treasure hunt

Tuesday nights in eastern Massachusetts can quickly turn from the ordinary to the adventurous when you're with Brad Kerns. Tonight began like any typical evening a few hours before bedtime...we indulged in watching a painful "Idol," followed by a trip to Hollywood Video to return our latest mvp rentings, and as we were on our way home, we decided it would be a good night for a drive with the windows down. The first beautiful day of the year deserves some attention, right? Little did I realize that my husband's sweetness had a motive behind it. A motive called trash day. Initially, I am content to sit in our slowly moving car and look in neighbor's living room windows lit up in the darkness, while Brad scours the area for treasures. But as always, I am sucked into the drama. We begin using our carefully-honed psychic abilities to figure out which streets have the most potential, casually pulling over if another car comes up behind us or if something looks interesting. The best part is when the owners of the trash peek out from behind pulled curtains in their homes. This is thrilling, and possibly one of the things that makes Tuesday night treasure hunting so fun. So although we passed up several choice items...matching vaccum cleaners, a few planks of wood, a rusty fridge, a broken air conditioning unit, and my personal favorite, a full croquet set...we instead set our sights on the biggest and most awkward computer monitor since the ones we played Oregon Trail on in 5th grade. The best part was watching Brad attempt stealth in someone's front yard with a 60 lb. monitor in his arms, because as we all know, one must be sneaky on trash day. Unfortunately his wife was laughing too hard from the front seat to offer any aid.