Hunkering Down

Hurricane Sandy is apparently aimed straight at New Jersey, obviously proving without a doubt that God is angry with Republicans, but Lady Chemistry and I are snug as bugs in a rug, who shouldn't be all that snug because rugs get stepped on.  So we are snugger than the aforementioned bugs.

I cleaned up the yard yesterday to minimize any missiles, taking the yard chairs to the barn, dragged the logs from the broken birdhouse and broken clothesline to the brush pile, and put our grills in the garage.  As long as the barn or garage isn't obliterated, we should be fine.  Well, there is the giant pile of house trash leftover from our neighbor's move, but hopefully that won't be launch in our direction.  And there are the dead branches in the maple tree that might hit a window if they fall, but we've got renter's insurance, and I warned our landlords about them twice in the last two months.  I can't do anything about the new leak in the roof by the kitchen chimney, but our landlord decided he wanted to wait until the first of November to have someone take a look at that.  That was a week ago that I warned him, and I hadn't heard of the hurricane either.

We've got plenty of wood cut for heating the house anyway, so if we lose power for days, we can still cook.  Our power was up and down last night, but seem fine today.  Right now, we're getting torrential rain with strong breezes, but by tonight things could be different.  We are in the peidmont, so I think we are far enough inland, and south, that we won't see much worse. 

Should this turn storm return Virginia to a libertarian post-apocalyptic paradise, I have an 80-pound hunting bow, and I know how to use it.

WOWZA! PEPCO Bills Go Through the Roof

I got a bit of a shock when I opened my PEPCO bill this morning. PEPCO claims that I used 9490 kilowatt hours in the last billing cycle. I switched apartments within the same building in February and have paid bills since then. If I remember correctly, I paid for February through March in April and then paid relatively on time in May (ACTUALLY, I DIDN'T PAY IN MAY, MY BAD). My usual usage is about twenty dollars in the winter (we have gas heating) and my biggest summer bill was forty-eight dollars and I was running the AC all evening. Now PEPCO claims that I owe them over one thousand dollars for the latest billing cycle. I know that rates rise in the summer but that is a little extreme. I will have to lodge some sort of protest and get this checked out.

I have vague recollections, that may just be wishful thinking, of news stories from last summer about people getting excessively large bills when PEPCO switched to the summer rates. If I were to add up all of my previous bills, I doubt they would be this high.

11:45 PM Wednesday, MORE INFORMATION FOR THOSE WHO CARE: I used 470 KWH hours from March 18th to April 13th, or some thing like that. I forgot to pay that bill because I am a disorganized person. Two months at that usage rate would be about 940 KWH which makes a bit of sense. The bill has a "multiplier" of 10 to determine the KWH and it seems reasonable to think that the meter reading was just multiplied by 10 a second time. I have called PEPCO and they opened an investigation. I should hear back in 48-72 hours. The representative asked me if I had installed any new appliances. I almost responded with, "Well, I do have this particle accelerator and I have been running it a lot." It's a 60 year old 435 square foot apartment, how the hell could I use 10 freaking MEGAWATTS without tripping every breaker in the building and burning the place to the ground?

An Expression of Solidarity

Matt Boyd, web comic writer of Three Panel Soul and former government contractor, was fired for talking about his potential purchase of a firearm at his office. He was debating the merits of buying a .22 bolt action rifle for target shooting for the accuracy and almost complete lack of lethality. This happened to be the day of, or just after, the Virginia Tech shootings. He was subsequently fired because his coworkers shit themselves when they overheard the wrong part of his conversation.

That is pretty bad, but it gets worse. Apparently, the cops paid him a visit after he posted the comics. I would be immensely pissed if something like that had happened to me. Oh, wait.

He is moving on and apparently moving out. It's kind of like being in an airport customer service line, you can get pissed and throw a fit but in the end you still have to wait in that fucking horrendous line and deal with someone at the end who has dealt with four hundred other pissed off people, so you might as well remain calm and count ceiling tiles.

Good luck with the comic, Mr. Boyd.