Fireworks and Fortunes

July 1st, 2019 – Safeway Route.

We had another slow Monday walk.  As the weather warms, people seem to litter more and picking it up slows us down.  We got a honk from Mr. Handyman and two other random honks.  Friendly honks, not angry honks.  We removed a roadkill squirrel from the road and found no money.

The Cedar Park Church and School had their annual Block Party yesterday.  The crows must be finding some good stuff this morning.  Or maybe they’re just late to the party.

On Friday we passed the two poop bags at the entrance to the Braewood Condominiums. We left them thinking that these are property owners and would take care of it.

We were wrong. We took care of it.

It must be underwear season again. A Victoria’s Secret Thong.   Wonder if she had a Spare Pair like we found last Saturday.

Nearby, we found a BuzzBallz drink. BuzzBallz Grape Chiller.  15% alcohol by volume.  Maybe this is how she lost her thong?

We hope they used this. 

Does “12 til 5:00  everyday [sic]” qualify as a garage sale? “New & Used Pet Supplys [sic]”  May want to work a bit on the grammar.  Say, we find lots of used pet supplies in dog poop bags.  We’ll sell them cheap.

We picked up a burned piece of aluminum foil. More evidence of drug use.

Someone dropped a bible verse. 1 Corinthians 10:13. “No temptation has overtaken you except what is common to mankind. Like littering!”  OK, we added that last part.

We found another errant gas cap near the Safeway Station. It was in several pieces and is in our recycle bin.

Another tie-down strap.  It was in fairly good shape.  It’s in our burgeoning bungee cord collection.

We found an ‘M’ bracelet charm. What does the ‘M’ charm mean?  Money?  James Bond’s boss?  Married?  Probably Missing.

A cutlass.  No, not the old Oldsmobile. We’ll save this for Talk Like a Pirate Day.

Caffe Vita, “Where the Coffee Matters”  But litter doesn’t.

We found an interesting jar.  It’s made of some rubbery plastic and measures 5/8 in. tall and 3/4 in. in diameter.  Maybe it belonged to a guy who used it to carry his Carolina Reaper Chili Powder.  Guy in the past tense.

Then, yet another fortune that is really an adage.  This fortune slip is a bit of an over achiever.  Well, maybe not the adage.

“A dream will always triumph over reality, once it is given a chance.”  We don’t know about you, but we usually forget our dreams a few minutes after we awake, and the ones we remember, we wish we hadn’t.

On the other side, though, we can “Learn Chinese.”  Really, they are going to teach us to say “Excuse me?”  Okay, we can probably pronounce that with some practice.  So we walk up to a couple speaking Chinese and say “Excuse me.”  Then what?  How about something practical like “Where is the restroom?”  At this rate we would need to eat a lot of fortune cookies to learn Chinese.

But wait, it’s not just offering to teach us Chinese, it’s providing us winning lottery numbers.  We’re in the money!

No more picking up litter!  We’ll hire people to pick up litter for us.  Of course, we still get to keep the good stuff.

 

July 2nd, 2019 – Park-and-Ride Route.

The weather this morning was slightly misty and kept us cool.  We didn’t get any honks and found no money.  We did remove one rabbit from the road.

The crows were back again chowing down on whatever Cedar Park left on the ground. 

And look, they brought their friends. 

At the park-and-ride, we found more burned aluminum foil. Doing Dope at the Park-and-Ride.

Today we found three single rubber gloves. 

And one dog poop bag left by an irresponsible pet owner. 

Hammer Gel?  Wouldn’t that make it hard to grip the hammer?  It’s actually an energy drink, Peanut Butter-Chocolate flavor.  Reese’s Pieces in liquid form?  Pretty expensive, though, at a $1.40 a pop.

We removed two outdated garage sale signs.  One was stapled to a telephone pole.  The other was on a cardboard box with some rocks in it to keep it from blowing away. A word of advice.  When you leave a sign on a box for someone else to pick up, don’t leave your name on the box.  Or better yet, just pick up your signs.  It’s called responsibility.

We found a 16-pack of hearing aid batteries. Make that a 12-pack. What did you say?

We found a lemonade bottle and a vodka bottle together.  Someone having John Dalys for breakfast?

Some good citizen dumped a mirror over the bank on Norway Hill.  It landed against a stump and the mirror shattered.  We brought the frame back up the hill and may go after the bigger pieces of glass with better gloves.  It was a large mirror, so we hope the culprit gets 70 years bad luck for this.  According to this link, the Romans believed to break the spell of bad luck, the person needed to gather all the pieces and bury them in the moonlight.  We wish whoever did this would also take all the pieces and put them where the sun don’t shine.

We found a plastic flag. Across the street was a fireworks stand with flags around it.  Yep.  Red, white, blue, red, white, red, white, blue… We didn’t give it back.

At one intersection, we looked down a side street and saw someone crouching in the gutter.  Our first thought was that someone was encroaching on our territory.  A few seconds later, he walked away preoccupied with something.

There was still something in the gutter. A broken marijuana jar.  Evidently there was some left in the jar and the guy grabbed it.  If he’s a smoker, does he harvest the remaining tobacco in cigarette butts?

So, last week, we closed the chapter on the McLitterers since they had been absent for several weeks.  Of course, today we found this. It was a standard McLitterer bag.  Two clean platters, unused utensils and unopened condiments.  Chapter reopened.

 

July 3rd, 2019 – Safeway Route.

Today was overcast with a heavy mist, but it didn’t require our rain jackets.  We got a honk from Mr. Handyman.

Up a side-street, we saw some litter and a couple of crows.  The crows had probably torn apart a discarded McDonald’s bag. 

We walked up the street and found that the litter was real, but the crows were working on a roadkill rabbit. We picked up the litter and the rabbit.  We tossed the rabbit in some nearby bushes.  The crows were not happy.

We found some money.  A dime and a penny in separate locations.

We found two more “fortunes.”  One was another adage.  “A great man never ignores the simplicity of a child.”  Does this mean don’t confuse yourself with complex questions?  The other was a prediction.  “A chance meeting with someone from the past is in store.”  A few facts would be helpful.  Who?  From when?  And, in what store?   Or maybe this means we are going to connect with our inner child.  We don’t know about you but our inner child just turned fifty.

Today we passed the guy who picked up the marijuana yesterday. He was rolling a “cigarette.” 

 We found two balls. The baseball was near a playground so we tossed it back.  The Wiffle golf ball is now in our ball collection.

We picked up a woman’s glasses case but no glasses. Giorgio Armani.  Six bucks for the case.

A men’s cap in excellent condition. We had not heard of Filson but they’ve been around since 1879 and we haven’t.  The cap is a Logger Mesh Cap priced at $36.  Okay, maybe not just for men. 

We also pulled a dog’s bandanna out of the berry bushes.  A Petsmart watermelon bandanna.  Petsmart sells many team-branded bandannas for about ten bucks.  This one’s not nearly as nice.  Even the dog threw it away.

And, for the second time in two days, the McLitterers made an appearance.

We were out of town for Independence Day and did not walk.  Happy Fourth.

 

July 5th, 2019 – Safeway Route.

Today was nice walking weather and very light traffic.  We didn’t see any of our regulars, but removed a roadkill rabbit from the road.

Last night, there was a lot of illegal fireworks being set off and they seemed to stop promptly at about 11:00 PM.    This morning along 112th there was a lot of fireworks debris.  Most of it was in front of one house and the now infamous Braewood Condominiums.  We still don’t understand people degrading their property worth by trashing their neighborhood.  We notified the City of Bothell and by the end of the day, most of the debris in the street had been cleaned up.  Our tax dollars at work.

Someone celebrated Independence Day in another way.  Perhaps this is some of the fireworks we heard?

Someone thoughtfully left us a sparkler.  Well, also the empty box for us to pick up.  Eight pieces for $1.25.  We remember when the sparklers were thrown in for free.  Which is about what they were worth.

We found a flag that was sadly abandoned in the street.  It is now proudly displayed in our found stuff museum.

At the top of Norway Hill, an irresponsible dog owner did not disappoint.  Actually, the dog didn’t either, and we respect the dog more.

Someone dropped their ear buds.  Guess the’re tone-deaf now.

We found another toy outside the KinderCare fence.  We tossed it back.  We need to start billing them.

We found a ball that tried to get through a fence and got stuck. We unstuck it and is a free-range ball in our ball collection.

Another dime bag.  This one had some water in it, so maybe a penny bag?

Then we saw a $50 bill.  Well, part of a $50 bill.  This is probably counterfeit.  The giveaway is the scale.  This was about 50% of the size of a real bill.

 

July 6th, 2019 – Riverside Drive.

Today was another pleasant day to walk with very little traffic and moderate trash.  It made for a relative quick walk for a Saturday.  We did remove a rabbit’s foot from the road.  This foot was unlucky for the rabbit.

We found more money. A dime and a penny.  Well, it was a Canadian penny, but still…

At the Sammamish River Park, we found more fireworks debris. 

Maybe the City of Bothell needs bigger Fireworks Prohibited signs next year. 

Then again, a big sign did not help with the parking situation. 6:00 am Saturday morning.

We found two unmatched gloves.  Chuck used the glove on the right to protect his rubber glove when going down a steep bank to collect two bags of beer cans.  It fit like a glove.

We felt safer after picking this up.  This type of defense is not worth the paper it’s printed on.

Four Loko Gold. 23.5 ounces at 14% alcohol by volume.  That’s like a bottle of wine.  “I’ve only had one beer, ociffer.”

Another small jeep hubcap. We seem to find a lot of jeep hubcaps.  Jeepers! At $24 a pop, we have a pretty good nest egg.

“You’ll always be part of my favorite story.” – Belle.   An Enchanted Tales with Belle bookmark.  Enchanted Tales with Belle is an attraction in Disneyland’s Fantasy Land, and this bookmark is their parting gift.  Well, this person’s parting gift departed.

Another poop bag. It was stuffed in a retaining wall near the apartments on NE Woodinville Drive.  We’ve found several of these over the past months.  We also find the bulk of trash outside these and other apartments.

We did find this in front of an apartment complex. A pig pencil eraser.  Appropriately, it was the apartments we’ve referred to as the Village Sty.

This really teed us off. 

Someone threw out a certificate of authenticity,  which is ironic since is specifically states “DO NOT DISCARD.”  We weren’t familiar with RDX and there was nothing on the certificate that stated what was being authenticated.  After some searching, we found this was from RDX Sports, a company that sells gear for boxing and Mixed Martial Arts (MMA).  Evidently they have a problem with bootleg gear because they spend a lot of effort on the website to allow buyers to determine if the equipment is authentic.  Who knew?

We found a stainless steel spatula. At least we think it’s a spatula. Well, it isn’t anymore.  It’s scrap metal in our recycle bin.

On 112th Ave NE, the City of Bothell did a good job of cleaning the street and the one house that had a lot of firework debris cleaned up their side of the street but left the other side a mess.  We spent about ten minutes cleaning up the area.  Responsibility, people, take responsibility for your actions.

We came across this sign. We thought it might be pointing us to some money or other treasure, but we only found a beer bottle.

We found what looked like a prescription bottle. But it was some giveaway urging people to apply to Vans, an “Off the Wall” clothing store.  We watched their career video, 66 Seconds with Joyce.

First of all, I don’t think a video of the VP of Global Apparel’s first day at work is going to have an impact on the Average Joe looking for work.  Second, these people laugh too much.

We found a pair of yellow soccer shoes. These are Adidas F50 adizero FG (Messi) Gold shoes.  $134 marked down from $230.  That’s pretty pricey for just leaving by the side of the road, although they are a bit scuffed up.  We don’t have any yellow shoe polish, so these are on their way to Goodwill.

An invitation to have breakfast with the Honey Bucket company? June 8th?  Gee, sorry we missed it.  However, going to their website, they are having a Selfie Contest where you can win your very own Honey Bucket or $1,000.  Guys, this might not have been the best idea, but if we win, we’ll take the money.