Kein Feugo Last Night

It was too cold for me to efficiently work in the yard, so I spent most of yesterday deciding if I was going to stop watching HBO long enough to make some raisin-black walnut cookies. Around 5PM I decided I would. Then, I realized I had no eggs. Not because I'm male, but because I up and forgot to get the mother fuckers while I was at the store getting everything else.
Instead of plopping my ass back in the chair, I decided to cut most of the wood I had in the basement, which is an excellent way to have firewood and listen to Bryson.
After several hours, I thought I'd catch the last episode of "Boardwalk Empire," as I rarely catch shows when they're first on due to people being over and having a fire.
I look at my watch, and it's 10:30. Boardwalk came on at ten. Well, shit. Back downstairs it is. I cut enough to make it pretty damn warm tonight.

In a separate note: This would be the best fishing boat ever. I want it.

Fuck Indiana. I mean it. And while I'm at it, fuck east enders too.

One of the bridges going from the Ville to Indiana is closed for repairs, which means that an extra 40 thousand cars get directed over the two. I65 (the best thing to come out of Indiana that didn't have Hefner staples across her midsection)is always backed up now, and so local traffic generally goes over the 2nd street bridge.
My co-worker and I decided to eat lunch at Famous Dave's Barbecue in Indiana instead of driving all the way out to Hurstborne Lane (remember that fun drive, Ted?) because it would take too long.
Long story short, on the way back, the traffic to even the 2nd street bridge was way backed up. Figuring that is was only temporary, I stayed in the lane I was in instead of getting back on to the slow ass 65.
We stayed in the same lane.
10 minutes went by.
20 minutes went by.
30 minutes went by.
Co-worker check his traffic app. Fatality wreck on the 2nd street bridge. Shit (yes I am selfish. Sorry for the departed's luck, but at this point it has been over thirty minutes since I ate. Trouble is soon to brew in the Kaiser's south end).
The bridge was closed, but expected to be open by three PM. Not bad, that's only an hour.
3PM rolls around, and an update on the bridge. Now hoping to have it open by four. Shit.
We got to an area where I could turn off the street, and then drove to a drug store where I was able to say goodbye to breakfast and what seemed like a gallon of urine.
I spent the next half-hour sitting in the parking lot having some water, eating goldfish crackers and staring at the non-moving traffic.

We returned to the office around five. Longest lunch break I've taken.

Found out today that the driver of a truck had a seizure, crossed the double yellow and plowed head-on into a car. Everyone had to be cut from their vehicles, and the driver of the car was pronounced dead at the scene.

If the fucking east ender's hadn't fought for the last ten years a road plan that was in place in 19 fucking 65, we would've had another bridge and much of the traffic wouldn't even need to go through downtown. That's what big money does; it purchases other peoples' lives.

It's alive! (unlike most of Ted's patients)

So, these last two days have had the coldest two evenings so far for which I have had a fire.
As the stove warms up, you can tell how hot the stove is getting do its voice. While warming, the stove tink-tink-tinks rather quickly. As it cools, the tinks are a slightly lower pitch, and occur less quickly. This is how I determine when to load in more wood, even if the outdoor heater is full of flame, because I don't want to have to react to the fire, I want it to do my bidding.
Last night I was drinking some beer, watching the first season of Northern Exposure, and generally trying to heat the outside when the urge hit. No, not to masturbate, but to drop the kids off at the pool. From the pain that struck, it was going to be less of a gentle wave good-bye than it was going to be an evacuation of everything from my neck to my belly button.
Due to the fact that there are some things even I won't do from my back porch, inside I went to begin my calisthenic movement (didn't Brahms compose that?). Twenty minutes later, I returned to the porch to find the fire almost out. I threw a couple of smaller pieces of ash in to get the flame up and prepare the stove for serious flamage. One piece rolled off to the right side and caught fire almost immediately. I went to the fridge to re-beer, and from inside the kitchen I heard a loud TUNK, followed a couple seconds later by TUNK-TUNK. Holy shit, what the fuck?
It turns out that the stove, while heating on one side, was still cooling on the other, and the temperature change had caused the stove to expand on one side, but contract on the other, and the stove shifted, or "walked" to the right.
"Oh shit! I have to move it back or it will separate from the flue!"

I knelt down and grabbed the legs of the stove in order to drag it back to the original spot. Did you know that even the legs of the stove get pretty hot?
You do now, and so do my missing fingerprints.