I live in the Oakland hills and last year investigated both a graywater system as well as a rainwater (roof runoff) system with a vendor who installs both. I will not recommend them as they seem to have disappeared entirely, being a small 2-man operation. Graywater: - The biggest problem is access to existing plumbing. It might be easy or it might be like our 1940 house - virtually impossible. If the main plumbing lines are easily accessed, it's about $3K install. If you've got to break into walls to get to the pipes, figure it's straight up from the base price. - You'll need a place about 4x4, easily accessible, to put a 75-gallon tank. It will connect to a sand pond, about 2x4 or thereabouts. You'll have to clean it out once a year or the system will gum up, replacing the old with fresh new sand. What do you do with the old sand? Beats me, but you'll need someone with a pickup truck to haul the gunk out. - A small pump is used to keep the water flowing from the tank to the pond. The pond usually just has a faucet on the side so you can hook up a hose and start watering. - You'll have to switch to BIO-COMPATIBLE soaps and cleaning agents. Bio-degradable isn't sufficient. Make sure you check the prices of the few brands available, some of them aren't cheap. Best source for info on graywater systems you can install yourself is Gray Water Guerrillas, a local organization dedicated to saving water. Link is below. Rainwater catch system: - Although the graywater was a no-go, our house actually has the absolutely perfect siting, architecture, and gutter setup for a rainwater catch system. I was told by the rep that many houses are not set up well with their existing gutter system for retrofitted rainwater catch systems. He showed me that none of our neighbors, for example, could install such a system without considerable modifications. To redo your existing gutters is a good-sized job, unless you're a contractor. - In an average year (which we've had in Oakland) the system will catch approximately 15,000 gallons of water. - This leads to the part that stopped us - you'll need about an 8x8x8' space, minimum - 12' is better - to install one of the cisterns, which cost about $3K. The only logical place to put the cistern unfortunately would eliminate our prized mature Meyer Lemon and worse, be visible from not only our house, but three neighbors' houses as well...one large eyesore! It would also completely cut off access on that side of the house (you can currently walk entirely around the house without obstruction). - If we had thought about this when we first bought the house and were gut-remodeling it, it would have been easy to site the cistern slightly further downhill and hide it entirely from sight. Unfortunately, all the landscaping was completed five years ago and is mature and beautiful. Digging it up now would be a major hassle, plus the cost of re-landscaping. In the end, we did neither because the payback was not there. Only general info applies as each situation is unique. Unfortunately, there are almost no vendors who do this since it was, until very recently, illegal in CA. Most of the information available is the DIY kind, or geared toward commercial installations. There is very little help for the individual homeowner who doesn't feel confident in his/her DIY skills, sadly. With time this might certainly change, though. You may want to check out this article on rainwater catchment systems - perhaps the local office of ARCSA might be able to refer you to a catchment system installer: http://www.waterefficiency.net/the-latest/drought-rain-harvesting.aspx Here is a link that might be useful: The Gray Water Guerrillas

Since I don't have cable or satellite, I never even heard of the show. I haven't heard from Jesse in a long time and last I heard he was in South or Central America with an occasional visit back. But internet to the rescue! I looked it up and watched the show. Interesting. I don't suppose they'll do any follow-up stories on this. In fairness, many times we shouldn't know everything at least not right away. But lying to start a military action (since it's not truly a "war") against a country is, IMO, treason. And there's a lot of things about 9/11 that don't add up. But then again we're still in the dark about Kennedy's assassination too.

One thing I wondered about is the sometimes lack of a common language. How did the team members communicate and share ideas, concerns and knowledge about how to get the boys out. Maybe there were translators. Just heard this morning that the last rescuers escaped just in time as the pumps failed and the tunnel began to fill up quickly. That seems very odd to me that it would fail at the last minute, and there should have been backups. There is always misinformation during these events, so in time we will get a more accurate story, maybe.

Some of my all-time favorite shows are British, starting with Monty Python (which I still watch on DVD), Absolutely Fabulous (which I also have on DVD), and Keeping Up Appearances, which I like better than Kevin does, as Hyacinth reminds him of his ex-MIL. She reminds me of our grandmother, although she was Alsatian instead of British, but she was an English professor. I do very much appreciate the British sense of humor. My German (Alsatian) grandmother had no sense of humor and my mother did not have much of one either. Germans are not known for humor, and in my studies of German literature, for which I have a B.A. degree, I rarely found humorous writings, although I think that is changing now. I did not study much German literature past the mid 20th Century. The only writers that I found that had a sense of humor were Jewish and reminded me more of Russian Jewish literature than German. Zalco, that is a good explanation, and I had not thought of it that way. I'll keep that in mind the next time I hear it. I do tend to be very literal and therefore miss out on a lot of jokes or even make some accidentally😵. Your analogy reminds me of Molière's The Misanthrope, in which one side says that telling white lies is preferable to brutal honesty. When I first read that play, I identified with Célimène, but I'm not sure I do anymore. If one is prefacing a potentially offensive statement with "to be honest..." I think that that makes the offense even worse instead of better. It just sounds like it is an excuse to insult. I lived with someone from New York for four years when I first moved to San Francisco, and it took me a while to get used to his sarcasm as well, and it was impossible to take many of the things he said literally, such as "Get out of here" (although I did take that seriously at first) and "Did you die?"