greg3d

briefly

Union meeting tonight, not much of note there. At least it was short. Dinner with Mortimer, since we didn't do our usual Tuesday. Nala seems fine. She is just a finicky eater. She's bouncing around acting normal, so I guess I'm just paranoid. I'll still keep an eye on her. Speak of the little devil she just bounded in here and bounded back out. She seems to like to know where I am. She seems frisky tonight, in fact. Guess I'll go give her some attention and then head off to bed.

posthumous fame

Siegfried hits the big time!

a new friend

We have a new member of the household. She is a breed called a lion because of her mane. We are guessing she is about a year old, but we are not sure. We found her at the place we found Siegfried and Max and Nutmeg and Medea. It's a pet shop that does pet rescues. She is a used bunny.

Now she and Hermione are not getting along yet. Hermione is being a bitch. THey will come to like each other since rabbits are inherently social. It just takes time for them to get used to each other. she seems to be litter box trained and she likes to be held. In fact, she will jump up from the floor into your lap. The reason we picked her was because she came running up wanting to be petted. She was not shy about being picked up. She was definitely a bunny that was used to being handled. Now we just have to work on Hermione.

sad

Siegfried passed away during the night.

hassenpfeffer

Hermione broke through our defenses for the front room and ate the computer again. All network cables were trashed. She also ate the USB cable to the printer, which luckily was replaceable. She almost ate through the power cord. I think we are going to have to put a door on the room or move the computers to the basement.

The main computer has been down and out for a while. Somehow I lost system functions. I couldn't access disk management or system restore. I suspect a virus. I did some work on it, which was probably a mistake because I probably made things worse, but I finally admitted defeat and took it in the the computer shop. Hopefully they will be able to restore it. fortunately i had a backup of the hard drive on an external drive for them to work off of.

Interesting day at work. More meetings for the new building design. The plot thickens.They are looking for weaknesses, but so far we are not budging. The boss is off on a business trip. His reactions when he gets back to what's going on should be entertaining. I don't think he will be happy with me. Darn.

then there's this

up yours, oil companies!

WooHoo! I drove Siegfried to the vet this morning. North Seattle and back on less than a quarter tank of gas! That is 70 miles on about 2 gallons, compared to the 8 gallons the Highlander or the truck would do. I am pleased.

We are off to Oregon this weekend, for no special reason but to just get away.

And drive the car.

the mouse wars are the least of it

I trapped 5 mice and one bunny in two days. One mouse and the bunny survived.

The bunny was, of course, Hermione, who got out at last.You-know-who left the door open or not properly closed and she escaped. Arthur came home to find her in the back yard. She dashed under the deck which is too low to crawl under and no amount of persuading could coax her out. What finally did coax her out was the water hose. Ever try to grab a wet bunny? They are difficult to hang on to. She got out of my hands twice. By the time I finally got her, Arthur was wet and muddy from lying on the ground with the hose. I was wet and muddy from trying to wrestle the rabbit, and she was soaked. I ran her inside and stuck her in the sink under warm water to clean her off and warm her up. It's still in the 40's here. She got a good rubdown in a big towel and didn't seem to hold a grudge. I came home at lunch today to find her looking longingly out the french doors, so getting blasted with a hose obviosly didn't faze her much.

Speaking of lunch, on my way home at noon I stopped at the store to grab a sandwich. I got to the checker only to find I only had three dollars. Someone had borrowed money and didn't tell me. The checker, who is a dear friend from way back, took pity and loaned me five dollars. She's such a sweetheart. I stopped in after work and paid her back.

We have been experiencing another mouse infestation and possibly another rat (besides Mortimer) [he'll read this and I'll hear about it]. 3 I got in snap traps, one in the live trap, and one got zapped in the electronic rat trap. The live one got released down the street and at least has a sporting chance. I set the traps, but I make Arthur dispose of the corpses.

I ve been struggling with the Area budget committee. We need the Area to advance WAAC the deposit for the Camp so we can lock in our dates and start distributing registrations. A couple of the members of the Budget Committee don't seem to want to take responsibility for a decision and want to hold out for a vote at Assembly, which is a month away. I'm not sure the Camp will wait that long. I have been lobbying a few people, but I didn't know who was on the Budget Committee until today. I have the ear of some influential people which I am going to take advantage of. If that doesn't work I'm going to turn Zany Blue on them, and then heaven help them. There is nothing more terrifying than a mad Alateen.

All I will say about work is that no good deed goes unpunished. So much for being dedicated.

I'm waiting on Mortimer. There is something brewing which may turn out to be a bright spot in my day, or may completely fizzle. We will see.

an afterthought

I went into the kitchen after writing this post (to set more traps), and saw sunshine at 7PM. I started kicking myself for squandering daylight now that it's daylight savings and not being out in the garden. Then I remembered it's still winter and it's still cold outside. Too chilly yet to lounge on the deck.

Damn.

This must be what insanity is like

The day got off to a very bad start.

Usually, the first thing I see when I get up is Hermione. She is either sleeping by the door to the attic or just in the living room having breakfast. Not this morning. I thought I had heard a door slam just before the alarm went off, so I took a turn around the house looking for signs of Mortimer. Sure enough, his car was out front, so I knew he was asleep in the basement. Siegfried was by the back door, but no sign of Hermione.  Ok, I thought, she's just holed up somewhere. I took a shower and got dressed, but no Hermione. Even when I opened the refrigerator, she didn't come running, only Siegfried. That's when I started to panic. You see, Mortimer has this habit of not closing doors. He walks out to the deck and talks on the phone and leaves the door open. He has left the front door open to go out to his car. The problem is that Hermione has shown some interest in the outdoors. More than once, she has dashed out side on the deck. I searched the house one more time, including closets. I looked in the basement even though I had never seen her show any interest in going downstairs. Nothing but Mortimer sawing logs. I got out the raincoat and looked around the back yard. It was raining, so I figured she would be hiding under the deck. There really wasn't an easy way to get out of the fenced yard. There were no prints in the yard. No sign of her in the front yard either. By that time, Arthur had gotten up. He went ballistic. I changed clothes and climbed in the crawlspace under the addition. He drove around the block. He screamed and yelled, blaming Mortimer. Based on the admittedly circumstantial evidence, he was the likely suspect, although Arthur has been known to keep the door to the deck open while out there smoking. I took him to work, mainly so I wouldn't have to listen to him screaming and went back and blasted Mortimer out of bed. He protested his innocence, but I put him to searching the house while I walked around the neighborhood and crawled under the deck. It's raining, remember. Mud. I come back in the house, covered, after having reamed him out about habitually leaving doors open and he tells me he found her hiding in the basement utility room. I went down and sure enough, she was behind some shelves. I cornered her and dragged her out, lectured her soundly and apologized to Mortimer. She was one hungry bunny. I have no idea how long she was down there. I finally made it to work about two hours late. Mortimer got about 1 hour of sleep.

It's been really busy here at work. A road crew came across an abandoned underground fuel tank, which prompted a flurry of sample container preparation and flying emails and some confusion. I still have a stack of paperwork I haven't gotten to since I was out helping the sampling guys the last couple of days.

I needed a break. I'm going back under headphones and finishing this data.

We seem to have been slightly mistaken

Hermione, it appears, is a Herman. Hermie (as he may now be referred to) has been making advances to Siegfried in a manner unbecoming a lady. In other words acting pretty much like a top. I took a look and sure enough. Now I want the vet, who was within inches of dong a hysterectomy on him a few weeks ago, and was planning to complete it on Friday, to explain to me why she didn't notice. I mean, I'm not in the habit of feeling up bunnies (and Hermie didn't like it when I did), so I think I can be forgiven for accepting the feed store guys word, but I would think she would have at least verified it. I think she is going to be a little embarrassed.