My folks and their neighbor, B, came over today. My dad and B took on the dead animal dryer. After taking the entire back off of it, they found the remains. Of a rabbit. :(

Apparently my dryer vent is a) too close to the ground, b) so full of lint that the flange doesn't stay shut when the dryer is off, c) this is in part due to it being too close to the ground and being smothered by a bush, and d) even when the flange isn't stuffed with lint, it's an unevenly cut pipe end and doesn't seal well/could easily fit a mouse.

But after much work and scrubbing (my bamboo brush for cleaning tall glasses was sacrificed for the cause) my dryer no longer smells like putrefaction. In fact it smells a lot like Mr. Clean...

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So the good news is that I finally found the missing mouse trap... with one small foot in it. And eventually the smell dissipated.

Only to return. In my dryer.

The first guy from the Property Committee, G, suggested that the best plan was just to run the dryer empty and "burn" it out. Yeah. I tried that over the previous weekend to minimal effect.

I think G liked this idea as he was on the cusp of going out of town and just didn't want to deal with it. He also hadn't had a chance to deal with the ground wasps that are living in the wall of the parsonage, need my main door.

So P, another guy from the Property Committee came over to spray the wasps and plug the hole in the stucco, and then he and I braved taking the dryer venting off. Unfortunately there wasn't much in the base of the piping, given the smell. Which means whatever got in, got quite in. :(

So I've been running wetting rags and drying them, along with running a dehumidifier to try to mummify whatever stuck in the innards. I need to purchase several boxes of baking soda too. In the meantime I think I've caught 7 mice in traps in August. I've NEVER had a mice issue in August.

And to add insult to injury, after first blocking the entry, a few wasps showed up dazed and confused in my house. Then they found another crack to enter into their home. So P came back, sprayed some more gunk and caulked the crack shut.

This time it appears to have truly sealed their outside entrance, as my more wasps are in the house. Thankfully mostly dazed and half dead. I've closed the french doors to the sun room to try to keep the poor dying things in that room (it's nearest to their outside egress). Granted, there's a huge gap at the base of the doors, but I'm hoping their not that systematic.

Which means I'm not using that room or door to the outside and I'm not keen about being in my basement either. Any bets on what room I'll "lose" next.

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It's Friday evening and I've got my Sunday sermon written. This is major.

Part of it is in hopes of going shopping tomorrow at a story called Title IX with real! sports bras. It's the little things (or not so little things) that motivate me.

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Recently I was gone for a week and came back to proof of mice in the house, which included but was not limited to a dead mouse in a trap I baited last October.

It seemed prudent to rebait my traps - two in the basement and one between a wall and the fridge. Today I was checking the basement traps. One is missing. I just recently cleaned and organized my unfinished basement, so there's not a lot of places it could have gotten to. Yet it has, as I can't find the mouse and trap, but can smell it. I'm hoping the dehumidifiers will dry it out relatively quickly, as I've already looked in all the likely - and several unlikely places.

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I've been watching a lot of Merlin on Hulu. While Hulu has very short commercials, they do tend to be very limited and therefor repetitive. A laundry detergent one - Gain I think. One is for a new Hulu original show called "The Path" which looks creepy in an intriguing way. Another is for the NBC midseason replacement called "Heartbeat".

Possibly Heartbeat is better than its promo makes it appear. In part I say this because I don't think a promo could do a worse job of introducing a show.

The tag line is that "she's a doctor who operates by her own rules." And if the word play wasn't cheesy enough and completely lacking subtlety, the music underneath? Renegade.

Add to that it appears that the first ep is about a patient with a heart issue and a surgery technique that hasn't yet been approved. But because she's got heart (the show is called Heartbeat), and her patient needs a good heart (the show is called Heartbeat), and "she operates by her own rules," she goes ahead and operates without the proper permissions.

And if there weren't already enough cliches, the administrator appears to be more concerned about liability than the patient's life. And when said admin chastises the doctor, telling her that if her patient dies she will surely lose her license, was is the witty repartee of this brilliant heart-on-her sleeve surgeon? "Bite me."

I think the first ep aired yesterday. I didn't watch because, well, work, but mostly because cringe worthy train wreck.

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Note: This contains what might be considered a small spoiler for Mad Men. I have no idea if it's a big deal or not as I've not had an opportunity to watch Mad Men. But the show is over, so there is that.



I was tucked up in my bed, playing spider solitaire (but let's pretend it was a fabulous book) and I realized I was smelling oranges. This was odd, as there were no oranges in my room. I figured that left my cat, myself, or possibly my sheets. I'd newly made the bed. But it wasn't a citrus detergent and the sheets had been stacked in another room for quite a while. And I know it's shocking but that room had no oranges either.

Could my sweat be smelling citrusy? Could my cat, who was curled up next to me, be smelling citrusy? That would weird. I know! I'll google it.

This seemed like a good idea. I figured I'd learn something about unusual body reactions.

I did not expect the top link to be to an episode of Mad Men. Apparently there's an episode where a guy says "I smell oranges." Then promptly has a stroke.

At this point I asked myself, "Is it good or bad I've not seen this episode? The good is that I have no idea how big this stroke was. Maybe it was small and no big deal. The bad is I am laying in bed and I could TOTALLY IMAGINE it being horrible and deadly."

Other links are also talking about people smelling smells, usually unpleasant, but sometimes citrusy preceding a stroke. So more taking to myself. "Self, if I'm having a stroke, would I know I was having one? Would I be able to google stuff that is freaking me out? No, I don't think so. But hopefully if it happens I'll still be able to say 'Hey Siri, call 911'. Of course she'll probably say, 'I'm sorry, I didn't catch that. Who would you like me to call?' Damn, I really should have revised my Nano notes into a novel."

Weirdly, I fell asleep without too much trouble. And I'm still alive, so I don't know what that citrus smell was. I didn't smell it the next night. So it's a mystery. But it got me to come see you all, so there's that.



In other news, after months and months of medically trying to get to the bottom of ongoing exhaustion it turns out that I'd become semi-immune to the anti-depressant/migraine preventative I'd been taking. I'm taking one in a different class and it seems to be working. Though it's possible I may need it kicked up more. We'll see.

And why geeky Giles icon? (Which may not transfer to my LJ account.) Because my Holy Week comfort TV has been watching Merlin for the first time. As Uther, ASH doesn't get to smile often. But when he does? Oh, baby. He's still got it. :: fans self::

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You know the dew point is out of control when going from watering outside to the air conditioning inside and the change is so severe that you get goose bumps and chills. I'm not sure I would have been out watering if I'd realized there were tornado warnings. Since that usually means there will be rain. Ah, well.

It also turns out that I'm running a rabbit refuge. I knew the rabbit population was out of control in the area, but I figured they were living out in the wooded area. Which some are. But I discovered little bunnies snugged up together under some strawberry plants. Which also explains the burrow dug under the roots of the cut down bush that now makes up the center of the strawberry patch.

They (and their buddies) have been eating up my broccoli and brussle sprout plants. Plus the yards of clover that is my yard. But I have zero heart to evict them or permanently remove them from my patch.

In other news, our area has tons of gray tree frogs. Last year I began to notice them consistently hanging out on my window nearest my couch. I finally figured out it's probably due to the automatic light that comes on right by that window. Which means bugs and moths and stuff are drawn to that window. Which I'm guessing that they like. It's good entertainment for the cat and me.

And today's discovery was that one of these frogs has taken up residence in a decorative bird house. I'm guessing that it was drawn in by the spider who was previously making its home there... I'll see if I can get y'all a picture.

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I haven't gotten my fic on much the last few years, but I did remix. And I enjoyed remixing - and it's probably not the type of content folks might expect. Add to that, I'm hoping to tie up a little remix madness today/tomorrow.

So check out Remix 12: Dirty Dozen. And my remixer played around with a mal/river drabble of mine and created Black Hole (The Effects of Gravity Remix), which has some great lines, including about the relative craziness of crew members.

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I managed to return to read and post in time for Remix Redux. Which is about the only fannish writing I've done the last few years, so I'm glad they were running it a bit later than usual an that I caught it. \o/ (I'll admit to being a bit nervous too - as I don't have the rhythm of fannish writing. But I'm trusting that like in the past, it'll happen.)

I finally took the plastic wrap stuff off my living room windows and opened them wide. While the cat loved it, I immediately regretted it because it was a lot more humid than I realized. (This is why I need a smart phone back - to monitor humidity.) But that weather front moved on as windy wind moved in. So all windows are again closed as it's supposed to be a high of 45 tomorrow.

Makes me feel better about slacking on gym time in order to get out in the yard. I pulled out at least a cubic foot of post-compost soil to add to my newly made raised bed gardens. (The yard is way too packed and filled with small rocks to try in-ground gardening.)

The cat is now staring at me with intent to get me to call it a night. Best not to rile the lovey dove.

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I live in an oldish house. So as we began to have warmish days over the winter, asian lady beetles started coming out around the window sills. Particularly the window sill in my bathroom. I think it must be the attraction of the moisture.

I've begun to feel rather badly about the ones who die, as there are not aphids in my bathroom. In fact, I felt so bad, I began to set out small amounts of a honey paste for them to eat. Which maybe helped? Hard telling, as lots of dead ones, regardless.

But it's been warm enough consistently that yesterday I decided to collect a bunch of my little friends and put them outside where they belong and might survive. And tonight it snowed. Not a lot of snow, just a dusting. So I'm hoping they're able to manage it, as I feel rather bad about moving them from warmish bathroom to coolish outdoors. And I've delayed the next round of asian lady beetle relocation until the snow melts.

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