drink the spice...

there's been a drought in georgia (and much of the southeast) for quite awhile now. after browsing a few news articles online, it looks like we may have a parched outlook for much of the winter and into the spring of 2008. my purpose for bringing this up is twofold. one: i'd like to do my small part to plug the idea of conservation and being more aware of everyday strains on the water supply. i'm just as guilty as the next person. i can list 10 wasteful things off the top of my head that i do on a regular basis. in turn, i'm also trying to develop habits that result in a longer list of things i do to conserve one of the few resources that we can't live without.

example: we've had a drip in the kitchen sink for at least 2 months now. ever considered how much water is wasted by one dripping faucet? don't look it up online. put a bowl or a pitcher in the sink and see for yourself. my dripping kitchen faucet will fill a medium sized Britta pitcher in one night. i finally called the maintenance man and the drip is mostly fixed (it's never simple with those guys), but in the interim period we started collecting the drip water throughout the day and had enough water to keep nalgenes and tea kettles filled without ever really turning on the tap. if you know anything about coffeeshopgirl's drinking habits, that's quite a feat.

another habit that's relatively painless to incorporate is to turn off the water while loading the dishwasher. there's no need to let the water run while you figure out how to rearrange the top shelf of the dishwasher to squeeze in one last piece of tupperware. you can also turn the faucet off while you scrub away at pots and pans and then rinse everything at once instead of leaving the water running while you chip away at the remnants of that peanut sauce you just devoured.

okay, enough proselytizing about dish washing. the second reason for bringing up the drought is to recommend the book Dune. I've avoided this book for a long time because i've always assumed it was a sci-fi geek's wet dream. my apologies to anyone who loves science fiction. i finally decided to read it because of a book pushing friend and because i didn't have any other book prospects at the time. it turned out to be extremely captivating and relevant (on the planet of arrakis, water is rationed to the drop and it's considered a form of wealth). i won't get into specifics about plot, but if you're in search of something different to read that has the staying power of harry potter (there are 6 books in the original series), with an equally complicated nomenclature, give it a chance.