Random Pictures

I don't really feel like typing anything tonight, but I feel like I should share something.  I've been busy all week getting ready for a festival tomorrow, and now just about everything's ready.  So here's some random pictures to look at.  Enjoy.

War: The Epilogue

In the time since the rat trap was set off and blood was drawn from the rat, there has been no conclusive evidence of its presence.  All has been quite apart from the occasional sound, which could be easily explained as things other than rats.

Until tonight.

After chatting with Sparky, who is back in town (yay!), I sat down to unwind watching a somewhat boring sitcom that I am oddly attached to despite only laughing on occasion.  Suddenly, there was a large bang.  My first thought was "bloody hell, did a huge branch just fall on my roof?"  Mind you, I have a metal roof and many trees above it, so this is not unreasonable.

My second thought was "crap, is the rat back?" so I checked the trap behind my rat barricade, which was still set.  Then I checked the other trap in the ducts, and found the culprit.

A young rat or an adult mouse was caught in the good old fashioned wooden trap, with its hip more or less crushed.  Gruesome detail, which I would normally omit, but for the fact that despite this rather serious damage, the rodent was still alive.  Not only alive, but struggling.  You would assume that it was struggling to get away, but you would be wrong.  It was squirming in an effort to (and succeeding in) get to the bait and eat it.  In fact, the only time it panicked was when the cat began investigating and sniffing around the vent.

So I closed the cat out of the bathroom, went out to the studio, got my gloves, grabbed my knife (and camera as you can see), and went back to the bathroom vent.  The camera was mainly for later identification of the rodent if I was unable to determine from examination wether it was a rat baby or a mouse, but Indy was persistent so he got to be photographed.  When I'd taken the trap out and set it down, he even began trying to reach it from under the door.

At this point, I stopped to consider what I should do.  My first instinct was to use the knife as I intended and kill it quickly.  But the more I thought about it, the more I considered something somewhat cruel, but with a reason behind it and annoyance at sleep disruption to back it up.  So really, if you haven't gotten the point about don't f*** with my sleep, take this as proof enough.

I took the trap, rodent, and cat out to the porch, and let the cat investigate, much to his delight.  Don't worry, he did no real harm to it, none at all even apart from nipping at its ear lightly and to no effect.  My reason for this was to let him see what it was, get the smell, and know that I approve of him "playing" with it, and even of him considering killing it.  However, trapped as it was he became fed up with it.

I took the thing out to the studio and used the knife to finish it off.  Upon examining it more closely, I found that it was an adult male mouse.  If you don't already get how I determined all of that, just think about it a bit.

So I went to toss it over the fence where nobody goes and the dog cannot reach, but I ended up dropping it.  I found it again with the help of a flashlight and a curious dog.  Thankfully, he was less sure it was food than the cat, and he just sniffed at it.  So I went and tossed it over the fence, and almost had to drag the dog back with me as he had decided that since he couldn't have it it must be something wonderful.

I got back in and realized that my sweat pants (I was all set up for a night in; big flannel shirt, comfy undershirt, baggy sweat pants) were covered with the really nasty prickers, the ones that hurt like hell when they get stuck in your skin and are hard to get off.  So I sat down, put the sitcom back on, and started pulling the stickers off and dropping them on a plate.

Then the cat walked by.

Of course, being a cat, his tail was straight up and wrapping around the edges of everything.  Including the plate.  So about a dozen of the things got stuck to him, but fell of quickly... leaving them for me to find by painful searching (and a few times stepping on wearing nothing but socks on my feet by now.

Eventually, I got them all (I hope) up and off, including one last one on the way to the garbage can that got me in the big toe.  55 in total.  Plus the cat is still a bit upset with me for getting rid of his toy.  Really threw a fit when I returned without it.  Checked out the dog, chasing him down to do so, then came, checked me out, and stalked off to moodily groom himself and throw me evil glares.  But the prickers did not bother him at all.  Go figure.

So much for unwinding though.  Think I'm going to have to watch something else now just to relax from all of this commotion.

Oddly, the last of this ended after midnight.  So the name of the blog is actually appropriate for once.  Go figure.

The Hundredth Monkey

This is a copy of an email my cousin sent me a long time ago.  I've always loved it and saved it.  Just thought I'd share it.  Don't know how real any of it is, but it's interesting nonetheless.

Maybe I just feel like a monkey today...

The Hundredth Monkey 

                        by Ken Keyes Jr.

                The Japanese monkey, Macaca fuscata, had been observed in the wild for a period of over 30 years.

                In 1952, on the island of Koshima, scientists were providing monkeys with sweet potatoes dropped in the sand. The monkeys liked the taste of the raw sweet potatoes, but they found the dirt unpleasant.

                An 18-month-old female named Imo found she could solve the problem by washing the potatoes in a nearby stream. She taught this trick to her mother. Her playmates also learned this new way and they taught their mothers too.

                This cultural innovation was gradually picked up by various monkeys before the eyes of the scientists. Between 1952 and 1958 all the young monkeys learned to wash the sandy sweet potatoes to make them more palatable. Only the adults who imitated their children learned this social improvement. Other adults kept eating the dirty sweet potatoes.

                Then something startling took place. In the autumn of 1958, a certain number of Koshima monkeys were washing sweet potatoes -- the exact number is not known. Let us suppose that when the sun rose one morning there were 99 monkeys on Koshima Island who had learned to wash their sweet potatoes. Let's further suppose that later that morning, the hundredth monkey learned to wash potatoes.

                THEN IT HAPPENED! By that evening almost everyone in the tribe was washing sweet potatoes before eating them. The added energy of this hundredth monkey somehow created an ideological breakthrough!

               But notice: A most surprising thing observed by these scientists was that the habit of washing sweet potatoes then jumped over the sea...Colonies of monkeys on other islands and the mainland troop of monkeys at Takasakiyama began washing their sweet potatoes.

                Thus, when a certain critical number achieves an awareness, this new awareness may be communicated from mind to mind.

                Although the exact number may vary, this Hundredth Monkey Phenomenon means that when only a limited number of people know of a new way, it may remain the conscious property of these people.

                But there is a point at which if only one more person tunes-in to a new awareness, a field is strengthened so that this awareness is picked up by almost everyone!

                The Hundredth Monkey by Ken Keyes

The Shape of the Universe and the Nature of Time

Sparky is out of town this weekend (and next) and I'm feeling a bit out of whack.  That's the technical term, by the way.  So, to divert myself I will endeavor to explain some... hell, I don't even know what you call this kind of stuff -physics? astrophysics? relativity? Whatever, I'm going to be a nerd and ramble on, trying to explain some of the (as far as I know) contemporary theories about the nature of the universe.  And no, Sparky, none of this is from the "National Geographic" documentaries I've been watching lately.  And I have, a lot of them.

People tend to say that the universe is infinitely large.  However they also tend to say that the universe is expanding.  If you know that something is expanding, you know it is increasing in size.  As infinity has no end and cannot therefore expand, you know that it is not infinitely large, just very very big.  Nearly infinitely big.

However, the theory goes, you can travel in any one direction for infinity, even if the universe was not expanding (or contracting).

This probably seems mutually exclusive.  While it is possible to travel around the planet in the same direction forever, you can only do so because it is not in a straight line, but rather a curve that brings you back to your starting point (more or less, it's not a perfect sphere).  But the universe is not unrelated to the concept.

Imagine you are a one dimensional being.  Everything is either in front of you or behind you.  There are no angels, there is no up, down, left, right, or catty-corner.  Just one line extending forever.  Let us pretend that there are such things as landmarks in this universe, so that you can know where you are.  You go forward for a very, very long time, and suddenly you find yourself back where you started.  But you went in the only direction possible other than backwards: forwards.  This would be impossible for you to comprehend.

The reason, of course, would be that your universe is a circle, a two dimensional ring.  A very very big circle, but a circle nonetheless.  It would seem infinite to a one dimensional being (especially without the possibility of landmarks as there is only the line), but it isn't, it is a contained universe.  It could get bigger or smaller, but it would stay a circle without end.

Now, let's step it up a bit.  You're a two dimensional being.  You can go any direction that you could draw on a piece of paper, all 360 degrees.  Much more freedom than the one dimensional universe.  But, the same basic concept applies, with the circle having an extra dimension: the third.  It is now a sphere.  You can travel forever in any direction or combination of directions, but it is not infinite.  It is simply beyond comprehension for someone with no sense of up or down.

So that's the theory on our universe, that it is, essentially, a four dimensional circle: a hypersphere.  We could go forever in one direction, and eventually end up right back where we started (of course our planet, star, and galaxy are always moving, so there probably won't be much there).  The universe is not infinite, but it is infinitely confined.  You just can't quite picture it because two of the directions have no meaning.  Call them in and out.

Here is were we bring in mass, and gravity.  Most people believe gravity is an active force, and for all practical purposes it is.  However, in reality (according to the theory), it is a curvature in the "fabric" of space; sort of a dimple on the sphere if you will.  The more mass, the more the space around it curves "in" drawing you in like a ball on a slope.  Theoretical antigravity, if it exists, would be the opposite, a bulge "outwards" in space, pushing matter away, like a ball going up a slope and rolling back down.

However, space at least in our dimension is not simply up down, left right, forwards and backwards.  It also incorporates time.  Some people call time the fourth dimension, which works well enough for some models, but that is not suitable for this discussion.

What it is is an aspect of space, and the reason it is called space-time (in sci-fi there are countless references to the space-time continuum or however you spell it).  This is closely tied in with the theory of relativity.  Basically, the easy way to look at it is that space and time are linked, as are the way we move through them.  However, rather than moving through one faster and thus the other, they are inversely proportionate.

I'm sure that sounds confusing, but it's not.  Look at it like you have a pair of gauges.  When one if full, the other is empty, and as you fill the other, it lowers the first.  If you are not moving through space at all (let us ignore the movement of the planet, sun, and galaxy for this, and say you're siting at your computer not moving), then time is at its fastest.  If you get up and walk around the room, you're moving through space at a very slow rate, and time slows by the tiniest fraction.  If you run, it slows a tiny bit more, and so on.

Mind you, this part is not theoretical, it actually has been proven.  If you want to know the details, you can look it up, but basically they took two identical clocks, the most precise they could find (and that are not updated automatically like most fancy clocks these days), and set them to the precise same time.  Then they took one and put it on, let's say, a Concord, a faster than sound aircraft.  They flew it around for a while, then brought the two together.  Each clock is extremely precise and regular, mind you.  The one that went for the ride was slightly behind the one who stayed still.  The barest of differences, but it was there.

At the other end of the extreme is the speed of light, the fastest it is possible to move in the universe around us.  At this point, if you were able to match it (which is impossible, but let's ignore that for a second), time would stop.  You would have emptied the gauge for time and put it all into spatial movement.  Just for yourself, mind you, as time is relative.

If you were going just under light speed, say 99.99% of it, time would all but stop, it would move at a crawl.  You could go incredible distances away, and come back to find everyone you know either dead or extremely aged, while you're just a touch older than when you left.  Now, beyond that I don't know very much about the actual mechanics of how it all works on traveling up close to the speed of light.  What I do know is that is the basis of the concept for traveling into the past, by going faster than light and thus reversing time.  There are some theories, but they are uncertain at best and the rest of this post is already too heavy without adding that.

One last bit to throw in.

We have said that mass curves the fabric of space inwards.  However, since space and time are connected, this is also something of a curve in time as well.  Due to this, being on a planet, our time goes a bit slower than someone outside the curve, due to the mass itself.  Meanwhile, black holes, the densest objects in the universe, curve the universe so much that time virtually stops, in effect simulating incredibly high speeds by virtue of curving time and space.  While objects take very long times to fall into a black hole, the time would speed by for someone right up in there, drawing it out far longer than those outside the curve in space.  It could even be said to tear the fabric, and what not, but I've gone as far as I think I should with all of this.  Let's just say that theories involving wormholes involve fourth dimensional cuts across the universe (cutting across the circle to the other side to save some time), and other science fiction stories involve "sub-space" which is similar in ways.

Anyway, sorry if I've given you a headache, and congrats if you understand what the hell I just said.  It's weird and gave me many headaches before I understood it even this much.

DUAL POST: An Hour In the Life.... and... Nature's Killer: The House Cat

An Hour in the Life of... the Dog

I ran around!  I went outside and chased sticks! I sniffed at things!  I chewed a stick!  I saw my Daddy!  I smelled the dirt!  It was great!  I played with him!  It was great!  I lay in the dirt!  I played in my hole!  I dug!  It was great!

An Hour in the Life of... the Cat

Yet again the human abandoned me for most of the day.  Then he comes back and abandons me again, taking that stupid mutt outside.  Miserable creature doesn't even know its imprisoned.  I watched them from the window.  Stupid dog, dashing around the yard, chewing on sticks thinking it's food.  And that human, just sat there playing with sticks himself.  Idiotic creatures, them both.  The dog failed to comprehend my plot to overthrow the human yet again.  Pah!  He can be left behind when the revolution comes.  For now I suppose I will have to attempt to work my way in the human's good graces, act "sweet" and "good."  If it weren't for the human's ability to operate that giant transporter he keeps outside, I would think he were as stupid as the dog.  Look at him, chasing the dog, as if he could really catch him.  I'm disgusted, I'll go clean my butt again.

An hour in the Life of... the Human

Went outside, worked on some walking sticks to sell, played with the dog a bit, got him to chew on sticks to keep himself busy.  Saw the cat watching us from the window.

Nature's Killer: The House Cat

Here we see the native house cat.  It is a long haired variety, notable for its ability to shed on every single article of clothing in a dwelling simultaneously.  Suddenly, it sees its prey... a cockroach!  It approaches the roach subtly, walking in plain sight, but slowly and with his head down which means that surely the insect cannot detect it!  Suddenly, the cat pounces, swiping at the bug!  He misses! The roach runs away across the carpet.  Unperturbed, the cat follows, and strikes again and again.  Suddenly, either confused or brave beyond reckoning the roach runs head first into the cat's leg, then careens under the bed.

The cat lunges towards the bed, striking madly with his paw, yet missing time and time again.  Suddenly, the cat hears a sound of what seems to be laughter from the bipedal ape-like creature nearby.  Insulted, the cat wanders off for a few moments.  But soon, the cat comes crashing back into the area, lunging with mad passion at the roach!  The triumphant feline has come to claim his prize!  He smashes at the roach, and soon leaves again to explore another corner of his habitat.

Soon, however, the ape-like creature detects sounds of rustling from behind him, and turns to find... the roach is still alive!  The cat returns, horrified to find that the ape-thing has smashed his beloved toy with a shoe.  The cat sniffs at the dead roach, then walks away bored to find more suitable prey, like invisible tufts of nothingness in the corner to assault, or moths on the other side of the glass.

Behold, nature's killer and the defender of the trailer against insect invaders that move quickly enough to be noticed on the floors or lower parts of the walls: the house cat.

A Curiosity of Curiosity

Although some may not realize it, I do realize that not everyone things as I do.  I mean this to mean both in the same ways, the same opinions, and the same levels.  This is not ego saying that I'm deeper than everyone else; I'm not.  Than some, yes, although I hate that this is so, as I think everyone should analyze things more.  There are those who think deeper than I do, which I can easily accept, and gladly even.  Some days though, I am frustrated by myself and others alike.

I just finished watching a National Geographic documentary on the Gospel of Judas.  And if anyone's wondering "doesn't he usually try to avoid talking religion on things like this?" you're right.  I'm not going into religion, but into mindsets.  What struck me as absolutely bewildering to me (which should have hit me long before now) is just how much some people are not curious, and wish to know no more about things they love.  At the end of the documentary, they did some "reaction shots" from various people, one of which was a religious figure or scholar or some such, I missed his name and job title.  Someone who lives and breathes religion, at any rate.  In reference to the newly recovered gospel, and any other such gospels, he was utterly dismissive, saying, in effect, 'Why should I need that?  I have these four, who could ask for more? What could it add?'

The movie Dogma includes a brief line by the lead of, essentially, people would love to learn more about these things, and who wouldn't want extra information.  I have never once paused over those lines, nor even considered that anyone who truly cares about religion, positively or negatively, would NOT want to at least review them.  But this man simply had no care about them whatsoever.

I'm a potter.  If I found there was some new major take on an aspect of it or a new technique, I would be interested.  I would think it natural to be, and would assume this would be true for anyone who has any passion for their job.  For theology and philosophy especially, which are intangible things, I would assume that any extra knowledge could only deepen your appreciation, lead you to new insights, greater understanding.  Even if you reject what it teaches, I am simply at a blank for any reason to simply not want to look, to be so wholly satisfied that anything new simply has no place in your mind.  To read it and say "interesting, but I do not believe it" is one thing, but not to read it?

I fear I'm growing repetitive.  My mind is repeatedly approaching this concept and not being able to grasp it.  Which, oddly enough, fits into my point.  I am approaching it, despite being utterly confused by it I am attempting to assimilate this new information.

One of my prior posts on this blog was on greater understanding of the world through having multiple points of view, basically balancing out your mind so you can greater understand the whole.  For the first time it is hitting me fully that some people simply do not want to understand more, even about that which they love.  I can understand not wanting to know about certain things.  I have no interest whatsoever in what celebrities are doing, nor any real interest in what sports teams are doing.  But I have no passion about those.  The world as a whole, I want to understand better.  Art and science, which I do have passion for, I am always curious about.

To find someone who is a devoutly religions and has dedicated their life to it, and has no curiosity about anything new or any opposing views... and presumably other people with comparable lacks of curiosity about their fields...

I begin to realize just how little I understand other people.  I find it disturbing, but I am still curious because it is something of which I have no understanding at all.

How can a person lock him or herself in a box and simply say "this box is the world, and that is enough" of their own free will, and what does that do to the person?

PS
If anyone at all was curious about the rat situation, it has not shown itself since the last incident.  It may be dead from injuries, dead from a combination poison and injuries, dead by predator (lucky predator if it was), disillusioned enough to seek a new home, or biding its time, but I have seen no evidence of it whatsoever in the last few days.

Second PS
I think my cat may have just illustrated the entire argument to me.  I was lying on my bed playing solitaire on my ipod thinking about what I have just typed, as I am prone to do, with the dog laying over my arm making it go numb when the cat jumped up.  He walked straight up my leg onto my chest, pushed his way between the ipod and my hand, and demanded almost exactly ten seconds of attention.  Then he turned around, walked straight off of the bed to the door and went about his business, whatever that may be.  He did not care about what I was doing, he did not care about what the dog was doing, and he did not care about the strange thing with light coming from it.  All of that was normal and posing no immediate concern.  He just came in, got exactly what he wanted, and then left, no curiosity about it.  Of course, now he is stalking into the room checking everything out as he goes, but he got what wanted, a few itches and a moment of socialization.

We're not so different in some ways, cats (and other animals) and humans.  I suppose that man is simply single-minded.  He gets what he wants to get from things exactly how they are and always have been for him, and that's that.  While I cannot imagine letting go like that, he can.  Maybe it's a good thing, maybe not.  He probably sleeps better than I do, I'll grant him that.

First Blood, and Other Casualties

Despite my confidence in my blockade of glue traps and the new plastic rat trap, the rat(s) escaped last night.  However, in a photographic survey of the ductwork, I learned three things.

One, the rats are not nested anywhere in the main ductwork under my floors, nor is there an entry point along these.  So the opening is by the main AC unit, and much simpler to find... for someone who can go under the floor, not a claustrophobic artist.

Two, the noise that so rudely has woken me up and deprived me of sleep yet again is an attempt to create an opening by tearing the ductwork, more or less under my head as I sleep.  It isn't large yet, which is fortunate.

And thirdly, and most satisfying to my need for vengeance, the rat did not escape wholly unscathed.  At 3AM the scratching started up again.  I finally managed to drift off, and shortly afterwards, at 4, the plastic trap went off.  LOUDLY.  It's loud normally, but it was ungodly in the metal ductwork.  Scared me, plus the pets.  But then I smiled, tried to go back to bed thinking he was dead (after wondering how he got past the glue traps), until I heard more rustling.  I was hoping he was just dying and dragging the trap, but no such luck.  But, it seems that either the trap clipped him or he ran straight into the sharp piece of metal he had torn up, as there was a spot of what appeared to be blood against it.  As for evading the doubled up glue traps blocking the path, he seems to have touched his foot to it a few times, then, presumably, jumped over.

He also stole the bait from the one traditional trap I can get into the ducts, without setting that one off.

So things are rearranged a bit.  Thanks to the photo, I now know where the rat comes from to get to the trap he stole from, so that is reset, and with better bait attached in a different way, facing that entry.  There are also now two layers of traps between the entry point (the path to the AC that is).  One is a barricade of metal screening.  He could easily chew through it or possibly move it some other way, but there are a pair of glue traps there, which he cannot jump over without hitting the screen and landing on them.  For good measure, there's some bait pressed into one of them.  Beyond that, since I've underestimated him once already, there is the plastic trap, set with the bait wedged under the trigger to be a bit harder to evade.

If he gets past all of that, he will have my sleep-deprivation enraged self to deal with if he makes so much as a peep that keeps me up or, god help him, wakes me up.  I have no plan whatsoever, and I doubt there is anything much I can do, but I will be extremely furious and racking my brain for any ideas.  If he strays too close to a vent, I'm not above dousing him with whatever I find that's flammable, lighting a match, and grabbing the extinguisher to put it back out.  I'm tired, I haven't had adequate sleep, and I'm starting to feel the results of it.

So ha, I got first blood, rodent.

Of course, that's not been the only blood.  In the process of fully prepping my studio space, I've gotten a number of wounds of my own, and then I had to go and whittle some for a separate project.  Between the two hands, I have a bump that grows back when I cut it off, a cut from dishwashing, a long scrape on the tip of one finger from a big staple on a box, a small slice on the tip of another from something I remember happening but then forgot what it was I did as I didn't see any immediate blood, a small gash from a rat trap, a blood blister on my palm from said rat trap, and what seems to be five blisters, two of which are on my pinkie and one just below it, and another on the pad of my thumb, all of the blisters being on the same hand.  Actually, everything but the small gash from the rat trap is on my right hand. But the left has two small cuts and a rather long one, none of which I am able to account for.

I think it's a race to see which happens first; the rat dying or my hand falling off from owner abuse.  But I'm tired, it's starting to hurt to type or use the mouse, and I don't want to think anymore.  I'm going to go watch American Dad with a knife beside me in case that damn rat gets stuck in the glue trap and makes a fuss about it.

Scary thing is, I'm not even about that.  Not even a bit.

WAR!

My feud with a single rat has become a war.  There is at least one more, probably several.  One of them was just brave enough to sit in the hole in the wall (they didn't put it there, but they've expanded upon it.  why it was there, I'll never know) and stare at me, even with the light on.  They've also started to expand upon some damage left by the previous tenant, and have started a hole there.

I started off with getting rat traps, because had become aware of a rat in the air ducts.  Then I found they don't fit into the vents, so I grudgingly got poison, which they have utterly ignored.  However, I have now found that there is a single vent, which I can, if I'm VERY careful, get the trap into without setting it off, and it's plainly a rat highway by the fecal matter there.

Doing a bit of research it is some variety of roof/black rat, and the recommended bait is dried fruit, dried meat, bacon, nuts, etc.  If they like it better than peanut butter, fine, I'll replace it.  So there is a rat trap with a piece of oven-dried sliced ham tied to it with floss sitting in my bathroom's air vent.  And another on top of my fridge, which may or may not be a worthwhile spot.  And there's still the other one by their (now covered up) hole next to the drier where the first one met his doom.

I wish the electronic pest controllers worked, but I have found no evidence that they do in any studies, and a number of sites which point to either no results, or only results which are poor at best (I don't care if moths reproduce slightly less when exposed to certain types, or if the occasional rat is flustered by it briefly).  Now I'm considering glue traps, which to place in the vents would require cutting them up at least a bit.  If anyone has any other good ideas, please let me know.

Now I have to look under the trailer, and see what there is to see.  I can do some of it, but I can't go under there, too claustrophobic.  So, Sparky... I love you!  I'll buy you cheesecake!

On the bright side, there isn't a huge mess behind my drier which I had feared.  Maybe the wood panel covering up the hole will be a sufficient deterrent.  Can hope, at least.

The State of the Mind Address

This is fairly accurate as a picture of my mind right now.  Oddly grainy, very blurry.  Kind of swooshy.  Swoosh-esque, if you will.  Not a horrible image, but without much sense of order or... well... sense.  Kind of a net grey.  Kind of a scrambled brains type of image.  That's what it feels like at least.

Why am I so swooshy you ask?

Well, maybe you don't, but I really don't care.  I'm going to ramble on anyway, because this is my blog and my boyfriend says I'm cute, so I say that I can get away with rambling on this.

Let's start with the dentist.  I rather like her, and she seems to be fond enough of me, despite my "small mouth" which is "very wet."  Now, I think she liked me well enough to start with, without the both positive and negative aspect of the state of my teeth (positive by money, negative by being annoyed with bad habits of mine in the past).  Three root canals.

Yes, ouch is right.

I've had the nerves in the teeth all killed now, and two of them are fitted with a temporary crown now, awaiting the permanent crown, the other one is awaiting the temp.  Now, the root canals are bad enough, and I had to be (literally) sedated for most of the work, but that's not it.  The nerves are dead, but there was a LOT of work for them to do to get ready for the temp crown and the final on the two that are ready for it.  Luckily for me I fell asleep during that.  But I'm straying farther than I wanted to on this.

Point is, I've been on antibiotics for a few weeks now (first one, now the other which prevents me from drinking any alcohol).  Plus whatever else it is that they've given me to take, I know one of them's a muscle relaxant, the other's a wash of some batch of chemicals.

Then there was the rat.  Read the last blog for more details on that.

Now there's another rat, this time in my ductwork, mostly that leading into my bedroom.  Lovely scratching sounds in the middle of the night.  I have to figure out the best line of attack, traps or poison.  It's war, now.  Don't **** with my sleep.

That was last night, that it really got to me though.  Today, I worked for my cousin's café as a stand in dishwasher for eight hours, which is always exhausting work.  Then, glutton for punishment that I am, I just spent about 3 hours or so working on a logo for a project (pro  bono).  Didn't hardly touch any of the rest of the stuff I need to work on for it, just fiddling with that logo trying to make it just about perfect.  There's roughly 50 shapes in it alone, in two colors.  Abstract.  Rather like how it came out though.

Oh, and I haven't gotten a very restful night's sleep in a long while.  Did fall asleep during the last big dental encounter though, which was rather pleasant.

Tomorrow I can't sleep in either.  Have to call someone about a potential permanent job (I really hope I get it, think I have a good chance), so want to get up early and call.  Partly to make a good impression, partly to beat anyone else to the punch.

Oddly that came through working for the café today.  She was a customer, and the cashier was kind enough to mention me and get the number.  The job involves a forklift! I miss my forklift!

I'm getting very swooshy, maybe enough where I won't have trouble sleeping... okay, not really, but I can hope I don't.

I'm going to bed.