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February 26, 2007
Ariel's rodent removal service
I'm now thoroughly traumatized after removing the rat carcasses from their little hidey-holes. It seemed like I was the best equipped to deal with the situation among the three of us who live in this building. Plus my landlord hasn't returned my latest call, and I knew the cleanup would only get messier with time. (Cringe.) At any rate, they're gone, and I hope there aren't any (or many) more in places where I can't see them with a flashlight. (Knock on wood.)
Through the magic of the internet I found that someone sells rat repellent powder made from a blend of fox and bobcat urine. I'm not sure if I'm quite ready to have our garage smell like cat and dog pee, even if it will keep the rats away. And anyway, what larger predators might that particular scent attract? I imagine the neighborhood dogs would love it.
In a comment on an earlier post, my grandpa reminded me of a rat war story (literally) he emailed me nine years ago, when we lived in Chicago and had a problem with very bold mice in our apartment. Back then there was no blogging as we know it, but I did have a little web site (we called them "home pages," remember?) and I wrote a story about our experience trying to get the mice out of our home. I managed to find the pages on an old backup, so I figured I'd re-post them here for entertainment value.
This story is completely unedited, even though I was sorely tempted to change some of the embarrassing writing. The layout and the graphics are exactly as they I created them in February 1998, except for a link I added back to this site. Any other links or email addresses probably won't work. Here's my grandpa's rat story and here's my mouse tale.
February 25, 2007
Faces of death
I suppose I really wanted to believe in the rat-poisoning fantasy. I wanted to believe that the rodents infesting our garage would nibble on the bait, start to feel unwell, and, finding no water inside with which to slake their terrible thirst, rush to the great outdoors where they would die a quick if not peaceful death out in the middle of a field somewhere.
Not that they would die under my water heater or atop a stack of boxes belonging to our upstairs neighbor.
I went down there to check on the poison, but I couldn't find the blue-black bars that our landlord put out a week ago. Surely the rats didn't consume them entirely? While poring over the paths of rat doo-doo looking for the toxic chunks, I nearly overlooked the two corpses right in front of me. One was posed in the Classic Death stance: flopped over on its back, stiff limbs sticking into the air. The other almost looked alive, huddled with its beady eyes open, so that I wondered for a moment if it was merely feigning death. But I realized that even rats aren't that good at playing dead, and that I would have noticed it breathing or twittering as rodents do. It was a deceased rodent.
Thank god I couldn't smell them. But I'm thinking that the odor will come soon enough.
I am so thoroughly grossed out that I want to take a shower right now to cleanse myself of the rat air down there.
Ew.
February 19, 2007
Ivan Basso is ten feet away from me, and where is my Sharpie???
Cycling fans at Coit Tower, near the finish line of the Tour of California prologue time trial.
After this weekend I am suddenly finding myself very much motivated to ride my bike.
For those of you who aren't rabid pro cycling fans, Ivan Basso is a beautiful and talented professional cyclist who recently joined the Discovery Channel cycling team after leaving his teammates at CSC amid a drug scandal. Yesterday was the first day (technically the prologue) of the Amgen Tour of California, and Basso's first time racing with Discovery. Almost all of the biggest names in professional road racing were in San Francisco for the race.
I got photos of US road champion George Hincapie, world road champion Paolo Bettini, Norwegian time-trial champion Thor Hushovd (take your pick), star climber Michael "Chicken" Rasmussen, world TT champ Fabian Cancellara, the weird Specialized angel lady, and San Francisco's famed Frank Chu. I managed not to get a decent photo of sweet Ivan Basso, except from behind. The whole bunch of photos is here.
Last night Dave and I attended a benefit featuring Phil Liggett and Greg Lemond telling stories of Lemond's amazing comeback victory at the 1989 Tour de France. To prove it I have a photo of Phil with my friend Jeremy. Why, you may ask, did I not get a photo of Phil with myself? Because I am an idiot, that's why. (And because I still had I've-been-sick-at-home-all-week hair, but still. Phil Liggett! The man is a legend of such magnitude that people play drinking games in his honor.)
Today I rode over to Sausalito (a 30-mile round trip which tripled my total mileage for 2007) to watch the start of stage 1. I remembered my Sharpie this time and managed to get Hincapie to sign a water bottle for me.
And if it's not obvious, my flu is finally gone and I'm feeling much, much better, thanks.
February 17, 2007
You won't find any hyperbole here
An update on my rats-and-fever post of a couple days ago: Despite my usual powers of exaggeration, things are actually worse than I expected. Well, OK, I don't have bubonic plague; it's probably just the flu (although I did spend a lot of time comparing my symptoms to the list in the Wikipedia entry on malaria*). I have had fevers, chills and aches on and off for several days; I've gone through boxes of kleenex; I'm popping Tylenol like candy; I'm waking up either shivering or drenched in sweat.
All day yesterday I willed myself to get better, thinking I would be well enough today to help lead a club bike ride I'd signed up for. But at 8pm last night my temperature surged back to 101, and I frantically called around looking for a sub so my co-leader wouldn't be stranded. (Thank you, Jess.)
And then the little rat problem is not such a little problem anymore. Our landlord came over to assess the situation in the garage, and we found that our furnace is COVERED in rat droppings. I cannot express how much I am grossed out by this. Luckily, there's still no evidence inside our apartment (and I am looking, oh, I am looking). Also, our bikes are safe, being on the opposite side of the garage (I knew you were worried). The buggers apparently came in during the recent cold snap looking for heat. With any luck this means they'll leave now that it has warmed up. But the landlord put out poison just for good measure.
I am sitting on the couch, looking at gorgeous blue skies outside, and thinking I want to go back to bed. How pathetic is that?
* I tried to donate blood last week and was told that my trip to Mexico in December means I'm deferred for a year because I was in a malarial risk area. Huh.
February 15, 2007
KitchenAid 5qt, you're clear for takeoff
I made this cover for my stand mixer for one reason: DUST. Our 1943 apartment is so dusty that even with weekly wipe-downs, vacuuming and sweeping, there's always a good coat of dust on everything. I was sick of washing the mixer bowl before I used it.
It looks like a little airplane hangar for my mixer. I found the pattern here (that link also shows what the whole thing looks like) and bought the pre-quilted batik and trim at Discount Fabrics in SOMA. I did not choose the fabric because it coordinated with the stack of enameled cast-iron pots sitting next to the mixer, but that's a nice bonus. I chose it because it was neither beige nor pastel floral, neither of which would look good in our kitchen.
[Apologies to those of you who read this via Bloglines or another feed reader. If you see a bunch of updated posts that appear to be very old, that's because I'm reorganizing a little.]
February 13, 2007
Maybe they're attracted to the hum of my Husqvarna
Here is a sneak peek at what has been keeping me busy for the last couple of weeks.
Except for today. I spent a couple of hours -- when I should have been riding my bike -- snooping around downstairs in my garage. My upstairs neighbor and I discovered irrefutable (and disgusting) proof of a rat infestation in the insulation below our dining room floorboards. The droppings looked too big to be from mice. Ew, ew and ew. We actually saw and heard the critters moving around in there before we pulled the insulation down. With my luck, our meddling will cause them to change their path directly into our kitchen. (No evidence there. Yet.)
In other news, I've had a sore throat since yesterday, and I'm feeling a little feverish, like I may be coming down with something. Typhus, perhaps. Or maybe bubonic plague.
February 10, 2007
Pool
While my friends rode their bikes in torrential rain today, I swam 4000 meters under blue skies, in an outdoor, 50-meter pool 400 miles south.
Not to rub it in or anything. But this is a far cry from the crowded, indoor, 25-meter pool I usually swim in.
It was amazing. I had the pool practically to myself. And I didn't want to get out.
February 6, 2007
Too slow and too fast
I have officially gotten back in the pool. I've started attending a swim with a different coach. It's even in a different pool than I usually swim in. And there's a new group of people to swim with. But there's one thing that's the same as always.
We had three full lanes yesterday, and coach Oleg put me in the fastest lane. I struggled in vain to keep up, and I got lapped a couple times. As I paused in the middle of a 100 to let other swimmers pass, I gave Oleg a slightly exasperated look. He said, "I know, you're too slow for this lane, but you're too fast for these guys," with a nod toward the next lane. He was right, but dammit, I am always in this position. Either I get my butt kicked in the fast lane or I go nuts trying to pass everyone in the slower lane. It was the same way in the other pool with a completely different group of swimmers.
Even as I get back in shape, I'll never be as fast as the "fast" swimmers. But at least I am back in the pool! I love the feeling of finishing a good hard swim.
As for the photo above, well, yeah, I am a geek. A couple of weeks ago I spent a few hours labeling every single USB, firewire, and power cable and hub in the vicinity of the computer. The most time-consuming part was untangling the cables to figure out which went with what. But it's so satisfying now to know exactly what I'm unplugging when I have to make room for something else! Like, say, an external hard drive for making backups.
February 3, 2007
Printer peeve
Lighthouse lens at the Maritime Historic Park Visitor Center.
Printers. They piss me off.
Our cheap inkjet printer died in December, just after I made a dozen jars of blood orange marmalade and before I could print pretty labels. The printer was a couple years old, and it just stopped working, just like that. A couple of the colors wouldn't print, then the other colors conked out as well. I replaced the cartridges. I bought special fluid to flush clots out of the ink tubes. I checked the purge tube to see if it was disconnected. I ran cleaning cycles. I downloaded special software to let me run heavy-duty cleaning cycles. Basically, all the internet-guided home surgery I could dig up. None of it made any difference.
You know why? Because today's inkjet printers are designed to be disposable. Why should I bother getting the printer repaired when I can replace it for $69? Taking it to a repair shop would cost more than that. Jeez, one set of replacement ink cartridges costs more than that. But my dead printer is now going into a landfill*, and I've only had it for two years. It still looks new. I never even pulled off the protective film covering the button panel.
I have an HP LaserJet from 1993 that is still running strong. Yes, that is a 14-year-old printer. It prints beautiful 300-dpi laser prints. But only in black and white.
So I finally bought a new printer after going without color for six weeks. It came with a free sample of glossy 4x6" photo paper. I made a few prints using this stuff... and whoah. Gorgeous! They really do look like photo prints. I am officially impressed. But I'm still kinda mad.
*I will recycle it properly, but I bet all the plastic will still go into a landfill**. In Cambodia.
**And speaking of landfill, I saw something cool the other day. I was at a bus-your-own-plates cafe which had bins labeled for recycling, compost, and landfill. Not trash, but landfill. Made me pause to think about where my sandwich wrapper was going.
