Monday, August 27, 2012

remarkably poor timing...

The weather man on the radio said that we could expect lots of rain from that tropical storm headed north. The people at work yesterday were predicting dire-ness, saying it would come up into Mobile and head towards Montgomery - of course, the main concern there is to keep stores in business, be available for sales. Worries about possible power outages, and loss of fresh/frozen merchandise, rather than a serious concern for safety. I have read in-house publications of a contingency plan that has  gigantic commercial-sized generators mounted on flat-bed trailers to strategically disperse to disaster areas, that will keep stores open with lights, freezers and especially cash registers running.

Thanks to the guy who got up on the roof on Saturday, and spend hours digging around in nasty gutters, cleaning out years accumulation of 'whatever' that clogs them up. Even though I spent extra to get the kind that have a lip/overhang so I would Never had to clean them again, they would overflow every time we had a hard raid. Apparently those itty-bitty invisible things like dust, pollen, grains of gravel that weather and wash loose from roofing accumulate and eventually create a problem even in the ones that are 'no-clog'. Thank You, ACI!

I don't pay much attention to the weather, partially due to not watching TV (and partially due to discovering that I have an excellent worrier in the house, who can do all the stressing about things no one can control for me, so I don't need to waste my time with concerns about naturally occurring events on global scale.) But know we can expect residual fallout from hurricane-like winds. And regret that I spent several hours in the yard last week picking up tree trash. Filled up the wheelbarrow at least six times with limbs that had fallen out of trees, hauling most of it up to the street for city trucks to pick up on Thursday.

Amusing, but not particularly funny that most of it has been littering the yard for months, and I just got inspired last week to start cleaning some of it up - right before the storm will blow more down. And give the appearance of benign neglect all over again. The amusing part is that those piles of limbs that I trundled up to the edge of the ditch, left for the city to remove, look like little beaver lodges. When I would tip the wheelbarrow over and dump a pile of tangled twigs and sticks up by the street, then go back to start another load, it looks like a little series of mis-placed homes for water rodent families. Not nearly as orderly or water-tight as the beaver parents would do, but from a distance remarkably similar to what you see out in the middle of the pond, where the rodents have set up housekeeping. Just amusingly mis-put.

Plus I have a major infestation of red-bugs swirling around my ankles. Bumps, scabs, scratch marks all along the top edge of ankle socks where the family of chiggers thought to set up housekeeping. Arrggghhh. As would be expected 'after the horse is out of the barn', I put insect repellent on my legs when I went out the second day. So I have the assurance (?) that all the aggravating, irritating, itchy bites are chiggers and not mosquitoes. And have done so much desperate, urgent scratching along the line just above my socks, that the scabs look like we could play 'connect the dots'. Colored markers, anyone?

Part of the not particularly funny is that the guys who drive the city trucks care so little for a job well done, that it would take about four trips for them to get it all: they pick it up with a claw-type device, with an arm that extends out from the truck to 'bite' the pile of trash. And don't care if they only get half of the pile. So I will go back up there on a weekly basis, re-stacking all the trash left behind, for them to try again the next week. City workers possibly think that it is more like 'whack-a-mole' and no matter how often they come by and pick up, the pile mysteriously re-appears the following week, needing repeat attention. Should I tell them that if they would get it all on the first try, they would not be back in seven days, taking another swipe at what appears to be the same stack of trash? Yeah, you are right, a complete waste of time and effort, to think they could be persuaded to get the job done right the first time....

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