Newsworthy day: Rain in NC and Angus’s first blog pic!

October 26, 2007

Angus, the office pit-boss, will be featured on this blog many times, but it is worth celebrating this, his first appearance. Gretchen snapped this pic while walking Angus at lunch. She left the umbrella as shelter for him as she briefly ran inside but, apparently, he likes umbrellas even less than he likes rain. Despite Angus’s distaste, the rest of us have been rejoicing in our galoshes for the past 3 days as we’ve had multiple inches of water pour down from the sky.

In a moment of semi-sad irony, it was at the beginning of this week that Guvnah Easley made a big deal to the public about our emergency, urging everyone to try cutting back individual water consumption by half! Much as we do really still need to conserve, it’s probably hard for the public to take that request seriously as rivers of water are streaming down the streets. And I’ve been thinking about how to cut my water consumption down by that much. I’m firmly with Easley in believing it needs to happen, but actually doing it is really hard! Since I never wash my car or water my lawn anyway, my conservation has to effect me more personally…like how long my shower is (can I really cut back at all on that??), or how much water I use to wash dishes or the laundry. All I can say right now is I’m really tryin…

On a marketing note, I thought the drought map on WRAL was very interesting. It’s actually an animation showing drought progression from June through October. It’s a great little map, and made me feel the fear. I actually got more thirsty as I watched it. I’m getting even more thirsty now writing about it. But anyway, one amusing note…I thought it funny that our levels of drought are all so…big. It felt like the Starbucks size-namers named these levels. We do have one boring level, Moderate Drought, but everything else is named for action: SEVERE, EXTREME, EXCEPTIONAL. My problem with “exceptional,” though, is that it’s a word that makes me feel good rather than bad. Maybe that’s from my school days. I was an “exceptional” student, after all. And if I did go all Starbucks on it, I’d definitely choose the triple EXCEPTIONAL nonfat half-caff soy latte, low foam, non-fat whip, steamed milk rather than going SEVERE on it (hmmmm…a SEVERE triple shot espresso might be good when you need a Monday Morning pick-me-up though.)