�and the garbage bins go rolling along.

Tomorrow is Wednesday, the day of garbage and recycling pickup in my town. Since we were forcibly merged with the greater municipality of Sh�brooke a while back, we received several notices that we would have to purchase a bac roulant (rolling garbage bin) to facilitate the collection of refuse. They have been in use in the larger city for quite a while, but we were able to get along with our old, round garbage cans because our own garbageman still drove the same vehicle where his assistant manually dumped the contents of our can into the back of the truck.

When we got back from vacation we found in our mailbox a notice that this was the last week to obtain the necessary container or our trash would not be collected. We were to go to town hall (now called the bureau office) and pay $100 to secure one of these abominations even though it remains the property of the town and we do not get our money back should we move, as the bac roulant remains with the house. We were not pleased.

Hubby telephoned to protest since we already pay for garbage pickup in our taxes, we already own serviceable garbage receptacles, and we have nowhere to put this gigantic bin (it will have to stay outside on the driveway, an eyesore in our opinion), but he was emphatically informed that this is the way things are because our neighbourhood will now be serviced by one of those new trucks where the bin is picked up and emptied by mechanical arms and the technician�s hands never touch the garbage.

So yesterday we did as we were instructed, paid our $100 (grrrr!), filled out the necessary form, and we now wait for this atrocity to be delivered. Hopefully it will come before the garbage is picked up tomorrow morning. Otherwise, we were informed to put our trash out as we normally do.

These bins are huge. We generally only have one green-garbage-bagful a week to put out, since we also compost and recycle religiously. I had the idea that we could simply piggy-back on our neighbours, dumping our bag in their bins when they�re not looking. My husband didn�t think this was a very good idea.

I liked living in a small town. The services were better when we were our own municipality, especially things like snow removal. The bridge that connects our part of town to the downtown area is going to be repaired (believe me, it needs it), but they�ve chosen to do it during September. Do you know what this means? Students who live in town will have to go through HuntingviIIe or Sh�brooke to get to campus. It�s totally insane. There is no bus servicing this route. For the first month of school, there will be lots of absenteeism, I�m sure of it.

When the other bridge, the one that connects our side of the St. Francis to the university side, was being rebuilt, we were estranged from the rest of our community for three months. Our town arranged a shuttle service with the local cab company (which no longer exists) to ferry people from BCS (the private school at one end of the bridge), stopping at a couple of corners along the way to pick up more stranded citizens, going all the way through Sh�brooke, and drop them off at Bushop�s, which is at the other end of the bridge. Will the City now do the same thing for those students and professors who normally walk to work? I sure as heck hope so.

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from tcklyrpharsn :

oh my god... are you fucking KIDDING ME???? i heard that they were fixing the bridge, but i didn�t realize that they were doing it in September. How fucking stupid can you be??? SERIOUSLY??? like at least half of the students live over the fucking bridge. That makes me furious! MOST OF THEM DON�T HAVE CARS! AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAA DIE DIE DIE!

p.s. shall we count how many more railway bridge accidents occur this year?

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