I filled an empty water bottle with tap water from our much lauded Los Angeles clean water system. I intended to use it to water the house plants, but when my husband wandered through the kitchen an hour later, he spotted the bottle of water on the counter.

"I need a bottle of water to take on my trip to the doctor's office," he announced. Without thinking about it, I replied, "Go ahead, take that one."

As he picked it up, he grimaced and said, "This water is bad." I glanced over my shoulder as he was holding it up to the sunlight coming through the window. Indeed, the water was murky, a sort of light orange-brown. I scooped out a sealed bottle of Arrowhead Spring water (the package was right under his elbow the whole time) and gave it to him in the other's stead.

As I poured the tap water down the drain, I could *smell* it. You're not supposed to be able to smell your drinking water, but this had a definite odor. Kind of biological, covered by chlorine. Or something like that.

We may be the butt of jokes, here in L.A., for buying bottled water ("designer water" "chi-chi" some tease us) but I'd have to be very thirsty all right to drink the stuff that comes out of the faucet. Bottled spring water, it is.