Probably the only thing I miss about Evil Kitty roaming the neighborhood is the way he kept the rodent population in check.  He was doing a better job at it than I realized.  He disappeared last winter, and this summer the mouse population skyrocketed.  

A couple weeks ago I started putting out traps in sheltered spots near the obvious mouse holes around the exterior of the house, as well as near the corners where we’d heard mice.

Almost immediately started catching mice.  Had to swap out several of the cheap wood snap traps for some of the sturdier plastic ones as the wood ones didn’t handle the wet well, but pretty  much every trap was catching at least one mouse a day.  We were having a few empty triggered traps, but not a lot.

Then I couldn’t find one of the traps…..finally found it a solid 10ft away from where I’d placed it.  It contained a mouse head.  No body, just the head inside the trap.  

Then I started getting ALOT of empty triggered traps.  And then traps started disappearing….

I set up the trail camera to watch the spot where a couple of the traps are and caught this:

Yah, your guess is as good as mine.  Current running vote is raccoon.

Then Thursday Arty suddenly went berserk at one of the windows.  I figured squirrel, but looked out the window to check…..thats a funny looking squir….THATS A RAT DAMMIT!  And its FRICKING HUGE!!  Something tells me that explains the empty triggered traps, and maybe even the missing traps (though it still doesn’t explain the bodyless head in the one trap).

*sigh*

Started looking at rat traps.  I’ll be picking up some huge snap traps this week.  But I’m also looking at some of the electric zapper traps, since they’ll absolutely kill anything that gets into them, and is marginally less likely to snap on a dog paw when I’m not fast enough to keep them away from a trap…..

*sigh*

I keep seeing lots of “why are you scared of Ebola when your chances of catching X disease are 20times higher!!!” or “death from obesity/violence is 10 times more likely!”.

Here’s the thing though. 

Sure, my chances of catching the flu are way higher than my chances of catching ebola.  But my chances of DYING from the flu are WAY smaller since I have a nice and healthy immune system.

And you can’t catch obesity from the guy sneezing next to you on the plane or bus. 

And if the guy next to you on the bus gets shot down by an out of control cop (which yes, was one of the meme’s circulating) a couple hours later you don’t have to worry about whether you caught your own death or not.

In the over all scheme of things I’m not overly worried about my risk of catching ebola honestly.  At least not till it spreads further.

Though I have to say that with the ebola mess, on top of the news that most register receipt tapes contain BPA that can rub off on your fingers, I’m really happy I’m not working retail right this moment.

But when I saw the news that one of the hospitals in Syracuse had been picked as one of the major response centers for potential ebola patients I really wasn’t pleased.  The “human factor” has been just to much of a problem with this particular ebola outbreak.  There are to many things going wrong, frequently by people who REALLY ought to know better……

Our home heating fuel has been delivered:

Actually it was delivered last Thursday (a week ago), and then I took the picture Monday.  As of the time I’d taken the picture about 1 cord + had been re-stacked neatly, as thats husband’s goal this fall.  Usually we leave it in a big pile covered with tarps, but that can be brutal to get wood from in the middle of the winter after the snow starts piling up, especially when the tarp springs a leak and the wood freezes together.  This year we’re stacking it into the back of the carport instead.  It’ll be interesting to see how close to the actual “10 face cord” of wood that we’re paying for the pile actually is.  Unless its very short though this guy is still the best price in town, if only because he’ll deliver and dump it where-ever we want as long as he can get his truck there.

We do have a furnace, it runs on kerosene, and we have a 200gallon tank for it.  It was full when we bought the house, Sept 2010, and last winter (2013-2014) was the first time we’ve had to buy more kerosene (course, last winter was so bad that we went through 100gallons between January and April).  The folks we bought the house from said that before they put in the wood burning stove they used to go through most of two tanks a winter, sometimes a little more than that depending on the winter. 

Kerosene delivered is running over $4/gallon (at least here, they charge us more cause we’re rural *sigh*).  So a full tank is over $800.  Two tanks a winter is $1600+.

Or we can pay $600 for 10 face cord of wood and have wood left over at the end of the winter and use less than 1/3rd of a single tank of kerosene…..

Yah, I’ll keep stacking wood…..

That the nurse in TX who contracted Ebola after tending to Duncan was going to be blamed for her own exposure?

+10 points to you……

At about 8pm Sat night I trimmed the fat, and slathered the pork butt with mustard and the dry rub as instructed and stashed the whole thing in a 2.5gallon ziplock for the night (in the fridge).  I also gave the smoker a quick test run to ensure that the heating element actually worked.  That would have sucked if it hadn’t.

I loaded up the smoker at 8:15am Sunday morning.  I’d been aiming for a little earlier than that, as it’ll likely be a 12hr cooking time, but I’m not a morning person.  8:15am is close enough.

Many reviews of this smoker (the Char Broil H2O electric) say that it doesn’t get hot enough, or only barely.  But the thermometer I added says it hit 250 in 15minutes.  Since I was instructed that I want to smoke at 225 for this recipe I’ll take it.  I turned down the temp control just a bit when I put the meat on and checked it another 15minutes later and it was right where I wanted it.

And then the breaker tripped.  So I checked all the connections, confirmed that the GFCI outlet hadn’t, flipped it back on, and went back to what I was doing.

An hour later it tripped again.  And again, the GFCI in the outside outlet that the smoker was plugged into hadn’t tripped.  We decided that the outlet must be faulty, and dug out one of the GFCIs we’d bought for a different project and replaced the outlet.

An hour later the breaker tripped again.

This time I switched on the back entry light, which is right over the breaker box, so I could look at things closer….and the light didn’t come on.  At which point a light came on in my brain, and while the breaker was off we began determining what else is on that breaker.  Turns out BOTH bathrooms, lights and outlets, even though they’re on opposite ends of the house, are on that breaker.  The washing machine is on that breaker.  The back entry way lights, inside and out are on that breaker, and the rear outdoor outlets are on that breaker.

No fricking wonder it kept tripping!

We ran an extension cord from a plug in the garage that we knew we could avoid using the rest of circuit for the day and got back to what we were doing.

About 8pm we finally got our meat off the smoker, and it was tasty!  We’ll be doing that again!

And if we ever have to have an electrition out for anything I’m having him wire that outdoor outlet into its own breaker…..

I’m once again trying a new spam blocker, again, it shouldn’t affect you all, except that there is no longer a captcha for you to fill out.  But if you notice that your comment isn’t going through please email me and let me know!

For the last week and a half now I’ve been having some odd issues with my ears.  It started with some itching inside the canal, and some very mild “popping” sensation (as if I was transitioning up and down a mountain side).  It was random, in-consistent, and I mostly ignored it.

Monday night and into Tuesday morning, every time I swallowed my right ear would suddenly pop very painfully.  ALL NIGHT. 

Called my doctor’s office Tuesday morning and told them I thought I might have an ear infection, when could they fit me in? 

*sigh* a few years ago now the office (which includes a fairly large number of doctors of all kinds of specialties) was bought out by one of the hospitals in the area, and ever since they’ve been making slow changes.  A large number of which are mandated by law, so its not all the hospital’s fault.  But its resulted in more and more doctors and nurses leaving the practice.

Its finally hit a critical point.  I know its back to school time, which means lots of kids into the doctors for that last “before school” thing, and that “first week of school cold” and what not.  But calling Tuesday morning to try to get in with a possible ear infection, and the earliest they could fit me in was Friday morning.

I was frustrated, but before I could decide it was bad enough to hit the urgent care the problems with my right ear mostly faded and it went back to the inconsistent itching and mild popping.  So I dealt with it till Friday.

I will say they got me in on time.  My ears showed no signs of infection, and no wax build up (which I don’t normally have issues with but I’d thought might be the possible other cause).  After some discussion she said that she thought it was likely a side effect of my environmental allergies.  Its not a normal side effect for me, but it is for some people, and we’ve had an odd enough weather year that things could be different this year.

So, a new (prescription) allergy med, and some (non-antibotic) ear drops to help relieve the discomfort.  If it continues after a week on the new drug, or if I continue to have more of the really bad painfull popping I’m to call for another appointment, at which point they’ll likely refer me to an Ears, Nose, Throat specialist.

The new med is Xyzal, generic name levocetirizine.  It has all the standard warnings about “may cause drowsiness”, and don’t operate machinery till you know how it affects you and what not, and then in big huge letters it says:

TAKE IN THE EVENING

So yes, its going to cause drowsiness…..oh goody.

Took my first dose at 7pm last night (Friday night).

Its now almost 8pm Saturday, and I’m FINALLY coming out of the drug haze.  As long as I kept moving today I didn’t feel to bad, but as soon as I stopped for any reason my body tried to crash.

I’m off to go take my 2nd dose.  If you don’t hear from me this week its because I slept through it all……I can’t decide if I’m hoping this fixes my ears (cause I don’t want to deal with the doctor and drug runaround thats going to happen if it doesn’t), or if I’m hoping it doesn’t work so that I can stop taking it!