Yesterday we'd gone out to the mall to check out a new cooking supply store in town William's Sonoma and while the products they carry seem interesting, cooking supply-wise, I prefer other places. It's more the "yuppy" "in-crowd" style cooking shop rather than truly useful supply store IMO. -_- BUT, that didn't stop us from buying some cinnamon-sugar, tea (from Harney's! Yay!) balsamic vinegar and some munchies. :P
Otherwise, the city apparently rescinded the local state of emergency yesterday and things are mostly back to normal (if you call millions in damage; destroyed parks lots of flooded ground/homes etc. normal...) except... we're still under level 4 water restrictions. Absolutely no outdoor water use and minimal indoor use. -_-; And there are idiots out there getting their cars washed!? I can really understand getting things done because of necessity (cross-contamination; completely muddied from flood waters / travel in flood zones, wedding/funerals etc.) but in-city and that??! :x Hopefully the waters will clear up enough that we can start getting more water processed and back to normal usage again soon. So far in this house, we're off loose tea and on to bagged (no biggie), no constantly running water in the shower (cold!), minimal cooking (whee fast food and other junk), we started using disposable dishes briefly but that clogs the landfill... >_< Still, local Starbucks, Tim Horton's etc., are using disposables for the time being for all customers to reduce water use as well. But, when the dam overflowed from last week's floods... *shrug* At least the 200 year flood should be over now with this one. :P
Could be worse, SoCal probably is more than familiar with water restrictions and has to do worse. I was reading on the local news website some of the reader submitted ideas but... "collect the water you run while waiting for the shower to get warm" or "have a bucket in the shower to collect some of the water that's run". Nice thought, but I'm NOT sharing my shower with buckets! The plants and grass outside can die first. :P (After all that flooding, they're not likely to die soon, and it's expected to rain a bit for the next couple of days). I will admit though, that all the restrictions have made me start thinking about getting a rain barrel for run-off. Not to mention I'm sure the plants would like non-chlorinated fluoride treated stuff. Of course, then we'd have to be careful of still water and mosquito larvae... You just can't win. :P
BUT; on the bright side, we got FB 9 yesterday as well as FB 17 and the Fanbook. I haven't read through Vol 17 yet, nor have I finished reading the Fanbook, but it was fun to curl up with the books. I also read through most of the tea book I'd ordered as well. Very informative and lots of stuff I'm still not sure about. I'll have to read it again later. The French volumes... I'm still on FB 8 at the moment. It's been going to bed with me but I haven't actually gotten far in reading it yet. Oh well. Maybe later. It was interesting though in the Fanbook to see a list of all of Takaya-sensei's works. The games seem cute but I haven't had a chance to try them all yet. I really want to see how I am at the trivia section. :P
And lastly... Baby Pink has updated but I haven't read the summary yet. Shall see if I can't do that later tomorrow. Oh well.