Computer Hell, Life as an Assassin and Country Lunches

I love computers when they work the way they’re supposed to but then for some reason known only to the gods of software and routers, everything changes. My printer wouldn’t talk to my computer and I had e-Bay labels I’d have to print the next day. No problem, I thought. It’s happened before and I breathed down the neck of a young tech guy wearing a black leather vest full of pockets that I lusted after---the vest not the guy---as I wrote down the steps he took to get my printer back online. And I used those directions a couple of times since without a hitch. This time, however, when I followed the steps---deleting the printer and then adding it back on---it didn’t work. 

Long story still sort of long, I discovered my wireless printer wouldn’t work from my backup computer either and Detective Nervous Wretch put two and two together and decided I was dealing with a Wi-Fi issue. Yup, the cell phone also had that explanation point next to the Wi-Fi icon---but wait! My Kindle was still connecting to Wi-Fi and was working! Why? I checked the settings thinking maybe I was piggy backing off someone else’s unsecured Wi-Fi. Nope. I spent way too much time trying to troubleshoot this and that. Found directions that involved turning off everything but the nightlight in the garage in an effort to reboot the whole kitten caboodle. I didn’t have the guts to do it before my e-Bay closings in case I couldn’t get my internet connected again. So there I was on Sunday night after my auctions closed, writing addresses out long-hand so I could get stuff to the post office in the morning. My plan was to enter the tracking numbers at e-Bay, plus write this blog entry and schedule it, before trying the whole reboot thing. If it failed I’d call Sexy Vest back to the house. If no blog appears on Saturday you'll know I'm curled up in a fetal ball wondering why I couldn't have been born in the era when long-distance communication required going down to the telegraph office to watch a guy tape my messages out in Morse code.

Stink bugs: Every fall they come to the south side of my house to embed themselves into the vinyl siding to winter over. Some years I’ve vacuumed them up with a little insect spray so they’d die before finding a way to walk back down the vacuum hose to make a winter resort out of my closet. For a few years I sprayed them with soapy water using a hose attached to a garden sprayer. The soap makes it impossible for them to fly, they die and then I have messy windows to clean. This year Mr. Google showed me how to make a cute little stink bug collector out of a pop bottle. So every evening when they park their slow-moving butts on my house, I’m on sentry duty every fifteen minutes, walking my deck looking for bugs to nudge into my trap. But it took them too long to die and I hated that. They’re only doing what Mother Nature tells them to do and for that they have to die slow? Does that seem fair? This morning I put a little soapy water in the bottle---duh---hoping they’d drown and they did but not before they had panic attacks before finally falling victim to my assassination attempts. Made me wonder if fires, floods and hurricanes aren’t God’s pop bottle trap…and that random thought makes me sound like a rabid, street corner preacher. “Repent your sins! The end is near!” I really do feel like a Supreme Being to my stink bugs. It's not fun to have the power of life or death over so many living things.

Monday was my third Mondays Lunch with my Gathering Girls pals. We carpooled to a near-by village like so many other specks on the Michigan map, that was founded in the mid-1800s on an old Indian trail next to a river. They built a mill, a blacksmith shop and a few other buildings and most are still standing today. One of those buildings was a pub back in its day and is still a pub that serves food and that's where we ate. Their menu says they are an Irish pub with a polish owner and I had a corn beef and sauerkraut sandwich on rye that was wonderful, especially paired with sweet potato fries.

There were six of us around the table and as usual we had lively conversations that went from bucket list activities like going on zip lines and hot air balloon rides to serious topics like human trafficking. One woman had been to a lecture about the sex trade recently where she learned that according to the expert who spoke, we average 400 girls (and boys) who get caught up in the trafficking trade every year…in just our town! Of course, we came up with solutions that ranged from teaching young teens not to be naïve thus easy pry to castrating the guys who’d buy them. I don’t know if the business men at the next table were listening and cringing when it was mentioned using a dull Bowie knife to do the task, but I was proud that I didn’t suggest cooking those balls and adding them to Purina Swine and Pig Feed. Vengeful thoughts might be fun but should never be expressed in public...Oops! ©

Stink bug trap photos from Pinterest.

cut

reverse top inside lower part of the bottle

tape

add a little soapy water

A gentle nudge and a shake causes the slow moving bugs to fall down the slippery slop of the bottle.