Georgia doesn't recycle and a Florida farmer made me cry

I got home yesterday evening after 7 days of traveling and I'm exhausted. I'm also extremely happy to be back home with Urban Cowboy! This trip was the longest we had been apart since the 1st month of our marriage. I missed him like crazy! I'm pretty sure he missed me a little, too. ;-)

The first part of my trip was work related and I was in a suburb of Atlanta, Georgia. I spent a lot of my time on a major college campus and the rest of my time at a hotel with a respectable name and close to a whole host of dining and shopping options. Ok, so you can't quote me on this because I didn't conduct any official research but I'm pretty sure Georgia does not recycle. My hotel did not recycle anything and when I inquired after the location of the hotel's recycle bin for my newspaper the desk staff looked at me like I had grown an extra head. In fact, they repeated my question back to me as though I had originally said it in a foreign language. Now, I know being from the North that I don't talk the same as a born & bred Southerner BUT I also know I was definitely speaking English. I figured I would recycle my newspaper at the workshop, located on a major college campus, but was disappointed to learn they don't provide any recycling receptacles, either. In fact, we ate several meals at this college, complete with bottled water and cans of pop (I didn't drink the pop, of course), and there were no measures taken to attempt to recycle the beverage containers or anything else. I was frustrated by this and I did manage to save a few plastic water bottles and all my newspapers to take with me to Florida to recycle them there. Florida recycles.

The second part of my trip was family related and I was in central Florida. We traveled to a wedding and it was in the middle-of-nowhere Florida. I mean, we have middle-of-nowhere Ohio and this part of Florida definitely rivaled our most middle-of-nowhere parts of Ohio! So, we drove forever to get to this wedding - and we drove through a lot of Florida farm country. Primarily, beef cattle and dairy farms. I have to tell you, I cried when we passed some of the dairy farms. It seems several farmers (I imagine this is a national practice) choose to cut the tails of their milkers - I researched why and the outdated reasoning (holds no scientific clout) is to prevent disease - so that all that is left is a stump of a tail. The practice is called "docking" - as in, the cows have docked tails. I cannot tell you how disgusted this makes me because it is so cruel to the cows! How would those farmers feel if the only appendage they had for swatting flies was removed? Those poor, poor cows are left defenseless against the thousands of voracious flies feeding on them! It's terrible. I can't even imagine how miserable it must be for those animals in the height of summer and, thus, the height of fly season! I despise those farmers.