While the above title isn’t really what I am insinuating, it was reality this morning. Seems that suburban city boy here takes water heater fuel for granted. See in CA, an endless supply of natural gas is magically piped in keeping your water nice and hot ready for use pulsating against your skin in the shower or washing your Toughskin jeans in the washing machine. Well, out here in the country, it is supplied by a limited capacity tank. The guys at the energy company like to know ahead of time when it gets down to a quarter tank so they can schedule a delivery.
So when suburban city boy (or his wife) call up revealing our lack of country sophistication, they probably got a good laugh. Luckily, my wife went in to the office and nicely chatted with them so not only did we get the friendly Kentucky service by having them come out this afternoon and refill the tank, but they also waived the $75 empty charge.
Now we need to reanalyze our fuel usage. It was at 82% 3 weeks ago! Having 3 guests during the holidays, a cold spell that brought all that snow, a (stupid) gas fireplace that switches on at the flick of a button (instead of a real man’s wood burning fireplace), and baths for the kids all greatly accelerated our usage. No doubt I will be adding a weekly reminder to check the tank level onto my PalmPilot calendar as well as implementing ways to reduce our usage.
It’s just those kind of things that we new country folk need to learn about.
Anyway, now you can join in with the energy guys in their laugh for the day.
…..Dan at aslowerpace
