I went into tier 2 in electricity last month. Only a tiny amount but I always wonder what kicked it over when this happens. Gas stayed in tier one.

Once again I stayed in the first tier for both gas and electricity last month. Good for me!

Curses. I stayed within tier one for gas but went into tier 2 for electricity last month. I wonder what I was using electricity for. More than usual.

Stayed within the first tier of both gas and electric again last month. Yay!

Once again I have stayed within the baseline usage for both gas and electricity. I'm proud.

Last month I lost the tiering game, but only by a little. My gas bill included small charges in tier two, breaking my three-month record. My electric bill stayed within the baseline. I think I can account, at least in part, for the gas increase: I was home the whole time and I was washing towels and blankets frequently in hot water, items that had been stained by Bullet's spraying food, blood, and saliva. Hot water just seemed the way to go with that.

I may lose it this coming month too. A few days ago it was chilly and I turned up the heat to 72 degrees so I could step out of my shower into a toasty bathroom. I love toasty bathrooms even though I don't much like being overheated generally. I neglected to turn the heat back down and spent a few nights listening to the heater kick on when it really should have been off. So I turned it back down to 70. If I were really conscious I'd kick it down a few more degrees but...even though I like sitting on the couch with a blanket over my knees I don't like being chilled the rest of the time.

Another game. Free Cell. I figured out that if I took the time to back up, to reverse moves, sufficiently, I could win every game. Some games are easy to win without reversing moves but I get enough of them where I make the wrong decision and get stuck and the only way out is to reverse the moves and try something else. At times it has seemed not worth the trouble but I thought I'd see if I could do it. Right now I have a record of winning 122 games in a row and my winning percentage is steadily rising. My aim is now to get the average win time down too. It's over 13 minutes because my lazy ass has just walked away from the computer and done other things, leaving half-finished games. Now when I start a game I finish it, or I shut down the game completely to turn off the time counting.

Last night I went to soup night at Joe Momma's again. We buy soup, bread, drinks, dessert for $15 a head and the money goes for a playpump. Last night we paid for the pump! This activity falls under the heading of "games", too, because the children who use the playpump are playing a game. From now on the soup nights will benefit other things.