I'll also be guest blogging while Kuff is laid up. I usually blog over at Houstonist, and I'm thrilled to be called up (to continue the baseball metaphor) to Off the Kuff. I can't promise the magic of Hunter Pence, but I'll do my best.

You might remember all the buzz a few weeks ago about trash collection days changing. If you're anything like me, you saw July 1 and thought, "Oh, that's ages from now," and put the notice away. But July is upon us and so are new garbage days. As Matt Stiles noted in a blog entry on the subject, trash collection is something that we'd really rather not have disrupted, but the city has made efforts to notify everyone of the change through mailouts, radio ads, and signage. I'm sure that won't stop some people from getting riled up about it, but change isn't easy. The new routes come as the CoH takes over trash pickup at 85,000 homes on the northeast side of town from Republic Waste and reconfigures its old routes for the sake of efficiency and money-saving.

To complicate things further, trash pickup schedules will also be altered to accommodate the July 4th holiday this week. My own ZIP, 77036, had one of the highest numbers of homes affected by the change, and my trash day has been moved from Thursday to Tuesday. It will be interesting to see how things go in this first week or two, but I'm sure that people will adjust quickly. If you're not sure about the new pickup schedule, the city's website has all the info you need.