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Showing posts from July, 2025

Did contractors leave nails in your yard? A magnet sweeper can help

Let me tell you about the time I stepped on a nail. It was Friday, November 20, 2015. I remember the date because it was the night before moving day, the day I spent making dozens of trips from the house to some Relocubes on an injured foot.  I was walking to Walgreens when there was suddenly such a sharp pain in my foot that I started screaming. There was a thick nail sticking out of the bottom of my tennis shoe. It wouldn't budge. A couple of passers-by (in town for a wedding) came over and, thinking it looked like a screw, didn't want to pull it out. They sat with me for a long time while 911 tried to figure out where the alley between Street A and Street B along Avenue C was. I eventually got to the emergency room where they took an x-ray that showed the nail didn't hit any bones. The doctor offered to either give me anesthetic, cut off my shoe, and extract the nail, or just pull it out. "Yank it out," I said. At least I didn't need a tetanus shot, having ...