Thursday, June 23, 2011

Major Outage at the Beta Center


I'm back on line after more than two hours this morning.  During that separation from the rest of the World and its web, I penned a whiny blog posting.  

Also got some other indoor projects started and continued to look for the possible places our newest onslaught of garage mice have decided to squat and pee a lot.

So far, the collateral damage is Marianne's mousetraps 4---Mice left hiding in the unknown---unknown.

And, I just learned from my provider that that Internet problem was not exclusive to the Lovestead.  The lady at the provider office said they just learned of a major outage at the beta center.

Seems like Internet is getting less foolproof with every day.  Seems like the gods need to call a conference and find a way to keep it working more consistently. Maybe we're slipping back into the dark ages.

Anyway, my rants on this rainy morning are below.  Now, back to the mice.  The rain has let up for a few minutes so maybe I can accomplish some of my plans for the day.


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Here we go again.  

No Internet.

This time the outage occurred right in the middle of my usual morning surfing.  What’s with this satellite stuff anyway?  Yes, we’re having a light rain storm, but that should not have caused the problem.

I thought that overall we were on a track to have a few easy, obstacle-free days with pleasant summer weather ahead, but events over the past 24 hours have proven different.

This morning while it’s raining, the activity that can take the place of outside projects decides to go south.  Lord knows when it will come back, and to have it happen twice in a week makes me wonder what the Internet gods are up to.

The other gods have been creating havoc too.

Yesterday morning, before starting my usual outside routine of watering the gardens, I heard some movement in a slightly congested area near the door leading outside from the garage.

Didn’t take long for me to recognize that telltale sound.  Little critters were running for better cover to avoid being detected by The Human. Well, the noise they made while attempting to hide gave them away.

MICE in the garage!    %#%%&$?#$!!

What the heck are MICE doing in our garage this time of the year ON THE SECOND NICE DAY OF THE YEAR? 

Didn’t take me long to look a little closer and to figure out that the bag of bird seed in the congested pile had lured them inside.  Hundreds of remnants of bird seed were scattered all over the floor and on tops of the few items that had landed in that handy catch-all spot.

After moving a few things, the dreaded odor of that putrid rodent urine gave my nose a workout it hadn’t experienced since the great mouse roundup in the barn a few weeks ago. 

Mouse urine is the worst!

I started moving items from where I’d heard the scampering sounds.  The critters must have escaped cuz  I could see no visible sign of them except for their mess and their smell.

An hour later, the floor had been swept, vacuumed and mopped.  Some items had been moved to other locations.  Others were put back in such a way that places for those nasty little creatures to hide were not an option.

In the midst of my clean-up, however, two bold mice had the audacity to run along the walls of the garage.

The mousetraps were reloaded and placed about three feet apart around the garage and in the cabinet where we’ve learned to store only canned or bottled food. 

We hadn’t had a mouse invasion near our house for almost two years, and so far, this bunch hasn’t made it to the main house.

Overnight, we caught three, which is either good or bad.  Maybe they were the only three causing all that ruckus, but then again, they probably have a lot of friends.

On another front, I hooked up the horse trailer for the first time this year.  This morning I was planning to take the two young horses over to my sisters’ arena----one for Laurie to ride and one for me.

Well, the fact that the left turn-signal light does not work on the horse trailer was not going to stop me.  We’re driving a country road, and I can stick my arm out the door for those two left turns.

Still, that means the pickup and trailer have to have an appointment at the trailer place to get the signal light fixed.

Never mind the plan to take the horses over.  They’re wetter than sops this morning.  If this rain does not stop soon, they’ll never dry off soon enough to meet the morning time frame.

I was going to finish mowing the lawn today.  Could have done it yesterday but figured with a week of nice days, it could wait. 

Silly me.  Seems I’ve used the previous term far too many times this year because of the ASS-U-ME glitch that always seems to get in the way of progress.  To ASS-U-ME that the weather report for the week might just be right this time is a gross error.

To ASS-U-ME in North Idaho that you can put off for next hour what you shoulda been running around doing this hour is insanity. 

I did that yesterday.  Debbie and I actually took some time in the late afternoon to sit on the deck lounge chairs.

Because of our short window of dry weather, I had not yet had enough time to clean off all the crud from the chairs that had built up over the past couple of weeks, but we sat in them anyway.  So what if all the stickers and dried leaves were poking my bare legs. Yes, I wore shorts yesterday.

And never mind if we were experiencing a cottonwood blizzard with a few puffs landing in my cup of coffee.

Okay . . . .  back to the top, which explains why this rant went on so long.  The birds are singing again.  I'm not wearing shorts.  Maybe the horses will dry off.  Who knows?  If I run around fast enough,tending to my new planned projects, maybe the day will turn out okay. 

But then again, for me to think that is to ASS-U-ME, and we all know how far off base that can be.

Happy Thursday. 

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