styrofoam

I had choices: either I was going to have to do something like what is pictured in the link above, or I was going to have to get rid of the massive amounts of styrofoam that were piling up in an ecologically sound way: reduce (been doing that) re-use, or recycle. I had found a place to recycle the stuff in Cherryville, which is almost an hours' drive from here, so I was waiting until I had a big load. But then I figured if I was going to Cherryville, I might as well go the rest of the way to Asheville, so made arrangements to visit with Cindy and Marti, and planned to attend a family reunion/party in W. Asheville the next day. To make a long story short, during a conversation with Cindy just prior to my leaving home, I mentioned that I would be dropping off the styrofoam to be recycled, and she got all excited because she has been needing some styrofoam for a project she is working on. So I ended up with the "re-use" option instead of the "recycle" option. (Thanks, Cindy!) And none of it ended up in the landfill. Hopefully the next place it goes people will find ways to re-use it as well.

I had a good time in Asheville, and came back not quite so discouraged by the boxes that are still ubiquitous...

"Ivy Alert!"

I'm thinking about maybe planting some ivy (see above link) right inside my new abode, to cover up the boxes, which are everywhere. It would be a whole lot prettier...probably wouldn't get enough sunlight, though.

Lots has happened in the past month; the fun part is documented here and here and also here... I'm going to try to post some photos soon, too. I finally got mine back yesterday.

I don't have photos of my move (who would want to look at photos of sweaty 50-somethings toting a lifetime of stuff around, anyway?) but rest assured the move did happen, and I am daily dealing with the aftermath. I'm trying to spread the "joy" around as much as possible by loading up my car with stuff to recycle and dumping it various places, though I did the first part of that today but didn't get to the dumping part because I was working too much with students today and ran out of time. Maybe -- hopefully! -- tomorrow.

Oh, by the way, the title of this post was because I thought of our "kudzu alerts" of years ago when I saw the ivy photo. And then thinking of kudzu reminded me, with sadness, of the untimely death a couple days ago of Doug Marlette, who was a wonderful political cartoonist and worked for the Charlotte Observer for many years as well. He also had a comic strip named "Kudzu".