Varmints and Gremlins
Mar. 18th, 2014 01:51 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
captainsblog I smell varmint poontang. And the only good varmint poontang is dead varmint poontang, I think.
-Carl Spackler, chasing after furry little rodents in Caddyshack
The smell of wintry varmint poontang may finally be past us. Friday marked the six-week mark from that other varmint's infliction of "six more weeks of winter" on us, and the snowpack from last week's midweek blizzard is now almost gone.
Other, even more hostile, varmints have been circling, though. In no particular order:
- I went to change the black ink in my printer this morning, and the Genuine New HP™ Cartridge turned out to be one of their rare replacement packages of invisible ink. Page after page rolled off with no print on it at all. Fearing it was the printer shitting the bed, I put the Mostly Dead black one back in and, after getting the obligatory nag screen about never ever using used cartridges when there are perfectly good Genuine New HP™ Cartridges to be bought, it put out a dim but better test page. And so wasted a good half hour of shlepping to replace one stupid $11 pile of ink with another- which, blessedly, did the trick.
- While I was doing that, Eleanor was calling about replacing the cord that connects from her digital camera to her new computer. They asked why she wasn't using the card reader that came with the camera; she replied that she'd hadn't needed to use the card reader in years, since the previous tablet read right from the camera. This has now got us on a heap-to-heap search of where the damn thing might be; as with so many other missing items, I know I've come across it dozens of times when I wasn't looking for it, but now that I am? Good luck with THAT, guy.
- Now, hours later, a plumber is here to stop a leak that's developed under our first-floor terlet. It's not a bad one, but at least we'll have one less drippy thing around here. (Oddly, the dog, which is another of the drippy things around here, has barely paid attention to him; she gave him one good bark and settled back under my desk.)
- On the way back here from another useless errand into Buffalo to track down a missing lawyer, I almost lost my lunch and my proverbial cookies, as a car in front of me on the 33 suddenly decided that 15 mph was a perfectly acceptable speed. I slammed the brakes on in time, but sheesh, now I know how the kid feels about getting into such pickly sandwiches.
- And today's mail? Brings a solicitation from a water company, about insuring our outdoor water line connection from the potentially disastrous cost of having to replace it if those ancient pipes suddenly blow. Pre-existing conditions not included, of course- and no mention of similar coverage for our sewer connection, which is probably the greater concern.
If this is how the rest of spring's gonna go, I might want to have a do-over on even these last six, relatively, horrid weeks of winter.
-Carl Spackler, chasing after furry little rodents in Caddyshack
The smell of wintry varmint poontang may finally be past us. Friday marked the six-week mark from that other varmint's infliction of "six more weeks of winter" on us, and the snowpack from last week's midweek blizzard is now almost gone.
Other, even more hostile, varmints have been circling, though. In no particular order:
- I went to change the black ink in my printer this morning, and the Genuine New HP™ Cartridge turned out to be one of their rare replacement packages of invisible ink. Page after page rolled off with no print on it at all. Fearing it was the printer shitting the bed, I put the Mostly Dead black one back in and, after getting the obligatory nag screen about never ever using used cartridges when there are perfectly good Genuine New HP™ Cartridges to be bought, it put out a dim but better test page. And so wasted a good half hour of shlepping to replace one stupid $11 pile of ink with another- which, blessedly, did the trick.
- While I was doing that, Eleanor was calling about replacing the cord that connects from her digital camera to her new computer. They asked why she wasn't using the card reader that came with the camera; she replied that she'd hadn't needed to use the card reader in years, since the previous tablet read right from the camera. This has now got us on a heap-to-heap search of where the damn thing might be; as with so many other missing items, I know I've come across it dozens of times when I wasn't looking for it, but now that I am? Good luck with THAT, guy.
- Now, hours later, a plumber is here to stop a leak that's developed under our first-floor terlet. It's not a bad one, but at least we'll have one less drippy thing around here. (Oddly, the dog, which is another of the drippy things around here, has barely paid attention to him; she gave him one good bark and settled back under my desk.)
- On the way back here from another useless errand into Buffalo to track down a missing lawyer, I almost lost my lunch and my proverbial cookies, as a car in front of me on the 33 suddenly decided that 15 mph was a perfectly acceptable speed. I slammed the brakes on in time, but sheesh, now I know how the kid feels about getting into such pickly sandwiches.
- And today's mail? Brings a solicitation from a water company, about insuring our outdoor water line connection from the potentially disastrous cost of having to replace it if those ancient pipes suddenly blow. Pre-existing conditions not included, of course- and no mention of similar coverage for our sewer connection, which is probably the greater concern.
If this is how the rest of spring's gonna go, I might want to have a do-over on even these last six, relatively, horrid weeks of winter.
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no subject
Date: 2014-03-18 05:58 pm (UTC)In fact, my 10-day-forecast app is predicting snow one week from today.
The White Walkers are abroad in the land...
no subject
Date: 2014-03-18 06:24 pm (UTC)