Tuesday, August 14, 2007
I hate rodents!
. . . both the real ones and the cartoon ones.
The following describes a recent Sunday afternoon. I actually sent this message to my friends because as you'll see, I lost them all. If you are my friend, you don't have to read this, as you already have. If you didn't get it, I don't have your e-mail address either. If you don't know me, please don't judge me by this. . . I am usually much better.
Why I hate rodents:
For those of you privileged enough to enjoy home ownership, you know that there are great highs and low lows associated with it. For those who are not homeowners yet, here is your Condo 101 lesson.
As a condo owner, you are only actually responsible for only everything within your walls, with few exceptions (ie, the doors, windows, and lights that are an extension of the inside) and your patio. The association takes care of the rest. My roof is considered among "the rest", which is why when my neighborhood squirrel family found an uncovered attic vent within which to take up residence in my rafters, my hands were tied.
Side note. . . Matt K and Jimmy. . . if you would like to reenact your roles in the original Blair Squirrel Project, I think we may have the makings of a killer sequel. (editorial: Matt K and Jimmy were my college roommates. We had a squirrel infestation in our college apartment. This was the same time that The Blair Witch Project was all the rage. We of course made a really bad home movie about it where Jimmy's GF at the time went apeshit on a stuffed animal)
If you know anything about squirrels, you'll know that they are a pest to remove. You can't gas them out, as they'll rot inside the house. You actually have to wait for them to escape and then cover their entrance. If you miss one, they're trapped inside and scramble to get out. That's what happened to me. But now that the little guy was inside, it was now my problem. The condo association has since decided to keep this situation under their jurisdiction, but I had to fight for my rights on that one.
Well anyway, Saturday night, he decided to pay a visit into my kitchen by digging through the drywall of my ceiling. He never actually popped through though; I guess he was afraid of the drop.
Me in my anal-retentive manner, decided to patch the hole as quickly as possible. With the association tasked with removing him, I supplied myself with the latest and greatest Home Depot had to offer in my quest to fix the hole. I did a damn good job except for the fact that I was fairly well coated in Spackle and ceiling prep material.
Realizing that I didn't have the foresight to change into crap, I sprang into action. The shorts I was wearing were earmarked for last week's Disney World trip. And with that, I emptied my pockets, dropped trow (and then changed-so get your minds out of the gutter) and threw them in the wash along with a few other things.
30 minutes later as I was examining the thoroughly confusing Disney ticket ordering website (if you have questions, ask me or Matt; we're totally pros now), I had a question and decided to call. Can you believe the mouse doesn't have an 800#? So rather than use my ghetto home phone which charges long distance, I decided to use my cell. Now if only I could find it. . .
I called it from my home phone because I can usually locate it that way. But it went straight to voicemail.
"Where could it be?" I thought. "Certainly not in the washer; I checked my pockets".
Oh. . . but I didn't. It seems that as I contorted to match the contour of my ceiling, LG C300 actually twisted around in my pocket and got stuck in a fold of fabric that I mistook for a the bottom of my pocket.
I tried for 2 hours to dry LG, but he was a casualty of Clorox. He could send and receive calls, but he was blind, and legally deaf. He also had no way of letting you know that there was a call coming.
Luckily, Matt goes through phones like babies go through diapers, and had a spare one.
In transferring the numbers, I learned that LG had a birth defect.
Menu trees are made for idiots who break their screens and for the OCD sufferers that prefer a process for everything. Rather than relying on the cool graphics to take you where you need to go, a sequence of numerical commands help you maneuver. For instance, the instruction manual said "to complete this task, hit menu, then 8, then 6, then 1 or 2 (depending on what you wanted)". Only, there was a typo on the book that prompted me to delete all contacts rather than transferring them.
Genius!
So . . . in recap. . . I hate real rodents because they F with my house and my stuff. I hate cartoon rodents because they are so confusing that you have to call except that they make you aware that you can't call because the real rodent screwed you in the first place.
The following describes a recent Sunday afternoon. I actually sent this message to my friends because as you'll see, I lost them all. If you are my friend, you don't have to read this, as you already have. If you didn't get it, I don't have your e-mail address either. If you don't know me, please don't judge me by this. . . I am usually much better.
Why I hate rodents:
For those of you privileged enough to enjoy home ownership, you know that there are great highs and low lows associated with it. For those who are not homeowners yet, here is your Condo 101 lesson.
As a condo owner, you are only actually responsible for only everything within your walls, with few exceptions (ie, the doors, windows, and lights that are an extension of the inside) and your patio. The association takes care of the rest. My roof is considered among "the rest", which is why when my neighborhood squirrel family found an uncovered attic vent within which to take up residence in my rafters, my hands were tied.
Side note. . . Matt K and Jimmy. . . if you would like to reenact your roles in the original Blair Squirrel Project, I think we may have the makings of a killer sequel. (editorial: Matt K and Jimmy were my college roommates. We had a squirrel infestation in our college apartment. This was the same time that The Blair Witch Project was all the rage. We of course made a really bad home movie about it where Jimmy's GF at the time went apeshit on a stuffed animal)
If you know anything about squirrels, you'll know that they are a pest to remove. You can't gas them out, as they'll rot inside the house. You actually have to wait for them to escape and then cover their entrance. If you miss one, they're trapped inside and scramble to get out. That's what happened to me. But now that the little guy was inside, it was now my problem. The condo association has since decided to keep this situation under their jurisdiction, but I had to fight for my rights on that one.
Well anyway, Saturday night, he decided to pay a visit into my kitchen by digging through the drywall of my ceiling. He never actually popped through though; I guess he was afraid of the drop.
Me in my anal-retentive manner, decided to patch the hole as quickly as possible. With the association tasked with removing him, I supplied myself with the latest and greatest Home Depot had to offer in my quest to fix the hole. I did a damn good job except for the fact that I was fairly well coated in Spackle and ceiling prep material.
Realizing that I didn't have the foresight to change into crap, I sprang into action. The shorts I was wearing were earmarked for last week's Disney World trip. And with that, I emptied my pockets, dropped trow (and then changed-so get your minds out of the gutter) and threw them in the wash along with a few other things.
30 minutes later as I was examining the thoroughly confusing Disney ticket ordering website (if you have questions, ask me or Matt; we're totally pros now), I had a question and decided to call. Can you believe the mouse doesn't have an 800#? So rather than use my ghetto home phone which charges long distance, I decided to use my cell. Now if only I could find it. . .
I called it from my home phone because I can usually locate it that way. But it went straight to voicemail.
"Where could it be?" I thought. "Certainly not in the washer; I checked my pockets".
Oh. . . but I didn't. It seems that as I contorted to match the contour of my ceiling, LG C300 actually twisted around in my pocket and got stuck in a fold of fabric that I mistook for a the bottom of my pocket.
I tried for 2 hours to dry LG, but he was a casualty of Clorox. He could send and receive calls, but he was blind, and legally deaf. He also had no way of letting you know that there was a call coming.
Luckily, Matt goes through phones like babies go through diapers, and had a spare one.
In transferring the numbers, I learned that LG had a birth defect.
Menu trees are made for idiots who break their screens and for the OCD sufferers that prefer a process for everything. Rather than relying on the cool graphics to take you where you need to go, a sequence of numerical commands help you maneuver. For instance, the instruction manual said "to complete this task, hit menu, then 8, then 6, then 1 or 2 (depending on what you wanted)". Only, there was a typo on the book that prompted me to delete all contacts rather than transferring them.
Genius!
So . . . in recap. . . I hate real rodents because they F with my house and my stuff. I hate cartoon rodents because they are so confusing that you have to call except that they make you aware that you can't call because the real rodent screwed you in the first place.
