Bon 1, Ants 0
As much as I love living in Oregon there are a few downsides. It's a temperate climate, which means spring starts in March (although the rain does not stop when spring starts, it just gets generally warmer). Because of this, we have an extremely long ant season. Two days after I first moved into this apartment there were swarms of ants, in the pantry, in the bathroom*, in the cupboard over the stove. I threw a mild tantrum about this, having never experienced this kind of infestation anywhere. Luckily, the rent I pay covers pest control and I happened to report it to the office while the pest control man was there and he came up and treated my apartment and put down some traps. Since then, we've never had an infestation anywhere near as bad, although we continue to have them, intermittently.
We had our first of this warm season on Sunday. A few scattered ants had shown up lately, skittering around the microwave cart as though they owned the joint and I'd wipe them up and carry on. On Sunday, by chance, our garbage can was pretty full and had been pushed back to make contact with the wall. And oh, did they swarm, from the corner of the kitchen winds in a line down to the trash. Many many ants. Enough to make my skin crawl. There were even a few in my (thankfully) nearly empty airtight sugar container. I began wiping them away with damp paper towels, and then rubbed the rind of a lemon wedge against the wall since I've read they don't like citrus oils. We tied up the trash and took it out, swept the floor well and moved the foodstuffs off the microwave carts. Since then, I've only seen a few ants hanging around so I'm calling it in my favor.
*Apparently ants can be attracted by soap and shampoo and the like. Additionally, they like to travel along warm water pipes in the walls, hence how easily ours traveled between the kitchen and the bathroom.
Busy B*
Things have been quite busy here lately. I spend Thursday nights knitting with ViolinJodie and a handful of other folks. This week's topic of conversation turned to Black Sheep Gathering (BSG). This year's BSG is going to be happening at a crazy time in this city, just before the US Olympic Trials [expect a lot of grumbling out of me come late Junly (late June to mid July) as they're predicting 100,000 folks flooding in for that. The population of Eugene is currently 153 thousand and change, with a metro area of nearly 350,000.] Workshop registration begins on March 15th (ah, the ides) so I'm getting together my application and funds to register for some fabulous spinning workshops. There's some talk of a sheep to shawl group, but that is still very much in the planning stages. (For those who are not fiber-y in their hobbies, a sheep to shawl is a spinning/weaving competition where a team of six--5 spinners and a weaver--spins and weaves a shawl from clean, uncarded fiber in a five hour period. The warp is handspun and set up on the loom prior to the event but the weft yarn is carded, spun and woven into a shawl measuring at least 1440 square inches).
Besides planning for Black Sheep, I'm working on another project. It will be revealed as soon as I get the website set up (hopefully no more than one week from now). This project is a big one, one that could hopefully change my life much for the better. It is also the first step in a much larger scale idea, one that likely won't come to fruition until the end of the decade. My husband and I are also planning to spend some time together. Instead of celebrating Valentine's Day, we've decided that we will celebrate Pi Day (3.14). This will encompass several dates we like--when we originally first met face-to-face (March 12th), Pi Day itself, the ides and St. Patrick's Day.
We're also gearing up for physical therapy! TheBoy has a problem with his lower back, he's already had one surgery to attempt to correct a disc that ruptured a few years ago (it ruptured largely due to four years of misdiagnoses.) When he had the surgery he was warned a second surgery to remove more soft tissue might be necessary so we had been preparing for that as we waited for his insurance to cover the pre-existing condition. However, his doctor thinks that with a couple of months of physical therapy TheBoy may be able to avoid undergoing another surgery. This is good news for many reasons, not the least of which is that it is covered by the insurance.
And now for our Friday Fixation: two youtube videos: Dancing Cop and A Sheep in Sheep's Clothing. Enjoy!
*B instead of Bee because my mom has always used "B" as a term of endearment for me.