January will be a month of lasts—last day at Silla University (today), last shabu-shabu (last night), last night in Korea, last love motel, last visit with friends, last hike in the mountains here, last chumchi doc bap, last look at the Nak River just outside Busan as we slide along the shore north toward Seoul on the KTX on February 2, last Christmas, last birthday, last dinner party. There are others. I’ll recount my experiences of these lasts here.

But, if January is a month of lasts, December was a month of firsts—as a married man, first margarita, first Christmas, first birthday, first dinner party. First time I wrote consistently in months.

So, if December was a month of firsts, and January was a month of lasts, it stands to reason that February will be a month of firsts. Certainly, it is desirable that there was this kind of predictability in life; and surely I’d complain about it if there was that sort of predictability. But January will bleed into February. There is no clear delineation in the meaning of firsts and lasts at this crossroads. I will here demonstrate: It will be the first time I’ll be saying goodbye to Korea for the last time, the first time I’ll be unemployed in two and a half years, the first time I won’t subject myself to the after-effects of shabu-shabu or chumchi doc bap. And next year will be the first time in five years that I won’t have a working birthday, a marginally-boozed margarita, a Christmas without family, or a dinner party without California wine.

It is this sort of logic that may allow me to wind my way past much melancholy as I set off on the Great Asian Adventure with Nic. It is also this kind of logic that allows me to think of the things ahead instead of focusing too much on the negative aspects of Korea that I will leave behind.

To that end, and not to belabor the point, I’ll move on to a first. I realized the other day how much time Nic and I have in Kuala Lampur (KL) on our connecting transportation. The cheapest tickets we could find all went from Incheon (Korea’s major airport in Seoul) to Malaysia. And, for the purposes of adventure (and for budget reasons), we’re going to do a border crossing into Thailand on train. The thing is that we arrive in KL at 5AM on February 3; we don’t have to be on the sleeper train until 9 that night. So, the first big adventure outside Korea together (aside from meeting the parents last winter) is a whirlwind of one of southeast Asia’s premiere cities. With the little reading that I’ve done, it is a good way to ease yourself into that region of the world: the light rail is supposed to be spectacularly easy and facilitates the visitiation of many different areas in the city. Aside from the world’s second largest towers—Petronas Towers—we’ll be visiting the colonial areas of Little India for some roti and some dahl and colorful saris; Chinatown for chaos; Detaran Merdeka (Independence Square) and the National Mosque. With all that time, these places seem easy to see in a 12 hour period. And sure, we’ll be running ragged, so a little coffee with condensed milk as we sit and write postcards near the Central Market will revive us. Besides, the train trip that night will be the first time I will sleep like a baby on a train.

When great change is afoot, I tend to dream more.  I take instruction from legitimate dreams.  A sober, unplugged journey could bear vast implications to my inner life.  Sex and death.  That’s what I’ve dreamed of most of my adult life.  The sex has involved “me” in the dreams; the death has happened to “others.”  Some might say that these two motifs are symbolically, metaphorically, psychologically similar.

Though I still find myself often thinking about death and sex, I don’t dream much anymore.  Maybe it’s a sign of aging—which I refuse to believe; maybe it’s a by-product of a few evening drinks—which is only sometimes the case; or maybe my life really hasn’t been as much in a state of upheaval as I often seem to make it out to be.  Does this make me a liar, a purveyor of dreams that didn’t happen, a shadow-maker of dreams that are really only the daytime imaginings of an idle mind?  And when I do dream, its validity comes into question: was it really a manifestation of some legitimate inner turmoil, or was it that I watched a twisted episode of television or tripped-out movie?  The “media dreams,” as I call them, are merely the collective rare bit dream of a writers’ group who ate bad pork at some late night staff meeting.  I always disregard these media dreams.

On the other hand, what do I make of a series of recent negative dreams about my recently-commenced beard?  Why aren’t my eyebrows scorned?  Why isn’t the peach fuzz on my ears ridiculed?  (Probably because, in reality, Nic won’t let those get out of hand.)  At any rate, my beard, of all things, is the one hair-growth project that looks good. While the increasing length of my cranial fuzz at the very top of my head looks like the path less traveled or one slightly overgrown wagon-rut on the Oregon Trail, my facial follicles have suffered no indignity since last I implemented a moratorium on cheek-shaving.  In one dream, though, a group of students told me I should shave the beard off because it looked stupid.  In another dream, Nic told me she didn’t like it.  (In waking hours, though, she tells me she likes it.)  And, in last night’s dream, I looked at myself in the mirror and pondered the cutting of said beard.

The reasons for growing my hair out are two-fold.

One is practical: not only is it cold here in Korea and there are still some peaks to train on (we head out this Sunday morning in 38 degrees F), but when I get to southeast Asia (in spite of the heat), I’ll have less to worry about in terms of maintenance of short hair and shorn cheeks; all the more time to ponder the weight of the world.  In addition, the extra hair will provide much-needed extra warmth on 4000m Himalayan spring nights, keeping shivering to a minimum and holding The Brothers Karamozov steady.

The other reason I am growing my hair out is a symbolic au revoir to social norms.  This is not to say that I will also take to touching Thais on the tops of their heads, moving ritualistic artifacts in Vietnamese hill people’s villages, laughing while in the Killing Fields of Cambodia, or eating with my left hand in Nepal.  I’ll do my best to represent myself well in these culturally diverse situations.   However, I have worked hard and earned my place on this trip.  I deserve to thumb my nose—at least for a little while—at those who say only an unrespectable, disrespectful man has an unkempt and disheveled mane.  The travel beard is by no means a unique concept.  I, however, fully intend to participate in it.

“Estranged” Holden said, maybe just to get Grace riled.  She yelled at him, “Patience!” And she left the singing room and went home.  He was just having fun at her expense.  Everyone knows “Welcome to the Jungle” is the best Guns n Roses song, but long ago—six months or so—they’d agreed “Patience” was their song.

Over-reaction, sure.  It was stressful at home with the stray cat they were trying to find a home for—the cat was running incessant  laps on the counter and table tops, gnawing on plants, assassinating peaceful toes.  But the real reason they were out at the singing room was to escape the rhino upstairs.  The house had been shaking every night for five hours, a large mammal upstairs doing laps or gymnastics or just seeing how long it took for the humans downstairs to come and complain.  The rhino wanted to spear the human and laugh.  Holden was sure.

It was his call to go out that night.  Everything bothered him more than it did her.  She had the uncanny ability to close her ears when watching YouTube—which she did more than anyone really ought to.  Is “Growing Pains” really that great of a show that she couldn’t at least show some sympathy when Holden was complaining about the cat or the noise or his students or the administration or the traffic or the market owner or the unsanitary conditions at the doctor’s office?

The cat was sweet to Grace.  The cat–named Pumpkin but really should have been named  Cheeto–was dubbed Stupid by Holden.  Grace didn’t like that; it was the one thing she always heard with those skillfully-selective ears of hers.  The cat didn’t like the name Stupid, either.  If only Grace would see Pumpkin during the long hours of alone time Holden and the cat spent.  Since Grace was teaching winter session all day, Holden was left to his own devices.  Since Pumpkin only understood Korean, he couldn’t sympathize with Holden’s emasculation as the house wench and plight as the ever-besieged foreigner.

Out of sheer boredom, Holden tried many times to befriend the cat; but Pumpkin didn’t seem to like being put on his back and spun on the hardwood floor and then left to bump off furniture and fall over.  Inevitably, when Holden was between cleaning the breakfast dishes and making dinner, he would take a nap or read a book on tourism in Thailand or stare at the ceiling.  Just as surely, Pumpkin would attack, an elaborate and patient assault on unguarded toes or fingers.

Just yesterday, Holden caught the cat by his tail after one such surprise attack.  He pulled the cat toward him, picked him up by the scruff of his back and flung him against the wall.  If Grace knew this, they would certainly break up.  She was or wasn’t accusatory, asking why the cat cringed behind her all night after she got home.  Holden said Pumpkin was Stupid, that’s why.

Could it really be true, Grace said to herself, that this boyfriend of hers had been a teacher of small Korean children for the past six years?  Could it really be true, she continued her internal rhetorical query, that she loved him?

When Holden got home from the singing room, Grace was surfing the net: watching the series finale of “Growing Pains” for the sixth time, looking at prices for taking a cat home with her, scanning Monster.com.  She didn’t look up as Holden walked toward the kitchen.  Pumpkin fled frantically from under the dining table and knocked over a small plant.  After he’d settled under the bed, Pumpkin meowed plaintively.  The rhino upstairs was pirouetting and the elephant in the room stayed absolutely still.

[46 minutes]

For my birthday, I decided I wanted to have one last dinner party in this great apartment before all the furniture, pots, pans, plates are sold.

I have few delusions and many failures to speak of when it comes to cooking for guests.  A logistically unsound person to begin with, I am flustered and have been known to spend the entire evening managing my missteps in the workspace while the party rolls on elsewhere in the house; if the wine and company are good, my frenetics may go unnoticed.  By the grace of Mark Bittman and Anthony Bourdain (God surely does not exist in my kitchen), I’ve pulled off a few wins in the dinner party category.  Last night was a win.

My issue in the kitchen is timing.  Therefore, I started the day before with my homemade marinara wickedness. Stewed canned tomatoes have a lot of water and need to be boiled down; also, the red wine (always cook with what you drink; idiots use  “cooking” wine) in the sauce needs time to sit and have a long friendly conversation with the herbs and garlic in the sauce (oh, for the days when I can grow my own herbs).  I recommend this day-in-advance prep for all red sauces (and soups, incidentally).  The day-in-advance prep also works for larger dinner parties because ten is not an easy number to prepare for.  If you want time to actually socialize with the guests and you want a casual atmosphere, this menu is perfect.

This is not to say that you won’t be in the kitchen the day of your party.  Yesterday, I felt like I was in the kitchen all day, washing dishes, adding to the sauce, washing more dishes, cleaning around the house, coming back to the sauce, adding more of what was needed.  The layering of the flavors really allows for a rich, full-bodied final product.  Round out your day-before-prep with as many mushrooms, spinachi (the plural of spinach) or other veggies (eggplant or zucchini) as possible.

I’ve never made the same sauce twice.  Aside from the aforementioned tips, it is important to note that I really don’t work with a recipe.  When I set off on a marinara adventure, I have the basic procedures in mind, the little signatures that make the base of my sauce unique (there are a few secrets I only divulge to dinner guests).  However, it could be the external variables such as the season, the guests, the wine (or even if I am feeling a bit cocky and adventurous from a successful day at the keyboard) that influence the final product.  In any case, tasting as I go, doting over the concoction and adding what’s needed/desired is effort that, while certainly time-consuming, is absolutely not labor intensive.

The smells that emanate the house invariably will bring a certain wife into the kitchen.  But this is yet another part of cooking in general that I truly enjoy.  For this aspiring cook, putting together a meal–whether it be for two, ten or twenty–requires outside discernment and suggestion.  With Nic’s help, the fashioning of this sauce yesterday, specifically, was like she was helping me edit a short story: masking a flavor that was too strong was like a deletion of a superfluous or poorly-written sentence; adding a squeeze of lemon at the very end was like choosing one synonym over another.

In addition to the red sauce, there was also a Chef Nikolai standard.  Anyone who’s anyone knows the pride I take in my Caesar salad, the recipe I took from Ma and made my own (she never used anchovies, an omission which I cannot fathom).  But I won’t go on about this.  Caesars are simple and if you want the recipe, I’ll give it to you.  Again, over time, you’ll make it your own depending on your taste.

None of this would have been complete without Nic’s herbaceous, spicy garlic bread.  Also, she made some killer chocolate chip cookies.  In addition to the chocolate-covered sunflower seeds, the real coup de grace was when she decided to sprinkle just a few grains of sea salt on the top.  The results were a perfect balance of sweet and savory that could be dipped in either milk or–less-traditionally–the remainders of your wine.

This will sound like yet another elaborate excuse, but it’s not.  I was just about to settle into a couple hours of reading and re-acquainting myself with the work I have so far completed on the second novel; however, my computer started to freak out.  Every so often, a message will pop up that tells me my computer has 34 malware, spyware and viruses.  Of course, this stops any writing progress dead in its tracks.  All I need is one more month out of this piece of shit, 4.5 year-old computer, and now, now of all times, it starts giving me grief.  I immediately went into panic mode, trying to get some virus protection, all of which costs an arm and a leg.  A saavy friend of mine even recommended a free virus-killer, but the “shield” that is on my computer currently won’t allow it to download. 

Stupid, old, ignorant Me, I thought that closing the computer down and giving it a rest would fix things.  However, this morning, I write furiously here because that didn’t work.  I think there is a timebomb in this computer and it will melt down at any moment.  Luckily for me–but not so much for my writing habit–I was able to offload all important docuements onto my external hard drive.  As of now, all important things are safe.  But I think this computer has shut itself down a couple times, too.  So, as I said, I type here without much recourse–or editing, for that matter: I cannot even open MS Word and typy my entry beforehand as usually do.

Anyhow, as I let my computer rest yesterday evening, I went out for my birthday after a secret agent meeting at a Russian teahouse.  I had a gluttonous Western-style dinner (of the kind I am ashamed to admit here) and then just tried to take in a movie.  But the only English language movie that’s out right now is F’ing Harry Potter and the Witch’s Cold Tit or something like that.  We settled for a DVD bang (a room where you can watch a movie in a little, private theater).  Now, I’ve been to these establishments before.  The concept is nice, but the sleazy underside of this kind of operation is they are usually doubling as a cheap way for teens and uni students to get sexy with each other.  Watch a movie in the dark, get a hand job, get a blow job, have your first sex.  All for 1/4 the price of a “love motel.”  Pretty great, except I just want to watch a movie (I have the money and a goddamned apartment…most times).  Last night was one of those times and this just happened to be the most disgusting DVD bang I ever encountered. 

In addition to the projector lamp being well past its prime so the movie (as marginal as it was, oh Robin Hood) looked as if all the shots were taken in moonlight, there were other standard greats of this movie-watching adventure.  There was the standard faux-leather sofa, this one in paticularly torn-up state; the ubiquitous Kleenex box was ready for action; and lots of action had been had, apparently.  Dried jizz shots on the wall (and who knows where else; I might be pregnant now, for all I know) and a full trashcan of spent kleenex jizz rags.  Awesome!  And it gave me something to write about here.

Okay.  Fuck this computer.  It just shut down on me without warning.  Good thing Nic has a working one and I have all my important docs off this dying dinosaur of a computer.

All this old man needs is a change of scenery from time to time.  After four and a half years here, I have travelled to Japan twice: once on the famous one-day foreigner visa run to Fukuoka, and the second time on a ten day holiday to Osaka and Kyoto.  The only other place I went to was Beijing; this was no mean feat, since the memory of bicycling on the hairy streets of Beijing and the 10 km hike on top of the Simitai section of The Wall is forever etched in my mind. 

But these travels amounted to a little over two weeks in nearly half a decade here in Asia.  Granted, I’ve been to the US three times, but let’s be honest: going home isn’t really a vacation (as Nic is fond of saying), what with the semi-celebrity status incurred by many months away.  I clamber for the beach; I lust for white sand and turquoise water.  I long to be at the top of a mountain.  I seek the mystery and splendor of ancient capitals and the haunting of genocide sites. Well, Nick, haven’t you lounged on Haeundae Beach for two or three days a week in the summer for the last two seasons?  Haven’t you been to most of the major peaks in Busan?  didn’t you write an article about one of the hikes in Busan?  Haven’t you twice been to Korea’s ancient capital of Gyeongju?  Like I said, I need a change of scenery.

I need not leave the beach at all for a week.  I need jungle mountains that are steamy and verdant.  I need a better sense of history than this town has given me.  I need to better understand real suffering and loss; odd that it’s tough to find that in Korea, given its history.

Last night, the Thailand itinerary took a little more shape.  A week on Ko Pha-Ngan’s northern shore with sleeping, swimming, eating, reading, writing, hiking.  That’s sure to revive the body for the remaining 2.5 weeks of breakneck travelling north to Bangkok, then west to Kanchanaburi where thousands of Allied POWs perished while building a railway to Burma’s ports during Japanese occupation of Thailand during WWII; this is also the site of the Bridge on the River Kwai—yes, they made a classic movie with a rather young Alec Guinness.  After a quick return to Bangkok, we’ll head to the ancient Thai capital of Ayuthaya (four hours north of Bangkok) before heading far to the northwest corner for the mountainous province of Chiang Mai, trekking in Pai (pronounced “bye”) and caving in Mae Hong Son.  There may even be time to hit Thailand’s highest peak, Doi Inthanon (2565m).

Quickly I jot here, as this secret agent has a 9 o’clock.  But it is not on my autobike that I go.  In metric, that’s -1 degree C what I mean?  In English Imperial, that’s 30 degrees F that.  With the winds kicking up to 15 mph by noon, that’s really F’ing cold. 

Last year I rode in the bitter, windy cold 15 times in 3 weeks to teach a two hour class.  I didn’t get the feeling to my fingertips or my X and Y chromosomes till mid Spring.  Yes, I know I’ve written that before, but it seems that memory goes as you get older.  Or maybe it’s just that I have been in the cold too much and have lost brain cells related to processing sounds and reading words properly.  So, I have either early onset dementia exacerbated by excessive cold winds on an autobike, or I am just old.  Tomorrow I turn 34.  I will be exactly the same age my dad’s brother was when I was born.  I wonder if he had these problems when he was my age.  One bright spot is that the other 12/28 baby in the family has his wits about him and still runs a few times a week and travels around the world in his retirement.

In any case, I am still one of the youngest in my extended family, but at my mid-thirties, I still have the aches and pains brought on by using my youth for good (or at least fun).  The knees that bother me are a result of four years of eggbeater treading water and a drunken spill or two.  The bad shoulders get creaky in the cold, leftover pain from too much wrenching of my shoulders doing the backstroke or pump-faking the water polo ball.  Yes, somewhere I have written breifely about these things before, too.  But now that I am in my mid-thirties, I am allowed to repeat myself.  Also, not everyone that is reading this knows of the senility from which I suffer.  Maybe I should just go back on Metadate and gradually increase my dose until I don’t need that morning cup of coffee or even to sleep anymore. 

Sleep is for the weak, and I get weak early in evenings, finding the pillow most nights (except the holidays and the night before the night before my marriage) before 10pm.  This often times only means that I am tired and need a nap, apparently, because half the time I wake up before the bell-ringing monks at the Buddhist temple a quarter mile from here.  Maybe I should just be a monk.

It is at this time of year that people make their pledges for the new year.  I think that’s a bit of malarkey.  I think everyone should make their birthday resolutions.  And people should be a little more realistic about things.  For example, when I was younger, my New Year’s resolution was to do a hundred sit-ups a day to get rid of baby fat.  I still have baby fat.  Another common resolution was that I would read more and get better math grades.  I never read more until I entered university.  And my grades in math went exponentially down in high school, starting with “Bs” my freshman year, ending with “Ds” my senior year.

Resolutions are too far-reaching, in my experience.  They will not stick.  So, instead of making an empty promise to myself and the resolution universe (which will get lost in all the other empty promises floating around the stratosphere this time of year anyway), I’ll make a 33% birthday resolution and start with that.  And I make these resolutions as a way test the waters in how to proceed with the rest of my life, thus doing away with resolutions all together. (This idealistic early morning writer looks a little into the future and says there will be times of lapse, i.e. when he reaches the land of beer, bratwurst and cheese, all bets are off).  After 1/3 of a year, we’ll see where I am. 

But, before that time, on the journey in Asia, I am devoted.  I will write a letter a day to a family member when I am on the Asian trail.  I will practice the art of caring for my gastro-intestinal region (that’ll be difficult with all the cheap pad thai  and Thai beer in the first month, and dal tadka and buttered chipati in Nepal; but excess is what needs to be managed).  I will take the time to absorb my surroundings with mostly sober eyes and a mostly monk-like devotion to the experiences I will have.

For the last week, I’ve been obsessed with the internet for a couple reasons.  One is that I want to see how many people are reading this blog.  The other reason is to check if there have been any emails about our moving sale.   I have to tell myself that popularity of the jottings here is not what I am writing for; though it is a good way for people to pop in from time to time to see what is up with the upheaval that is my current life, the reason I am writing here is really only for my own daily warm-ups for the bigger projects.  However, those bigger projects have stalled due to the initial success with the online classified ad we posted. 

It seems, also, that the holidays are to blame.  Just as they are to blame for my eating and drinking that creates a bloated me who waddles around the cavernous home of ours—over a third of our stuff is now gone.  I can tell myself, though, that these interruptions/excuses/ excesses will soon cease to exist, that soon it will be easier to start waning myself off the internet habit , that soon I will not even think of checking my email., that this preparation for my unplugged experiment that begins 37 days from now will not be as difficult as I think it may be.

If there is one thing that will be difficult to wane myself off is the Skype conversations I have with my nieces and nephew.  Granted, I do not have video conversations every day; but, after  Nic and I had the great experiences yesterday of watching Ian, Audrey and Lexi open the Christmas presents that we sent them, it is cause for concern.  Video chatting has allowed me to experience my little family members and watch them develop over my years here in Korea; certainly these relationships would be entirely different and have far less depth.  While I am a little concerned about how my relationships with my older people will change while I am offline, I wonder how the lack of online video chat technology will affect my relationships with Ian, Audrey, Lexi (and Ella, who seems to like the look of my face on the computer screen, too).  I wonder if they’ll even notice that I am gone for three months, not popping up on their parents’ computer screens every so often.

The URRC is dominated by those who are brusque and unapologetic, which surely I can be.  Why did I fail so miserably yesterday at the Rectangle? As Nic was bandaging my adjumma-inflicted wounds (bottle bruises and cardboard contusions), she told me that the way to survive Thursday morning URRC is with stealth and intelligence.  Since these are traits I do not often possess, it has been agreed that I will stick to the stinky food disposal.

A week from now, my wounds will be healed.  A month from now will be Nic’s last appearance at the Rectangle to avoid entanglement with the adjummas.  Six weeks from now, we’ll be on a beach in Thailand.  Two months from now, we’ll know where Nic has been accepted for PhD study in psych.  Two and a half months from now, we’ll know where we’re going to be spending the next five to six years.  Five months from now, we’ll be back on US and I’ll be watching the Giants beat the Brewers at Miller Field.

It is at this time of year that many people look back, saying to themselves, “I cannot believe it’s Christmas again already.”  And they look at their kids and how much they’ve grown and changed and become more lithe; they look at how much they themselves have grown (outward and downward), changed, and gotten to be a little more crotchety.  Some people face these things with grace.  Many others face their fear of time’s rapid passage armed with reminiscences, attempting to rejuvenate their spirits with a sentimentalism for agility of mind, body and spirit.

Which is it for me?  What will it be for me when I have kids?  Admittedly, I approach the holidays with a little bit of grace and a little bit more of booze and food (certainly, this leaves me longing for the agility to move or roll myself off the couch).  If I can find a little more balance during this time of year (and I never have), the sentiments can be dealt with in a much more level-headed manner.

This year, though, in spite of all the talk in this household about establishing holiday traditions for the future little Holmbergs, I find myself in a unique position.  On the cusp of great changes (travel and a new home), at the beginning of transition (marriage, joblessness, homelessness), nearly closing the book on four and a half years in Korea (financial security and flush with kimchi), the implications of what has transpired and what is yet to emerge is vast.  A winter solstice lunar eclipse in that the rarity of this particular (or similar) combination of circumstances may never occur again in my lifetime.  The astronomy is either fortuitous or foreboding, but surely only coincidental.  What will I make of it?

Always negotiating.  With selling off the apartment accoutrement, I negotiate pick-up times and prices.  With this damned cat, I negotiate play time and appropriate methods of play (he’s an attention-hungry biter of a 8-month old).  With my own time, I negotiate the pitfalls of too much time on my hands (it’s nearly noon and I’ve managed not much but my excuses not to write here and other places) and the demands of my public (I am currently multitasking by writing this drivel here and uploading photos to facebook). 

And with my wife, of course, I negotiate.  This morning, she was running late for work and I was roped into doing the recycling, a job she does every week in exchange for my taking out the food scraps to the smelly bin.  But today, I got the raw end of the deal, for sure.  Sure, sure.  I got out of kitchen duty (an automatic house wench duty when the other half is working) and even got Nic to agree to food scrap duty when next the need arises.  But still, I got the raw end of the deal. 

Nick, you may wonder, what in the hell is the big deal?  Well, this ain’t your average recycling operation.  The bins are enclosed in a rectangular cage (think Ultimate Fighting Championships) in the parking lot; and only once a week (Thursday morning), hundreds of people bare their drinking and eating habits to the world.  But, as quick as I want to distance myself from the empty whiskey bottle, wine bottle and cans of beer (hey, it’s the holidays AND Nic forgot to take the recycling out LAST week, so a whole new level to my getting the raw end of the deal), there are the two or three adjummas patrolling the cage; mostly, they just change out bags and bins when they are full.  However, since I am big, white and not a frequent visitor to the Ultimate Recycling Rectangle Championships, they eye me warily.  “Anio, Anio.”  One snaps at me, snatches the yogurt cup out of my hand and throws it in another bin.  I put other similar looking things in that bin and she growls at me again and digs in the bin and takes out what I thought I had rightfully placed. 

How hard can it be to put plastics in with plastics, bottles in with bottles?  There is a veritable smorgasbord of recycling options.  Clear plastic, white plastic, colored plastic, hard plastic with no colors, soft plastic with colors, clear bottles, green bottles, brown bottles, plastic bags, paper paper paper.  This is part of my monthly bill, paying for recycling, so why don’t the adjummas separate my containers for me?  An even more important question: Now that I have my own adjumma, why did I agree to the terms of this negotiation?