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2008.08.28

The saga of the kitchen rats continues. I pulled off the plates at the front of the dishwasher, looked underneath, and hoooo boy. There's a full on little insulation house back there, nearly buried behind a wall of rat shit. Vacuumed up what I could reach, albeit perhaps not as much of the rat house as technically I could reach, given that it kind of freaks me out. The rest will have to wait until I have someone to help me haul the dishwasher all the way out.

On the plus side, it almost looks like it might be possible to throw another trap back there. I don't normally have anything against rats. I just don't want them stinking up my kitchen, damnit.

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ty @ 2008-08-29 08:45:32am

do the rats have refuge other than the kitchen (a basement, perhaps)?

Jen @ 2008-09-02 03:15:52am

Our basement is fully finished, and there's no sign of them down there. The kitchen has a post-house-building addition that we think is poorly sealed to the outside (it butts up against the deck, which is terrifying to consider crawling under looking for holes). When we hauled out the dishwasher, we found a hole at that probably leads right outside. I'm going to assault it with foam stuff. Be gone out of my kitchen, rats!

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2008.08.25

More mac and cheese made tonight, in the ongoing attempt to find the perfect set of recipes. Tonight's was good, no doubt, but not good enough to unseat the reigning champions. Bunny's writer, you're next. Do you have what it takes?

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2008.08.24

Friday was Brandon's bachelor party; I had 2 very good lemon drops and a lap dance from a Amy Winehouse suicide girl clone. That was amusing. Saturday was me being super effing depressed, but Tropic Thunder made me giggle enough to break me out of it at the end. And today was stupid rainy and we hid inside all day. Of these sorts of things, weekends are made.

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2008.08.21

The oven is back in action. Now, however, we suspect rat nastiness behind or under the dishwasher: there is suspicious ZOMGFUCKINGSTINKY when we just now ran the dishwasher for the first time in weeks. Sigh.

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2008.08.20

Well, today at about 1pm, the pressure was off. I'm exhausted and about as wrung out as can be... looking forward to a good night's sleep. Hopefully without the whole waking up at 3:15 and not being able to get back to sleep until 6:30 thing from last night. That was, lest we be at all confused, pretty damn lame.

Also, Alabama 3 is totally my new favorite band. I could tell from the Sopranos theme that I'd like them... I didn't quite know how much until now. That much is a whole damn lot.

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2008.08.18

Today was just fucking shitty. And tomorrow at work will be no better, likely worse. Great. This week is all sorts of un-winner.

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2008.08.17

TOO DAMN HOT. It's not about it being objectively a high temperature, but rather a statement about the difference from the norm... and the lack of air conditioning in Seattle. But, but, but, we did go out today and find me a dress to wear at Brandon's wedding. How comforting to find that I really do wear an 8, as long as I can get the damn dress over my hips. Loooooong side zipper for the win.

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2008.08.15

I had a bad week. And my garden is full of blossom-end rot and powdery mildew. Cranky pants. But the first semi-good Friday night in... months! That's helpful. How nice of it!

Haven't been home much because it is beastly hot up in my attic bedroom. I don't think I'll get the gumption to fix it this year, but next year... blinds. And a bigger fan. Fo sho.

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2008.08.11

Grr. My Tivo is misbehaving. Or, more accurately, either my cable-cable or my cable-port-in-the-wall is misbehaving, resulting in us not being able to even watch TV pass-through. Serves me right for letting my Tivo be all fucked up for like a month; who knows what went wrong and when, given that I haven't really used my TV up there in weeks.

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2008.08.10

The Olympics, particularly the opening ceremony's Parade of Nations, always make me sniffle. Go, tiny country I've never heard of with one athelete, go! The internet is where all the good stuff has been, so that's where we've been largely glued when not watching swimming. I <3 watching Olympic swimming for many reasons, but chief among them is their tendency to break records every single damn race. I find it hilarious.

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2008.08.07

Work today was very hard and full of drama. Which is likely to be continuing for at least another day. I guess it's a good thing that there's very little that some grilled zucchini and potatoes and steak and some Breaking Bad can't ameliorate at least a bit.

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2008.08.06

Cranky, cranky, cranky. Left out, disregarded, second choice, settled for, not part of the unit. Cranky, cranky, cranky.

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2008.08.05

Science on Tap tonight was on space elevators and power beaming. Poor Fool couldn't attend, but I took copious notes on his behalf. The part of the talk that struck me was actually post-talk: two people were arguing with the speaker, with their point being essentially that any space elevator work would be out in international waters, so you wouldn't have to worry about governmental regulations or safety codes. This struck me as quite backwards. it seems to me that you'd either have government funding (read: military) for a project like that, in which case safety ratings could go out the window as long as you were on track towards a military goal (hello, test pilots and test aircraft), OR you'd have private funding and those investors wouldn't want to risk their precious investment falling apart or exploding. It really doesn't seem to me like you get to have it both ways.

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2008.08.04

Tonight, we (and by we I mean mostly Jeff) pulled apart my oven. See, a couple months ago, I had noticed a smell in my kitchen... a smell as if something were living under or behind or in it. Fool and Jeff had pulled it out to see a cheeky rat dash away. They cleaned up what they could see, and set a rat trap; the original culprit has never been caught, although we caught a compatriot of it about a week ago (snickety snack went the trap on its neck). But the smell persisted.

So we lifted off the cooktop today to find a sea of rat shit and rat piss, soaked several inches deep into the insulation in my oven. All old, most certainly the leavings of original cheeky bastard, but every time we've used the oven, it's baked into more of a stinky morass.

This is my oven that, by the way, I bought new when we bought the house, and that I most definitely do not have the money to fully replace at the moment.

So we cranked it open, cut out the horrific insulation, and are ordering some new insulation from a place online that specializes in refurbishing antique ovens. Between this and the dishwasher that Bryce installed downstairs, it's regular DIY month at Chez Barrick.

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