I’d like to know if garbage removal people aren’t aware that their trucks are noisy. I don’t even mean the City garbage removers, or whatever you call them… ok, they’re doing their job, one that most of us would gladly pass on. Plus they do it extremely fast, so you hardly notice them when they pass by your street at 2 in the morning.
I am, however, talking about those companies that rent these huge debris containers, so that you can do house work or renew the roof of your building (which is what’s happening in this case, two buildings down the street), and leave all the debris in the container (it’s illegal to leave it anywhere else, which is a very nice deal for these same companies). At night they come retrieve it.
This of course means no sleeping for anyone in the street… or… at least not for me.
We’re talking a relatively large truck that has to maneuver for 15 minutes to park correctly in front of the container. Since my street has an inclination of about 45 degrees the engine is going like mad, making the loudest racket possible. Then, the same diesel-driven engine has to work the crane, in order to get the container from point A (on the street ground) to point B (on top of the truck).
…Now, this is particularly noisy. Imagine the biggest, dirtiest diesel engine in neutral, while you put the pedal to the metal and let it roar for about five to ten minutes. It’s not a long time, but if you add it to the time it took parking and mention it was 4 in the morning in an otherwise completely silent neighborhood…
Sometimes I wish this was actually the US, because then, I’m sure, I’d be able to sue the ass off of this particular garbage disposal company… but then again I’d have to actually be an american… ugh…
But life isn’t all bad… at least it’s the last day of August and as much as Summer struggles to stay until late September (which it usually does), nothing can stop the planet from actually tilting and moving away from the bloody Sun again, ending this miserable heat. I can’t wait.
Last Saturday I’ve returned from my short vacation. At first the feeling was nice, to be back home, to take care of my cats, to see everything was still where we left it and to fire up my computer for some e-mail reading.
Soon enough, however, the feeling of utter boredom with civilization returned (not Civilization – the computer game, civilization itself). Swamped with work but not exactly drowning in money I returned to my day-to-day routine of annoying myself to near death.
In a pathetic attempt to recapture the week spent in the sun, careless and fun (what a nice rhyme), I leave you with the short story of my summer vacation…
Day one:
Woke up in the early morning to get ready to leave, feeling unsure about actually going and leaving everything behind for a week, especially work and the cats. Anna’s car pulls up by the door at around 11 am, we lock the door, down the stairs and into the car.
Stopped by a drugstore to buy eclipse sun glasses.
On the road: the car rolls at a nice speed, traffic is scarce we make it south in about 4 hours. My other aunt and cousins await us. We have arrived, let the vacation begin.
Since it’s the middle of the afternoon we put on our swimming suits and go take a dip in the pool, it’s nice, although a bit windy. Out of the water and into the cars we go to town for dinner. Clams and steak. Nice.
Back at the house my uncle James arrives.
Day two:
Morning at the beach, afternoon in the swimming pool – this would become the daily formula for the week. At night we cooked a nice barbecue, but mainly we ate shellfish. I started drinking beer, which I never enjoyed before… odd.
Day three:
There was a Sun eclipse today. It was utterly uninteresting, if you ask me… from where we were there was almost nothing to it, except that weird light when it was halfway through. It must have been nice, though, in those places of Europe where it got 100% covered.
The days slide by easily, I’m still not sunburnt, so it’s ok. My uncle James went back to work.
Day Four:
Can’t really remember any details from Thursday.
Day five:
Nothing special to be said… the routine was steadily installed… beach in the morning, swimming pool by the afternoon, dinner, playing games late, usually pictionary or trivial pursuit… talking… sleeping.
Except dinner on this day was particularly annoying as we had to drive for almost 2 hours to get to a silly restaurant to eat some form of chicken which everyone seems to like a lot… oh well.
Day Six:
The last day. The weather got better on the day we’re supposed to leave. It’s been fine so far (a bit windy), but now it just got perfect. We get to the beach fairly early, and there we are for a while… I start to find the beach utterly boring. Plus I’m already sunburnt despite all the sunblock I wore during the week… So we took a walk, talked, swam (although the water was ice cold)… Went to have some sandwiches by the beach for lunch and when we returned there was a huge red oil stain covering the water and approaching the shore.
We left.
Swimming pool, obviously. I like it a lot… I can jump in, swim or just sit on a floater and enjoy the sun. This particular swimming pool was also empty besides us.
We went out at night for dinner in town (by this time my uncle James was back again), we had a big final meal of seafood and steak and by this time I had three beers, which is very odd, considering I always hated beer. Something changed.
Back we drove during the night… four hours, again. And… well… here we are.
That’s it… short vacation, not much to tell… nice anyway, although I will strongly consider a different form of vacation for following years… perhaps we’ll rent a small house by ourselves…
I’d like to know if garbage removal people aren’t aware that their trucks are noisy. I don’t even mean the City garbage removers, or whatever you call them… ok, they’re doing their job, one that most of us would gladly pass on. Plus they do it extremely fast, so you hardly notice them when they […]
– a summary of a short summer vacation- Last Saturday I’ve returned from my short vacation. At first the feeling was nice, to be back home, to take care of my cats, to see everything was still where we left it and to fire up my computer for some e-mail reading. Soon enough, however, the […]
