Guinness Book of World Records

I don't want Fop, I want Dapper Dan!!!  I'm a Dapper Dan man!

T'was a record-setting day today.  Not anything that would actually be noticed by Guinness, but I am drinking a Guinness at the moment.  And while they're not world records, they are personal records for me, and I live in the world, and so...you know....  And as far as the book goes, well, yeah.  That's a lie.

Anyway, let's get to it!



Starting close to home:

A) Most comments on The Cameronomicon in one day.
Not counting my own comments, today we had 11 comments.  I don't know what the previous best was, but it was certainly less than 10.  I figure I'll start paying more attention now that we have an actual record to beat.  So good job all of you commenters out there.  Keep up the good work.

On a related note, despite Tracy's valiant efforts to skew my "Time on the site" stats, she was unsuccessful.  Today's average time was just under 18 minutes.  That didn't even make it to the Top 5.  But keep up the efforts Tracy (although #1 will be tough to beat - May 19, 2009 had an average time of visit of 47:26 - yow!)

B) Most green waste/compost buckets collected in one day
Today I carried the equivalent of 24 five-gallon buckets (17 buckets and one 35 gallon trash can) out of stores and out to the truck, four buckets at a time to save on trips.  It's a great workout for the arms.

We've had busy days before, but this was by far the busiest for only a two-day turnaround (I'd picked up on Monday).  This Friday is a contender though.  There's a chance we'll get just as much, plus a few buckets from a new place, PLUS the green waste from one of the produce departments....  I'll try to keep you posted  (because I know you really care about our buckets).  :)

And finally, really close to home:

C) Most pigs in the compost pile
We've never had wild pigs getting into the compost pile.  In fact, we rarely have pigs on the property at all.  Occasionally they cut through the back part of the property were there's less fencing and less activity, but they haven't caused much damage, so it hasn't been a priority to worry about them much at all.

Recently things changed.  A few weeks ago, I was on the porch of the yurt, and Kalewa was in the back with the weed-whacker.  I'd just walked out the door, and looked at where he was, and a pig walked out of the tall grasses, strolled within 10 feet of Kalewa, and continued on to the creek.  I hollered and whistled, but between the noise of the weed-whacker and the noise of the Speed Metal piped through his earphones, he didn't hear any of it.  I ran down to see if the pig crossed the stream or just followed it off of the property.  I'm not much of a tracker (although I am half Comanche on my sister's side of the family) but it seemed pretty clear that said pig was just passing through (albeit spookily close to a guy with a weed-whacker).  Later I told Kalewa and Kaleo, and we all had a good nervous laugh about it.

Three days ago, we were all in the draw behind the yurt looking at an area to plant some bananas.  I was talking to Kaleo, and I was talking about the road above us and glanced that way to indicate where I was talking about.  Out of the corner of my eye, I saw something move.  I instantly knew it was a pig, but I tried to convince myself it was one of our dogs that had gotten loose and was running around rabid, because that would be marginally better.  I gave up trying to convince myself when the animal left the scrub brush above the road and started running up the hill along the fence (towards the yurt) and it was very clear that not only was it indeed a pig, but it was also the same pig that I had seen near Kalewa before.

How do I know it was the same pig?  That's easy.  This is the only oreo pig I've seen in the neighborhood (black on both ends and whitish pink around the middle).  After some yelling, the pig turned around and headed back towards us, and then ducked under the fence at a place where it crosses the intermittent stream in the bottom of the draw and the pig noisily disappeared into the forest on the neighbor's property.

And that brings us to today.  After all of my very long day today, I pulled the truck (with all of the buckets) up to the gate, and looked over the property as I was out unlatching the chain.  There in the garden, next to the compost pile, was this oreo pig.  I yelled at it, but it just stood there, watching me, trying to decide if I was worth worrying about or not.  So I pulled the truck in, grabbed my pack, and headed over to the garden.  It must have seen me coming up the road and had high-tailed it out of there.  I then let the dogs out and went to look for Kaleo.  She was in the very back, and as I had my town clothes still on, I didn't want to ford the stream.  So I hollered that I'd brought dinner, and she hollered back that she'd be there in a bit, and I should go ahead and start.  So I walked back up the hill to the yurt, and Lucy was at the corner of the yard wagging her tail at me, and I glanced over to the garden, and there's the stupid pig with his nose in the compost again.

Well, that tore it.  I took off at a run for that fat jerk of a pig, and he looked up at me with an expression of complete confusion.  My guess is he couldn't quite reconcile in his wee porcine brain how:
1) I'd sneaked up on him in the first place
2) How I'd gotten so close
3) Why I was running straight at him instead of walking and yelling as everyone else usually does, and
4) Why I kept looking at him and then looking off to his right.
He even looked to his right just for a moment, to see if he could figure out what I was looking for.

What I was looking for, of course, was the potato rake.  I always keep it in the corner of the garden nearest the yurt, just in case I need to get it in a hurry.  I kept looking at the pig to see if it was going to startle and run away, or if it was going to get defensive and make a stand of it (as they sometimes do, which is dangerous).  I kept looking to it's right because I couldn't see the potato rake.  It wasn't there.

Suddenly, when I was about twenty feet from the pig, I remembered that I'd seen Kalewa with the potato rake down by where we were planting the bananas.  He'd been using it to rake up the tougher of the california grass that was growing down there.  That of course meant that there's no way that the rake was in the garden.

I was too close to show weakness, so I couldn't stop running.  I tried to decide what I would do if I actually arrived at the pig - bare handed - and my mind was blank.  There was nothing I could do.  This thing weighs at least as much as I do, and has better traction and a lower center of gravity.  If this was going to turn into a fist fight, I was going to lose.  So I looked right at the pig and started yelling.  I figured if it was going to end badly, I should at least have a go at trying something new like becoming the first person who ever insulted a pig to death.  So that's what I did.

It didn't die, of course, but it did decide that it didn't care for my tone, and if I was going to be unreasonable about it, it didn't see any need to stick around and put up with my bad attitude, and it promptly turned around and ran away.

I call it the "Marital Dispute" attack.  I guess I'm quite good at it, which probably explains why I'm still unmarried....
*introspective pause*
At any rate, the pig is gone for now.  But it'll be back.  So tomorrow I'm getting a pellet gun so I can take pot-shots at it from the porch.  This weekend I might look at paintball guns as well, because that has a more visually pleasing end result.

As usual, I'll try to keep you posted.