Welcome to my new blog!

Hello and welcome to my brand new blog, C/o Clear Lake.

I've lived in Clear Lake Iowa for ten years now, and I've always loved this town. There's so much going on, with the Surf Ballroom, and our lake that only in the winter do I get marginally bored. XD

One thing I've noticed is that... there's a lot of trash around. That bothers me. It's like people don't appreciate this place enough or something. The range of trash I've found is quite incredible, but only in the last couple years has it really started to get to me.

I enjoy walking the lake shore. There are a number of ducks, geese, and seagulls around the lake at any given time. It bothers me to see these beautiful wild animals in such close proximity to so much garbage and other random crap that has made its way into the lake. Trust me, you will be shocked to hear some of the stuff I've pulled out of the lake.
These things include:

• An attachment brush for a vacuum
• a chunk of carpet
• elastic to a pair of underwear
• an entire pair of underwear
• a pair of underwear that had been there so long they had completely unravlled, except for the elastic
• a fishing license receipt from 2006 (found in 2010)
• a movie ticket from 2009 (found in 2011)
• A huge television (I'm not kidding). The police had to deal with that.

I could go on, trust me. That is just a sampling of what I've found in the lake. Not to mention all the sea glass. I love collecting the smooth pieces of glass but it pains me to see just how much of it I can pick up in a single outing. Just earlier tonight I came home with both my jean pockets full of glass.

Anyway, enough of that. I wanted to start this blog to chronicle the sheer amount of trash I've found in the lake. It's my hope that, towards the end of the summer, I write an editorial to the local newspaper, the Clear Lake Mirror Reporter, and possibly even Mason City's paper, the Globe Gazette because I think people need to be more mindful of what they do with their garbage. They need to stop being lazy and just chucking their trash on the ground because there's no bin around. Also... I think there need to be more permanent trash cans around town, but that's a different issue for a different day.

Anyway, I'm going to get on with posting some pictures in forthcoming entries, so stay tuned.