…and then termites

Having finally beat back the invading ants, we were looking forward to a peaceful Sunday. Got up, had a relaxed breakfast, some coffee, read the paper, watch the talking heads on “This Week” with George Ste… whatever. I hadn’t noticed Becky had got out of her chair, as I was dozing, until I heard the screeching from the bathroom. So I rushed to the door and the floor’s covered with things about the size of ants but long straight-back wings, Becky standing in the middle of them, stomping like mad, and screeching. I joined the “dance” but realized I needed a bathroom myself, and went back to the “master” bathroom and there they were all over the floor, walls, shower. So I commenced to dancing some more, partly to stomp bugs and partly ’cause I needed to pee. I wasn’t making much headway just stomping; didn’t help with the critters on the walls. So I ran out to my desk and grabbed my latest Playboy, noticing as I ran through the kitchen they’re all over the floor in there, too.

Well, at this point, the screeching has mostly stopped and I have various scenarios playing through my head, none of which involved spending the day inside the house. Nevertheless, I proceeded to make good, though unusual, use of Playboy. We finally got enough of them squashed that Becky felt like trying a dash through the shower, so I joined her and we got cleaned up and dressed.

Becky’s figuring to bug-bomb the place, and I’m wondering how the hell I’m going to get a brief done that I was planning to spend the day working on. By this point, though, most of the bugs are dead ones and I’m thinking it looks like time for a vacuum cleaner. Instead, I hit the computer and did some searching on pests hoping to find a picture that would show me these were not termites. I quickly found a good authority and my hopes were promptly dashed, for the most part. The good news was there ain’t much use trying to bug-bomb the damn things. For the short term, the only thing worthwhile, according to this authority, was (and here I thought myself a genius of some sort) vacuuming.

While I did some additional searching for pest control candidates to call tomorrow, Becky cleaned up with the vacuum. At that point, it’s almost mid-afternoon and a decision is made to go out for burgers. If the place was swarming again on return, it would be bug-bombed. If not, we just hold the fort and call reinforcements tomorrow.

When we got back, there were a few stragglers, but not enough to let loose the bombs. So, I got to do a little work on the brief, and Becky did some other cleaning stuff. Normal people, of course, were outside mowing their lawns, washing their cars, etc., as it was just a perfectly gorgious day, outside.

We’d rate today: :yuck:

I Hate DST

Normally, I’d post something about how much I hate Daylight Savings Time. But, I’m just tooooo damn tired.

I noticed somewhere a couple days ago that the Brits went to “British Summer Time” last weekend. That answered a question I thought about two or three times in the last decade or two and didn’t exert the effort to find the answer. More evidence in support of the procrastinator’s favorite maxim, “All things come to those who wait.”

Yup, It’s Winter and All

First snow Wednesday – big flakes mixed with rain and blowing almost horizontally. Time to pay the piper for the previous couple weeks of abnormally warm weather. It was quite perfect for quite a while. Hoping for something dry and better than bone-chilling this weekend as I need to change the oil in Becky’s car. Also need to decide about the van. Poor thing sitting out there with dead battery, almost flat tire, rusting away in the driveway. Thing is, once in a while it’s nice to have, like last spring when we rented the tiller for the garden.

At least one spammer has been throwing comments garbage at the blog, so comments are turned off on most older articles.

Yesterday Norton Internet Security decided its firewall would no longer allow smtp (email) to/from my laptop. That took five or six hours to deal with. There’s no manual configuration for firewall settings other than rules that the user has added. Of course, I never added any rules to block email. Finally found a little page on their website with a 54kb download to restore default settings, which took care of it around 2:00 a.m. last night. Good ol’ Norton.

Okay, I’m off to the neurologist for nerve conductivity testing. This is like acupuncture but larger needles, through which electricity is fired and measured, at umpteen body locations. A lot like putting an ohmeter on a circuit. I’ll surely be in quite a zen-like state later today.