The photo above should give you some clues. We’ve got a lot of green in our front yard and thought it could be improved with a little more color. We’re starting off nice and easy with a small assortment of plants and herbs. We’ll see if they thrive, after which we’ll add to their number.
Category: It Happened to Me
During the summer between high school and university, I landed a job at a warehouse where I was often required to drive a small electric forklift.
Prior to getting my 15 minutes of “training” on the use of the forklift, my manager and I sat in the break room and watched the mandatory safety video.
It was the 1980s, which was the golden age of gore–horror worker’s compensation workplace injury ads and videos in Ontario, and the one we watched took things to a red-corn-starch-syrup-soaked new level.
There’s a scene that’s forever seared into my memory. It starts with the Merry Prankster’s golden prize: an unattended forklift with the keys still in the ignition. A carefree teen decides to take it for a joyride, does a couple of donuts in the warehouse, and quickly loses control.
He plows the forks, which have been raised to the “halfway up” position (which you don’t do when the ’lift isn’t carrying anything), into an oh-so-fake wall:
As if that isn’t bad enough, the lunchroom is on the other side of that wall, and so was someone who was just having lunch — he’s now just been forked from behind:
I remember going home that evening and thinking with great disbelief: “Grown adults commissioned, wrote, and made that video. And got paid for it.”
I’d forgotten about that video, and had even begun to think that I’d misremembered it — until this compilation started making the internet rounds. And yup, it features the “forked from behind” scene!
Once again, in case you missed it the first time:
It doesn’t matter what gang you belong to — just join one, and work on your finger-snapping, dancing, and singing.
It looks like twilight out there, but I took this photo from our front porch at about noon today. Tampa Bay’s under a severe thunderstorm watch until 4:00 this afternoon. Today’s a good day to stay in and get started on your spring cleaning.
Six years ago today…
Well, it’s the best grocery store sign ever in my opinion, anyway.
My hunch that Trader Joe’s Tampa would be a ghost town last night during Super Bowl LV’s half-time paid off. It was the perfect time to make a quick but important grocery run, as you can see from the photo I took while at the cashier (see above).
This run was important because there are better-than-even odds that we’ll experience a COVID-19 spike, thanks to Super Bowl superspreader gatherings like the one in the picture below, taken in Ybor City on Saturday night…
This is officially the wildest I’ve ever seen Ybor. EVER. 1:40am. pic.twitter.com/7LTC9NvEfE
— Luis Santana (@LuisSantana) February 7, 2021
…and covered in the following articles:
- Washington Post — Thousands of maskless Tampa fans flooded the streets, celebrating the Super Bowl win while risking a superspreader event
- New York Times — In Tampa, Super Bowl Celebrations Bring Superspreader Concerns
- WFTS Tampa Bay — Tampa crowds, dance parties spark superspreader concerns over Super Bowl weekend
- Medscape — Superspreader Sunday: The Super Bowl With COVID Variants Afoot
My advice: Be particularly careful over the next couple of weeks, because a lot of people were careless over the past couple of days.