Kurt Vonnegut died Wednesday night (US time) [NYT, via Scripting News].

He was 84.

Not long after our last water bill we made three changes at home for saving water:

• A new 9 litre per minute shower head ($20, easy to fit).
• Buckets in the shower to collect water and redirecting the drain of the clothes washer to the laundry tub until full.
• Toilet mains tap turned off. All saved grey water goes to filling the cistern (manually with a bucket) for flushing. Left over water goes on the hedge and around the garage.

We got our new water bill today. Our water usage has dropped to 236 litres a day from 300 last year. Our bills quotes 239 litres as efficient water usage for two people without a garden. Recent aims for water usage quote 140 litres a day per person so we're pretty happy with our usage. And the garden gets a good soak now with the left over water, something it never got before.

And I have no idea how long my showers are.

A minor note, on a $100 bill the actual water usage cost is $17.19. But then I think the service of having clean drinking water pumped to my house and poo hygienically removed is something worth paying for on top of the actual water.

You know there was a time when I thought water was free and there was no such thing as a "water bill".