Up an hour before sunrise is normal for me. Sometimes as much as two hours.
I got used to doing this when I was trying to get to Fairmount Park in Philadelphia before the events would start so I could get my own training in on inline skates.
I called it a Boob Walk, I'll let you figure out any second meanings. I shall explain it as a bunch of boobs walking around miles in the heat to make dollars so the charities could get pennies.
Looking into the finances of that boondoggle, I will never give anything to the United Way - their offices were the "Palace on the Parkway" in Philadelphia compared to even the Rodin Museum a few blocks away.
Hmm, interesting aside?
Anyway... Rack and I got up and went for this walk. I intended to go to The Park and get in a marathon on the bike that morning, and I did. But that all means we have to be quick about the walk and not dawdle.
It was the one day a month where we had Bulk Trash Pickup.
Bulk Trash Day is an odd beast. I've used it before when we had our Sea Grape tree "lowered" for the last couple years. That tree is huge, or rather it's big now, it was huge thanks to Nelson and his landscaping team climbing up the thing and chopping it down by about half of its height artfully. It's still alive even if the termites had begun to eat it away - which is what we are told happens to these trees.
Every so often someone leaves out a "gift" for an eagle eye. Once I found a New In The Box Microwave Oven sitting on top of a pile. Yoink, that oven now lives with us.
This was nothing different but I suspect someone was having a bit of fun.
What caught my eye was a "Power Tower". You plug this thing into the wall, it has 16 sockets for power along with some USB power ports. I can't imagine using this for all 16 ports at once but it will get used.
I pulled that out, and found a second wall socket with 6 more power ports and 2 USB ports. Since at this day and age, the USB is fairly important it was worth grabbing.
However when I lifted that off the ground I saw a $100 bill!
Then a Second, Third, and Fourth.
Under that $400 was another $20.
Ok! I can fill my Jeep for 8 tanks was what I was thinking.
I grabbed the bills and got out of there. Plunging them into my pocket and getting Rack moving, I noticed they did not feel quite right.
Hmm.... (again).
When I got home I looked again and found that the money was not legal tender but Movie Funny Money! Motion Picture Purposes was emblazoned on the face and back of the bills, and the paper was decidedly thicker. It looked casually accurate to real US Currency but it was lacking the anti-counterfeit thread that is in all bills now that states the amount on it.
Groaning, I took a deeper look at it. There was a
website where you and I could order more of the stuff and get $10000 worth for about $15 real dollars once shipping is included.
Briefly considering that it was going to go into the Monopoly game I considered that would be about the best thing I could do with the blatantly non-money money.
So it's sitting at my left elbow right now, with Ben Franklin glumly looking at me as I have a crooked smile glowering back.
After all, what can you do with the stuff? "Make It Rain"? I suspect that might be why those places have the reputation of being so expensive, not that that is my style anyway.
All in all it was a lot to take in before my first mug of coffee.