We finally had a cold front come through Tucson, and someone was burning a bonfire or leaves or something.  The smell made me think of and miss Illinois.  :(  Never underestimate your legal ability (in my opinion, obligation) to start a backyard fire for no reason but enjoyment. 

If I start a fire here, I get fined.  And then fined for using extra water to put it out.

Arizona has frogs.  I was outside and a bush was shaking and I thought I was going to finally see some crazy poisoness snake.  And out jumps the biggest frog I’ve ever seen in the wild.  Illinois has some good size frogs, but I would expect that.  To have a frog bigger than my fist jump out in the middle of the desert was somewhat surprising.  So I ate him.

So I went to a Carrie Underwood concert last friday, and her opening act was Josh Turner (who I recommend to anyone who hasn’t heard him and likes to hear a bass take centerstage).  Josh sounded good, but Carrie was amped up soooo loud that the old man came out in me, and I found my way to the bathroom, the nearest stall, and shoved toilet paper into my ears.  I’m pretty sure the TP balls were fairly concealed, but it still felt quite stupid.  But I’ve only been to one other concert in my life that required shoving toilet paper in my ears, and that was in high school when I saw heavy metal band Jackyl, who brings a chainsaw on stage and destroys a bunch of equipment with the amps at full blast - a performance to which one goes with the understanding they will lose hearing.  But Carrie Underwood? 

So if you’re going to see Jackyl or Carrie Underwood anytime soon, bring your toilet paper.

One man’s trash is another man’s treasure. Alright, c’mon. C’mon. Let’s define trash here, because I’m pretty sure trash is trash. I think of little pieces of paper rolling around on an empty street. And that’s no man’s treasure. Unless one of those pieces is a winning lotto ticket. But in that case, it wasn’t the first man’s trash anyways, it’s a lost treasure. Which makes the treasure finding man, the assumer of another’s trash to be trash, a no good stinkin’ thief.

I was asked a rhetorical question yesterday, to which I gave an answer immediately because I think rhetorical questions are stupid.

I was asked if I wished I could live 200 years? 

Are you friggin’ nuts?!  That means my IRA withdrawal would be like age 140 and 1/2.  So if your question is do I want to work for 140 years, then my answer is no.  I proceeded to rant for several minutes, which I’ll exclude here.  But it was enough to end rhetorical questioning for the day.

So, would you like to live 200 years?

New house, new neighborhood. I put my garbage out for the first time. I get a call from my wife the next morning telling me that the garbagemen didn’t pick up my garbage. I ask her to give me the phone number off of the can (we have to use a common city can here).

The garbagemen did not pick up my garbage due to “an accumulation of garbage.”

“Yes, it says here ‘Garbage was not picked up due to an accumulation of garbage.’”

“An accumulation of garbage?”

“Yes, that’s what it says.” After a brief silence I reply, “The garbagemen didn’t pick up my garbage because there was an accumulation of garbage.” She says, “That’s what it says here in the system.” They have a system (?).

“Let me think here for a minute,” I tell her, “and by all means go ahead and think along with me. I have an accumulation of garbage…” Interrupting, “which is why they didn’t pick it up.”

“Oh I heard you, but you see, this is where you come in. This is where my job ends and yours begins. An accumulation of garbage becomes a disbursement of garbage during garbage collection, at least it does in Illinois.”

Later that day a manager called me back, at which point I was told that an accumulation of garbage is having garbage outside of the can.

“The men won’t get out of the trunk. If they can’t grab the can with the claw then they can’t take the garabge.”

“But, but they could grab the can with the claw, the bag on the ground had nothing to do with them not being able to grab the can with the…..claw.” Whatever the claw is, in my mind I was pretty sure that anyone could pick anything up they wanted if they have a claw.

“The men don’t get out of the truck for an accumulation of garbage. If there’s extra garbage, there’s a problem.”

“Well they just increased their problem for next week then.”

In short, I had to pay for multiple trips. Because garbagemen don’t get out of their truck, because they hate garbage.