Water, Water Everywhere...

Today is "Blog Action Day 2010". On this day, bloggers everywhere have committed to dedicating their posts to a designated topic we all voted on to discuss. This years topic is "Clean Water", as in billions of people in our world do not have access to water which is safe to drink. Unsafe drinking water and lack of sanitation kills more people every year than all forms of violence, including war. Unclean drinking water can incubate some pretty scary diseases, like E. coli, salmonella, cholera and hepatitis A, way worse stuff than what really bad cooking can do. Given that bouquet of bacteria, it's no surprise that water, or rather lack thereof, causes 42,000 deaths each week. So, this a pretty serious issue. The average American uses 159 gallons of water every day – more than 15 times the average person in the developing world. From showering and washing our hands to watering our lawns and washing our cars, Americans use a lot of water. To put things into perspective, the average five-minute shower will use about 10 gallons of water. I personally have NEVER taken a five minute shower, I am somewhat ashamed to admit - mine are generally 25+ minutes. But imagine stretching a measley 10 gallons of water to do all that we 'need' to do!

When you consider more than 40% of our country's rivers are too polluted to SWIM in, or support aquatic life, and 45% of our lakes are in the same condition, and that even now, wetlands are still being destroyed at an alarming rate, it's pretty amazing that we have ANY clean drinking water. But there is enormous cost to render water safe enough to drink. It is estimated that worldwide, pollution of the worlds waters costs the global economy over 12.8 BILLION DOLLARS A YEAR! That's a lot of coin, no matter where you're from. Imagine what good could come from using that 12.8 billion for health and human welfare programs. If you want to know how you can help, visit water.org or follow their links for more in depth stuff. Or, for a really cool bit of technology for the environmentally conscious, you can download an iphone application which will allow you to calculate the 'water footprint' of your favorite foods at http://virtualwater.eu/ . I know this is a big departure from what I usually have to say here and I really appreciate you taking the time to read this. So now, I am going to get a big tall glass of water and reflect on how lucky I am that I can just open a tap to get some!

Rock and Roll

So over the summer I went to a concert up in Charleston, SC. I went to see Boz Scaggs. Now Boz Scaggs was never what you would call rock and roll, he's more like jazzy light pop sort of stuff. And now that he is in his advanced years, his music style is even more apparent. Which was good, because just about everyone in the audience was old. I don't mean old like me...I mean OLD! Now old doesn't usually equate to bad or undesirable, but related to "rock" concerts, it does. Here's how: The venue was all wrong. It was all plush and clean...there were cushioned seats that still had the padding intact and the place didn't smell like stale beer, cigarettes, pot or come to think of it, it didn't smell like anything yucky. I am not particularly fond of yucky smells, but they do have a place in a concert hall. In this arena, I felt I could not stand on the seats, drink beer, smoke or do anything I associate with typical rock concert behavior. I sat down in my seat for most of the performance, rising to my feet in enthusiastic and irrepressible bursts of rebellion sporadically throughout the show. At these times, I was corrected by my elders in the seats behind me with "Down in front!" and some outright mean sounding "You. You sit down...now!" Catering to the comfort of the audience, specifically old people, is a Bad thing for a concert. So then there was the concessions. Concerts used to maybe sell beer and a few junky type snack foods, but most of us would go to a concert with full flasks and refills at the ready in the pockets of a jacket for the liquid libation (which is all we ever seemed to need in those days). At this show, the concessions sold not only beer, but wine as well, and, they sold more than ONE TYPE of each! I could have also purchased a mixed drink or, get this, one of those 'frou-frou' drinks like a daiquiri, complete with little PAPER UMBRELLA! I mean, what the heck were the promoters thinking? Most concerts I have been to would never have given out the little umbrellas because they are on a stick, which when hurtled across a concert arena would likely start a toothpick war, and cause at least one very drunk person to stick someone or be stuck badly enough to have to be removed from the show. So again, undesirable catering to old people. I think the final downer of the night was the man a few seats down who scolded me with, and I am quoting here, "I didn't spend a hundred bucks a seat to hear YOU go 'woooooooo' and whistle all night, now shut the hell up and listen to the guy on stage." Verbally spanked at a concert by a man old enough to be my...well, my PEER! Sheesh.

Interview

So, I am hot on the trail of a job. It's a good job - I don't have to know anything about fondue or soccer schedules or laundry soap or when it is necessary to change the vacuum cleaner bag to avoid potential personal injury due to the bag exploding because the dirt from oh, I don't know @2008 has mutated in there and wants out... I interviewed for the position about 6 weeks ago, and it went very well. The secret to my success? Exhaustion. I was unable to sleep the night before the interview, so I was very tired and therefore, totally relaxed during the meeting. I was so relaxed that I said some things, such as "Well, I'm pretty smart, ya know - I could figure that out" and "Well, it's important you pick the correct person to fill this position, because you'll be stuck with them for awhile." I cringe even now. I also shudder at the recollection of how I dressed for the interview. As some of you may remember, my wardrobe is pretty much non-existent unless it involves being on a boat or a beach. I wore my one and only nice white shirt (I even busted out the iron) which still fit okay and seems to have held up to its long solstice in the closet with minimal yellowing, and a pair of brown pants I purchased recently to wear to a funeral. The shoes were another matter. I tried my boat shoes but that looked pretty bad. Then, I tried a sort of new pair of tinnies which were still white and mostly clean. They gave me the appearance of an AWOL nurse. Digging way back into the recesses of a closet, I found a pair of brown sandals, that once I cleaned the dust bunnies from seemed to look okay. Stylish? Definitely not, but functional? Absolutely. So, considering how cocky and badly dressed I was for the interview, I figure I should be hearing about the job any day now!