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.
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.
