Δαφνη Ευτυχια Αρθουρος

Grrrrrr. Today's mail brought a citation from the Baltimore Department of Public Works, for having my trash out on the wrong day. Which I didn't do.

I don't do that. I put my trash out on Sunday night or Wednesday night. The citation says that my trash was out at 10:00 AM on Wednesday, 2003-11-12, and that it was out "not in bags". Now I know I didn't do that, 'cause I had to take out the trash that evening after coming home from rehearsal.

Could they have mistaken my next-door neighbour's trash for mine? They do often put it out on the wrong day. Or was it that there was trash in my trash can, not in bags, that morning? If I don't retrieve the trash can in the first fifteen or twenty minutes after the trash collectors show up (at which time I may not be awake yet), there's usually somebody else's trash tossed in it by the time I get to it, so I've stopped dragging it all the way through my house to put on the back porch and all the way through the house to put it back out on trash night, because I don't feel like lugging somebody else's trash through my house twice. Come to think of it, that might have been one of the days somebody (presumably one of my neighbours) completely filled my trash can and dragged it to the curb before I had a chance to put my own trash in it. I hate it when they fill my trash can.

This is stuff I'll have to sort out in a hearing ('cause I'm not just paying the $60 ticket without any resistance), which will probably be a day of unfun. And they'll probably insist that I be at the hearing earlier than I'm normally awake.

If I could figure out which neighbour got me in trouble, could I sue them for the time I spend at the hearing?

Confusingly, there's a section for "ongoing violation" that has a "must be corrected by" date filled in. Ongoing? So the problem is not the one date, but the pattern? If so, it's definitely the folks next door. But that would be odd, because their trash is piled directly in front of their door, not offset to be in front of mine, so it should've been obvious whose trash it was.

I am so not looking forward to this.

As if it's not bad enough that I have to move my car to the other side of the street twice a week for street cleaning (which wouldn't be as much of a pain as I make it sound, if it weren't for the fact that I have to make sure to move it back again as soon as the street cleaning restriction ends, because of rush hour restrictions on the far side of the street, so I can't afford to fall asleep on Tuesday or Friday afternoons regardless of how tired I am) but they only actually drive the street cleaning machine down my side of the street about twice a month on average. And that they almost never pick up the newspapers on newspaper recycling day, and only pick up the bottle and can recycling about three fourths of the time. Now I'm getting fined for "my" trash, when I'm the only person on my side of the street who actually uses a trash can.

[pout] Life is so unfair. [sulk]