{"id":339,"date":"2008-05-11T11:31:34","date_gmt":"2008-05-11T18:31:34","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/pwoodford.net\/blog\/?p=339"},"modified":"2008-11-30T14:42:50","modified_gmt":"2008-11-30T21:42:50","slug":"peanuts-from-hell","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/pwoodford.net\/blog\/?p=339","title":{"rendered":"Peanuts from Hell"},"content":{"rendered":"

In April, almost a year after my father died, Donna and I flew back to Missouri to see my family.\u00a0 While\u00a0there we decided to ship a few small items home, mostly military memorabilia my father had collected.\u00a0 We took the stuff to the nearest UPS store and left the packing and shipping to them \u2014 which wasn’t cheap, by the way, but Lois insisted on paying, so how could we say no?<\/p>\n

Yesterday we finally opened our UPS boxes.\u00a0 We were almost done rearranging the garage when it occurred to us that many of the items we’d shipped home needed to be stored there,\u00a0and that\u00a0we couldn’t finish the garage project until we’d opened the boxes.<\/p>\n

Damn, UPS, how many styrofoam peanuts can you pack in eight boxes?<\/p>\n

\"Popcorn
Popcorn . . . from HELL!<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

We were looking at several cubic yards of packing material and about one cubic foot of military memorabilia.\u00a0 We had a disposal problem.<\/p>\n

My initial plan, to scoop the peanuts into plastic garbage bags, proved unworkable due to static cling \u2014\u00a0for every armful of peanuts we’d scoop out of a box, another armful would stick to us, and yet another armful would stick to the outside of the plastic garbage bag.\u00a0 Simply dumping the peanuts into our large outside garbage bins wasn’t the answer either \u2014 two boxes worth completely filled both bins, and there were still six boxes to go.<\/p>\n

We finally dumped all the peanuts into the two largest boxes (and I don’t even want to talk about having to sweep up all the ones that got away and drifted all around our living room and kitchen), but that presented another problem: our waste disposal company doesn’t take cardboard boxes unless they’re broken down and flattened.<\/p>\n

My plan was to put the boxes in the back of my car, drive behind the nearest shopping center, and find an open dumpster.\u00a0 But I remembered that the last time I tried that, all the dumpster lids were padlocked shut.\u00a0 So Donna called the local UPS store to ask if they’d take the peanuts back.\u00a0 Yes, they said, and off I went.\u00a0 But as I neared the corner shopping center, I thought I’d just take a quick cruise around the back.\u00a0 And lo & behold, someone at Ace Hardware had left the dumpster open!\u00a0 Bet he won’t do that<\/em> again!<\/p>\n

I’ll probably have peanut nightmares for the next two to three years.\u00a0 But I gotta give UPS this, though \u2014 they pack stuff real well.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

In April, almost a year after my father died, Donna and I flew back to Missouri to see my family.\u00a0 While\u00a0there we decided to ship a few small items home, mostly military memorabilia my father had collected.\u00a0 We took the stuff to the nearest UPS store and left the packing and shipping to them \u2014 […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-339","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-personal"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/pwoodford.net\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/339","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/pwoodford.net\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/pwoodford.net\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/pwoodford.net\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/pwoodford.net\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=339"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/pwoodford.net\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/339\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1127,"href":"https:\/\/pwoodford.net\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/339\/revisions\/1127"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/pwoodford.net\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=339"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/pwoodford.net\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=339"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/pwoodford.net\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=339"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}