It's been an interesting week. [View all]

Everything happens all at once.

First, I had to buy a new desktop computer. It's sitting in a box next to me. I will be transferring files from my old computer today onto an external hard drive in preparation to transfer them to my new computer, tomorrow. That was about $400. I hate setting up a new desktop because it takes me all day.

Second, the other day, I was in my attached garage and a fucking yellow jacket stung me, twice. WTF? I looked around, and there were several yellow jackets on the garage floor. I couldn't figure out where they were coming from. So I went outside and looked at the roof around the garage. My garage has a gable roof that joins into the main roof of the house. Right where the gable of the garage roof joins into the main roof, there is a small soffit, maybe a foot long. Sure enough, there were hundreds (thousands?) of yellow jackets flying in under the soffit. I couldn't see the nest at all, so I knew it was up inside the soffit.

I really didn't feel like spending any more money on an exterminator, so I considered going up into the attic above the garage, peeling back the insulation in the soffit, and trying to take care of the nest myself. I then thought better of it, because I don't have a "bee suit", and I didn't feel like getting stung to death in my attic (I got stung in the face 15-20 times a few years ago trying to do a similar thing, in a similar location).

I went into the garage, which has a built-in cabinet near the location of the soffit. I unlatched the upper door on the cabinet, looked up in the corner of the ceiling, and I could see just the TAIL END of the nest coming through. Just that tail end was enormous. I thought holy shit, the rest of the nest is in the attic and it must be FUCKING HUGE!

I have a friend who is an independent professional exterminator. I texted him and waited 5 minutes for him to text me back. When I didn't hear back, I phoned him. He picked up immediately, and I said I'M BEGGIN' YA. PLEASE COME TODAY IF YOU CAN.

He was here within the hour. He took a look at it and said, well, it's hot and I don't want to put on my suit, so I'll get them from the outside. He put on just the head and face portion of his bee suit, got on a ladder, and went to work. He used insecticide dust, and then some kind of little insecticide box that worked in a 1,000 square foot area. He tucked it on the house roof under the soffit. Then he got out a large hose attached to a compressor, and sprayed a liquid under the soffit. They'll all be dead by tomorrow, he said. I thanked him and paid him. There's another $200.

Third, whenever my wife hesitates to tell me bad news, she comes up stairs and sits behind me, and just stares at me. Whenever she does this, I know she has something bad to tell me, and my arm hairs and neck hairs stand up, waiting for the bad news. She didn't say a word. My arm hairs are at full staff now.

Then she said "When it rains, it pours". I said WHAT????

"I know we've been spending a lot of money this week...."

I said WHAT IS IT?

"The microwave crapped out".

Oh fuck, I said. I wasn't worried about the money. I was worried about my back. My back has been terrible this week, to the point where I occasionally can't walk without screaming, and the old microwave was freaking huge and I knew I would have to pull it out of there at an awkward angle and carry that big heavy bastard into the garage.

I priced a new microwave locally, but they wanted $75 just to deliver the thing to my front door, so I said fuck that and went and ordered the new one off Amazon with free delivery. It arrived arrived yesterday and the box was literally smashed to shit and re-taped with about 10 pounds of packing tape. Jesus! I decided to open the box anyway and it looked OK, so I pulled out the new microwave, fucked up my back further, and installed the new one. It seems to be working fine. There's another $450.

Then, both of our phones start blowing up. Our two women friends/neighbors were in a bad car accident. Broken ribs, facial lacerations, and their car was totaled. So I'll probably be doing a few things for them today. They were released from the hospital.

That's what has been going on here. Thanks for reading.

The End