Better Than TV
My beautiful kind wife is a rational, intelligent person nearly all of the time (for real). But, she is the only person I know who makes use of those flyers that magically appear on our neighborhood’s screen doors in the middle of the night. She actually reads them, and then, calls the numbers to invite people into our home to design us a new kitchen, or to test the water that runs from our taps (even when nobody knew that we needed a new kitchen or that we were especially concerned about the contents of our tap water). This is not a common occurrence, but it is a regular and familiar one. The visits are spread out just far enough that each time one happens I am surprised. I think she decides that since there is nothing good on TV, and since there were no other plans for the evening; why not invite someone over who can show us how with this special brand of siding, we’ll never have to paint our house again?
These guys can be pretty entertaining. Like the one in the kitchen with a machine that takes 40 minutes to determine that our water is “hard,” that the only solution to this problem is a large tank full of salt tablets that he can install in the basement for $9,999.99. Then, we won’t get the crusty build up on our faucets. And, we’ll use way less soap (now that’s worth ten grand). Or the guy with his “anionic surfactant” that he’ll put on his tongue to illustrate just how safe it is. It’s soap. We know you can do that with soap.
Don’t get too high and mighty; we never spend money on these people. We just kind of watch them, and when they are done, they disappear for a couple of months until beautiful kind wife gets bored and invites another one over.
I especially enjoyed the energy efficiency expert of a couple of years ago who was going to cut our energy bill in half. He was so sad when he found out that we didn’t have air conditioning. He did, though, have a proposal that we entertained for about half an hour in our back yard: solar panels on the garage roof. Generate your own power! (he said). Make extra money! (he said). Apparently 0.5 percent of the extra energy we generated would be bought back by the power company, which sounded pretty exciting to us until we pulled out the calculator and figured out that the system wouldn’t pay for itself before the sun burns out.
But now, interestingly (to me at least), there is an exciting new development on the exciting “solar panels on the roof of your suburban house” scene (did you know about this scene? It’s exciting.). This past August, the Kindergarten Cop signed a bill that has the goal of installing solar electricity generation systems on one million homes in California by 2018. You may be surprised to learn that it is known as the “million solar homes bill.” There are developer requirements (which you probably know about if you are Fred Bowden) and there is $2.9 billion available to incentivize (made-up word alert) homeowners to install these state-of-the-art fancy shiny panels on their roofs. The basic idea is that the state splits the cost with you 50/50. So after spending $6,000 or $8,000 of your own money you will be energy independent, and you can reallocate what you used to spend each month on electricity for gasoline.
But what does all of this mean for me? It means that an attractive and neat brochure from an enterprising state approved installer of solar panels will eventually end up lodged in my screen door. And when that happens, I can look forward to a comprehensive home energy needs assessment being performed for me in my very own dining room. It will entertain my wife. And I’ll be forced to admit that, yes, it is better than TV.
My beautiful kind wife is a rational, intelligent person nearly all of the time (for real). But, she is the only person I know who makes use of those flyers that magically appear on our neighborhood’s screen doors in the middle of the night. She actually reads them, and then, calls the numbers to invite people into our home to design us a new kitchen, or to test the water that runs from our taps (even when nobody knew that we needed a new kitchen or that we were especially concerned about the contents of our tap water). This is not a common occurrence, but it is a regular and familiar one. The visits are spread out just far enough that each time one happens I am surprised. I think she decides that since there is nothing good on TV, and since there were no other plans for the evening; why not invite someone over who can show us how with this special brand of siding, we’ll never have to paint our house again?
These guys can be pretty entertaining. Like the one in the kitchen with a machine that takes 40 minutes to determine that our water is “hard,” that the only solution to this problem is a large tank full of salt tablets that he can install in the basement for $9,999.99. Then, we won’t get the crusty build up on our faucets. And, we’ll use way less soap (now that’s worth ten grand). Or the guy with his “anionic surfactant” that he’ll put on his tongue to illustrate just how safe it is. It’s soap. We know you can do that with soap.
Don’t get too high and mighty; we never spend money on these people. We just kind of watch them, and when they are done, they disappear for a couple of months until beautiful kind wife gets bored and invites another one over.
I especially enjoyed the energy efficiency expert of a couple of years ago who was going to cut our energy bill in half. He was so sad when he found out that we didn’t have air conditioning. He did, though, have a proposal that we entertained for about half an hour in our back yard: solar panels on the garage roof. Generate your own power! (he said). Make extra money! (he said). Apparently 0.5 percent of the extra energy we generated would be bought back by the power company, which sounded pretty exciting to us until we pulled out the calculator and figured out that the system wouldn’t pay for itself before the sun burns out.
But now, interestingly (to me at least), there is an exciting new development on the exciting “solar panels on the roof of your suburban house” scene (did you know about this scene? It’s exciting.). This past August, the Kindergarten Cop signed a bill that has the goal of installing solar electricity generation systems on one million homes in California by 2018. You may be surprised to learn that it is known as the “million solar homes bill.” There are developer requirements (which you probably know about if you are Fred Bowden) and there is $2.9 billion available to incentivize (made-up word alert) homeowners to install these state-of-the-art fancy shiny panels on their roofs. The basic idea is that the state splits the cost with you 50/50. So after spending $6,000 or $8,000 of your own money you will be energy independent, and you can reallocate what you used to spend each month on electricity for gasoline.
But what does all of this mean for me? It means that an attractive and neat brochure from an enterprising state approved installer of solar panels will eventually end up lodged in my screen door. And when that happens, I can look forward to a comprehensive home energy needs assessment being performed for me in my very own dining room. It will entertain my wife. And I’ll be forced to admit that, yes, it is better than TV.
posted by kyle at 9:26 PM
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