What the Heck IS This?
I should first explain my neighbors. He is an older gentleman. I will be charitable and call him "cranky." He is feuding with one or two of the neighbors on my street at any given time. Since they live directly next door to us, we try to get along with him for the most part. She is from Iceland. She's a Vice Consul or something. They are a strange couple. Here are a few examples:
First is the shipping thing. Apparently it costs a fortune to ship anything to Iceland. Luckily for the good citizens of that country, there are two cargo ships that traverse between here and Iceland with one in port about every two weeks. Shopping is very limited in the Viking homeland, so they love to shop on the Internet. They purchase stuff and have it shipped here, to my neighbors house. My neighbors have built a huge garage/shed to store the merchandise. When one of the ships ports here, my neighbors load up this covered trailer and head to the port where all of these purchases are then loaded onto the cargo ship and are homeward bound. There are UPS and FedEx trucks delivering here daily. Our mailman is also severely overworked. Those Vikings DO love to shop.
I was not aware, until buying this house 5 years ago, that there is quite a thriving Icelandic population here. I now know because they get together once a month at my neighbor's house. The street is filled with parked cars, all sporting Icelandic bumperstickers and personalized license plates saying something about the homeland. Sometimes they block my driveway. Icelanders don't park very well. They also tend to have small yappy dogs that like to exit their cars and poop on my grass.
Then there's the float. Yes, I said float. Icelanders are a very proud people. The group here participates in just about every major parade that is staged in our region. They have built a float. Most of the time the float lives in a storage shed near the port. About a month or two before a scheduled outing, the float moves to my neighbors driveway. This is a big, garish, spangley, silver float. They work on it, changing a few things around to fit the theme of whatever parade they happen to be participating in. For St. Patrick's Day the Viking long boat is festooned in shamrocks. Santa rides in the long boat for the Holiday parade. You get the picture. It's very easy to give directions to my house when the float is living here. "We're the first house on the left past the float," I say. Our friends have gotten used to this.
I could go on and on about my strange Viking neighbors. I could tell you about their Christmas light display. This year the lighted snowmen are standing under lighted palm trees in a sea of blue lighted fake trees. I could tell you about their immaculate back yard complete with fountains that rival those in Rome. I could even tell you about their penchant for nude sunbathing (did I mention they were older - in their late 60s - and overweight?) which, thankfully they cut down on this year after we had several trees removed. But that's not the point of this post.
I was driving home from school on trash day this week when I spotted this in front of the neighbor's house:
It appeared to be a tarp type thing with "something" on it. Quite honestly it looked like turds. Perhaps it was something from their compost pile? I don't know. So I'm asking for your opinion. What the heck WAS that?
First is the shipping thing. Apparently it costs a fortune to ship anything to Iceland. Luckily for the good citizens of that country, there are two cargo ships that traverse between here and Iceland with one in port about every two weeks. Shopping is very limited in the Viking homeland, so they love to shop on the Internet. They purchase stuff and have it shipped here, to my neighbors house. My neighbors have built a huge garage/shed to store the merchandise. When one of the ships ports here, my neighbors load up this covered trailer and head to the port where all of these purchases are then loaded onto the cargo ship and are homeward bound. There are UPS and FedEx trucks delivering here daily. Our mailman is also severely overworked. Those Vikings DO love to shop.
I was not aware, until buying this house 5 years ago, that there is quite a thriving Icelandic population here. I now know because they get together once a month at my neighbor's house. The street is filled with parked cars, all sporting Icelandic bumperstickers and personalized license plates saying something about the homeland. Sometimes they block my driveway. Icelanders don't park very well. They also tend to have small yappy dogs that like to exit their cars and poop on my grass.
Then there's the float. Yes, I said float. Icelanders are a very proud people. The group here participates in just about every major parade that is staged in our region. They have built a float. Most of the time the float lives in a storage shed near the port. About a month or two before a scheduled outing, the float moves to my neighbors driveway. This is a big, garish, spangley, silver float. They work on it, changing a few things around to fit the theme of whatever parade they happen to be participating in. For St. Patrick's Day the Viking long boat is festooned in shamrocks. Santa rides in the long boat for the Holiday parade. You get the picture. It's very easy to give directions to my house when the float is living here. "We're the first house on the left past the float," I say. Our friends have gotten used to this.
I could go on and on about my strange Viking neighbors. I could tell you about their Christmas light display. This year the lighted snowmen are standing under lighted palm trees in a sea of blue lighted fake trees. I could tell you about their immaculate back yard complete with fountains that rival those in Rome. I could even tell you about their penchant for nude sunbathing (did I mention they were older - in their late 60s - and overweight?) which, thankfully they cut down on this year after we had several trees removed. But that's not the point of this post.
I was driving home from school on trash day this week when I spotted this in front of the neighbor's house:
It appeared to be a tarp type thing with "something" on it. Quite honestly it looked like turds. Perhaps it was something from their compost pile? I don't know. So I'm asking for your opinion. What the heck WAS that?
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