nekosensei

Blergh. I have been sick since about Thursday, and I really haven't been feeling the greatest these past few days. Yesterday was the costume party at voidness' house. I got dressed as a vampire and went over there for a couple of hours. (Monster make-up is confusing! Next time, I'm going to use clown make-up and improvise). I didn't feel up to staying much longer. There were a lot of people there, it was loud, my voice was going...going...gone, it hurt to talk, and I didn't feel like shouting over people to be heard. I was also having a hard time breathing. So, I had doomsey take me home a little after nine o'clock. I told doomsey to go back to the party since he seemed to be having fun. I watched tv, knitted, and ended up coughing so much that I gave myself a nasty headache. Ouch!

Today, I didn't do much of anything. I sat on the couch and vegged out with the computer. Gosh, I didn't even shower or get dressed until six in the evening. That never happens. I hope I feel better by Tuesday.

Oh...as I told doomsey during dinner, I've also been a woman of few words because my voice is pretty much shot. Why do I keep losing my voice every time I get sick?

And now I leave you with a link and a meme.

This link is swiped from brightflashes. A group of people conducted an experiment in which they sent unlikely objects through the US Postal Service to see what would get delivered and what wouldn't.

The meme is from tx_cronopio:
If you could have seven homes like some unmentioned recent political candidate, where would you have them? For simplicity, let's limit this to the country in which you currently reside (Aww...that's no fun! I would love to live overseas so I'm including some non-US locations as well). So for me, that'd be the US. Obviously, we're pretending that money is no object.

- Chicago, IL
- San Francisco, CA
- Somewhere in the mountains outside Boulder or Golden, CO
- Tokyo, Japan
- Granada, Spain
- London, England
- Enh...I don't know. Someplace warm. Let's say Hawaii. It's warm year round and they don't get hurricanes.

So...does this mean I get to pick eleven cars now too?

Let's see. I can only come up with two: a Toyota Prius (wait...I already have that!) and a Tesla Roadster (Oooh! Shiny!)

Okay...I lied. I have one more link courtesy of ginmar. Obama is talking about reversing 200 of Bush's administrative actions and executive orders once he assumes office in January. It's about time that we start seeing some sanity in the White House!

Several days ago, I was a few houses away from my driveway when I saw a police car with his lights on turn onto my block ahead of me. He was heading right towards me. I remembered that I had been listening to a really good song when I was driving on [name redacted] Street, and I wondered if I had been speeding inadvertently. Then, I looked in my review mirror and saw another police car turn onto my street behind me. I thought, "gee...that's a lot of police cars for a speeding ticket. What did I do? Run someone over and not notice?" It turns out that they weren't pulling me over at all. Our neighbors in one of the houses across the street from us had smelled smoke in their basement and called the fire department. I just so happened to be pulling onto my street the minute the police showed up. The fire department made an appearance about a half a minute later.

Whew! No tickie for me!

Oh...and our neighbor's house is fine. It turns out that it was a false alarm.

Yesterday was pretty busy. In the morning, I waited for the heating and air conditioning guy to come out to clean the air conditioner and try to figure out what was wrong with the furnace. This winter, the furnace had a tendency to click (it stopped and started) numerous times before turning on and staying on for good. We had the home warranty people out to look at it earlier, and they cleaned the flame sensor and, when that didn't work, they replaced it. However, that never seemed to fix the problem. The warranty people have a reputation for being incompetent so we had the guy we usually hire to clean the furnace look at it while he was out. It turns out that it was just a broken connector, a very inexpensive part. He put on a new one, tested the furnace a bunch of times, and it worked after that. I'm still amazed that the warranty people never caught that.

I wonder if doomsey and I are going to renew our home warranty again next year. Since we've had it, it just seems like a waste of time and money. The people they send out are usually very incompetent and they never do fix the problem. The plumber the sent us to fix a broken pump about a year and a half ago was a real piece of work. The motor was on the fritz, so he ordered a new motor to replace it. Since he couldn't find a quarter horse power motor to replace it, he got a half horse power one. It turned out that the new motor was too big for the container. The really stupid thing was that he never tested anything before he left to make sure that it worked. In fact, when I was there, he got a phone call from his office saying that he had to go back to a house that he had been at earlier that day because the tub he had "fixed" wasn't working. I should have taken that as the warning sign it was, but I didn't. After he left, I did a load of laundry only to find that the floor was wet. The pump was not working. It turns out that the motor was a bit too big and that it was hitting the top of its container, so it never turned on. The guy told me that he was going to try to find the correct sized motor for it, but he never got back to me. When I tried calling him, he never answered my phone calls. Finally, I got in touch with his supervisor. It turned out that he hadn't shown up to work for a week and they were "worried about him." I kind of suspected that he went on a bender or something. In fact, they never did find the correct part. I kept calling the plumber, but they never got back to me or they told me that they were still looking for it. doomsey ended up fixing the pump himself. Thankfully, the plumbers never cashed the check that we sent them.

Let's see. What else did I do yesterday? I went for a three and a half mile walk and then I did some weeding in the garden. By the way, listening to music and audio books while walking and doing outside work makes the time go faster. It's really pleasant actually. I'm really enjoying the Neil Gaiman book I'm listening to now. And an added bonus...I stepped on the scale this morning and noticed that I had lost a little bit more weight.

The squirrel people are at my house again this morning. They removed the trap from my roof and they're spraying Sporacin in the attic to disinfect it. I tried telling doomsey this earlier, but I think he was too busy to notice or respond (he's incredibly busy at work this week because of some big deadlines), but there were two squirrels in the trap. Unfortunately, one didn't make it. The squirrel guy thinks it was the second squirrel that was trapped. It ended up dying because the first one ate all of the food. He warned me before I looked at it because he said that it sometimes makes some customers upset. I wasn't really. Such is life. They couldn't come out any sooner and we weren't comfortable going up there by ourselves.

The squirrel guys finally came out today and sealed off all the vents where the squirrels were getting into our attic. There's a trap connected to one of the vents for any squirrels that are left inside the attic. We have to check them in the morning and evening to see if there's anything up there and then contact the squirrel people to come and remove them if there is. doomsey looked out there this evening and he noticed that there's a squirrel poking it's head out of the vent in question, but it hasn't entered the trap yet. We'll probably see him in the trap by tomorrow morning.

doomsey talked to one of the neighbors this evening, and he said that he saw a bunch of baby squirrels walking across our roof not too long ago.

Today was made of EPIC FAIL. I tried to order a repair kit for the spigot that doomsey was fixing in back only to find out that they're going to have to get it from a factory in New Hampshire and it's going to take 90 days. I ordered it anyway because, while the spigot out back is very drippy, at least it still works in the meantime.

Then, I called Terminix back again and told them that we figured out that the rodent in our attic was a squirrel and that it was getting in through a vent. I also reminded them that the person they send out needs to have a tall ladder because our attic was hard to access. (We had someone come out last year for a wasps' nest and they didn't bother to bring one). And then, the person on the other end of the line informed me that, while the plan says they cover rodents, they only do mice and rats. They don't cover squirrels. FUCK! When I originally called them to set up an appointment for Tuesday morning, I told them that it might be a squirrel (I wasn't sure at the time), and the person on the other end of the line said not one goddamn thing about Terminix not handling squirrels.

Then, as I was pulling out of my garage to go grocery shopping, a Terminix truck pulled into the driveway and blocked me in. The driver had been told to come over and investigate my critter in the attic problem today while the person on the other end of the phone had told me that they weren't able to come out until Tuesday morning. Seriously. These people don't communicate with one another at all! This isn't the first time they pulled shit like this. The last time I had to make an appointment, I was told that they would come out on a particular day at a particular time. I waited...and waited...and waited some more. Finally, I called them to try to find out what was going on, and the person who answered the phone said that the national office had scheduled the appointment and hadn't bothered to tell the local branch about it. They didn't have anyone scheduled to come out and look at the wasps' nest that day. And she didn't even apologize! She made it sound like it was somehow my fault for calling the national office and not the local one because national doesn't communicate well! Hello! How was I supposed to know this?? I called the number that you printed on my goddamn receipt! Sheesh. So...I ended up pitching a fit and getting someone out there that day to take care of the wasp problem. Only...they showed up without a ladder as I mentioned above and had to make an appointment for another day. So...that was two days wasted because of their fuck-up.

After finding out that Tereminix wasn't going to get rid of my squirrel problem, I called the county animal control. Their recording said that they did not trap wildlife. Then, I called the number for the Wildlife Foundation that Terminix had given me. They, in turn, gave me the phone number for the wrong pest control company who, fortunately, was able to get me the phone number to the right one (they both shared the same name) that serviced my area. They told me that the person who trapped squirrels was booked solid, and they wouldn't be able to come out until some time next week. In the meantime, the fucking varmint upstairs is chewing on our wood and insulation!

judygs gave me the number of another pest control company, and I'm going to call it tomorrow. These guys will not only trap the critters, but they'll also clean up the mess they leave behind and seal off the attic so they don't come back again. They also have a guarantee where, if they do come back, they'll come out again free of charge. doomsey seems to think that this might be a good idea because, once squirrels find their way into a place, they or another squirrel usually come back. It sounds like they could be expensive though. doomsey seems to think that this could run anywhere from a couple hundred dollars to a thousand. Yep...between my hospital bills, doomsey's test, and $250 I had to shell out for my deductible because some jackass rear-ended me, this is turning out to be a very expensive year for us. And it's not anywhere near over yet!

If the company I'm calling tomorrow is not able to come out anytime soon, I might end up giving up and trapping the goddamn varmint myself. I borrowed a better step ladder from judygs and doomsey said that someone at his office is going to loan us a Havahart trap. If this is what I decide to do, I'm going to buy a pair of welder's gloves because I'm afraid of being bitten. I have reason to believe that my INR is on the high side (I moved up the appointment for my blood draw to Wednesday), and I really really really do not need to get bit by a frightened critter. So...does anybody out there want to help me trap a critter this week?

Gah!

Yesterday, doomsey moved the small bookcase that was built into the wall of our room and looked at the crawl-space behind it. He noticed that some of the insulation back there was ripped up. He said that he thinks that there's an entrance from the attic into that particular crawl-space. So...yep. It looks like we have a critter.

By the way, I think I could use one of these right now.

doomsey and I went to a party last night and didn't get back until late. I was annoyed at being woken up this morning so, before I went to bed, I pounded on our bedroom ceiling and said, "wake up!" to the squirrels. I hope they liked them apples...

Today I managed to vacuum the upstairs and the downstairs. The cleaning ladies haven't been by since they're on vacation and the cat hair has been piling up. During my adventures in domestic chores, I managed to get part of thin black power cord sucked up into the vacuum. It wrapped around the bar before it broke off completely. I'm lucky I didn't shock myself or something. The plastic piece that's around the bottom of the vacuum is also coming off. I don't know how I did that. Between lugging that heavy vacuum around, bending over to sweep the floor, going to the grocery store, and doing other odds and ends, I'm sore and I want people to leave me the fuck alone.

I know lucy_burb will appreciate this one. Yesterday, I had nothing better to do so I ended up taking pictures of some flowers in my garden...

( Flower Pictures )


I wish I had taken pictures of the lilac bushes and the honeysuckle in the spring. They were pretty...

doomsey came home and puttered downstairs for a few minutes. It turned out that it was the circuit breaker, not the washing machine itself. I'm wondering if it got pissed off because I turned on the air conditioner. It may not be particularly hot outside, but it's humid...

Looks like I am going to get my laundry done after all...

The laundry is downstairs and in the washer. I decided that giving the laundry baskets the old heave-ho down the stairs wasn't a good idea since the Katuba is hanging on the wall by the stairs. I was afraid of knocking it off the wall with a laundry basket and having it break on me. Instead, I went down the stairs backwards step by step and leaned on the laundry basket. That worked. I damn near stepped on arwenmonster since she thought it would be cute to sit on the stairs. I swear...that cat is as dumb as dirt.

I'm wiped. I think I'm going to spend the rest of the day on the couch downstairs.