Through the fire, through whatever, come what may

A couple months ago the Board of Water and Light came in and chopped down a lot of trees in the neighborhood, on the grounds that this would prevent future storms knocking out power. For a week or two after the trees were cut down, their remains, cut into nice fireplace-ready chunks, lay on the extensions. We kept meaning to pick some up, but most of the piles were in front of houses that already had fireplaces and so might have use for the wood. The ethicality of snagging curb lumber was, I'm told, one of extremely heavy debate on the neighborhood Facebonk and Reddit groups. And then the piles were gone before we could snag any from the chimney-less houses.

Last Wednesday when the storm blew through a lot of branches and trees within three streets of our house in every direction and knocked them down, and knocked out power in other places than our street. Workers, both city and private, came around over the next weekend cutting up branches and forming piles to line our streets. We vowed to not miss this bounty of wood, now.

Except last week we couldn't, as we were in Pittsburgh for good reasons that I'll get to someday. Monday we couldn't because of getting everything settled back in after the trip. Tuesday we couldn't because of a pinball tournament bunnyhugger was running, as well as playing awesomely. She was so on fire that people were calling her ``Canada''. Wednesday we were ... I forget what we were dealing with, but we were. Thursday I was working overtime because my work has offered that prospect again, and yesterday we were visiting MWS and K to play the Legacy edition of Betrayal at the House on the Hill, resuming a campaign that stretches so far back in time that when we started the original Betrayal hadn't yet come out. So today was the first chance I'd had to snag lumber besides what our fallen tree branches were.

bunnyhugger tipped me off to where some good piles of wood already cut to fireplace size were. By the time I got out there, though, they'd been cleaned up by the street-cleaning crews, finally taking the wood and I don't know. Chipping it or something. So, I changed course and went around our street, picking up tree branches and trunk parts that could fit in my car and that I could handle on my own.

It's overall close to the half-face-cord that we'd buy every two or three years. But it'll have to season a year or more, so we're still going to have to buy more wood for next season. We're also going to have to cut up almost all of this, as apart from a few chunks it's all too long to be in the fireplace. I think the thing to do is rent a chainsaw from Lowe's Or Whatever and cut this all down to size. We'll see what we can manage safely.

They haven't yet cleared our street.

Trivia: Though Sanskrit is recognized as having spread through southeast Asia, including the main islands of northern Malaysia and Indonesia, by the middle of the first millennium AD, it was not spread by military conquest, although it is not yet clear just how it did come about. Source: Empires of the Word: A Language History of the World, Nicholas Ostler.

Currently Reading: Paper: Paging Through History, Mark Kurlansky.