So this morning Becky went downstairs to let Cinnamon out for her morning business, and the big 40 pound bag of dogfood shook and made noises and scared the bejeebers out of her. Mouse inside. Or maybe jumping off. Whatever. Becky didn’t like it. Tonight I went down and set out five standard traps and four boxes of d-Con at strategic locations where Cinnamon couldn’t get at them. Just made it back up to the top of the stairs when Clack! Score one for Mouse Hunter.

Lest anyone decry the senseless and inhumane slaughter of these cute little denizens of God’s kingdom, let me just say that we had no takers on the ads we ran during the last invasion, seeking sensitive mouse catchers to collect them up in a humane and painless fashion and relocate them to an environmentally friendly habitat. All we succeeded in doing was generating a heated debate about whether it was humane to abandon domesticated mice in a natural habitat where, deprived through no fault of their own of normal development of defensive behaviors, they would fall easy and unsportsmanlike prey to predators if, indeed, they did not starve first for want of foraging skills in a non-man-made domain. Who knows how long the picketing factions would have scowled and hurled epithets at each other on Lazy Brook Lane if the fellow down on Brush Creek hadn’t been spotted gouging into the gopher runs in his back yard, pitch fork in one hand and baseball bat in the other. Apparently, skewered and battered gopher is more tantalizing than garroted mouse.

Friday night at 11:00 p.m. I checked into LMH South for a sleep study to see if I have sleep apnea or other sleeping disorders. I did one about five years ago and all I got out of it was “snores while sleeping on back”, and I was advised to not sleep that way. Fortunately, that bit of expensive medical expertise was paid for by insurance (as is this one). So after getting me all hooked up he says, “We want you to sleep on your back.” To which I replied, “I don’t think it’s gonna work, because of my neck (degenerative arthritis in a couple of disks up there) and these really bad pillows.” Two hours later he came in and said, “Okay, any position where you can get to sleep will be fine.” By then, my neck was killing me, but I got to sleep and had weird dreams including a slapstick comedy involving hand grenades. When they shooed me out into the morning fog at 6:30 I apparently had not exhibited any obvious apnea.

Saturday I felt like I’d been in a car wreck. Not only was the neck screwed up, but also the rest of the back and hips, as well, from the strange and apparently not very orthopedically friendly bed. Spent most of the day in the recliner watching Olympics next to Becky in her recliner. Her skeleton was having an off day, as well. Listen, kids, getting old sucks big time, even when you’re still “young” (mostly according to people who are older than you are). Somewhere along the afternoon I decided to tackle mowing the yard. Got the front done, and about a fourth of the back before hitting a root and bending the blade; and really really hoping the crank shaft isn’t bent, too. We went out for a Marisco’s Special Nachos (with shrimp and lobster) supper, followed by a nice apple pastry dessert. I guess one nice thing about getting old is that two can share one order of things and still get stuffed. Stopped at HyVee for milk but it was too late to buy a lottery ticket.

Sunday we bundled up sticks and fallen apples in the back yard, and I went over to Sears to pick up a blade for the mower. Luck was with me, as the mower runs smooth as ever with the new blade. Crank shaft OK. Wish I’d have had a lottery ticket.

And that’s about it for the weekend report. I don’t anticipate much else happening, unless we have a wreck on the way to get Sonic burgers for supper. We’ll probably go ahead and splurge and get one each, though, instead of sharing one. Hey, even us oldies gotta go crazy once in a while!

Watch out with Google Gmail. A whole bunch of emails I sent out today haven’t got out. Sometimes, y’know, things sit on a sending server awhile and sometimes they sit on a receiving server at the other end. But, in my case, it’s clearly a Google problem. I have the advantage of several email accounts on several different servers and the ability to test things out pretty well. Also, whenever I send an email from gmail, I send a bcc to myself at a different address. If not for that, I wouldn’t have realized that the emails I sent weren’t going anywhere. A few of them finally got delivered after about six hours. Some are still not delivered after 12 hours. My ticket to Google support got a quick standard automated response, but still no actual response after 8 hours, and counting. Far as I can tell, I seem to be receiving okay.

Yeah, I guess they need to keep the “beta” label a while longer.

Watching the Olympics opening ceremonies. Sort of like the Macy’s Thanksgiving Day Parade, without floats. When I was a kid, and even into my 20′s, it seemed like a long time between Olympics. After 40, it seems like there’s an Olympics every year. That’s how much faster time seems to go by when you get older. Becky and I were discussing that phenomenon the other day. We agreed it must be because as kids, we packed our time with activities, whereas now we spend a lot of it just sitting around. But, that seems backward from the saying “time flies when you’re having fun”. I know I had a lot more fun as a kid. So, I don’t know why time is flying faster these days. Unless, maybe, it just really is. But, getting back to the Olympics, I wish I was listening more closely. The announcers were talking about the country with the only flag that has a front and back, different on each side. But I missed the name of the country. Darn! If anybody knows, please share!

Oh, amazing — Bjork debuting her song Oceania

We had a little wine with our anniversary dinner (mmm, steak!) at J. B. Stout’s. The plan had been to see I, Robot afterwards, but we were running a little late, so we went to Hastings instead to grab some DVD’s. Ahem. So, last night for anniversary entertainment we watched Along Came Polly. Not exactly academy award material. And tonight we watched Starsky & Hutch. It’s unanimous. We both unequivocally recommend that everyone bypass this movie entirely; unless for the purpose of screening nominations for worst movie ever made. I can’t say it’s the worst, though. There was one a while back, I remember, that we actually yanked out of the player after about 10 minutes. I don’t remember what it was. This one, however, we only fast-forwarded so as to reduce the length of torture. Wanna know the third one we rented? League of Extraordinary Gentlemen. It didn’t seem like that much wine!