I think it's finally safe to say that winter is over, although temperatures approach the freezing point at night. However, it is supposed to reach 71 degrees tomorrow, which is the warmest we've seen this year, although it will drop into the 40s at night. I have raked up a bunch of the leaves I didn't get to last fall and added them to the compost pile. The leaves will be helpful since I've added mostly shredded paper and cardboard over the winter. They don't amount to much by themselves, but they attract the worms and help everything else to compost. Other than that, I did get around to picking a bunch of junk around the yard and hauling it to the transfer site. Some of it was due to laziness, others because I harbored the idea that I might need it for something. I'm still working on the category for American Indians and First Nations people in my paying job. I still have a ways to go with that, but am more than half done.
I went in for my annual check-up this afternoon. The usual gun ownership question wasn't even asked, but there were far more questions than there usually are, most of them designed to determine whether I'm about to off myself or whether I can care for myself. The three words that I was supposed to memorize and cite back later were there, along with the drawing of a clock set to a specified time, although the latter is something that 20-year-olds might have trouble doing these days. I was tempted to draw a rectangle with 10:10 in the center.
I am always intrigued by them asking me 100 times what my birthday is. I kind of know why they do it but I usually come back with, Is that the alzheimer's question?
Today, I mowed the lawn and bought an edger. Edgers usually last only as long as the string that comes with it because I can rarely get it to work again after replacing the roll of string. I end up getting frustrated and setting it aside, not doing any edging for a couple of years, and then buying another one. Unfortunately, I ran out of string just on the front lawn and am not in the mood to fight with it today. I don't know what the temperatures are today, but I was sweating by the time I was done with the lawn stuff. I brought six bags of deposit cans and bottles into the redemption place. They call them redemption centers in Maine, and it seems people should preach in there rather than sorting bottles and cans for the deposit. Six bags got me $15.25, and I still have about twelve more. However, I hate spending the whole day waiting for them to be counted, so I'll take another six bags in on Thursday. They used to let people drop them off on the way to the transfer station with their trash and pick the deposit money up on the way back, which makes the most sense, but now they require everyone to stand there in that stinky place while they count them. When they started that policy, I quit bringing them in, but I have too much of a backlog now.
You get nothing here for recycling...unless it is stolen copper wire. They must get something for that. @Ken Anderson you could get an edger with a metal blade. They are usually gas powered and don't wear out. Don't "edge" something you don't want to though, as it will cut it .
Here, if they are aluminum cans, and probably other cans, they just weigh them although I just put them in the recycling cans for weekly pickup. Not sure they ever actually DO any recycling any more.
We pay a 5-cent deposit, which is what we get back, and I think the state taxes the bottling companies for whatever the redemption centers earn.
Okay, so you are redeeming, not recycling. Got it. We pay no deposit. I remember as a kid roaming the streets for $.02 per bottle for spending money. They still had penny candy and such in those years too.
Yeah, when I was a kid in Michigan, we got different prices for the larger bottles than the smaller ones, but pretty much everyone threw them out, often along the road. Then, my cousins and I started going through the landfill and that was a goldmine. None of our parents wanted us to pick up the beer bottles, but we did. At that time, they would be returned supposedly to the store you bought them from, so we had to go to the bar to cash in the beer bottles. My grandfather ran the only grocery store in town, and he didn't stock alcoholic beverages. If we picked up bottles on the way to the store, we could at least get enough to buy a bottle of pop and a popsicle, and usually more than that.
I remember pop bottles were a 3 cent deposit. My folks had the little grocery store, so that was where all the neighborhood kids brought their bottles and then spent the money on penny candy. Most of the bottles probably came from our store anyway, but I do not remember there being any requirement to return to the store you bought from. There was a back storeroom and that is probably where my mom kept all the pop bottles until the next delivery truck came along and picked them up. Back then, I think that all pop came in bottles from the company, and usually sold in little cardboard containers that held a six pack of pop. I remember , sometimes there were coloring contests for the kids, and the delivery person would leave a handful of posters with my mom for the local kids to color, and win some special prize. One must have been for the Spokane Rodeo, because I remember coloring the poster of Annie Oakley (played by Gail Davis at that time). I don’t remember if I won, but I do remember we went to the rodeo and I got to see Gene Autry , his horse Champion, and Annie Oakley.
I haven't been posting much lately for a few reasons. One, I am bummed because it seems that being able to move this site to a new server has, for reasons that are a mystery to me, fallen through once again, as I am getting no responses. Second, I have an abdominal hernia that, so they tell me, would be difficult to operate on because I have had at least one too many surgeries in that area, beginning with a major issue over a strangulated hernia in the late 1990s, a horribly botched operation, and a resulting drug-resistant infection that had me in the hospital for about six weeks being fed through a tube; I couldn't even drink water. And, while reaching down for Ella a few days ago, I twisted something, and I think the result was a partially strangulated hernia. More afraid of operations than the hernia, I decided to wait it out. I knew that it wasn't as bad as the fully strangulated hernia that I had in the late 1990s, so I wasn't overly afraid of dying. I ate only broth for a couple of days and alternated between working, sleeping, and walking even though it hurt to do so because I knew it could be helpful. I slept a lot because nothing hurt as long as I was positioned correctly in bed. That seemed to have worked out okay because I am okay now. I hurt a little but have been lengthening my walks, which seems to help more than it hurts now. I have graduated to power walks, which is when you walk like you haven't taken a crap for a couple of weeks and are hoping to make it home in time to get to the bathroom. Okay, I'm not doing power walks because people look awfully silly when they do that, but neither am I dragging along. Third, I can't remember the third reason, but I had one when I started this.