Why Georgia Power is our friend, NOT!

I was sitting in my van today, waiting to pick up my granddaughter from school and got bored. I started reading the insert in my Georgia Power bill envelope. They were letting me know that they were increasing rates by 10% in order to pursue greener technology, improve delivery, and blah, blah, blah. They went on to say that, even with the rate increase, their rates were still below the national average so it was ok. Guess what? Our salaries here in South Georgia are also below the national average, so it does impact our budgets negatively. We aren't getting 10% raises anytime soon, either. They are an industry pretty much unaffected by the recession and their employees make good money with plenty of benefits, too. Further down in the article, they go on to say they are also adding an average 3.5% to pay for construction costs related to 2 nuclear power plants they are building for the next 4 years. So, we basically are getting a 13.5% increase in our bill. Another item in the newsletter was a program they started to help us get rid of our old refrigerators and freezers sitting in our garages and basements. Their theory is that each one uses about $100 per year. They will pick up the old fridge and pay $35 to boot! They are partnered with an appliance recycler who does the actual pickup. I have several problems with this. First, if I have an extra fridge in the garage, it's holding beer or fish bait or something. It's not empty. If it was, it would be for sale on Craigslist! Second, Georgia Power stated they don't pickup non-working appliances. If the recycler is only picking up working appliances, they aren't tearing them apart. They're selling them to the budget used appliance stores for resale. Sounds like a hell of a racket to me. How stupid do they think we are?

Odd thoughts

Well, not really odd thoughts. Just a collection of unrelated stuff thrown together.

• When money gets tight, the term "tighten our belts" is used. I just realized where that came from. I bought a belt the other day. I haven't worn a belt in 30 years, but in the last 2 years, I've lost about 15 pounds. Not that I needed to but that's the recession for you. I decided it's cheaper to buy an $8 belt than $100 for new pants.

• I was riding down the road the other day and was behind a car with a GPS stuck to the windshield. It was obviously a local car. I was thinking that, in Atlanta or Tampa, it might make sense to have one if you went to different unknown places. In a town of 40,000 people, unless you have a really bad memory, why would you need one? Especially if you are just driving to work. I guess it's the "gadget factor" striking again.

• I had to replace the fuel tank straps on my van last week. It lived in Delaware for 12 years before moving south and has a lot of undercarriage rust. I don't know why undercoating isn't an automatic thing up north. No one had them in stock, so I called the 4 main parts stores to find out who could get them the quickest. Note that there is only one company making them so everyone had to get them from the same place. Here are my results. I stopped by NAPA first. They said all they had was a universal kit that you just cut off what you need. I told them that their website listed the correct parts but they weren't interested in trying to look them up. I called Advance Auto Parts. Note that it's Friday. They said they could have them by the following Wednesday. I called O'reillys and they said they would have to email the warehouse to find out when they could get them. They said to call back between 4 and 6 pm. Autozone was my last call. They said if I order them before 1 pm, they would have them the next day (Saturday!) It's pretty bad to have one part with 4 different answers. Needless to say, Autozone got my order.