For about four years I have had one of those fabric folding chairs folded up on my balcony. I may have sat in it twice. I had bought them 2 for 1 and for some reason just left that one outside to rot. I looked over at its sad self leaning against the corner of the balcony. The sun and weather had not been kind. The color was all faded and the fabric worn thin. I decided to put it out of its misery and throw it away. I unfolded it out of curiosity. As I expected it had a bunch of detritus in it. Old rotten leaves and twigs and some dead insect husks. What I didn’t expect was the dead toad body. How did a dead toad get up onto my second floor balcony? I thought. Then it hopped. How did a live toad get up to my second floor balcony? I thought. I came up with two possibilities. During a storm, the toad got picked up from the nearby retention pond and deposited on my balcony, or possibly it happened when it was a tadpole. There would have been water in the folded up chair. I released the toad into the wild and threw the chair away
My phone goes walkabout
I was hanging out with my friend at the bowling alley. The place was dead that night. When we left at ten we were the only costumers there. My friend drove me home. About a half hour later I decided I wanted to finish listening to a podcast on my phone. I grabbed my bluetooth headphones I had in my pocket and went for my phone. I couldn’t find my phone. My headphones couldn’t connect to the phone meaning it was’t near by. I knew I had it at the bowling alley. So either it was in my friends car or at the bowling alley. I walked over to the bowling alley. It was only eleven and they are supposed to stay open till midnight. When I got there the doors were locked. Instead of heading home I walked to the Buffalo Wild Wings hoping maybe my friend had gone for a late night snack and i could search his car. He wasn’t there when I got there. Distraught and phone less I went home.
The next morning I headed out to the bowling alley as soon as they opened. The guy who had been working the night shift was there. He hadn’t found any phone while he had been cleaning. I checked out everywhere the phone might have been but didn’t find it. I also did the bluetooth headphone trick but they never connected. On the way home On my way home I realized I had been stupid. I could just use a find my phone feature.
I googled, “find my phone”. It found it, told me it had 70% battery life, and it was sitting in a parking space outside a bar downtown. I assumed my buddies car must be parked there. I drove down there but his car wasn’t there. It was near lunchtime so I thought maybe he went somewhere so I went home. The find my phone thing still said the phone was in the exact same place. And it said it’s location had just been found. I waited for about an hour and kept checking. The location staid the same. I drove down there again. This time I slowly went down all the nearby side streets looking for his car. After not finding it again, I drove home. I checked the location exact same place.
I knew there was a bar up that way that my friend said he liked to stop in before heading home. So I drove up that way again. This time I parked and walked along all the side streets looking around trying to find the phone. I even brought the bluetooth headphones. No luck. I stopped into the bar the space was right in front of. Nobody had turned in or found a phone. I went around the corner to the bar my friend goes to. (kinda dive really). No phone.
When I got home I started to research new phones. I suddenly realized I had a way to contact my friend. Ali probably had my friends number in his phone. So I went down there and he did. I texted my friend and waited. He showed up a half hour later. A quick search of his car found the phone in between the seat and the center console. My baby was back. My friend admitted he had parked in that spot when he went to the dive bar. Why google kept insisting it was still there confused me. It kept telling me it was found just then right at that spot.
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