  Before I get into all of the lousy details of my day, let me first say: HAPPY 29TH BIRTHDAY BOB!!! Ok, so now I can tell you that I’ve had a hell of night and morning. It started at 12:15 am when Chris came home, dropped his bag off and went upstairs to Sergio’s apartment. Berg meowed at the door for the next 20 minutes. I screamed only 3 times, I think, from the warmth of my bed to SHUT THE HELL UP BERG!! Later, Chris’s alarm starts going off at 4:15 am, which is normal but I’m in such a rotten mood already that I can’t go back to sleep before the alarm goes off again 10 minutes later and then 10 minutes after that. Finally, he gets up at 5 am – again, this is normal. At about 5:25 am, it sounds like someone is hitting our radiator violently with a hammer. While some faint banging is a normal (occasional) occurrence, this sound was very loud. I nearly jumped out of bed.
Within 5 minutes, our neighbor, Ms. Gertie, started knocking on all of the doors on the 1st floor to let everyone know that she didn’t have electricity. I finally lay back down only to have to get up to my own alarm at 6 am. Much to my dismay, the lack of Ms. Gertie’s electricity wasn’t the only problem our building was having: no heat and no hot water. Ah, a barely luke-warm shower it is then. Then it’s finally time for my morning cup of coffee only to go cold on me quicker than normal due to our freezing cold apartment.
New York City! Ain’t it the life?!? I just read on MSNBC.com that Ozzy Osbourne had to have emergency surgery after an ATV accident. You can read the story urlLink here . Now, what we’ve all been holding our breathes for, the facts on the paper vs. plastic bag saga: Convenient and Everywhere Plastic bags were first introduced in 1977 and now account for four out of every five bags handed out at grocery stores. Americans make 2.3 trips to the grocery store each week. If people use five to 10 bags each time, that's between 600 and 1,200 bags per person per year. Stores usually pay less than a penny per plastic shopping bag, and 3 to 4 cents per paper shopping bag. According to the Grocery Industry Committee on Solid Waste, less than 1 percent of shoppers consistently use cloth shopping bags. Paper or Plastic? You Decide. Plastic grocery bags consume 40 percent less energy to produce and generate 80 percent less solid waste than paper bags. Plastic bags can take 5-10 years to decompose. Paper bags take about a month to decompose. Paper bags are made from trees, which are a renewable resource.
Most plastic bags are made from polyethylene, which is made from petroleum, a nonrenewable resource. Two thousand plastic bags weigh 30 pounds, 2,000 paper bags weigh 280 pounds. A packed standard-sized paper bag can hold up to 14 items, an average plastic bag often holds 5-10 items. Research from 2000 shows 20 percent of paper bags were recycled, while 1 percent of plastic bags were recycled. But plastic bag recycling is growing as plastic lumber products become more popular. 
