Frying potatoes in bacon grease

This week looks to be one of those two or three weeks we get in the heart of the nation with absolutely perfect weather. Things around here are usually TOO.  As in too hot, too cold, too wet, too dry. This week we are looking at bright blue cloudless skies and temperatures in the 70s and low 80s: Chamber of Commerce weather.You get the idea.

The weather is perfect and I am stuck in the office working on my 21012 business plan. Am I bitching -- nope, I am glad to have a job. While I complain about work, I have worked at a few worse places and not many that are better. I think it is our nature to complain, to look for the best in life and work.

This week the city is picking up nearly anything you want to throw out on your normal trash day.  If two guys can lift it, you can put it out by the curb. Nothing hazardous is allowed (tires, paint, etc), but all else is fair game. The city will even take old appliances, as long as the doors are off the hinges and coolants are removed. Old furniture, boxes, junk of all kinds ends up by the curb. Last night we put out some stuff -- things we could not sell for even a dime at the last garage sale, an old ottoman, the cloth torn and spitting out stuffing, a smashed remnant of a long-ago received fruit basket.

I was not surprised to wake this morning with most of my "trash" neatly stacked and picked over.  The late night trash vultures came through the neighborhood, headlights off, scanning the curbs and drives for the good stuff. Most of the junk my neighbors and I put out is gone long before the city employees make their pickup. I don't care, as long as the junk is out of my garage I am a happy boy. But the trash vultures do crack me up. The twice yearly heavy trash pick up days is living proof of the accuracy of the old adage "what is one man's trash is another man's treasure".