$#@%^&@!

our fair city has brought in a new waste management system, which sees homeowners paying variable taxes based on the amount of trash that they put out--i think i may have reported on this a while back. i wholeheartedly support this, and wish the new program every success. it makes lots of sense to me...if you can recycle, compost and otherwise reduce your household waste, then you shouldn't have to pay the same taxes as someone who can't bring themselves to sort their recyclables.

we have been quite smugly putting out a couple of small plastic grocery bags of trash in our tiny garbage bin every couple of weeks...we once went a month without having our garbage bin emptied because we didn't consider it full enough to justify having the garbage truck idling in front of our house during collection.

i suppose instead of being self-satisfied and complacent we should have been chaining our garbage bin to our porch and writing our address on it in big sharpie pen, and realized that we are surrounded by people who create so much garbage that they have to GO AND STEAL SOMEONE ELSE'S GARBAGE BIN in order to have properly presented garbage for the city to collect. jesus. we are now going to have to pay our fair city $50 for a new garbage bin. garbage put out in anything but an approved, registered bin does not get collected.

this is a test of my endorsement of the whole program, and of my beloved mayor miller. i don't actually know much about the man, and i do know many people who say things like 'feh, that miller, he's a bum'. i can't even recall if i voted for him, but i do like him and the things he is trying to do to make our city better. the garbage plan is an excellent one, but suffers from the growing pains associated with any kind of transition. i bet when this idea was being passed around nobody thought of a way to deal with mass bin thefts. i don't even really mind the $50 fee for the bin--apparently tons of these are being stolen all over the city, and well, someone has to pay for the production and delivery of them, right? i do sincerely hope someone at city hall figures out how to not punish people for losing their bins to theft. it was my hope that if they knew we were simply replacing a stolen tiny bin instead of upsizing to a bigger one that they would offer us a free replacement, but not dice. i can't say i blame them, really.

nonetheless, i am still pretty ticked off at this, and wish the person who stole our bin (but so thoughtfully removed the bag of garbage that was in it and left it under our porch, along with a few empty beer boxes) a bad case of bedbugs and a guilty conscience. (i also wish this on my neighbour john, and my boss at the dog food factory, for reasons that i may go into some other time). may all of them sleep badly tonight! grr.

the year of ten thousand snowmen

recently, while listening to christmas music at home one night (yes, this has already started in at the monkey house) i came to the conclusion that frosty the snowman really had the right idea; even though in the animated tv show he comes across as a bit of a witless buffoon, he has a good attitude. he knows his days are numbered (as are ours, every one of us) but he's determined to live out his days as happily as he can, rather than waste time being miserable about his inevitable melting. it seems very self-actualized and enlightened.


i remember in my youth flipping through national geographic and seeing photographs of Qin's terra cotta army and being blown away by the sheer number of them. in my more recent years, as a budding peacenik and treehugger, i've decided that i should embark on the zen-like practice of building my own army, but instead of an army of soldiers to carry out soldierly duties (ie killing, looting, and otherwise oppressing), it should be an army of ten thousand snowmen to bring peace and the sheer therapeutic joy of snowplay to the world.

i admit, ten thousand is a bit ambitious, but hey, if you're going to dream, you should dream big! last year i managed nineteen snowmen ranging from actual snow snowmen to this beautiful sculpted foam ninja snowman who is currently at large somewhere in my office.

i invite any and all snowman makers to help me in my quest. if anyone is interested in sharing pictures of their snowmen , I will be more than happy to set up a picassa web album of our growing population.

so far, this year's tally is four snowmen (not bad, considering we've only had one real snowfall). here's a couple of them, snowmeo and juliet, the famous starcrossed lovers. (juliet is leaning down from her balcony and gazing at the imploring figure of her man--the thing that looks like a ghost with a happy face in the background is the work of mother nature and had nothing to do with me.)

best wishes of the season, and happy snowplaying!

ah, procrastination!

in a rather lame and transparent attempt to put off cleaning the bathroom, i've decided to try to get some more pictures posted here. these are from my summer/fall adventures.


this is a bee stinger, with the guts attached. we've all heard that when a bee stings someone it disembowels itself, yes? this is true. they sometimes trail their innards around as they continue to fly around after they've stung. i got stung twice, once in the ear (it was un-fun). poor little bees.


we planted some wilted, sprouting ginger in our garden, then forgot about it. look at what eventually got dug up! it was tasty. this also works if you throw your sprouting ginger ends in a flower pot.





fall was painting season. we painted and painted and painted. we got sick enough of that vile puce non-colour that was on the walls, and put lots of color in our home. it actually feels like people live here now! the pumpkin orange bathroom and the green pepper living room do so much more to soothe the soul than dusty rose and beige-ish.

ok, i've successfully evaded the bathroom cleaning for 8 hours now...time to go!

miscellanea

it's a day off today, remembrance day is a federal holiday. i observed a moment of silence at 11:00, but only because it was a continuation of the 5 hours of silence that i'm still observing now. i've spent some time happily (and quietly!) futzing around the house--moving stuff from the porch, feeding the birds, reading honey recipes--it's a nice day off, as days off are so often wont to be.

i've gotten out of the blogging thing, same goes for facebok. dunno why. i've been keeping busy, probably alot busier than in previous years. baking, composting, jam and jelly making, honey bottling, painting and fiddling in the garden have kept me pretty occupied (although i admit to spending many many hours playing video games ;) )

anyway, time to run...more to come (eventually...)