Yea!  It is finally here!  I have been waiting all week for this day to arrive, and amazingly, it’s finally here…Trash Pick Up Day!!!
I’m sure you’re wondering why anyone would get this excited about their trash being picked up.  Please allow me to explain.
   It all started last Saturday night.  We actually had a weekend with nothing major going on, so we just vedged around the house, all day long on Saturday, (I made that spelling up, vedge is not a real word, but it should be).  Around 6 PM, my mind started craving adventure. The first things that came to mind were crawfish and exotic beer:  Luckily, these were both available in the same shopping center.  After selecting my perfect mix-pack of beer, I drove the 68 yards to the local crawfish provider.  Unfortunately, their sign said they closed at 5.  It was almost 7.  As I was getting ready to back out of my parking space, I noticed one of the proprietors of the Ragin’ Cajun waving me in.  I put the car in park, jumped out and asked if they had any crawfish left.
   “Just 4 or 5 pounds.”, he responded.
  “Cool, I just wanted a pound or so.” I replied.
   “You’ll need more than a pound!”, the R.C. recommended, to which I said, “Okay, give me 2.”
   He came out of the cooler with a large bag and said, “Here’s 5 pounds, we’ll only charge you for two.”
   Cha-Ching!  I thanked them and headed home, dreaming of all the things I could do with 5 pounds of boiled crawdads.   I ate about 2 pounds of crawfish that night and decided to make Etouffee the next day.
  Sunday, I found a recipe that sounded really good, and set out to acquire all my ingredients.  I got all my fixins, cut up the vegetables, shelled all the crawfish, and started cooking.  I guarrranteee that be da’ best ting I evah done ehht!!!  Seriously, this was the best dish I have ever cooked, and remarkably easy!  I’ll post the recipe I used at the end of the post, (minus the few changes I made, which I can’t tell you about).  My wife even raved about this dish, which is rare for her, so I know it was good.  Of course you know something is going to be good when it says, “Start by melting one STICK of butter.”
   So, that’s where the Crawfish Lovefest ends.  For those of you who have eaten crawfish before, you know that there is a LOT of waste left over, after you shell them, (pretty much the whole animal, minus the tail meat).  So now the problem is, what to do with the ‘waste’.  I knew putting them in my trash can in the garage…for a week…towards the end of May…in Georgia, was probably not the best idea,  but hey!  I double bagged them!…How bad could it be?

DAY 1:  Whoa!  I cannot believe they smell already!  Well, it can’t get any worse than that.  My wife probably won’t even notice.

DAY 2:  THE HORROR!!!  My trash can smells like a Thousand Dead Rats!!!

DAY 3:  You can smell it in the house!  You can smell it in the car as you pull into the garage!

DAY 4:  Holding my nose, I sprint through the garage, dive and roll under the closing garage door, and narrowly make it out alive.  After regaining my footing, and my sense of smell, I see deep scratches all over the outside of our garage door.  I quickly spin around and see a bunch of vultures, standing around in a circle, in my neighbors’  backyard.  The vultures keep looking up at me, and then quickly look away when they see I’m looking back at them.  As I run over to them, I notice they are drawing something in the dirt.
   “What’s going on here?!”, I shout as I get closer.
   None of the bald birds budge, but the leader looks up and says, “Move along kid, nothing to see here.  Besides, we’d be doing you a favor.  Now get outta here, before we start throwing up on you.”

DAY 5:  TRASH DAY:  This will all be over soon.  It’s impossible to hold in my sighs of relief as I try to hold my breath while rolling the can out to the end of my driveway.

You could imagine my disappointment that afternoon, when I got home and saw the trash can hadn’t moved!!!  Seems my wife, who was out of town, and very busy, (LU), had forgotten to pay the bill.  Luckily, after some serious discussions, the garbage company agreed to send a truck by to pick up our trash.
   Please don’t hold this against the crawdads; it was all my fault.  And the vultures never actually said anything, about throwing up on me.

Here’s the recipe: http://www.gumbopages.com/food/seafood/etouffee-perry.html

What Robots really say when no humans are around.

I’m not a big fan of T-shirts these days, due to my current size.  Let’s just say, T-shirts don’t accentuate my more positive features, like my…I dunno, sense of humor?  However, I do wear T-shirts while working in the yard.  It’s totally a comfort thing, but I figure I deserve it for actually working in the yard.  People may ride by, laugh and point, and say, “Look at that fat dude!”, but at least they’ll say, “Look at that fat dude, working in his yard”.  

     So, I worked in the yard the other day, and wore a t-shirt.  After I finished, I went upstairs and turned on the hot water in the shower.  I stood looking in the mirror, (which my wife says I do a lot).  While I waited for the water to heat up.  I casually glanced down at my t-shirt, and noticed the slogan on it read, “Life is boog”.  It’s weird.  Even in the reflection, the words ‘Life’ and ‘is’, still appeared as themselves, but ‘good’ was now ‘boog’.  ‘Life is boog’, kind of struck me funny, and got me thinking about the actual saying, “Life is good”.
   

     Taken literally, Life is almost always good.  There are exceptions, such as when you’re being severely tortured, or you’re suffering terribly from a tragic disease or injuries from an accident, but most of the time, life is good, when compared to the alternative. 
   When the same phrase is looked at from a religious point of view, you could say, “Life is good, but the afterlife is better!”
  Another way of looking at this simple phrase is “Life is good”, (currently).  When someone asks, “How’s life?”, they don’t want to know what you think of life itself, they want to know how your life is going currently.  If all the planets are aligned, and everything is going your way, (or you just don’t want to go into an explanation of all your problems), then you reply, “Life is good.”
   The way you say “Life is good”, can also affect it’s meaning.  If you say, “Life is Goo-ood” in a voice similar to Wooderson, from the movie Dazed and Confused, then that means things are really going great.  If you say, “Life is…um…good”, with your voice dropping off on the word ‘good’, then you are begging this person to reply with the question, “What’s wrong?”   They should just say “That’s cool”, and quickly turn and run away.
    So is Life good?  Yes, hopefully for all people, life is good sometimes.  Life is also many other things, and they are all important parts of the experience.
   Life is good, life is bad, life is easy, life is hard, life is fun, life is boring, life is scary, life is magic, life is short, life is long, life is just beginning, life is almost over, life is over, life is wonderful, life is dreadful, life is funny, life is sad, life is impossible, life is inevitable, life is beautiful, life is ugly, life is silly, life is serious, life is boog baby, life is boog.
   

Why doesn’t someone make a t-shirt with all that on it!  I bet that T-shirt would fit me just fine. 
Moral of the story, just keep on living.  Whatever life is, it’s all worth it.

P.S.  Sorry there are no gaseous robots in this post.  I’ll see what I can do to correct that omission.