How Do I know That?

 It's not often you sit in a chair on your lawn and admire your roof while kicking the ball for Cooper and sipping on a nice hot cup of liquid gold while air conditioning cools the house down.  It's a first in my lifetime!!

Before we go there however, let's go to the Magic Kingdom ... that place where all hopes and dreams of screaming BINGO and becoming a millionaire are dashed to bits.  Let's face it ... if you are raiding your kids piggy bank, you are NOT going to succeed in this endeavor.

It was crack-open-the-kids-college-fund this night.  How do I know that?  Because I was inundated with change.  There's not much I hate worse than having to count filthy sticky nickels and pennies (it's disgusting) because they never give me the correct amount.  

There are always those frantic attempts to win by withdrawing the last of their social security or welfare checks, or maybe the last $5.00 on that EBT card they should be using to buy food.  No credit cards are allowed, mostly because the bank charges us a chunk.  Any other card with a PIN number will work.

So on this night as I was trying to pare down the long line of attendees, this one lady came up and paid for her $48 worth of cards.  My question is always "do you want it for the amount or do you want cash back"?  Reason being, if they get cash back, they always spend it in the other room on Pull Tabs.  Remember, every dime we make goes to charity.  These are tickets with little tabs you pull off to win money.  Once in a blue moon, you can win $250.  Mostly it's 50 cents to $5.  The cards cost anywhere from 25 cents to $1.00 each.  

No she said, no cash.  Fifteen minutes later she came back through the line wanting $40 cash.  No problem ... we are your local bank ... as she headed to the pull tab counter.  Thirty minutes later she came storming back, barged in front of everyone in line and yelled GIVE ME $40!!!  I would be happy to, but these people are in line ahead of you.  

Well as you can imagine, that went over like a ton of bricks.  The pitchfork came out along with a machete as she ranted and screamed at me.  She was one unhappy camper.  I don't think I've ever seen such ugly looks on a human before.  Crikey ... those Bingo fanatics can get cranky!!

The King came over and calmed her down as he escorted her to the back of the line.  I almost told her if she just used that nice word "please", she might have gotten further, but I kept my mouth shut.  

That being two late nights and two really early mornings, I was pretty beat when the contractor showed up to install the bird wire around the panels.  The guy behind me with something like 45 panels now has an entire breeding facility for pigeons on his roof.  I'm not kidding, they flock around the neighborhood all the time.  

In order to keep them off my roof and out from under my panels, I asked for this bird wire to be installed.  It was kind of tough to do since my roof is rather steep, but they got most of it done when they ran out of wire.  As they were leaving for the day, I heard a knock at the door.

In an even more amazing moment, there stood the contractor and the Building Inspector.  Inspections around here take weeks to obtain.  How do I know that?  Because in one of my previous lives, I worked at the Building Division here for ten years.  It could not have been a better place to work, surrounded by eight men all day long, not to mention good looking contractors.  That brought about an hour's conversation with the contractor about who is there now and how terrible they are!!

In the days of the dinosaurs, you had to have been a contractor to be a building inspector.  At about the end of my "term", they hired a book inspector who was NEVER a contractor and had no idea about anything except what he read.  There is no book that can rival experience.  But that's another story.

My system passed with flying colors and SHE (yup a lady inspector) just looked at the box above and counted the panels.  She didn't even turn it OFF which I had been warned might happen.  

I made a beeline for the thermostat.  Not wanting to overdo it before I had the real numbers, I downloaded the app for my phone.  Everything you ever wanted to know about what these panels are doing is now at my fingertips.  

Another cool thing ... if anything goes wrong at any time, a notification is sent not only to me but the contractor.  Is that service or what???  Here's a snapshot of the panels and what they were doing late in the day.  By sundown, they all went to zero and I shut down that wonderful, cooling, amazing feeling air conditioning.  

PG&E has not updated my info ... they are always two days behind.  I'm curious to see what their usage says.  It's just such an amazing feeling to know I don't have to pay them much any more.  I think my charge is now $12 a month.  WOOHOO!!!!!

Cheers to solar!!!