Packing Up

I’m heading to the office again today. This makes five times this month. Crazy! My company hands out holiday gifts each year. The last two Covid flavored years they’ve mailed it to us. This year they are going back to handing them out, pre-pandemic style. I prefer the mail method.

Today is trash day and Poland Springs five gallon water bottle delivery day. I put the trash barrel on the street last night and our empty bottles at the base of the steps so it would all be ready today.

After my shower, at about 7:04am, I looked out the window and saw the trash truck pull up. Woah! Glad I did it last night! I also saw one of our water bottles out in the street. Either it was windy last night or the deer decided to mess with me.

It would be more dramatic to say that the trash truck nearly ran over the bottle, but it wouldn’t be true. The scene was not that wild. Oh well.

I’m all packed up and ready for the commute. I just need to go… but I don’t wanna. Nope. I’m hoping they do the gift distribution early so I can head home during my lunch break at about 1:30. I usually break at 1:00, but someone booked me into a 12:30-1:30 meeting. Ugh.

Happy commuter Tuesday, my loyal readers and only friends.

Something Going On

Today is trash day. I brought the barrels out to the street before 7:00am. They came in the early afternoon. They picked up my stuff, then moved down the street. I happened to look out the window and saw them 2-3 houses away. They appeared to run the compactor but a couple of things fell out. I figured they would pick them up and put them back. The last I saw, the guy who rides on the back of the truck called the driver out to take a look. Weird, but oh well.

At some later point, I have no idea how much time went by, I was in a meeting at work and something outside caught my eye. It was another truck, covered in emergency lights driving up the street.

This guy, to be precise:

Or maybe not precise. The original truck was facing the other way. This guy, to me, looked like a tow truck. The truck in the picture, however, is not a tow truck so maybe there were three trucks? I was busy with work so may have missed some events.

Anyway, I figured the first truck, the one with my garbage in the back, broke down and needed to get towed away. Why then were there two guys putting sand all over the road? They looked almost like a haz-mat team cleaning up a chemical spill, except that there were no haz-mat suits. What the hell?

They spread sand on the road (you can see where in the picture) and then shoveled it all up. The second truck then backed up against the first truck, furthering my suspicion that the second truck was a tow truck. Then work got interesting and I took the one eye I had out the window back to my monitor. When my meeting was over, all that was left was what you see in the picture. After another few minutes, this guy drove away.

So… what the hell was going on?

Abandoned Mower Update

The trash pick up did not take the abandoned lawn mower. Good. The lawn care team that was working on the neighbor’s yard did eventually come and pick it up. They didn’t actually leave, they just moved to another house down the street. They picked up their seemingly abandoned stuff and left. Good.

Until…

They are back! Their truck is, at least. It’s not blocking our driveway, but it’s close. Maybe they left for lunch? I gotta tells ya, this is just fascinating shit over here.

Abandoned Mower

One of our neighbors has a landscape crew come over and cut their grass and rake their leaves. They were here earlier this morning. They unloaded their equipment and did their thing and somehow managed to leave without taking a huge lawn mower with them. This orphaned lawn mower is currently sitting at the end of my driveway. It’s only partially blocking us. We could back the cars out without hitting it, but we’d have to be careful.

This is leading to many new questions. Do I need to take the lawn mower in and feed it and clothe it and give it a name and everything? Is this like a baby at the fire station door step deal? Today is our trash pickup and the mower is sitting right near our barrels. When the trash pickup folks show, are they going to think we are trying to throw out a gigantic lawn mower? I don’t think it would fit into the back of a garbage truck, but it might. Will they try to dump it into the truck?

How are we going to get answers to these pressing questions? Enquiring minds need to know.

Sleepy Red Head

Another less than great night of sleep last night. The data my Apple Watch collected actually looked okay, but coming on the heels of the previous night’s bad sleep it has left me feeling pretty sleepy and crummy today. I’m hoping to get to bed early tonight but I am pretty sure it ain’t happening. We’ll see.

I’m in a weird state right now where I have a few projects to work on and I keep letting them get in the way of each other. I start working on project A but my mind wanders to project B so I switch to that but my mind wanders to project C so I switch to that but my mind wanders to project A and so on. The end result is I don’t make progress on any of them. Blah.

Referencing back to the previous post, if you’re wondering about our neighborhood trash pick up, they still haven’t arrived… though I do hear the sound of trucks in the distance. Maybe soon?

Finally, as my lunch break comes to an end, I return to the topic of guitar gear, what with guitar and cats being the two most common topics of this particular page (are they? I should do some research into that… but I won’t), I am starting to think it might be time to start searching the youtubes for a new wah pedal. I’m starting to want to upgrade up from my Crybaby. Hello, rabbit hole. Allow me to fall down you for a while.

Okay, back to work, red head!

Damn You, Rodents!

I’m covering a day shift at my mother’s house today as I slowly get back into the swing of that thing. Today is trash day, so I put the barrels out on the street last night so that I wouldn’t have to worry about them this morning.

The squirrels get into my trash barrels all the time, but they have never staged an attack while they were on the street. Until today that is.

The damage wasn’t bad, but one barrel was open and there was a small amount of trash scattered across the front yard. When I went outside to fix things I found two squirrels, three chipmunks and a handful of various birds checking out the wreckage.

Oh good, now the squirrels are cluing the rest of the wild kingdom into the buffet that is the crap we throw away. It’s like some perverse Disney cartoon.

Damn you, rodents. Fuck you, squirrels. We have foxes, bobcats, hawks, owls, and on one occasion a coyote living in the woods behind our house. None of those super predators eat squirrels? Come on, assholes. Control our rodent infestation!

Ouch

You’d think that after 40 days of exercising 30 minutes a day my back wouldn’t scream in agony after dragging three trash barrels out to the street.

You’d think, but alas you would be in error.

Ouch.