Poor Hibiscus

This is what happens when Gary leaves me home alone in the freezing weather.

Bill Collectors

I pay my bills, I really do.

But in September of 2003 I got a statement from a phone company saying I owed them $156.10. I called them to say that the phone number from which these calls were supposedly made had closed down by me in June 2002. (At one point we had two land lines, before we got high-speed cable internet.) They said they would research it. Then later I got a letter from a new company telling me I needed to pay. Then later I got another letter from a bill collection agency telling me I needed to pay. Each time I phoned them and explained, and each time I kept notes and was glad I had kept notes from the time before.

And now today, another call from another bill collector, for the same amount. By some miracle I was able to locate the paperwork and notes from 2003 and explain it all again. When I complained about being through all this before, she told me how the bill collectors buy and sell debts to each other--so if bill collection company A doesn't succeed, they sell it to B who tries again, etc. Apparently, since no one seems to believe me, this may go on forever.

*sad face*

Waste Management

I guess it is getting pretty bad when you can't think of any better way to waste people's time than to post about trash cans. I could have recycled some old topics, but instead, I'm making bad puns.

I do like the new blue bins we got to place our recyclable materials in. Dallas as been slower than it should have been in getting around to this, IMHO. But, really, do we need bins this big, even if they are emptied only once every two weeks?? For that matter, do we need regular trash bins this big? I know in Texas everything is bigger, but it seems that oversized trash bins, picked up twice a week, only encourage over consumption of over packaged consumer goods. I can go 2-3 weeks before setting the trash bin out for pickup. (I guess that is partly because I put the "stinky" food scraps into the compost pile instead of into the trash.)

OK, let me know if you can think of anything more interesting for me to blog about. I'm hitting a dry spell, it seems.