When I lived in Arizona, I lived around the corner from the family-owned trash-hauling company that I chose to pick up my trash. Unfortunately that meant I was always first on their route, and they started in the pre-dawn twilight in hopes of getting done before the worst of the heat. Luckily my trash can had handles that would latch over the lid, so it was safe enough to leave out overnight. Also, they were observant enough that at least sometimes if I didn't put the trash out, they would give me a partial credit on my bill. Nice people.

Yeah, we can leave our recycling by the curb overnight, too. Good thing, or I'd never get it picked up.

Apartment trash! Apartment recycling! All I have to worry about is competing for space. I just need to remember to take my recycling out on the weekend, since it gets full up towards the middle of the week.

Hee. Don't get me started on recycling. We used to have a reasonable recycling bin, but since the city went broke it's gone. So I can recycle magazines and aluminum cans here in town. I can do cardboard if I don't mind that it's downcycling (going to the digester with the town's sewage (not even my sewage; I have a septic tank) to end up as compost). Oh, and I can take packing materials to the UPS store.

But I have to take #1 & #2 plastics and tin cans to Winslow, just under two hours away. And #3 and up plastics, clear or colored glass, I go to Sedona. So the amount of fossil fuel I spend on achieving recycling is kind of ridiculous.

However, all that means I have about two kitchen sized bags of trash a week. I wish I got a discount for lack of use if I don't have a container out, but since the trash guy has to drive a goodish distance just for me, that's not happening. Once I get the composter and start doing that, the trash will be really minimal. There will be the meat scraps and styrofoam food containers (which can actually go into the digester, although they say it can't) and plastic wrap and not a heck of a lot else.

We don't have recycling here...I want it, but not quite enough to do all the coordinating myself, as my neighbors are almost all deranged cheapskates...I'd need a signed, recycled-paper declaration of lust from Adrian Grenier to make that worthwhile, especially as details are not my friends.

Guess who's got two thumbs and got their recycling picked up 10 minutes ago?

THIS GUY!!

BOOYAH!!

Cool, MM!

Two thumbs??? When'd that happen?

I think that it was clear that you were willing to escalate, and they would have to both explain why the guy put the note on your recycling when it was recycling day (I suspect that the real purpose of the notes is for when people put out the recycling on the wrong week) and when you told them what they said about the route supervisor, someone was actually going to have to do that shit.

I would've said it was full when I arrived, but I got thirsty. Let 'em prove I didn't drink from the old thing. At least, that's what I would've said if I could have avoided saying the thing that would've landed me in jail. Which... yeah, jail.

Later I thought that that is what I should have said. But the possibility didn't ever came to my mind then - again, I wouldn't have drank from this thing in a life or death situation. I'm quite convinced that that alone could have killed me.

And I was fairly amused, while being in the IDF, that it's the only place with a fashion police that could send you do jail for a hell lot of reasons.

I tell you, sometimes I have no idea how this institution works. The Mastenichastabo (I bet there's a typo there. I'm referring to the order of linage and jobs in the 15th and 16th century Russia) had clearer logic.