Every year after the all of the fruit from the trees has been devoured they, the ants, move indoors. To my kitchen, bedroom, and bathroom sink - they must be thirsty?
I always place Grant's Kills Ants around, but they don't care. No matter how clean the house, I would either wake up to or come home to find a nasty thick black line of ants munching something overlooked on the floor, like a piece of kibble the cat dropped, then have to get the can of Ant Spray out, then have to clean the dead ants and ant spray off of floor so the cats wouldn't get sick from the poison.
I saw a documentary not too long ago about these ants in the jungle and how the villagers looked forward to them coming every year because they'd take away some material that attracted some other bigger badder something or something like that.
I know there isn't ANY food in my bedroom so I wondered what the ants were eating and was about to get the spray out and do some damage and then I recalled that documentary and realized they are probably eating dead spiders and bugs hidden in the dust bunnies under my bed and dusty corners of my closet and all-what-not, so this year I decided to let them have at it and clean the house for me this time around.
That was about 3 days ago and now all of the ants are all almost gone, I've only seen a few so far today.
But the other night there was a grain of rice on the counter and you should have seen this group of little ants all working together to move it. It was a pretty damn freaky sight, I was afraid they'd grow and mutate in the night and carry me away so I took the rice grain away from them. Letting them eat is one thing, but feeding them is another - I can't have them get too strong...
I guess the countdown is on. Donna has a quote on her whiteboard that says "I'm gonna be ready for Halloween this year" or something like that. It's a direct quote from me. I said that sometime in, oh, April? Looks like it's almost time.
I just got this in my email:
Get a free Ph.D. in Horribleness to print from the link at the bottom of the starsprinkles.net page.
When we redid the kitchen, we put in a tract lighting system. It is pretty cool, well, fiery hot actually - it has seven 50 watt halogen bulbs that you can aim at various work centers in the kitchen. So the stove, sink, fridge and coffee pot all get special attention - like they are in the big show. That's fine until one of them burns out. I'd say we've been through roughly 15 bulbs since last August. 15 at 3 per pack and $14 per pack works out to $70. Another two packs and we will surpass the price of the tract system. I assume that the company that manufactures the fixture ALSO owns stock in the company that makes the bulbs. (If you own a Wii, this is exactly the same synergistic relationship that Nintento has with Eveready.)
I'm still surprised, as I probably should not be at this point, with the number of bulbs we go through and the timing of them burning out. If the light pointing at the sink burns out, I replace it and within a day, the light pointing at the coffee pot goes out. If the light in the living room ceiling fan burns out, I replace it and then the one next to it goes out. Now it doesn't happen all the time - I'm not walking from room to room with my ladder and waiting. It only seems like that. I've switched to the new compact florescent bulbs where possible and they promise 11 years between changes. Ahh - 11 years. I can be blogging or something during all that free time that I'll have - but wait! I put two into the fixture in the living room and within a week, one of them was out. Dang - maybe it was a dud. At closer look, however, I found out it was the fixture itself that had failed. The bulbs will now out live the fixtures.
I had a few strings of those Christmas tree white lights on the bushes in the front yard. Originally, it was a Christmas decoration but then I left them on all year and they looked pretty nice, that is until they started going out. I could have gone through each and every bulb to see which one it was but instead I opted to just throw another complete strand overtop of those. Long story short, when the last one went out I pulled out about 300 feet of old wires from the bushes and I have yet to replace them.
My newest enemy is the photocell switch that is supposed to turn the outside lights on at dusk and off four hours later. I came home for lunch and all the outside lights were on. I can usually tell this because I can hear the electrical meter spinning out of control. I checked the switch and it looks fine - I mean, it looks like a switch, it just doesn't work anymore. I'd turn off the power going to the outside outlet but unfortunately due a twist of fate I used the same outside outlet for the pond pump so I'm going to have to get a new switch.
I think my next investment is a pair of coveralls that says "Maintenance" on the back.
Well, thanks to an unplanned sleepover, we went to see Tropic Thunder tonight.
Wow! We thought it was great. Lots of great talent and some of it was completely unexpected, which is why I LOVE seeing a movie without hearing (or reading) anything about it.
All I'll say is - I'm really glad that Robert Downey, Jr got his act together. Between this and Iron Man, he's really made my summer.
Well, we didn't go to Boston - blah - I'm going to check out everyone's review, though - I'm sure it was a fun time.
I received an email from eWeek about Vista not getting accepted by Enterprise users (and everyone else). What caught my eye immediately were the comments. Tech people are so freaking relentless:
Here was their reply:
Hello DeWitte,
Thanks so much for writing!
We are pleased that you took the time to share your thoughts with us.
All of our advertising is created to sell Degree products in an
entertaining and informative way.Thank you so much for your interest in our advertising. Your comments
will be shared with our media department.Thanks again for your interest!
Your friends at Degree
JB
(They are my friends now!) Thanks, JB!
I had a really good customer service interaction with Amazon last week. I bought an MP3 and it did not download. They have a link on their site that says something like "Call You Now". I put in my number and the phone rang like two seconds later. The CS person reset my link so I could re-download the song. That's cool beans.
We went to see this over the weekend for Nathan's birthday:
Michael Crawford - wow!
We went fishing over the weekend. The tourists were the real show:
NJ Woman "OMG! OMG! OMG! OMG! I CAUGHT A FISH!!! OMG!"
NJ Woman "GET THE CAMERA!"
I can't emphasize how loud this came out. Try envisioning that in 72 point type with a few extra "!"'s on the end.
There was also this old guy who caught a crab and made a dive for it - sadly, without even the least attempt to block his fall. I'll leave the visuals up to Jamie on that one.
We watched that McCain/Obama political forum thingy - does anyone else feel like McCain knew the questions ahead of time?
I took Friday off and we tore into the garage attached studio and took everything out of it - Clean Sweep style, tarp and all. It was quite refreshing. Nathan wants to make it into a workshop and I'm all for it. We'll get everything in place this week and I'll post a picture. I'm sure we'll start making something ridiculous and sell in on Etsy.
All this and then President Musharraf resigned.
I think that's everything (for me) so far.
I know ambigrams are mirror images of words, but are mirror images of pictures called ambigrams too?
...Like this page of 18 really interesting MATCHBOX COVERS?
Yeah, you can guess where the Pure Red Iguanas are from...
Many times I've made the assertion that the best music in the world comes from Scotland. (It does.)
I now assert that even football songs from Scotland are the prettiest tunes you could hope to hear. (They are.)
As further proof, I offer you Follow Follow. You can decide for yourself, my mind is already made up. (You can & it is.)
- Though the straits be broad and narrow, we'll follow we will,
- Follow we will, Follow we will.
- Though the straits be broad and narrow, we'll follow we will,
- We will follow in the footsteps of our team.
- Follow follow, we will follow Rangers,
- Everywhere, anywhere,
- We will follow on,
- To Dundee, Hamilton, Aberdeen and back again,
- If they go to Dublin we will follow on.
- For there's not a team like the Glasgow Rangers,
- No not one, and there never shall be one,
- Celtic know all about their troubles,
- We will fight till the day is done.
- For there's not a team like the Glasgow Rangers,
- No not one, and there never shall be one!
