WHERE ARE THE TRUCKS??

If you google Poland and blogging or blogspot you’ll see that for the most part, Poland:
1. ..was hot in the blog world last year because of it’s oppositional stance toward the EU’s proposed changes in voting rights (predictable)
2. remains on people’s radar screen as the country invaded by Germany and then the Soviet Union (predictable)
3. ..is the last name of a number of people referred to in blogs (surprising)
4. appears on long lists of countries that seemingly have nothing in common (“coalition of the willing?”)
5. has many blogging American visitors who use words such as “dunno” and “gotta” (surprising)

I myself am waiting for the city of Madison to show up and trim the trees in front of our house. This seems like an idle exercise, I know, but I feel strongly about how they should be cut and I know I wont have another chance to express my opinion on this matter for some 5 – 6 years. Yesterday, the city forestry guys were working their way up the block, and I thought my wait was about to end, but the silent bell that tolled the end of the work day (2:45 pm) made them pack up their tools and leave JUST ONE TREE AWAY FROM OUR HOUSE!! Perverse luck. And today, at 10 a.m., they’re not here yet.

Surely this may be read as a very uninteresting story, and indeed, the wait is very uninteresting, forcing me to google Poland and blogspots and do all sorts of other existentially stupefying things (because I keep thinking it is only a question of minutes). On the other hand, one needs an occasional reminder about life’s randomness, and tree trimmers stopping just before your property as well as finding people with names such as David Poland (a film critic, with a very interesting take on the top 10 movies of 2003, very astute AND funny observations on the worst films, and a good column posted yesterday about the Oscars) are all surprising and random events, and so I mention both as quirky stand-ins for those trivial, unpredictable occurrences that shape the day more than we’d like to believe.