the 'other' other thing....

...I had on my little 'to do' list for Thursday when I was roaming around town: take aluminum cans to recycle. I know some hilarious people who like to recycle cans to get money and put it in their 'beer-making' fund. And have taken cans on a cross country drive more than once for them to then have to haul to the recycling center and turn into cash. I had two five gallon buckets sitting in the carport full of crushed cans, and wanted to take when I went downtown to that 'hail and farewell' pot luck lunch. Why take the cans on a scenic drive, when I could just get the cash from the recycling business, and not have a car full of stinky bug-infested cans driving around for hours?

I had no idea what the going rate for cans would be, and was interested to see a couple of guys pushing grocery carts piled high with bags of recyclable material struggling along, headed towards the yard where you take metal to re-sell.  I was also very surprised when I took my two little bags of smooshed cans in the big open warehouse that had a sign saying: Receiving, and found a man on the job smoking a cigarette. It is so uncommon to see anyone in public smoking any more. And so unusual to see someone actually working and holding a lighted cigarette at the same time.

I was so startled I wanted to say something to him. Better judgment caused me to keep my mouth shut. Because I would have probably made some comment about how unexpected it was to see a man standing there with something on fire in the middle of his face. Reminding me of the title of that Robert Fulghum book: 'It Was On Fire When I Lay Down On It'... I guess a story about people who do profoundly dumb things while appearing to have at least a modicum of good sense?

I think I was expecting that my accumulated cans would have some actual value: sorry, only two dollars and fifteen cents. That won't go far for the  people who enjoy creating home-brew.

So I think I will put my lottery winnings in with the $2.15 to spur the process along. I'd never had a scratch off card before, so did not know how it works. But was pleasantly surprised when I used my Lucky Peso to scratch all the spaces and discover I had a card that paid a great big whopping $15. I will stop by the curb store and cash it in...