Category: General
Winter Time
It turned spring around here a couple weeks ago, set the clocks ahead, had April Fool’s Day, coming on Easter, and now it’s winter again. Very strange to look out a window, see sunshine, birds, grass nigh a foot high, green leaves and other blooms on the trees; and then you step out to get the newspaper and freeze yer buns. Reminds me it ain’t too soon to start gettin’ Christmas shopping done!
Becky went to Emporia to a baby shower, I stayed home and mostly slept. Had worked non-stop from Wednesday morning to Friday evening non-sleep, so had a little catching up to do. Was sort of nice, except now suddenly there’s only one day of weekend left and too much to do before Monday arrives! Just can’t seem to get ahead.
And only a week ’til tax return’s due. :tired:
…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:
Winter? Spring?
April 15, 2007
General
Comments Off on Winter? Spring?
John
Since April Fool’s Day it’s been hard to tell whether it’s Spring or Winter around here. It seemed like Spring at first; in fact, an early spring that started back around the middle of March. The yard already had grass six inches high needing mowed two weeks ago; but I didn’t mow it. We had the air conditioner going. And then last week it was back to winter coats and furnace! It even snowed a couple days ago; not as much here, as south of here. South? Yep. Then it rained all day Friday and yesterday (Saturday) was cloudy, cold and wet. I thought I might escape mowing another week but, alas, it was spring again today. Beautiful spring. I mowed. But, first, I did taxes — though I didn’t file yet. Last year I switched from TurboTax to TaxCut, only because a free TaxCut disk came in a magazine and I figured why not try it. Same thing this year, but this year I’m rather less impressed with TaxCut. It had a goofy bug that came up telling me we had a $1.00 penalty for underpayment of estimated tax, even though we overpaid by $1500.00, and had it all paid in by Jan. 15. I figured it it out, I think, by fudging the date on the first estimate which wasn’t late to begin with but was after April 15, a year like this year where the 15th is on Sunday. For whatever reason, the program didn’t recognize that. Kansas has free online tax return filing, so I skipped Taxcut’s generous offer to sell me their state program. TurboTax does that, also.
Happy Spring, everybody!