Mostly Harmless

A few weeks ago I woke up and glanced over at the cup of water on my "nightstand" (aka cardboard box near the bed). As I watched, a disturbingly large black ant appeared and proceeded to make a few laps around the rim of the cup — stopping occasionally to lick something apparently nutritious.
Eventually the ant tired of this and wandered off. I washed the cup, a lot.
This morning I woke up and found an ant floating in the cup. Again, I washed the cup thoroughly. (I generally don’t drink from the cup in the morning anyway, which is probably a good thing.)
I believe I have devised a solution for this problem: "the Ant Moat".
The Ant Moat can be most easily constructed by filling a circular jello mold with water. Simply place your water glass in the center and rest easy.
If you find you have ants worthy of winning an Olympic swimming event, you may feel free to fill the moat with flaming kerosene; just don’t come crying to me when you accidentally set your flannel PJs (and house) on fire.

I seems like it was a couple of weeks ago — probably because it was — that the wall of my shower unexpectedly caved in… although, on second thought, the fact that the soap dish spontaneously fell off the aforementioned wall about nine months ago should have been a clue that something wasn’t quite right.

The wall of the shower was constructed of a rotten sheet of plywood (or similar pressboard type stuff), a layer of grout, and a bunch of six-inch square ceramic tiles.

Now, I don’t know about you, but if you want to build a wall that’s gonna last you don’t make it out of wet, rotten wood.

There is also the theory that the wood became rotten from water seeping through cracks in the grout; but I wouldn’t put anything past those construction companies.

The wall has now been rebuilt, but since I didn’t watch the guy put in a fresh piece of plywood (or drywall, or whatever), I have no idea if he used the good stuff or the rotten stuff — but it feels solid so I’ll give him the benefit of the doubt.

So, back to the “cave-in event.” I was taking a shower (duh!) and leaned against the side wall… much to my amusement a dozen tiles, and the wall, gave way and formed a “V” in the wall. Some tiles took that opportunity to fall off and into the tub. Other, more persistent, tiles, needed only minor coaxing to be removed (with my bare hands).

At this point I have a dozen tiles piled up in the back of the tub, and various bits of rotten wood clogging the drain. The water is rising ever so slightly.

I finish washing my hair and end the shower with water about ankle deep, trying not to step on too many ceramic tile fragments.

Surveying the damage later I notice a circular hole in the exposed wood and I guess, correctly, that it is the work of a mouse.

I know I’m correct because when the maintenance guy came to rip 11 square feet of tile off the wall (44 tiles) you could see the little mouse tunnels and nesting places in the insulation. Cool.

There were no mice actively in residence.

I also didn’t see any mice over the week and a half that I spent taking showers with a big sheet of plastic over the wall (so it could dry out, and they could forget about it, and I could remind them, and they could come and fix it.)

As I said, the wall is now fixed — ready for a new family of mice to set up housekeeping.

There are mice living in your walls too, by the way. Sleep well tonight.

For some reason unbeknownst to me a large number of people in front of me on the road today seemed to randomly have problems remembering that they were supposed to be hurtling down the highway at speeds slightly above the legal limit (like usual) and instead were slowing down and stopping for no fucking reason whatsoever.

At one point both lanes came to a complete stop for at least 5 minutes, when it cleared there was nothing there, no fender bender, no broken down vehicle… nothing!

Hey, I’ve got an idea! When the road is clear, let’s just drive like the road is clear! I feel that this will go a long way toward improving traffic conditions. Thank you.

I saw two former Survivor non-Survivors gracing the covers of Mademoiselle and Stuff during my last trip to the store, where I picked up new sheets and new towels but stopped short of buying matching washcloths for fear of creating a dangerous precedent.

Colleen is cute as ever in Mademoiselle. Amber is much hotter than ever in Stuff. I couldn’t bring myself to buy Stuff but I did flip through the relevant pages and can assure you that it’ll be worth the download.

I didn’t check out Mademoiselle ‘cuz it’s a chick mag. Besides,you can see Colleen walking, talking, and looking cute in The Animal — where her stage direction was apparently "stand in front of the camera and look cute, occasionally we’ll have you talk"; which she pulled off admirably.

With Survivor news out of the way you are now free to wait on the edge of your seat for Big Brother 2, starting July 5th.

In a heroic effort to save my own life this morning I dumped almost an entire bag of expired Dole Classic Iceberg Salad into the sink’s garbage disposal. (This is in lieu of just letting it rot in the garbage and stink up the joint, or, apparently, just eating it before it expired.)

In my haste a bit too much salad (nee, lettuce) was rammed through the disposal and didn’t get finely chopped (I’m guessing)and formed a fairly impressive clog in the drain pipe. Running the disposal after this only managed to force water from the left basin to the right basin. (Aha!)

After upwards of a minute of amusing myself pumping the water from one basin to the other and then watching it flow back and level out (see: Archimedes) I decided to harness the mighty hydraulic power at my disposal (ROTFLMAO!) to clear the drain.

For this trick you will need: (a) one sink drain plug or small plastic bowl, (2) a sink at least 1/2 full of water, and (c)one garbage disposal, properly installed.

• Step One: Insert the drain plug and hold itfirmly in the drain (opposite of the disposal, of course).Alternately use a small bowl, upside down over the drain.
• Step Two: Flip the switch and hold on!

As you will see, a large volume of water will move very quickly from Point A to Point B*. Point A is the basin that has the disposal, Point B is either the other sink basin, or the drainpipe, depending on how well you’ve sealed the opposite drain and the stubbornness of the clog. It may be necessary to shut off the disposal and let the waters recede (see: Noah) and give it another go.

So there you have it. (Well _I_ thought it was amusing.)

* This is called "bandwidth" and depends on the size of your "pipe."