Run Away!: UPDATE!

The following note was stuck on our door late this evening:

It reads:

Run Away!

Guy smokes inside. While it's gross, inconsiderate, and totes against the rules, it actually doesn't really bother me all that much. He only does it once in awhile and if the smoke does find its way up to our apartment, I usually only catch the occasional whiff. He is usually pretty good about going outside to the front stoop to light up, or at the very least, go down to the basement and smoke in the laundry room. I should mention while I'm riding this whaa-mbulance that as much as Guy smokes, it does not seem that he has ever invested in an ash tray. All of the cigarette butts that we do not find in the laundry machine are whirling around in the wind on our front stoop. Sometimes he'll collect them in an empty Diet Coke can that he also keeps under the poop chair, but inevitably, the wind knocks the can over and cigarette butts decorate the shrubbery in our front yard.  

Trash Can Mystery

We share two rolling trash bins with the people downstairs that sit in the back of the house. Every Monday night, the bins get pulled to the curb for trash pickup. We noticed that every time we went to take our garbage out and opened the lid of the trash bin, there would be random pieces of unbagged garbage just sitting on top: an empty cereal box (Special K), used kleenexes (crumpled into balls), an opened tray of uncooked chicken breast (Gold'n Plump), floss (surprising). It looked like they would get up and walk outside every time they had something to throw away. Seems a little inefficient, but whatever. We were already weary of their ability to properly use a garbage can, so this only added to our theory. The stench coming from these bins is overpowering, especially in the summer when unbagged food sat cooking in the hot sun all day. I developed a strict procedure to follow every time we needed to take a bag of trash out. It requires a balance of strong hand-eye coordination and quick movement, and I have detailed it for you below.