Friday, 06 December 2002

A picture of Rapunzel. Photo credit goes to my mom.

I went through "Snare" again. I had nearly finished the re-write back in August, before I got sidetracked by non-writing stuff (my day job, mostly). I fixed a few little things, rearranged a bit, added one small detail. It's in pretty good shape. I'll give it one more careful reading, then maybe get someone to give me a fresh critique on it. I should have done this rewrite before letting my local group read it. Live and learn. There's a guy at work who'll give me a useful critique.

I did get those two mss into the mail this morning. So, it is once again possible for an editor to buy my work.

I bring my lunch to work in reusable plastic containers, and then I reuse them, rather then throwing them away. That's probably a net win for the environment, although it's a tricky question if you want to get particular about it. If I didn't use plastic containers, I'd probably wrap my sandwich in waxed paper, then throw the waxed paper away. That has some advantages: The waxed paper is biodegradable, is made from renewable resources, and is just less stuff (on a per-sandwich basis). Still, I figure intuitively that the reusable plastic containers win, as long as I use them enough times.

The reusable plastic containers do last a long time, but there is a part that wears out: The plastic tab that makes it easy to get the lid off eventually breaks off from the lid. That annoys me no end. The rest of the container will probably last ten or twenty times as long as the tab.

One of the containers I had in today's lunch is about to lose its tab. I was thinking about throwing it away and replacing it, but I've decided not to. The only justification for expending all the resources to make the plastic and shape it into the container in the first place is to use it until the plastic wears away.

In the next year or two, I expect the tabs will come off most of the lids. But that's okay. It's almost as easy to open them without the stupid tab. I figure the company that makes them does it on purpose--they'd hardly sell any new containers, if the old ones didn't ever wear out. But I'll let the broken tabs serve as reminders not to replace them.

I expect my brother will think that's very like me.