Lemme see… I got one quarter with my change for the coffee we got at the Zeeb Rd. McDonald’s this morning. I found two more when I cleaned out The Indefatigable this afternoon. And another two were hiding in the key basket. That brings me up to a whopping $23.50!

But I’ll need more. It takes 10 quarters to wash a vee-hickle. I’m trying to wash approximately one vee-hickle a week, mostly taking turns between the Hondas. The Indefatigable has too many holes. It’s two quarters (plus two dollar bills) every time I cross the Mackinac Bridge. And I’m not sure how many quarters it takes to do the laundry. Back in the days when I filled three triple-loaders plus a couple light loads and then umpteen batrillion trips through the dryers, it took at least 80. It’s considerably less nowadays but I still need quarters. Oddly enough, the mess of laundry in the pic doesn’t look like it’s big enough to take up three triple-loaders plus but that pic is from summer 2002 and that was my typical laundry routine then. And then there are always a few miscellaneous parking meters to feed. Fortunately it takes only one quarter a lunch at Penny’s Kitchen, compared to five or six anywhere downtown on The Planet Ann Arbor.

Anyway, I need more quarters. American quarters only. I’ve got nothing against Canada but Canadian coins don’t work in American machines. Last year I did what I usually do, which is go over to the bank and “buy” some rolls of quarters. The first time I hit the Lockview Laundromat, I started putting quarters into the washers and they wouldn’t turn on. I was really puzzled until I scrutinized one of the coins and found that it was Canadian. At a quick glance, they look a lot like the new-style American quarters. The coins in the roll I got from the bank were hand-rolled by some customer, who had loaded it up with Canadian quarters. Probably a third of the coins were Canadian. That was bad enough but the next roll I opened had dimes and nickels sandwiched between the quarters. Maybe rolled by a customer’s three-year-old? [NOTE: this is *not* a rant about the bank. Just in case anyone thinks all I do is rant about banks and on-line businesses. This was a fluke, I managed to get the laundry done, and went on with life.]

This year, recent housecleaning endeavors yielded two rolls of quarters plus some. It became a game to see how many quarters I could add to that through change from purchases and general scavenging.

I’m up to $23.50. I need more. I’ll pay anyone IN The Carbeck Landfill 12.5 37.5 cents for each quarter they give me. (Uh, yeah, 12.5 cents would not be much of a deal, would it?) NOTE!!! This is not a plea for readers to send me quarters in the mail. So DON’T send them. I won’t pay you for them. And I’ll find what I need around here, I’m sure. Or go to the bank. Have a good summer, have fun at the laundromat and the carwash, and cross the Mackinac Bridge a few times but please don’t buy property in the Yoop. We already have enough McMansions.

This entry was posted on Tuesday, June 19th, 2007 at 5:41 pm and is filed under Uncategorized. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.