They're Back

See all those little white things out there in the landfill?

They are a sure sign of Winter. The Seagulls have returned.
Every year these things fly in from the coast to spend the winter here. It seems like an odd thing to do.
You can see them around town, hanging out at Micky Dee's filching french fries and stuff.
But mostly, they hang at the landfill. Apparently, life is easy out there.
Well, just so y'all know about this important event, The Fuzz has included a couple of poor quality pix of our feathered friends, a sure sign of Winter.

Birdie Business

So here we see this wonderful Seagull* soaring above the waves. But wait, those are waves of garbage! Yes, they have been here all winter. The Fuzz has just been too lazy to write this post. But since they will be going home before too long, we better mention these yearly visitors from the coast.This is a scene at our spiffy new landfill. That black stuff is some of the high-tech liner that's not covered up yet. The white stuff is birds. They come here every winter. They seem to have found their way from the old dump to our spiffy new one OK. I suppose they had the advantage of aerial reconnaissance. But all in all, it's good to know that this spiffy new landfill was able to retain some of the fine features of the old.
*The Fuzz would like to remind everyone, that we have been advised, that these "Seagulls" may actually be "Arctic Terns".

The "Lego Truck"

This one has been referred to as the "Lego Truck".
The Fuzz saw it out at the Landfill and just happened to have his camera. So now we all get to see it. I don't believe it is actually made of Legos though, but one of the coworkers named it as such and it seemed to fit. The Lego Truck belongs to a neighboring municipality which utilizes the same landfill.
You may have noticed what appeares to be some sort of tractor in front of The Lego Truck. It is, in fact, a bulldozer. The Lego Truck is somewhat unconventional in that it is Front Wheel Drive. This has many advantages I'm sure, but operation in mud is not one of them.

The Fuzz regrets that our Mystery Pix of late have been lacking somewhat in Mystery. And so we present our....

Latest Mystery Pix

No cheating now!

The Fay Day

Fay hung around Florida a good while and left them lots of rain.
Then she* finally made it here and did it again, though not on the same scale.
She has helped out with the well, and the Fuzz cut the pump back on. Today, he measured a whopping 18in of water in that hole. You will notice the ripple effect down there. This is not some kind of Photoshop trick. It is Fay, herself, filling the well. That's the way it works with these shallow wells. Unfortunately it probably won't last long.
I'm afraid she did complicate things on the job though. She washed out the road into the dump.
Here you can see the extensive damage.
This complicated things since our trucks need to dump a couple times to work a whole route.
At first the folks out there told us they'd have things straightened out by about 1:00 PM. So The Fuzz tried to cram as much as he could into that truck in the hope that he'd be able to dump it. But alas, it was not to be.
Next we brought out some of the old "rear loader" trucks and filled them also.
By quitting time we had a number of full garbage trucks and nowhere to dump them. The Fuzz suggested dumping them over by the river, but nobody took his idea seriously.
But the trucks needed to be empty for the next morning. The landfill people said the road would be passable by 5:30 PM, so the boss man sent us out there to wait. By some fluke, The Fuzz got in the head of the line. He was the first one in, it was 7:00 PM.
But now every thing is OK. The garbage made it into the dump, and The Fuzz will get Overtime!

*The Fuzz thinks they should still name those things after women.

The End for My Flipflops

It looks like this is the end of the road for my Flipflops. There's been many a mile pass beneath these things. It's not that they were "Down at the heal" exactly, more like there Was no Heal.

All through this winter The Fuzz has had an eye out for a new pair, but it would seem there's no market for Flipflops around here in the middle of winter.

But Today, he scored big at Wally World. So these will get a much needed rest. I doubt that they will be preserved for posterity though. Their Historic significance will go unnoticed and they will most likely end up in the landfill, just another insignificant bit of plastic for future archaeologists to puzzle over.

Doorstops and Flicks

I found this thing out at the dump, or should I say "Landfill" a few years ago. Actually there were two of them. I grabbed them both. I'm not real sure what it is exactly (besides heavy). It looks like part of some huge transmission or something. You may wonder what a person would want with such as this. In our case, it makes a great Doorstop for a drafty house, even the cats can't move it. This is good because we can confine the Kitties' nocturnal mischief to a smaller area. Dumps used to be great places to find cool things and shoot rats and stuff. Now days, they're in such a hurry to cover everything up. But that, I suppose, is progress.

We did enjoy a bunch of "Blowout" movies from the Reel to Reel festival. The Fuzz recommends-

"My Name is Wallace"
"Fission"
"Warlord"
"Off the Grid: Life on the Mesa"
"Kilroy Was Here"
"Welcome to Tolono"

Unfortunately, I have no Idea where you can get them. But, if you get lucky and run up on a few, they're worth your time.

Final Final Destination

I'll admit it was hard to see. A sharp eyed surfer got it close. A deer was the call, and considering how hard it was to see, I guess that was close enough. Here is a closer look at this tragedy. So congratulations to Woodie, you'll have to buy your own lottery ticket, but if it's any consolation, I hope you win big. Maybe if you do you'll remember the Fuzz.
I guess that stuff about the glue factory isn't true any more. These big guys get special treatment. They have a nice deep hole just for them. Horsies, Moo-Cows, Dogs and Cats, ( the animal "shelter" is here at the landfill ) this is the final destination for so many.
But I'm getting depressed about all this, so I think it's time to say Bye Bye.

Final Destination ?

Ha ! No picture.
Yes it's quiz time. Turn back the pages of time and "Kinda Fuzzy" itself. Travel with me back in history to Saturday, February 24, 2007, and the "Final Destination". How observant are you ? Who's "Final Destination" is this ? Unfortunately there are no prizes, no big bucks. If you want that, buy a lottery ticket. But you can have the smug satisfaction of knowing your keen powers of observation are a cut above the rabble.

Final Destination

Let's just say, we've been furiously grabbing garbage for several hours now. The packer has been packing and packing, but can only do so much. If we don't do something we will have garbage blowing out of the top of the truck all over town. It's time to take a ride in the country. We run the packer blade all the way back, and if we haven't gone too far with things, it should seal everything safe in the truck. This is important because the police frown on littering.
When we get there, we will have to run over the scale. For some reason they must keep a careful account of just how much stuff comes out here. A big reason is money. The County charges by the pound for garbage. But we have to pay them. This seems somehow wrong. I mean, this is our garbage, and we are delivering it to them. They don't even have to go get it themselves. But be that as it may, we will have to sign a ticket, and they will bill the city. Threatening to just keep our garbage won't help.
Now we'll travel down a dusty road, cross a creek, and eventually wind up on top of a hill that used to be a big hole. After they dug the huge hole, great sheets of some kind of rubber looking stuff were spread out on the ground, then garbage, and more garbage. There is a system that collects the water that ends up in here, and pumps it out. That's not my problem and I'm not sure what they do with it. It's probably really exiting, but, like I said, that's not my problem.
This is where the birds are. It's cool to see the buzzards hanging out in the dead trees. There weren't any around when I had the camera, so you'll just have to take my word for that. We will dump our garbage out on the ground along with everyone else's, and unless it looks like there is something good in there, they will run over it and crush even more with these big crusher things. This is one parked. It's probably tore up. All this kind of stuff seems to tear up a lot. We keep our mechanics busy too.
Finally they will cover all the garbage with dirt. And that will be that. Out of sight, out of mind.

I'm not sure why I wrote all this stuff about garbage, and I only scratched the surface. I do have a life other than this, but someone once said to write about what you know, so I maybe I got this out of the way now.

White Crows

So what's the deal here ? We are like, about 200 mi. from the coast. So what's with all the birds ? Every winter they come. They seem to prefer the dump, or I guess I should say, "landfill". There used to be only a few, but now multitudes arrive each December and hang with us for a while. I guess they just like it here, plenty to eat. and a lake nearby for swimming. Once we had a guy who had never seen them. He was kinda dumb I guess and didn't know what they were. Someone told him they were "White Crows". You just can't trust some folks.
So why do they come all this way ? I don't know. Sometimes we go to the beach during the summer, I guess they go from the beach during the winter. Maybe they miss us. But if they're here, who cleans up down there ? All I know is if you have to get out of the truck, wear a hat.