Story of the Day 6/ 24/ 2014

My son is in the midst of an internship. It is paid, too, although no one, not him and not the place he is working know for how much. He has been told that he will be given a sum at the end of the summer.
I am hoping that this is a pleasant surprise.

Of course, since last year's internship was not paid, any amount will be a pleasant surprise. (Last years internship suggested he would be paid out of a grant they were awaiting reimbursement on. It later came out that they had been waiting since 1993.)

I ask him, at least once a week, how it is going.
So far, all of the reports have been good.
They treat him nicely, it is a friendly work environment, and he has figured where to park his bicycle.

Today, however, I got a more interesting report than usual.
Today, he tells me, was spent in a meeting, a long meeting about plumbing.
In this case, plumbing means toilets.

The university is putting a new system in place at the sports dome.
They are collecting rainwater that falls on the roof and filtering it twice, then using this water to flush the toilets.
It is a move towards lessening environmental impact of combined sewer overflows that happen when it rains. This causes raw sewage to drain into the lake (which was once the most polluted in North America.)

The interesting part of this meeting was that they were concerned that people, (students, staff, visitors) might mistake the water for drinking water,
so they have decided to dye it purple.

My son spent the rest of the meeting unable to get his mind off of the fact that if anyone was so mistaken as to think they should drink water from the toilet bowl, the fact that it had not been treated by the municipal water company was the least of their problems.