Holy Smoking Peat Moss, Batman!
	Going Down?
	I'd Say She's Warmed Up Now!

HOLY SMOKING PEAT MOSS, BATMAN!
Like many people do nowadays, they didn't want cigarette smoke wafting through their entire apartment. Smoking on the balcony solved that concern, but what to do with the butts?

The solution seemed quite logical. Butt out in the dirt filled planter located beside the barbeque on the small balcony.

Alas, there was one thing they overlooked. The planter had peat moss in it. And, as was going to happen sooner or later, one cigarette was not quite dead when it was butted in the planter. And so the afternoon went, pleasantly, as happens when you spend time with friends. Till, finally, it was time to go out. No one was home, so no one noticed. The peat moss just quietly smoldered.

No one noticed a little smoke, besides with barbeques on just about every balcony, smoke is not an unusual sight. And so it smoldered, and got hotter and hotter.

Now barbeques tend to come with propane tanks, as did this one. This tank was right beside the planter. As the planter got hotter, so did the tank. And when gas gets hot, it expands. So, the tank did what it is designed to do when the internal pressure gets too much ... it let off a little steam. Propane steam in this case, which vented over ... you guessed it, the planter.

We all know what happens when gas and sparks get together. It was spectacular, from what witnesses say. And it made an incredible mess.

So, the moral of the story is...

...Peat moss may be hazardous to your health

GOING DOWN?
Living in an apartment building has its ups and downs. However, some folks find it handy because you don't have to walk far to throw out the garbage ... just mosey on over to the garbage room, open up the garbage chute door and stuff the bag in. The law of gravity will take over from there. Your garbage just falls straight down the shaft, into a big noisy compactor on the main floor. There the garbage sits till the compactor automatically does its thing, squishing everything together - with great noise and whining and thumping.

And so, off she went, leaving her apartment door partially open, trotting down the hallway and over to the tiny garbage room. Small and stuffy, but hey, who needs lots of room when you're only there for a moment? Open goes the bin, in goes the garbage. Oops, the door knob doesn't work. It just spins and spins. It's 9 a.m. and no one hears her pounding.

No one really knows why she did it - was it her claustrophobia that made her panic in this lit but stuffy and smelly 3' X 5' room (as she claimed) or did she want to get back to her 18th floor apartment, where she left the door ajar, or was she just impatient? (You see it coming, don't you?)

She is a tiny woman, maybe 5', maybe 100 lbs. She can fit into some pretty small places, she discovered. It took some managing though, since the garbage bin lid opens downwards and is on a strong spring. But, she found that if you pull it down, and then get one leg on it, you can then pull the other leg in and shimmy down into the garbage chute and, from there, into the shaft. I guess she didn't notice that the door latch, to the bin, can only be opened on the outside.

So, the bin slammed shut behind her and there she was, in a pitch black hole, 18" square, quite a tight fit. Then she did what any sane person would have done in such a situation. She shimmied, just like on TV, with her feet on one wall and her back on the other, to the 17th floor. She figured once she got there, she'd get out through the chute, open the door and then trot back up to her apartment.

When she reached the 17th floor, she squirmed into the small chute, but try as she might, she couldn't get that bin to open ... that darned latch. And, as luck would have it, no one was around to hear her banging from inside the garbage chute. Hmm, what to do. Well, maybe the latch on the 16th floor will let her out. So, she squirmed and grunted herself back into the garbage shaft and started to shimmy down to 16. Only, something went wrong this time and she lost her footing. Suddenly she was falling ... faster and faster. Finally, as was inevitable, she reached the end of her trip and arrived in, what else, the trash compactor. Fortunately, a fair amount of trash had come down during the night so it acted like a cushion ... sort of.

Did we mention the compactor is on automatic? Good thing it was noisy. If it hadn't been, then the tenants living near it wouldn't have complained. It was because of the complaints that the landlord switched off the compactor every night and only turned back on around 10 in the morning, just so people could sleep undisturbed. Nice of him, don't you think? Did anyone hear her in the compactor, you ask? Umm, no. She ended up pulling herself out and falling to the floor and then dragging herself across the room till she could open the door. From there her cries were heard and finally, someone came to her aid.

It took some investigating before police were satisfied that she actually did climb into the garbage chute on her own, and didn't have 'help'. There they found her apartment - door ajar and the garbage can sitting in the middle of the kitchen, empty. Everything matched what she told them.

And the moral of the story is ...

....granted garbage shafts are faster, but elevators are safer.

I'D SAY SHE'S WARMED UP NOW!
Did you hear about the young man whose 12 year old pick up wouldn't turn over on a cold December morning. He hadn't plugged the truck in because it didn't have a block heater. So he sat down for a minute to think about how he could heat up his engine block. If he could get her warmed up, she'll run just fine ... uh huh.

Then it came to him. He had himself this handy dandy blow torch. Got it for Christmas from his folks. That would do the job just fine. So off he went to collect his blow torch, came back and lay down on the ground and slipped and squirmed till he was underneath the truck. He then lit up the blow torch and waved the flame back and forth across the bottom of that old dirty oily engine. That's the last thing he could remember, he told the police, firemen and paramedics. Actually, he came out virtually unscathed. Can't say the same for his truck though.

And the moral of the story is ...

... Blow torches are not always a great gift idea