50 vhs's anyone?

we've been doing some long overdue cleaning lately and found about 50 vhs tapes. that's a lot! i wanted to get rid of them but figured that must be a better way than just throwing them in the trash. i went online and got two suggestions: freecycle and recycling through greendisk.

freecycle is a free online network where you can offer or request stuff in your community. anything. as long there's no money involved. so kind of like craigslist but actually free. greendisk seems like a great service to recycle your "technotrash." you pack it, ship it, pay a small fee, and forget about it.

but since i didn't really want to pay the fee (tho yeah, it would've been only $7 not including shipping) i decided to freecycle it first. if no one wanted it there, i'd send it to greendisk.


anyway, i put my offer of vhs tapes online, and about a month later someone contacted me! he wanted the tapes even tho they're all used and have super random recordings on them. and earlier this week i found our old vcr, which he said he could use too.

i met with him and his wife today at the local mcdonald's (to be safe). turns out they've been freecycling for about a year and they joined because they too were tired of seeing everything go into the trash.

btw, before i left the house to meet him, i called rip and told him where i was going to be, just in case i never came back. he was, unsurprisingly, not too happy. he thought the whole thing sounded unsafe. which i can definitely see. but that's why i wanted to meet somewhere public, and also why i called rip to tell him where i'd be. later on rip said that i should've gone with someone, which i would also have preferred, but everyone's at work and from his emails, the guy sounded really normal. which, i know, sounds stupid. but i just figured that while i'm sure there are crazies on freecycle, most of us aren't nuts. and i was taking basic precautions already. anyway. i was glad to meet then. and i had no expectations of what he would look like, but him and his wife were not hippies. just cool folks who like to be able to record tv shows. and you know what? i don't blame them. i don't have tivo or a dvr either. and i could just figure out how to record onto vhs, they would not have been getting mine! anyway, just wanted to blog about this experience.

i'm happy today!