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hrjSo when SK called me, in addition to the medical news, she had two extra tickets (because her parents were out of town) for Dave Barry at the Flint Center Thursday evening and did I want to come? So the downstairs tenant and I drove down only to find that SK had an awful cold and wouldn't be joining us after all. I mean, Dave Barry was hilarious and delightful, but I wouldn't have driving down to the south bay on a work night if it hadn't been for the hanging-out-with-friends aspect. Dave told the exploding whale story. I literally laughed until I cried.
I'd promised myself that if I woke up Saturday morning at a reasonable time and feeling rested, I'd go join the shoreline cleanup project in Emeryville. Now, this wasn't one of the "stuff all the trash and litter into bags" cleanup days, this was the "shoreline trash census" day. In addition to our trash bags, we were to carry around checklists of several dozen types of common trash items and to tally up everything we collected. My original reaction was that this seemed a collossal waste of time, but having done the tally, I've come around. I ended up teaming up with another woman who had shown up on a bicycle because it meant that we could easily scoot out to the "elbow" of the Emeryville marina next to the Chinese restaurant rather than sticking closer to the starting point. It turns out my trash partner lives on a boat at the marina -- I have a promise that she'll invite me to go out sailing sometime, although I won't be crushed if she forgets about it. It rapidly became apparent that the commonest item was "small unidentifiable piece of broken plastic", for which we hadn't been given a category. We ended up tallying them in rough groups of 10s and 20s, ending up with a count somewhere around 700 items. The next largest item was cigarette butts, running around 500. After that came bottle tops and caps in the 300-400 range. This was when the usefulness of taking a census really hit me. No bottles. No cans. (Well, ok, one bottle.) The combination of a redemption value on beverage containers combined with a thriving economy of freelance collectors has essentially eliminated covered items as a litter element. I can see how it's useful to have formal censuses documenting that sort of thing. Now if only we could put a bounty on bottle caps! Another observation was that there seemed to be a fair amount of some sort of fluffy fibrous substance (mostly caught up in the roots of the iceplant) that a best guess suggests may be the absorbant fill from disposable diapers. But no actual complete diapers. This suggests that the outer more plasticky parts are successfully degrading fairly thoroughly. The most depressing item that we found enough of to create a new category for were the tiny zip-lock bags discarded from the crack trade. That one came in around 50 or so. The most exciting item was a fisherman's utility knife (your basic hunting knife type) in fairly decent condition that was nearly invisible under the iceplant. Given the way the plants were lying over it, it must have been there for months at least, but not more than maybe half a year. Somebody must be sorry he lost it, but it seemed unlikely that anyone would be coming back looking for it at this point so I kept it. (I did ask the people in charge of the clean-up if there were any policies about such things and they didn't seem to think it was a problem.)
After going home to clean up, I biked down to 4th St in Berkeley for lunch at Cafe Rouge (sorry -- no review this time) and a little recreational shopping. Then I actually took time to cook a nice dinner (I think this was the first "real dinner" I had all week, what with one thing and another), finished watching the last of the Firefly DVDs and actually got to bed early ... and woke up at 5am thereby removing the possibility of a full night's sleep. Sigh.
I went off to the stove-and-hot-tub store today to ask about recommendations for stove-pipe cleaners only to be met with a blank look. It seems never to have occurred to them that they might be a logical resource for information on this point. So it's back to leaving messages on phones and hoping someone deigns to return a call. I did pick up a couple cans of stove blacking and a wire brush so I can get the thing all refurbished before reinstalling it (whenever that is).
I'd promised myself that if I woke up Saturday morning at a reasonable time and feeling rested, I'd go join the shoreline cleanup project in Emeryville. Now, this wasn't one of the "stuff all the trash and litter into bags" cleanup days, this was the "shoreline trash census" day. In addition to our trash bags, we were to carry around checklists of several dozen types of common trash items and to tally up everything we collected. My original reaction was that this seemed a collossal waste of time, but having done the tally, I've come around. I ended up teaming up with another woman who had shown up on a bicycle because it meant that we could easily scoot out to the "elbow" of the Emeryville marina next to the Chinese restaurant rather than sticking closer to the starting point. It turns out my trash partner lives on a boat at the marina -- I have a promise that she'll invite me to go out sailing sometime, although I won't be crushed if she forgets about it. It rapidly became apparent that the commonest item was "small unidentifiable piece of broken plastic", for which we hadn't been given a category. We ended up tallying them in rough groups of 10s and 20s, ending up with a count somewhere around 700 items. The next largest item was cigarette butts, running around 500. After that came bottle tops and caps in the 300-400 range. This was when the usefulness of taking a census really hit me. No bottles. No cans. (Well, ok, one bottle.) The combination of a redemption value on beverage containers combined with a thriving economy of freelance collectors has essentially eliminated covered items as a litter element. I can see how it's useful to have formal censuses documenting that sort of thing. Now if only we could put a bounty on bottle caps! Another observation was that there seemed to be a fair amount of some sort of fluffy fibrous substance (mostly caught up in the roots of the iceplant) that a best guess suggests may be the absorbant fill from disposable diapers. But no actual complete diapers. This suggests that the outer more plasticky parts are successfully degrading fairly thoroughly. The most depressing item that we found enough of to create a new category for were the tiny zip-lock bags discarded from the crack trade. That one came in around 50 or so. The most exciting item was a fisherman's utility knife (your basic hunting knife type) in fairly decent condition that was nearly invisible under the iceplant. Given the way the plants were lying over it, it must have been there for months at least, but not more than maybe half a year. Somebody must be sorry he lost it, but it seemed unlikely that anyone would be coming back looking for it at this point so I kept it. (I did ask the people in charge of the clean-up if there were any policies about such things and they didn't seem to think it was a problem.)
After going home to clean up, I biked down to 4th St in Berkeley for lunch at Cafe Rouge (sorry -- no review this time) and a little recreational shopping. Then I actually took time to cook a nice dinner (I think this was the first "real dinner" I had all week, what with one thing and another), finished watching the last of the Firefly DVDs and actually got to bed early ... and woke up at 5am thereby removing the possibility of a full night's sleep. Sigh.
I went off to the stove-and-hot-tub store today to ask about recommendations for stove-pipe cleaners only to be met with a blank look. It seems never to have occurred to them that they might be a logical resource for information on this point. So it's back to leaving messages on phones and hoping someone deigns to return a call. I did pick up a couple cans of stove blacking and a wire brush so I can get the thing all refurbished before reinstalling it (whenever that is).
