Life is getting back to normal after last week’s snow storm. Seattle Public Schools will reopen Monday morning, and Metro Transit has returned all buses to normal routes, after canceling dozens of routes last week.

Seattle Public Utilities is back on its normal pickup schedule for garbage, recycling and yard waste starting Monday.

Residential customers that had their collections missed last week can set out double their normal amount of garbage, recycling and yard waste on their regularly scheduled collection day at no additional charge.

Extra recycling that doesn’t fit in the city-provided container should be placed in sturdy bins or boxes next to your recycling cart. Remember to flatten empty cardboard boxes and do not put recyclables inside of bags.

Extra yard waste that does not fit in the city-supplied cart should be set out in one of the following ways:
• A 32-gallon can with handles. Label your can “yard waste,” and fill it loosely, so that it will empty easily when turned upside down.
• Bundles, tied with fiber twine, up to 4-feet long by 2-feet in diameter. Do not use wire, nylon cording, or plastic banding to tie these bundles.
• Kraft paper bags, available at many home and garden retailers
• Reusable yard waste bags, made of polyethylene.

No food waste is allowed in these extra units.

Extra garbage should be placed in plastic bags or your own garbage can (up to 32 gallons), and put next to your regular garbage.

We’ll continue to update this post throughout the day.

Update 11:14 a.m.: According to KING 5, Gov. Gregoire has declared a state of emergency, 100,000 people are without power across the state, and one man died near Issaquah when he was hit by a falling tree.

Update 11 a.m.: If anyone has driven on neighborhood roads or taken the bus, please put a note in comments and tell us about it. We’re curious to know how well the buses are running.

One man took to his skis to get around the neighborhood (thanks to Lynn for the picture!)

Update Thursday 8:30 a.m.: The National Weather Service has issued an ice storm warning for the Seattle area until 12 p.m. today.

According to the NWS, an ice storm warning means “severe weather conditions are imminent or occurring. Significant amounts of ice accumulation will make travel dangerous or impossible. Travel is strongly discouraged…Ice accumulations will likely lead to snapped power lines and falling tree branches that add to the danger.”

On traffic cameras, television or from your window, streets may appear bare and wet but they may still be covered with ice. The Seattle Department of Transportation (SDOT) continues to treat major arterial roads with salt brine and granular salt. Some secondary or neighborhood streets are very slick and changes in conditions between treated and untreated roadways can be very sudden. Four wheel drive is not a solution – vehicles need chains to have traction. Keeping the roads clear of traffic is extremely helpful for emergency vehicles.

Many sidewalks are icy. Pedestrians should use caution while walking and crossing streets. It is the responsibility of property owners to keep their sidewalks clear of ice to protect pedestrian safety. SDOT is dispatching 22 crews to activate the Pedestrian Safety Element of the Winter Response plan to clear and salt pedestrian landings, crossings, and intersections.

Seattle Public Utilities will not pick up garbage, recycling and yard waste today as planned, because the roads are too icy.

Weather permitting, garbage, recycling, and food/yard waste service will resume Friday, on a revised schedule — with customers scheduled for pickup today collected Friday, and Friday customers collected Saturday.

If your materials are not picked up this week, please put them out on your next regularly scheduled pickup day. Missed customers will be allowed to set out double their normal amount of garbage, recycling and yard waste at no additional charge.

All Seattle Public Library branches are closed on Thursday.

Woodland Park Zoo is closed again on Thursday.

Many King County offices are closed today, including District and Superior Court, Council offices, the Prosecutor’s Office and the Department of Assessments. For a full list of county closures, click here.

Someone created some great snow creatures in front of Santoro’s Books on Wednesday. (Thanks to LS for the pictures!)

Earlier: Wednesday was a very fun snow day of sledding and drinking hot chocolate. Unless, of course, you had to drive somewhere. The roads will likely be very icy on Thursday, so please drive carefully if you must go somewhere.

Here’s what’s on tap for Thursday:

Seattle Publish Schools are closed again.

Seattle Public Utilities will pick up Wednesday’s garbage, recycling and yard waste on Thursday, weather permitting. That means regular Thursday pickups will now happen on Friday, and Friday customers should set their refuse out on Saturday by 7 a.m.

If your materials are not picked up on the revised schedule, please put them out on your next regularly scheduled pickup day. Missed customers will be allowed to set out double their normal amount of garbage, recycling and yard waste at no additional charge.

Metro Transit will continue to operate on snow routes, with 27 routes canceled. Other routes may experience significant delays, so check Metro’s Snow & Ice page for updates before you head for the bus.

Greenwood Hardware was all out of sleds on Wednesday, but they’re getting more on Thursday.

We may be out of sleds for today, but we’ve seen a lot of creative solutions: garbage can lids, cardboard+rope+tarp… Send us pictures of your ad-hoc sled-like device and whichever we think is the most creative we’ll hold a sled for you from tomorrow’s truck!

Lexy sent us a photo of the hordes of sledders at Woodland Park on Wednesday.

Next door, at the Woodland Park Zoo, the animals frolicked in the snow.

Photo by Kirsten Pisto, Woodland Park Zoo.

As Christmas approaches with its mounds of wrapping paper, leftover food and dried out Christmas trees, Seattle Public Utilities wants to remind everyone just what can and can’t be recycled or composted.

Since recycling is free, you can put extra cans, bottles, paper and whatnot into a bin or box and set it next to your recycling cart on your regular collection day. Flatten empty cardboard boxes.

All recycling, garbage and compost needs to be put out by 7 a.m. on collection day.

Tips from SPU:

Common holiday items that go in recycling:

Clean pie tins, plastic deli/veggie trays and lids (wider than 3 inches), empty eggnog cartons, paper, plastic and metal cups, bottles, cans, jars, and tubs; catalogs, greeting cards, envelopes, cardboard, clean aluminum foil, gift wrap, plastic grocery bags (bundle and tie together) and glossy/shiny shopping bags.

All food scraps and yard clippings can go in your food and yard waste cart, including:

Figgy pudding, fruitcake, mistletoe, wreaths, bones, meat, cheese, seafood, fruit and vegetables. Paper bags and napkins can also be composted, as well as greasy cardboard pizza boxes.

There are several local Drop-off Recycling Locations for hard-to-recycle items, including:

• TVs, cell phones and other electronics, as well as Styrofoam, batteries and other items.
• To find a location near you, call (206) 684-3000 or go to www.seattle.gov/util and click on “How do I dispose of this?”

Holiday items that go in the garbage include:

• Ribbons and bows, burned out holiday lights, alkaline batteries and Styrofoam packaging.
• Fats, oil and grease should be placed in a lidded container and placed in the garbage.

Bluebird Microcreamery‘s Phinney Ridge ice cream shop, at 7400 Greenwood Ave. N., is collecting new, unwrapped toys for Toys for Tots. And they’ll give you one free scoop of ice cream for every toy donation.

Waste Management has a new series of public service announcements that is focused on recycling. Greenwood resident Lowell Deo plays the dad. (Deo is also the host of “Neighborhood News” on the Seattle Channel.) He’ll be in the four videos that will be released each Monday in December.

Waste Management presents ‘Waste Management Joe’ – he’s a driver and a psychiatrist. Follow along with the Smith family as they work with Joe to improve their recycling habits. In this episode Jimmy helps his parents figure out what to do with their food scraps and food-soiled paper.

The videos can be found here. For recycling tips, click here.

Greenwood resident JaNayah Ivy, a 9th grader at the Center School, is playing the role of Scrim Mouse in Pacific Northwest Ballet’s production of “Nutcracker.”

PNB School students as Scrim Mice in Stowell/Sendak “Nutcracker.” Photo by Angela Sterling.

Polly-Glots children’s foreign language classes, created by a Phinney Ridge mom, will be offering Hindi language classes beginning next year. Classes will be at 4 p.m. Mondays at the Phinney Neighborhood Association. Start date has yet to be determined; email them at  info@polly-glots.com if you’re interested.

Polly-Glots is also looking for a Seattle or Eastside organization for needy kids that would benefit from a free language program. Email them suggestions.

Phinney Ridge and Greenwood are competing against other neighborhoods in Seattle to win $50,000 for a “Main Street Makeover” from Waste Management. The Think Green Recycling Challenge started in early October and runs through March. The goal is to increase recycling and composting and cut down on garbage disposal (as compared to last year’s data). Waste Management will post graphs of each neighborhood’s progress by the middle of November.

The neighborhood that reduces the most waste will win a $50,000 grant to spend on a community-wide project. Ideas for those projects could include bike racks, public recycling containers, hanging flower baskets and park benches.

Waste Management has partnered with a community organization in each neighborhood to get the word out and help the winning neighborhood decide on a project. In our case, it’s the Phinney Neighborhood Association.

We got a note from a homeowner in Greenwood who reports that someone dumped the contents of his garbage and recycling bins all over someone else’s driveway – two blocks away – but left the cans at the original house. He reported it to Seattle Public Utilities, which picks up garbage and recycling, as well as the Seattle Police Department’s North Precinct.

My wife received a phone call from an angry woman, saying that our garbage and recycling was dumped all over her driveway. We put out our garbage and recycling on Tuesday night just like everyone else, so we aren’t sure how it got all over her driveway. We have reported the incident with seattle public utilities, and they mentioned they would send out an inspector. Wondering if this has happened to anyone else recently? This happened near 8500 block (of Phinney Avenue North).

To the woman: we are very sorry that you had to deal with this. Again, we have reported the incident with seattle public utilities. If there’s anything you need from us, you have our phone number.

Here’s a roundup of various neighborhood news tidbits.

CoolMom reports that members of the environmental group collected 35 child car seats for recycling at last Friday’s Phinney Farmers Market. Each person who dropped off a seat paid a $10 recycling fee, but received a $10 gift certificate to Childish Things in Greenwood.

If you’re a college student in need of apartment furniture, three Goodwill stores, including the Ballard store on 8th Avenue NW and NW 65th Street, is giving college students 30 percent off their entire purchase on Wednesday (must show your student I.D. card). And you can enter a raffle to win a Goodwill gift card worth up to $100.

Greenwood is featured in one segment of a new film about cleaning up and restoring Puget Sound. “Sound and Vision” premieres at the Northwest Film Forum at 7 p.m. Monday as part of their Local Sightings Film Fest. This short clip features West Seattle. The film was produced by local production company We Are Shouting.

Three musicians from Phinney Ridge are involved in an interesting new musical adventure called “Ragas across Space (A space physicist’s musical journey through our solar system).”

Ragas across Space is a unique album in which sounds from the Earth, Jupiter and Saturn, gathered by NASA’s Polar, Voyager and Cassini spacecrafts are harmonized with Indian Classical Music. The project was spearheaded by Dr. Chanchal Uberoi, retired Professor from the Indian Institute of Science, Bangalore, and features many wonderful artists from the Seattle, WA area. The album can be purchased from CDBaby, iTunes and several other music sites.

Of the seven artists in the album, 3 (Vibhavaree Gargeya, Daniel Shurman and Chaz Hastings, live on Phinney Ridge.

If you’ve got an old computer or television to get rid of, over in Fremont, InterConnection.org is having its Grand Opening Donation Drive and Laptop Sale at its new Computer Reuse Center from 10 a.m. to 5 p.m. on Saturday.

Anyone who donates a computer gets 20% off selected items at InterConnection’s retail store. The nonprofit will also have a clearance sale on laptops, many starting at $99.

The successful nonprofit relies entirely on computer donations to support its cause. Therefore, any proceeds from the retail store provide direct support to InterConnection’s mission.

InterConnection.Org accepts all computers, monitors and TVs, but especially laptops less than five years old are valuable technology resources that can be refurbished and given new life as vital tools for people and humanitarian organizations around the world. Reusing a laptop is 20 times more effective in reducing greenhouse gases than recycling.

InterConnection.org’s Computer Reuse Center is at 3415 Stone Way.

And PAWS (Progressive Animal Welfare Society) wants to remind folks about safety around raccoons. You can take their six-question quiz here, which gives you the answers to questions such as: How can you keep raccoons out of your pet’s food?; How can you keep raccoons from entering your home through a pet door?; and, When is the best time to raccoon-proof your home?

The answer to that last question is now, in the fall or winter when babies are grown up and have dispersed from dens.

Fall/winter is the best time to repair access points to attics, crawlspaces and sheds and to install chimney caps in order to prevent conflicts the following spring/summer. If Raccoons still reside around your home, use humane deterrents to evict them such as bright lights, a loud radio set to a talk station, and unpleasant smells (such as placing ammonia soaked rags in a closed container, with holes punched in the lid, in the impacted area – only do this if you are sure no babies are present).

Need proof of how prevalent the raccoon problem is? Gregg sent us this photo recently of five raccoons trying to eat the fish out of his pond.

Local climate change organization CoolMom will be collecting old child car seats for recycling from 4-7 p.m. Friday, Sept. 23 at the Phinney Farmers’ Market at the Phinney Neighborhood Center.

A $10 (cash only) recycling fee will cover recycling costs by Goods for the Planet, an earthy-friendly product store near the Space Needle. You’ll also receive a voucher for Childish Things, a children’s consignment store at 10002 Holman Rd. NW.

The plastic and metal parts will be processed and resold as raw materials, and the straps will be used by Alchemy Goods for production of their bags, wallets and accessories made from reclaimed materials. Unfortunately, the covers are not recyclable, so please remove these and put them in the garbage at your own home. Your car seat should be recycled if:

• it has been in an accident
• is 6 years old or more
• has had its straps washed or bleached

CoolMom folks also will be doing a canning demonstration at the farmers market that day.

Waste Management, one of two companies that contract with the City of Seattle to haul away garbage, recycling, and yard waste, is challenging neighborhoods to reduce trash and increase recycling during a six-month period. And the winner gets a chunk of cash.

Starting at the end of September and running through March, Waste Management’s Neighborhood Rewards Programs will measure garbage, recycling and yard waste, and compare it to data for the same time period last year. The neighborhood that can recycle and compost the most, and throw out the least garbage, will win a $50,000 grant for a community project.

While the contest is strictly for residential and not commercial, Kristin Kinder, outreach coordinator for Waste Management, said businesses are encouraged to promote the contest as a way for the whole neighborhood to win.

“It’s a cool combination between single-family residential and commercial entities working together and both reaping the benefits,” Kinder told last week’s Greenwood Community Council meeting.

A number of Phinney Ridge and Greenwood organizations will collaborate on helping our neighborhood decide what to do with the grant money if we win the contest, including the Greenwood-Phinney Chamber of Commerce, Phinney Neighborhood Center, Sustainable Greenwood-Phinney, Northwest District Council, Greenwood Community Council, and Phinney Ridge Community Council.

“The neighborhood that wins will be granted $50,000 for a ‘shovel ready’ plan. So they don’t want us to spend a lot of time and money figuring it out. It should be ready to go,” Phinney Neighborhood Association Administrative Assistant Marie Bolla said.

“We want to protect our resources and protect the resources of this area for our children and our friends and family and for our community,” Bolla added, “and one way to do that is to reduce waste, and recycle what we can.”

Final details of the contest are still being worked out, so stay tuned for more details, and the official start date in September.

Before the recycling crew could open up their truck, a couple dozen people had lined up in the Phinney Neighborhood Association’s lower parking lot with old computers, monitors, printers, cell phones and other electronics last Saturday.

InterConnection, a local non-profit, refurbishes usable items to donate to local and international nonprofits. Those that can’t be refurbished are recycled.

Organizers said the initial turnout was very good, as evidenced by the pile of old electronics that quickly piled up before they could sort through it.

Organizers tell us they received 108 computers, another 42 laptops, 67 monitors, 41 keyboards or mice, 38 cell phones, 31 printers and 15 televisions.

From the PNA:

We had a great turnout and ended up with 9 pallet-sized boxes full of equipment. Several of the computers, monitors, and cell phones will be refurbished, and others will be recycled through environmentally and socially responsible methods. The event was such a success that we hope to do more of these in the future.

People who couldn’t make the event on Saturday can always drop off the same materials at InterConnection. Their address is 2222 N. Pacific St, Seattle, WA 98103, and drop-off times are 10-6 Mon-Fri and 10-5 on Saturday. For a complete list of what you can give, visit http://www.interconnection.org/give.html.

Bring your old electronic equipment to the Phinney Neighborhood Center, 6532 Phinney Ave. N. in the lower parking lot, on Saturday for an E-Cycling event conducted by InterConnection.

Laptops only will be accepted from 1:30-2 p.m.; all electronics accepted from 2-4:30 p.m.

Bring your old desktops, laptops, monitors, keyboards, mice, speakers, cables and other peripherals, and cell phones to recycle for free. Printers and scanners will also be collected for a fee of $5, plus $0.35 per pound for printers over 15 lbs. Equipment can be working or not, old or new.

InterConnection, a local non-profit, will refurbish usable items to donate to non-profits at home and abroad, providing job training to people in Seattle in the process. Items that cannot be refurbished are recycled through environmentally and socially responsible means. To learn more visit www.interconnection.org

InterConnection clears all data from electronics, but “wipe discs” will be available at the PNA for added privacy.

Seattle Public Utilities will pick up garbage, recycling, and food and yard waste like normal on Martin Luther King Jr. Day on Monday.

The city’s North Recycling and Disposal Station in Fremont/Wallingford will be open normal business hours, from 8 a.m. to 5:30 p.m.

Customers can report a missed collection after 5 p.m. on the day it was missed by calling (206) 684-3000 or by filling out the online Missed Collection form.

SPU also will pick up and recycle TVs, computers and other electronic items for a $20 fee. Call (206) 684-3000 to request an electronics collection. Apartment residents should contact their building manager to arrange for electronics collection.

You can also drop off your old computer and TV for free at a designated E-Cycle location.