When a friend of mine first introduced me to freecycle about a year ago, I was overjoyed. The concept was great: divert good (albeit unwanted) stuff from the landfills by giving them to people who can use them. Sounded easy enough. I quickly joined three freecycle Yahoo groups in my area. I picked up a nice Pottery Barn paper lamp. I also acquired a box of 3-ring binders. Sure, some of the stuff wasn’t exactly in “good” condition– the binders were covered in an inch of dust and some of their rings didn’t close all the way– but who was I to complain: the shit was free after all. Over time, however, people started rubbing me the wrong way with their ridiculous requests. People asked for free cars, ipods, and laptops. I mean, wtf, this wasn’t a frickin’ Christmas wish list, you know? I mean for offbeat stuff like red worms (for worm bins), that seemed ok, but an iPod? Puhleez.

For my part, I mostly offered cardboard boxes. I often took them home from work (many were going into the dumpster as trash….). We get tons of shipments in daily, so every night before heading home, I’d load the car up with medium and large boxes. At first, my boxes were a hit, and it was so easy to just put them on my stoop. The selected freecyclers would then come the next day and pick them up. No face-to-face interaction required. I even had a wait-list with previous “customers” wanting more boxes. John joked that once again, I engaged myself in a time and energy-consuming activity that yielded no financial gains. Sigh. What can I say, I suck at bringing in the dough. And unfortunatley, as statistics would have it, I started getting burned. Some people wouldn’t show up. Others wanted all kinds of info before driving out– box dimensions, no damp boxes, blah, blah. And some people seemed only to check email once every other day. Wtf?

My latest issue is no interest. Last week, I posted my boxes to offer. Absolutely zippo response; meanwhile, my stoop is loaded with boxes. John’s complained that his stoop isn’t a junkyard. If my boxes go unwanted for much longer, I’m certain the homeowners association is going to cite me for uglifying the community. Frickin’ A. And they’re perfectly good boxes– would be such a shame to send them to the recyclers. Recycling is still so uneconomical for so many materials (but it doesn’t stop me from participating…). And a local auto recycling facility in Redwood City just suffered another huge fire yesterday…sketchy.

Well, I think I just need to wait patiently. Surely, some one will need boxes for moving or shipping or whatever…

In other news, John and I saw Showboat on Friday night. I was so tired though… the show ran from like 8 p.m. to 11 p.m. A long frickin’ time. Storyline was cheesy, but I got sucked into the dancing and singing. Gets me every time. Last night, we went with Chuck and Fonda to a local Irish pub. OMG, that place was like Sunrise assisted living. 70+ year old dudes doing the Heathcliff Huxtable groove. Ladies too old to be strutting around in minidresses and skin tight, high waisted blue jeans. Was such a odd sight. But hey, gotta give it to these peeps for staying active and enjoying themselves. I have to say, I wanted to go home within ten minutes of arriving. I’m just not made for that scene: super loud music, lots of alcohol, really bad dancing. Not a whole lot of fun for a sober prissy pants. Oh well, was something different I suppose.

So today’s Sunday already. We ran some errands in the morning. I’m in the middle of some work. John and I are gearing up for Entourage. John’s going to watch Sopranos too. Tv. It’s so damn evil: people cannot be responsible in the presence of tv. They just get sucked in– good programming, bad programming… regardless, it sucks away far too many hours in the day.