Good Friday

Wow, it was just an absolutely gorgeous sunrise this morning. Driving in to work (wish I didn’t have to say that part of it) I was looking up at the sky a lot – the east was full of feathery wispy clouds, there were lots of stripes in all directions from airplanes, and it all looked so clear and bright. Sorry I didn’t drag along the camera today, but here is what the stripes look like from a previous blue sky time:


The weather reports says it’s supposed to be up to 70f today, even warmer tomorrow, so it should be a very pleasant weekend. We moved all the broken up concrete from my front patio into a dumpster last weekend, pictures are in one of the cameras someplace. I really messed up my back working the jackhammer, and further helped it along with lifting the concrete. Two Aleve each morning helps very much, so it should be OK by the next project. Of course, that will be putting something back into the courtyard to replace the concrete just pulled up.

Listening to the radio, right now they are playing an ad by our local water district. Being out in the desert we do have a problem with water. As the city grows we need more and more. Most of our water comes from Lake Mead and the Colorado River, but this source also supplies Arizona, Southern California and Mexico, all of which are also growing and looking for more. Our water company is trying to build big pipelines to northern Nevada and install big wells up there, to suck out all of their groundwater and send it here to us. The radio ads tell us how this is a renewable resource that we should be taking advantage of.

‘Renewable resource’? Yea, it’s taken thousands of years to fill up that aquifer, and it should take Vegas about ten years to suck it dry. Then another few thousands of years of limited rain and snow from the mountains will fill it up again. LA did the same thing with the Owens Valley, pulling water out so the local wells all went dry, the lake is now a dry bed, and all the natural vegetation died because their roots don’t go down 1,000 feet. The deep wells in the Phoenix area have pulled out so much water that the entire area has dropped three feet in elevation because of it.

I know we need water, but please don’t put out this pr crap trying to convince the world that it’s OK to rape the rest of the state for us. Kind of like saying Iraq is better off under us than Sadam, when they still have no power, water or sewage treatment, people are afraid to leave their houses, and the US soldiers are more feared than Sadam’s police were. (OK, sorry to circle back to this theme, I was talking water and bad PR).

This week our bank is celebrating the signup of our one millionth (1,000,000) active credit card customer. We got free cake on Monday, and balloons were put up all over the place. This company is really big on helium balloons; I’ve put up photos before of them. These are white, and put up on every cube. So looking out over the call floor you can see hundreds of white balloons floating about six feet over everyone’s head. Well, they have been up for five days now. And if you have ever had a helium filled balloon you know that after a few days the helium leaks out or something and the balloons do not fly anymore. Well, after five days our balloons are now walking across the floor instead of flying overhead. The weight of the ribbons is too much for the lift of the helium, so we now have balloons in our cubes hanging just three feet or so off the floor. I’ll try to corral a bunch and pull them together.

For another shot of Vegas, it seems that every cab is covered with advertisements. I pulled up behind this one a few days ago, and it all seemed to fit.