the lights went out. Being optimistic by nature ---anyone who knows me, realizes that's a joke--- I soaped up assuming the juice would be back within a few minutes. Nope. An hour later when I left for work the power was still out, dammit. Anyway, since I have a well and my house is set up with continuous flow / low standing volume water heaters and such---there's virtually no water on hand. And since it takes electricity to get that water out of the well... in just a couple of minutes I was standing there wet and soapy hoping the water would start flow...

...and even more importantly my alarm clock. I had intended on going to the NC Zoo today but I didn't wake up in time. I like to get there when it opens so there's no crowds around the enclosures. Crowds make for bad pictures, y'know? I went to bed fairly early last night so you'd think waking up early would have been no problem. Unfortunately Duke Power was up to its old tricks and sometime between 4am and 7am the power went out in my neighborhood and it wasn't restored until a little before noon. For some odd reason I have frequent power outages here, usually several a month, however it's rare for the power to be out for more than a few minutes. People who live just a few miles away don't seem to suffer these frequent outages tho. Odd. Normally with a short power interruptions I just have to set the clocks again but when the power is out this long I have to do some reprogramming. And this time I had the additional duty of setting up my high def television...