Recycling

About every six weeks, I load the jeep up with recycling. The City of Torrance has curbside recycling for private homes, but the eight-home development where we rent must not qualify. The papers, cans and bottles get boxed up and stored in the garage until there is a full load.

I used to go to the little "recycling centers" they have for CRV , but they don't take newspaper, and there tend to be lines - a lot of trash-pickers with bags full of discarded soda cans and bottles. There is a gizmo that reads the UPC as you stuff your containers one at a time into a mechanized tube, and if you're lucky, you get behind a guy who will put the same can in five times because the scanner doesn't recognize it. Now I go to a place one town over.

If you get out onto Sepulveda and drive west, you pass out of the suburban strip-mall and into a more industrial area. By the time I get to where I'm headed, almost all of the vehicles are semis pulling trailers. Driving is a little intimidating. This is the big time- there's a concrete recycling place next door to the place where I go.

The guy who works the scales wears a coverall, a hardhat and mirror-shades. With the level of noise, it's nearly impossible to talk. There is a salvaged stereo blaring dance music, and the booth is decorated with small brass and bronze art rescued from eventual reuse. You see some serious collectors there - battered pick-ups with aluminum duct work and construction debris piled higher than the cab and lashed down and bicycle riders balancing monstrous trash bags full of cans and bottles. Some guys even work the cardboard angle.

An aside- for some reason, the payout often includes unusual currency - two-dollar bills and fifty cent pieces.

My last haul was more lucrative than usual, $41, although I always say I'm not really doing it for the money.

Is it possible?

So I decided to start a blog. Is it possible that this is in any way worth it? Rapidly losing interest in things, not finishing - these are some of my defining characteristics. My main motive, I guess, is to let those few people in the world who are interested know what is going on in our life here.

Right now I am waiting for R as I type. I worked at the feed store today, but right now I have short shifts - 5 or 6 hours. Mission, our Grey, is protesting loudly from the other room because I am not there.

R likes to blade home from work sometimes, other time I pick her up. We just have the one car, but that works fine. She'll change and have a snack, and we'll walk the hounds.

Maybe this is a sufficient start.