I had a breakthrough with the insurance exchange this week. I waited 45 minutes to speak with one of their customer service reps to find out whether or not any subsidies were available to me. He was a fellow with an East Indian accent, and he told me that looking at my application was giving him a headache. I said the same thing was happening to me. Then he discovered that I'd incorrectly selected "Cobra" coverage for myself, M and C. (Cobra is what I have now). He says, (say it out loud or in your head with an east indian accent), "Your problem is, you have snakes in your application. In fact, you have three snakes in it. Let me remove the Cobras for you. There, that's better. I remove the snakes, you get xxxxx thousand dollars. Can I do anything else for you?"


He was a charmer indeed!

When I moved to California in 1990, the state was experiencing  a drought. I moved into a beautiful house with a woman who was the student government president at UC Berkeley. Her bathtub was filled with buckets meant to catch the excess shower water. That water was then used to flush the toilets.


We are experiencing a drought currently, supposedly worse than the one in 1990, and no measures have been imposed, just some suggestions to wash only full loads of clothing,  and a reminder to turn off the running water while you're brushing your teeth – things you probably do anyway.


In good news, it rained yesterday.