Too Much

I am going to summon Dave Matthews' song "Too Much" to help me with this post. At the moment I have "So much to say, so much to say, so much to say, so much to say," that I couldn't possibly express it all on my own.

"...I eat too much..."
Yesterday Todd brought home our fabulous new grill. He's had his eye on a Vermont Castings grill for a very long time, and we finally brought it home yesterday. On the way home from the grill store I popped into the market and bought him his favorite, rib-eye steak. I grabbed some turkey dogs for myself, as I am a recovering vegetarian and still can't sit down and eat beef. So while Todd was dignified eating his rib-eye, I was chomping down my hot dogs lamenting that I hadn't thought to buy beer nuts too.

Here's Todd manning his new grill:



"...I drink too much..."
Actually, lately this has not been true, despite the fact that our good friend Mike brings beer when ever he comes over to hang out in the hot tub with us. I am still fighting off a cough, which I've been told is a "bronchial spasm" and have been downing Tussionex every night so I can sleep through it. I haven't touched a drop of alcohol in the last two weeks for fear of ending up in a coma as I sleep.

Though I did plug in our beer fridge, and it is stocked with the beer we moved from the old house. I also unpacked whatever booze we have. I now have a fridge full of beer and a jug of vodka and orange juice in the house just waiting for my bronchi to stop spasming.

"...I want too much..."
I dedicate this line to Griffen, here he is in his single-minded wanting for someone to please just throw this damn frisbee:


"...too much..."
This line is devoted to the expulsion of our ancient woodstove. Here it is, on the day that we moved into the house:


If you look toward the bottom left of the stove, just to the left of the bottom hinge on the door, you will see that the seams on the stove are warped. Due to the fact that this stove has a hole in it, is ugly as hell, and that we would prefer to have a fireplace anyway we have decided to get rid of the stove. Then the clincher for this decision came when the chimney sweep told us that the design of the stove is extremely unsafe and is a house fire waiting to happen.

The stove weighs roughly 400 pounds, and it took us the better part of an evening to get the thing off the hearth, onto a dolly, out the door and to the curb. This was no small feat, and required the whole of the lobe on Todd's brain where all his MacGuyver tendencies are stored.

We very gingerly edged the stove off the hearth and onto the cart. Then we laid down plywood to protect the wood floor as we very slowly rolled it to the door. We discovered the stove wouldn't fit through the door, and had to very carefully turn it as it sat on the cart. We edged the stove to the door, and pondered how we'd get it down the stairs and onto the lawn. We laid down some 4x4's we had kicking around, and hoped for the best:


We gripped the cart as it rolled down the planks, hoping that it wouldn't topple over and forever remain implanted in the front lawn.

Next we addressed the matter of stove disposal. We decided that we'd haul the stove out to the curb and see if a passerby would want it. We have already discovered the scavenger tendenies of the people who drive on our street. We have discovered that we can put virtually anything on the curb and it will disappear within 12 hours or so. We hoped this would be the case with the wood stove.

Here Todd is making a plywood road from the house to the curb, so the stove on the cart would more easily roll away from our house:


You can see how far we'd gotten before I thought I break out the camera:

We tipped the 400 pound beast of a stove onto the side of the road, and rolled it onto the grass. We joked that we will be looking at this thing for the entire summer because nobody would be able to lift it even if they wanted it.

Within 24 hours the stove was gone.

Yesterday I hauled out a metal futon frame that the old owners of my house had left behind, and a TV stand made of pressboard and veneer that we don't need anymore. By nightfall, those were gone as well.

I am glad that somebody who drives on this street is making use of our cast-offs, which makes the recycler in me sing with joy.