Living Greener?

So much for my resolution to live greener. I have always been a good recycler, and try really hard to garden organicly. This year however, I decided to work a little harder at leaving less of an impact. Remember how I said that I wanted to start using my own shopping bags? Well I am using my own most of the time. That has been great. The checkers seem inconvienenced by not using their bags, but screw them!They are so wasteful with them sometimes only putting one or two small items in a bag. Last night for example, we were at a store and purchase a pair of capri sweat pants and two packaged t-shirts. When I told the clerk we didn't need a bag, he looked shocked. Please! We could totally carry these ourselves.

Anyhow I found out yesterday that most of this work has been in vain. A few months ago we got a water bill for almost 500 dollars. I thought to myself, oops I must have missed the last bill. We are billed bi monthly. Now the ammount seemed high even for 4 months, but I really didn't pay much attention. Well then we got another 500 dollar bill. I then called the department of utilites and they were less than helpful. Their inspector came out and was supposed to knock on the door to make sure we weren't using any water when he checked the line. He didn't he looked and left a note that said we had water running in the house. Well, because he didn't knock I didn't know if we did or not. So the lady at the department of utilities, which I would like to call the department of uselessness suggested that I dye test my toilets. I questioned whether that could really make my bill go up by almost 4 times. She assured me that it could. I asked even if I couldn't hear my toilets running and she said yes. Well....the plumber yesterday told me no. He also told me after turning off the water to my house, under the house that we had a break somewhere from the meter to where it comes out of the ground under the front corner of the house. YEAH! We get to dig up our front yard! In my quest to live greener, during a near drought(we have been under water restrictions) I have been using tons of water. I am shocked that this wasn't a red flag to anyone at the department of uselessness. I mean we aren't allowed to water our lawns, or wash our own cars, but apparantly can have HUGE leaks in our front yards. Or course a dear friend suggested that I look for the silver lining. Hmm....the oak trees in the yard have been well fed...I will have one nice green strip of grass where they have dug up the line. Umm...my water bill should go down...and considering the size of the leak, I should have better water pressure. And, I can once again continue my quest for greener living.

BTW, I am typing on my new laptop, and keeping hitting an unknown key that causes the cursor to jump somewhere else on the screen. It is getting VERY frustrating and I don't know what key it is or how to stop it. The strange thing is this has never happened to me on any other keyboard ever. So, if there is a typo I missed...sorry.