The alien is no more! A few weeks ago I mowed the lawn and after I had come in and taken a shower I noticed that the bump on my hand had significantly gone down, nearly to the point of being gone altogether. It gradually went down even further over the next two days. I sit here typing now with it completely gone. I have no idea what happened and whatever did happen, I didn't feel it when it did. The only thing I could come up with that maybe all the jarring it around while I was mowing cause it to burst or something. Anyway, it was a major relief to me and I'm pretty pumped that it's completely gone now. Woot!
Well! I must say... it has been some time hasn't it! I've been thinking about it today and I guess I've kind of gotten into a routine in the evenings after coming home that when Shannon and I have our own lazy time and she's got stuff to do, I find myself headed to World of Warcraft to finish up a quest or check the auction house or whatever. I'm not addicted here, but it's just so easy to log in and check up on things. Anyway, I say that to say that my "spare" internet time has been pretty well taken up with that rather than taking the time to sit here and type out a post.
So what's new since last? Well, I guess the biggest news is Ryan (my brother to those unknowing) got married back on April 26th! So a big congrats to he and Rena! There's a whole album for the wedding on my Picasa Web site, so I'm referencing that instead of posting a bunch to here.
Let's see, what else. Ah yes, about ten minutes after 8:00 pm this evening I got an email from Paypal letting me know that my payment had been completed. My payment... what payment? I didn't buy anything. I checked with Shannon and she hadn't either. Nice! Someone has hacked my Paypal account and used it to purchase some web marketing software from http://mods.auscity.com. Luckily it was only $50.00. I contacted Paypal and they set me up with the Resolution Center and I submitted a ticket. In the meantime I contacted the site that it was purchased form and informed them. They were very nice and completely refunded the full amount withing about 15 minutes. They also supplied me with the IP address of the person that placed the order and made the download of their software after the purchase was complete. So if anyone knows the Indonesian person that lives where the IP of 125.60.133.97 is, please let me know. The biggest concern with all of this is that I have no idea how many other places I've been hacked if they got my Paypal info. I can monitor the bank and watch for fraudulent transactions yes, but I still don't know what else the person got access to. It's really quite infuriating. To complicate matters, yesterday I got home from work and my wireless router wouldn't talk to my modem anymore. After some troubleshooting it's pretty obvious that the router is done. So I'm just scared thinking that it could be because my router is dead and that Zone Alarm is the only firewall between us and the internet at the moment that this happened. I sure would hope that's not the case, but it just makes me want to hurry up and run out and buy a replacement which I really can't do at this very moment. Just seeming like it's one thing after the other over the past week, but that's how it is sometimes I guess.
Well hey, don't let me bring you down with my first post back in a while being such a downer... The Cardinals are still in first place and by 2.5 games, so there's nothing to worry about. :)
Show us a discontinued food or product you wish would return.
Submitted by Shawn.
Of course I have to answer my own question! The evening I submitted the question was one that I had been watching something on TV and suddenly thought, you know, I sure could use a Clear Pepsi! I had plenty of friends who hated the stuff, but I thought it tasted great!
After that, I started thinking what else I missed the most, food-wise, and came to the conclusion that Chocodiles were pretty much on the top of that list as well. For those not familiar, Chocodiles are basically a chocolate covered Twinkie. Realizing I haven't seen them in years, I went searching online and sure enough, found out that they are still being made, but only on the West Coast (so technically they're not discontinued, but they're definitely not readily available most places). Lucky for me, and anyone else out there needing their Chocodile fix, there's a great website I came across in my search that caters to just that! Freshchocodiles.com apparently buys them fresh from the bakery and ships them right to your door! Seriously, what did we do before the internet was available?! I'll be placing my Chocodile purchase in the near future and will let you know how it goes.
Oh yeah! And let's not forget the original recipe Honeycomb cereal... I'm still bitter about this one.
Show us something you're allegic to.
I've got asthma that's triggered by evil, hateful, vindictive, impersonal cats... and the other two cats that are out there somewhere too...
So who else has tomorrow off for Good Friday? I don't know about you, but I'm sure glad for the impending long weekend. I plan on being lazy and sleeping in, well tomorrow at least. Sunday will of course be Easter so church will be having two services instead of one. This just means a bit more camera work than usual. Last Sunday it turned out that I was the only camera guy. This may not sound like a big deal, but you try keeping a camera steadily on a guy walking back and forth across a stage while your forearm (that's moving the camera) is sore and a bit shaky still from mowing and weed-eating the lawn for the first time since before Christmas for two hours the evening before. (Bonus points to anyone who can properly diagram that last sentence. I'm talking rocket ships and all too by the way here.) Well, I made it through that without much trouble, but man was my arm tired when that was over.
Do you have a particular "catch phrase" for which you are known?
Submitted by Emu with a Clue.
Seriously!...
(amen Maleah?)
Well, I won't be going into quite the production I did the other night, basically because I'm about to fall asleep here and fortunately there's not much more to tell! I've given them two days now just to be sure and I've checked yesterday and today when I got in from work and haven't seen an ant since. I guess the moral of the story is: when the bottle says "be sure not to disturb the mound" it really means "do whatever you can to draw as many of them out in the open as possible and pummel them with the fury that is Orthene!"
Thank you, Ortho! And now, for the first time since the week before Christmas, I'll be able to mow my lawn here very soon. (Half the reason for the time in between mows here is because it really didn't need it until now. I wasn't THAT nervous about the ants... just so you know ;) )
Hello again... just wanted to toss out a quick update regarding the fire ants that have decided to take over our back yard. That may be a bit of an exaggeration, but there are/were at least four mounds in the yard as of the other day and one that was questionable as to whether it was being inhabited or was under foreclosure like everything else is right now.
Anyway, it seems I've finally found something that has curtailed their efforts to mobilize and take over more ground. I knew they were trying to do this when I noticed a satellite office being built off of the south side of the biggest mound that's by one of our trees. I really knew things were starting to heat up when talk around the water cooler the other day was that the tree mound was considering a hostile takeover of the mound in the far west corner of the lawn. I'm sorry, I'm really trying to make this as interesting as possible when it's really not - my apologies. More seriously though, I wanted to mention this stuff because it has seemed to work!
Ortho Orthene Fire Ant Killer is what at least four people on separate occasions recommended to me, and I'm starting to see that it was for good reason. First off, let me tell you, this stuff is WAY potent. You definitely want to try and stay up wind from it once it's opened. Wow, seriously, I can barely get the smell out of my mind right now just typing about it. Nevertheless, it's a very fine white powder, with nearly a baby powder consistency. You take one tablespoon and spread it around each mound. I put it on all of them on Saturday evening. On Sunday after church in the afternoon I went to check and see what the results were. Three out of the four mounds looked pretty much unoccupied. Lots of little red bodies were laying around and not because they were all out group tanning. There were the few exceptions, a couple stragglers on each mound still stumbling around, undoubtedly "trying to make sense of it all". However, even after waiting an extra day, mound four, the biggest offender, seemed pretty well undisturbed. It's walls thick and it's resolve strong, I figured the only way this is going to work would be to awake the sleeping giant and then cover it in a second round of powdered death. I took a pretty good sized stick, shoved it deep into a side of the mound and moved it all around. Sure enough, the battalions mobilized against the over-sized offender in great numbers. I waited... motionless and quiet, until they had deployed enough to cover most of the top of the mound. Then I struck! Teaspoon after teaspoon of the powered death covered the masses in a snowy blanket of pure torture. I think I actually heard a few of them coughing... Confident I had made an impact that would be felt all the way to the evil core of the mound, I left. This evening when I came home from work, I headed straight to ground zero. It was of course still covered in the power from the previous day's onslaught. But wait... where were the bodies? I was admittedly a bit concerned at this point, wondering if the mighty Orthene had finally met it's match! I found a good-sized limb. I positioned myself a little ways away from the mound, yet close enough that I could still reach it (they will leap out and grab onto your leg you know). I inserted the woody probe having nothing to lose at this point... all was quiet. A tumbleweed rolls by (I didn't know we had those). I pulled it out, found another side of the mound, and shoved it in again, this time deeper. I was met by a few troops. They slowly started coming out, clearly showing that they were the "B" squad and had never really seen any action, probably riding the pine since the day they signed up. As I continued to make my probes into the mound, there was still activity. However, it was a mere fraction of what it had been just the day before. Again, these troops looked weary and overworked, no doubt from hauling the corpses from the previous days massacre into the depths all night long. I continued to poke and prod until I had all but uprooted their whole operation. What was left were enough ants to sparsely cover the mound, again, walking around in circles and seeming rather confused. But had I made just a couple of the same violent jabs into the mound yesterday, I would have been met with literally thousands and thousands of downright livid guardians. I went and grabbed my Orthene for a third, and hopefully final round with these fellows. Again I doused and covered their depleted ranks in what will surely be their final undoing.
I don't want to count my ants before they're laying belly up, so I'll just have to wait and see what the war zone looks like after another day has passed... ...more to come...
A quick update to my post last night: I went today and he told me that pretty much my only options were to just live with it because even if we drained it, it would still come back, or have the surgery that Sheila mentioned in her comment on the last post. Really not sure what I'm going to do as of yet, so I guess I'll just be putting up with it until I decide. Oh random and annoying!
