wandering wordsmith

My house. Has to be. No other explanation.
Yes, another dead mouse this a.m.
I’m going to Hardware Sales and buying a gross of mousetraps. Wish I could have a cat.

So.
All that steel-wool stuffing and hole-plugging, and what happens?
Yet another freakin’ mouse.
At least this one’s dead, in the trap.

Here’s a shot of poor Grandma. These are the most classic, textbook example of “coon eyes” I’ve ever seen (for quick injury classification). The head-bump wasn’t nearly as bad as it looks. Gotta admit it does look bad, and with the promise of looking worse and worse over the next few days.

Am finishing up a pint of Deschutes Hop in the Dark, which Deschutes claims is a new beer style they call Cascadian Dark Ale. :shakes head: Naah, they’ve largely reinvented not-quite-Imperial stouts. Don’t bother.
Lotta catchin’ up to do, even in a life as boring as mine. I hate to admit it, but the […]

I got the first couple of lines and part of the last line, but my math knowledge wasn’t good enough to understand the whole thing so I had to get it translated.
In other news. . . I got yet another dead mouse today. But it was dead, and not feebly struggling. I wish I knew […]

If throwing fits would make changes, I’d throw one, and then I’d be healthy and it would be rainy and cool again.
I’ve had to cut back to my former exercise schedule—every other day—because of the extremely unhappy post-bumble tendons holding my kneecap to my quadriceps. Or vice versa. Since the recumbent bicycle […]

. . . and Little Fishes.

Actually, I’m assuming—and I will believe—that it’s a mouse, not a rat. But it is some sort of rodent. And it has been scrabbling around in my walls for a couple of months or more, utterly oblivious to every remedy I have tried.
Naturally, I have deployed anti-rodent dances, banged on the walls and ceiling with […]

When heat hits here, all my anti-heat defenses percolate to the surface. Since it was 90-something yesterday and almost that today, that means

shutting all the windows and doors as early as possible in the a.m.
closing off the south-facing bathroom door (this keeps all the radiant heat in the bathroom rather than creeping through the rest […]

When I go walking Ye Dogge, I tend to be very careful. The trail we mostly use isn’t very difficult except in patches, but it is dirt and rocks, back in the woods, and has inherent potential for disaster. I watch where I’m going and what I step on. When it’s muddy, which is most […]

Yesterday, I started a post that included asking y’all if you or any of your wide network of brilliant, creative, clever friends could recommend a good value for an intermediate-quality alto sax. The ether ate it and sent it off to Betelgeuse or somewhere.
I got recommendations from some other friends, notably for a used Yamaha […]

Having determined that my Spanish is yet again getting rusty, I decided to find a new telenovela to watch. Imagine my surprise upon discovering that there is no plain ol’ Channel 28 Univision any longer! Instead, there is Channel 29 Univision, which evidently comes straight out of Seattle. It was a bit disconcerting to see […]

You’d think that at my age there would be no “firsts” left, wouldn’t you? And you’d be wrong! Today—the ides of June!—was so chilly that I actually turned on the heater to take off the edge. How’s that for bizarre?!?

The afternoon is gloomy, dark, with roiling black clouds glowering overhead and slinging a bit of wet now and then, like the flecks of foam flung by a rabid dog stalking crazily down the street. I am walking back in the woods with Ye Dogge, with no one in sight or sound for what seems […]

Hee hee! I think I made my first killing on the international money market. Since the Euro v. $ has been down the last several days, I took the opportunity to buy Vital Equipment from a European source. I got for $67 what I would have had to pay $140 for a couple of weeks […]