~larcher

Following the theme of “trouble with critters” this blog seems to be taking on, I was stung by a wasp this past Sunday. I was out on the deck after checking on some meats grilling on the grill .. I think he lives under the railing. It happened so fast that I was yelling and shaking it off before my brain had a chance to process the sentence “wasp stung me!” Didn’t actually see the bug(ger).

But the “vienna sausage” bit is true .. it didn’t actually swell a whole lot until the next morning, but now I can’t bend the finger very well. And it looks even sillier when I straighten it because the knuckle sticks up like a camel hump.

So this is the excitement in my life right now — random animal invasions and attacks. More intersting blogginess will soon return, I promise.

In other non-wildlife news, I did get a new laptop recently, as an early birthday present. It’s a ThinkPad X60 tablet. Very nifty so far, except for Windows Vista, which seems a bit of step backwards from XP in terms of speed and annoyingness. However, speed issues (time-to-hibernate, -boot, -sleep, switch users, etc) have improved a bit with the latest updates. The Annoyingness mainly shows up when installing new software (“Cancel or Allow” ad nauseum). I will eventually install Ubuntu and dual boot it, but I’m afraid I’ll lose some of the nifty tablet stuff that Vista does well. Like handwriting recognition, which is nifty.

I should get back to work … but now someone down the hall is playing guitar … ?!?

*update*: re-reading the previous post, I noticed I said “check back in another two months” … so I was only 3 days off that prediction, totally by accident.

Well, not exactly … bats in our bedroom though. Alright, just one bat.

So, Natalie’s already asleep, I’m in bed but still awake, watching the tube. Then I hear this scritching noise. Probably one of the cats, I think at first. But it’s different than a cat-trying-to-wake-up-the-humans noise .. and it seems to be coming from overhead. So I pick up my cell phone, turn it on, and shine the screen upwards, and there’s this odd, lumpy shadow on one side of the beam that runs the along the peak of the ceiling. So I get a brighter light, and there’s definitely something there. I wake up Natalie and turn on the overhead light, and it’s apparent that a small furry-ish lump with limbs is attached to our bedroom ceiling. The million-candle-power spotlight leaves no doubt — it is a bat.

So we’re both wide awake now, but extremely tired. Googled a bit on “bats in houses”, and we’ve decided to follow the CDC’s advice and try to get the poor thing tested for rabies somehow. It’s locked up alone in the bedroom, we’re in the guest room. We still have no idea how long it’s been in the house, or how it got inside.

The City of Austin’s website says to call 311, so we did that .. said they’d send someone out tonight to catch it and have it tested.

Update: so I called “city wide information” (311) at 2am, animal control called back at 7:30am, showed up at our door a little after 9am, Bruce Wayne was gone by 9:30. The officer took down some information, including home phone number, so after they run tests they can let us know if we have rabies.

Or you could just wait and see if this blog starts foaming at the mouth.

Need more sleep now. Check back in another two months, maybe I’ll post something else.

This was too freaky not to blog about: the iPod just played the same song twice in a row, by different artists. First it played Led Zeppelin’s original “Trampled Underfoot,” immediately followed by the same as performed by Benevento/Russo Duo, recording available on archive.org. Good stuff.

In other news … work! I am busy and getting busier all the time. I am learning quite a bit though, and not just technical knowledge.

Also, we’ve had some serious weather here this week. In Texas, the slightest bit of ice on the roads will shut everything down. They put sand on the roads (not salt), and since it only happens once a year, no one remembers how to drive in this weather. And this time we got enough ice to shut down Austin for three days. But thanks to marvelous technological advancements such as VPN’s and toll-free conference call lines, I was able to work from home Monday through Wednesday.

Wow, last post was in October .. better give some more updates then: Thanksgiving was good, Christmas was good. For more details, you might check out Natalie’s blog.

We now return you to our regularly scheduled radio silence, already in progress.