Friday, June 24, 2011

Hot! Hot! Hot! and may I add dry!

Here in Texas, we have been plagued all spring with wildfires. In west and northwest Texas, we have had little or no rain for about nine months. Combine no rain with triple digit temperatures every day for weeks, and high winds, and there is great potential for disaster. And, believe me, we are well acquainted with disaster this year. Every day in Lubbock County, there are reports of one or more homes that have burned. Grass fires break out almost every day burning structures, fences, crops, and forage for wildlife and livestock. We watch and pray for rain, and not a drop falls. Farmers planted their seeds knowing that unless we received rain, the only reason they were planting was to be able to qualify for a settlement on their crop insurance.

We desperately need rain!

Got to be a better way!

Warning -- this is a rant!

I have been shredding old financial records. I do this every summer when I am the only person in the office. It is a nasty job, uses lots of time, and the shredded material takes up way more space than the documents did in their original form. Yes, I understand that for security reasons, old financial records need to be destroyed, but there has to be a better way. A small pile of mostly biodegradable paper is shredded and placed into trash bags which not only take up way more space than the unshredded documents, but it goes to the landfill preserved in plastic trash bags which last an infinitely long time. Isn't there some other secure way to destroy sensitive documents?