This week's accomplishments

The headmaster's been lax in his blogging lately. So much to do, so little energy to do it. He's been picking his battles carefully.

Every Thursday morning he lies in bed, staring at a cottage cheese ceiling that desperately needs updating. His mind shuffles the deck that represents his list of things overdue. He frets at how it grows thicker each day. It is a ponderous thing to shuffle.

That's usually when he hears the garbage truck, and remembers the pile of trash spilling out of the cans and into the parking lot.

I swear, I've lived here a little more than a year, and I don't think I've made trash day more than twice. So I'm on a first-name basis with the guys at the dump. We have an "arrangement". I bring them scrap copper from my rewiring project. They let me dump drywall without going through the scales.

This is dramatically different from the arrangement I had in our last house. There, I didn't take the trash out - I had "people" for that. I tipped the garbage truck guys generously at Christmas. In return, each Tuesday morning they'd actually go into my back yard to fetch my trash cans, and then they'd put them back neatly when they were done. Now that's what I call service! One year, I made the mistake of taping their Christmas cards (tips inside, bows outside) to the trash cans at the curb. Several weeks later, I caught up with them and checked to make sure they'd received the cards. They hadn't. So either they were after a double-tip, or some Grinch drives around Bowie looking for trash cans with bows on them. At any rate, I tipped twice, and continued to sleep in on Tuesday mornings.

So... back to the Academy. Thursday morning, I lay there and listened as the sounds of the trash truck slowly faded into the distance. Today, I paid the price. It is astonishing how much trash the Academy produces. To behold it, spread out in the parking lot, it invokes a sense of accomplishment. Standing by this trophy pile of trash, I sensed that my neighbor's passing nod was a bit more respectful than usual. It was a proud moment indeed.