Blogger pooched.

They lost the draft of a draft post I was working on last night.

Now, I'm a spontaneous sort of writer. I either get it right the first time, or I need endless revisions and re-writes to get down what I want to say. I only write when I'm "inspired".

...or ticked off.

Losing a bit of writing to the electronic ether is annoying. I don't lay the blame entirely on the good folks at Blogger.com; they're doing their best, I suppose.

On the other hand...that post was kind of dumb. It was to have been a blow-by-blow description of how our Beagle, abby, caught a mouse in the living room...

...oh yeah, we have mice...

We've got sonic repellers installed on the west side of the house, next to the garage. No mice seen there since. On the east side of the house, however, is abundant evidence of a rodent problem. We set traps, we laid bait. No luck.

Since Granpa has now vacated the downstairs suite (only temporary, we hope), there has been no forage to speak of downstairs. Thus, the mice are now venturing upstairs.

Abby can hear them.

She flushed one out from beside the fireplace early one morning last week. The mouse beat a hasty retreat down the stairs and bolted into a mouse hole under the front door landing. A few days ago, abby flushed out another one that ran from the fireplace to hide underneath the love seat. Laurie...FREAKED. Had no idea my wife was capable of such hysterics. Abby, for her part, was very excited and hung about the love seat trying to persuade the mouse to come out and play.

I moved the loveseat aside.

The mouse, paralysed with fear, sat quivering in the midst of the dust bunnies and other junk we had under that couch. Abby leapt upon the opportunity and trapped the mouse between her front paws. She then picked the mouse up gently in her mouth, trotted over to the middle of the room, and settled down to give her new "chew toy" a thorough going-over.

She was a little disappointed when I picked up her captive by the tail and carried it away. After all, I couldn't just let her rip the mouse apart...that would have been SO messy! I got a small perverse thrill from showing the specimen to Laurie, who was by this time cowering in her bedroom on the opposite side of the house. The mouse was eventually disposed of in a steel rubbish can next to the elementary school ballfield. Said rodent will probably end up as a midnight snack for one of the barn owls that frequent our neighborhood at night.

Abby was quite pleased with herself for the next few days. We even let her patrol the downstairs suite a few times. Laurie bought some new and tastier poison bait, and so once again the dog is not allowed downstairs. We haven't seen any more mice upstairs...this week.

Speaking of this week...

Paul came by for a visit on his way down to California to vist his folks for Spring Break. I sponged off him mercilessly, and generally abused our friendship as only former university pals can. He's still single, but not terribly upset about it. His life is fairly full anyway. Without spouse and kids he has much more room in his life for...things. He bought a TRUCK!!!
Anyways, it was good to see him again, and we had a pleasant time over the last couple of days.

It's pathetic to admit this; but the only time I ever "go out" without either L or the kids is when Paul drops by.

Speaking of going out...

The rear wheel on my bike has gone out of true. I can't find an obvious problem; such as a broken spoke. I think it may just be because the bike is a clapped-out hunk of junk and I am one heavy hombre'. The wheels had a LOT of rust on them when I first restored the bike. It would not surprise me if there were some structural weakness there. I really ought to finish off that ATB...