Oct 26 - sometimes pleasant surprises

Last year our propane delivery (we only get it delivered once per year) was on January 6th. 2123.3 litres were delivered @ 71 cents per liter, plus a delivery charge, plus GST. This year I decided to get delivery earlier so that I don't have to worry about the truck getting down the driveway with lots of snow -- 1374.6 litres @ 53 cents per litre, plus delivery of course and plus GST of course and plus HAZMAT fee.

What a difference ! I don't know how much is due to decreased usage, because the delivery is two months earlier and of course November and December are cold months to heat the place. Although the propane usage from heating would have been negligible from the middle of December until January 6th since I would have been burning wood. The difference due to reduced price is clearly measurable though. The cost per litre is 75% of what it was last year. I like that !

The tank holds 3000 litres -- I've been through this before in the blog -- but they only fill it to 80%, therefore the "real" capacity of the tank is 2400 litres. Come to think of it, the delivery of 2123 litres implies that I only had 277 litres left in the tank which would have produced a reading of 10%. I recall that the tank was reading around 30% when he came ... this is not making sense to me. That delivery of 2123 litres must have put the tank over 2400 litres. It must have. Something doesn't make sense. 30% of 3000 litres + 2123 = 3023. ?!?! Well, there's not much that I can do about it now.

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I just checked the tank. It's showing a tad over 80%. That makes sense.

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Well, I just went back and looked at my blog for that day and the amount of fuel delivered agrees with what they told me on the phone. I hadn't speculated last year about how much was left in the tank. I do remember now that Sandy had left the bedroom door open a crack while we were away so perhaps last year's usage was above normal. I could speculate all day and get nowhere ! It is what it is.

Later ...

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The 407 ETR toll road north of Toronto has a confusing system. You use a transponder and there are no toll booths. Without a transponder you are charged a "video toll" for someone to read the pictures later and process your license plate. While we lived in PA use of this road was "free" in that they didn't bother getting data from PA to process the charges. Once we moved to Florida we started getting charged. I guess that there are enough Florida plates to make it worth their while. Once we started getting charged, I got transponders for our cars so that I didn't have to pay the additional $3 per trip for the video processing.

I seldom check my emailed bills but did this time because it looked unusually high. There were video toll charges so I called them, which they reversed. That usually happens when they mis-read the transponder but this time it was because they were reading the trailer license plate. After I got off the phone with them I realized that the trailer usage was Jason's and that we were probably double charged. I exchanged emails with him and sure enough, well perhaps sure enough, he wasn't charged at all. Go figure. Pulling a trailer has, for me, resulted in three situations -- charges for car only, trailer only with video charge, car and trailer i.e. double charge. Roll the dice and send the bills !

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It continued to rain all day. It's raining this morning. I did get the car loaded up during a lull in the rain; I pulled up the boat during a similar lull; I brought in wood during yet another lull. You get the idea. Wait until the rain turns to light drizzle and then do your thing.

We'd invited Jim and Bonnie over but Bonnie called around 5pm and said that she'd been with 20 other women and made 240 apple pies that day and wasn't feeling sociable. I said that she probably smelled like apples too ... we'll catch them when we get back from Toronto. Hopefully that will happpen. We haven't been around much this year and by the looks of things next year could be even worse, what with a trip it Italy and all.

We'll be leaving here in about an hour, on our way to Stef's, the eye doctor, Jersey Boys etc. and expect to be back Friday afternoon sometime. I've eaten; Abby has eaten; Sandy is up and getting ready. I have yet to pack but that doesn't take me any more than a couple of minutes. It took a lot longer to pack the tools and I'm probably forgetting something.

Onward ....