Of mice and me
Speaking of Julia Nunes (and maeve_strathy and bri_lawson were), look what came in today's mail!
And yes, it is signed. I'm so excited to listen to it I almost feel like the moment isn't worthy of it yet. My room is a mess, for starters...
Winter is coming, and I'm trying to prepare for it. I'm trying to get my apartment ready for the coming months when I'll be more confined to it than usual. I'm trying to get things organized to the point that I can keep them clean, so my room will be cozy instead of stressful.
The last few weeks have been a little stressful around here. Apart from the fact that I was working on a hell of a lot of transcribing, it's been a while since I got a decent nights sleep. A mouse got into the house a few weeks ago - I heard it chew the drywall in my closet and get into my room - and has made it its mission to prevent me from falling asleep. It does this by waiting until I'm right on the brink of of sleep and scurrying through whatever it can find - paper, a plastic bag - in all corners of my room, causing the primitive part of my brain that falls asleep last to jolt me awake with a shot of adrenaline.
I put traps out as soon as I could get to a hardware store, and although they were the kind I've had success with in the past I caught nothing for almost two weeks. By this time I was resorting to falling asleep with music on, or some kind of white noise, or just sleeping on the couch in the living room. Soon I started to see the mice, first scurrying across the room out of the corner of my eye, then running across the counter and into the stove when I went into the kitchen. In the last few days they'd gotten bolder, too - sauntering slowly across the counter, even climbing right up onto my desk while I was working at the computer. They were actually really cute and tiny.
Adorableness notwithstanding, I went and bought some better traps, and in two days I caught and released five mice, and since Sunday there's been no sign of them. Knock wood.
We've also had dodgy access to running water all this week, which is a long story that begins with a sewage backflow in the basement (the place has also been a little stinky lately), ends with a 14-foot deep hole in the front yard, and in the middle has me coming home from work one day to find the landlord hosing sewage water off the driveway. 14 feet! That's more than two of me. Scott, a friend of the landlord who's been helping with the digging all week, lifted up the door they'd been covering the hole with and showed it to me. I was shocked that they'd dug so deep by hand, and through clay. It was kind of spooky, too, like an open grave. Maybe I should put together a time capsule before they fill it up.
Last night I sorted through all my bins of costumes and props. If anyone is in need of anything for Hallowe'en, let me know, I probably have something for you.
And yes, it is signed. I'm so excited to listen to it I almost feel like the moment isn't worthy of it yet. My room is a mess, for starters...
Winter is coming, and I'm trying to prepare for it. I'm trying to get my apartment ready for the coming months when I'll be more confined to it than usual. I'm trying to get things organized to the point that I can keep them clean, so my room will be cozy instead of stressful.
The last few weeks have been a little stressful around here. Apart from the fact that I was working on a hell of a lot of transcribing, it's been a while since I got a decent nights sleep. A mouse got into the house a few weeks ago - I heard it chew the drywall in my closet and get into my room - and has made it its mission to prevent me from falling asleep. It does this by waiting until I'm right on the brink of of sleep and scurrying through whatever it can find - paper, a plastic bag - in all corners of my room, causing the primitive part of my brain that falls asleep last to jolt me awake with a shot of adrenaline.
I put traps out as soon as I could get to a hardware store, and although they were the kind I've had success with in the past I caught nothing for almost two weeks. By this time I was resorting to falling asleep with music on, or some kind of white noise, or just sleeping on the couch in the living room. Soon I started to see the mice, first scurrying across the room out of the corner of my eye, then running across the counter and into the stove when I went into the kitchen. In the last few days they'd gotten bolder, too - sauntering slowly across the counter, even climbing right up onto my desk while I was working at the computer. They were actually really cute and tiny.
Adorableness notwithstanding, I went and bought some better traps, and in two days I caught and released five mice, and since Sunday there's been no sign of them. Knock wood.
We've also had dodgy access to running water all this week, which is a long story that begins with a sewage backflow in the basement (the place has also been a little stinky lately), ends with a 14-foot deep hole in the front yard, and in the middle has me coming home from work one day to find the landlord hosing sewage water off the driveway. 14 feet! That's more than two of me. Scott, a friend of the landlord who's been helping with the digging all week, lifted up the door they'd been covering the hole with and showed it to me. I was shocked that they'd dug so deep by hand, and through clay. It was kind of spooky, too, like an open grave. Maybe I should put together a time capsule before they fill it up.
Last night I sorted through all my bins of costumes and props. If anyone is in need of anything for Hallowe'en, let me know, I probably have something for you.