It's been raining often here. August is usually bone dry. The rain isn't supposed to return to Seattle until late September or early October.

Oh well...

RO and I are building Trellis's and Arbours in the front yard. Yesterday's work was cut short by the rain. So we used the time to plan things out.

As I grow older, I find that I have less patience for "Just get in there and do the work. Deal with the problems as them come up." style. It can be so wasteful.

Trouble at the store...



That's cement pouring out of the toilet at the store.

One of our sales people was in the back doing some paperwork. She heard gurgling in the bathroom. When she opened the door she saw cement pouring out of the toilet.

There is construction going on behind the store. The crew found an old sewage pipe that they thought was no longer in use so they decided to fill it up with cement.

You can figure out the rest.

Thankfully our sales lady heard the cement pouring early enough that there is not much damage to the inside of the store. Also, thankfully the construction crew decided to pour a lot of cement down the sewage line. It would have been very bad if they poured enough to block up the line, but not enough to fill the toilets.

The construction foreman is being very nice to us. They have offered to replace our sewer lines.

Our neighbours, Clem and Ross, are having a big party this weekend. People from all around the world will be there. RO and I are hosting some of the friends.

I'm looking forward to it.

We had dinner with Clem and Ross on Wednesday evening. It was good to see them. They are considering selling the house and buying a condo. As much as they enjoy their house, they both work long hours and the house is a lot of maintenance.

To those of you who got here by googeling "Carpenter Ants" "Hear Them" and "Borax," this is for you...

For everyone else, a while back my house, the roof above my bed, was infested by carpenter ants. At night we could hear them scurrying around, eating the insulation.

We tried many things, starting off gentle; vacuuming them out, flea bombs, borax and sugar. That didn't work.

We solved the problem with gallons of strong ant killer. "Bayer Powerforce" if you want to know the brand. We've been spraying about a gallon a week of the stuff around the house; into every crack and crevice and all around the base.

Finally, after the fourth spraying they stopped. I'm sure the soil and wood around our house is now very toxic. But we don't have any small kids or pets that play in that area.

I'm very happy this worked. The professionals were quoting us thousands of dollars to fix the problem. I can't afford that right now.

My sofa bed is gone. Long live the sofa bed.

I've had this particular sofa bed since 1994-- two homes and one country ago. There were many memories in it, but ultimatly, it became a piece of old furniture that we didn't want to use and that was taking up too much space. RO has never liked the sofa bed and has wanted me to get rid of it for years.

I put an ad on Craigslist; free sofa bed if you move it yourself. In the first two hours there was only one response; a nice Mexican family. They came, they looked at it and immediatly said "Yes."

Even though the sofa bed is heavy, it wasn't difficult to get it out of the house. The hard part was tieing it to the top of their SUV. Their winches kept getting jammed. In the end we cut the straps off the winches and tied the straps with knots.

The weather has been wonderful here in Seattle. Last night RO and I went to the beach to swim and watch the sun set-- nice and relaxing.

My day job is very full. A project that I picked up in the spring has become very important. However, finishing it as well as many people want means that I will have to take resources away from my other projects. That sends alarm bells off in my head, because the surest way to get nothing done is to keep hopping between projects and never finish anything off.

So, is my new project just trendy, or is it of vital long term importance? That's a hard call.

Today is my last day alone. I feel like it's my last day of vacation. I'm cleaning up the house a little bit, but mostly I'm loafing; watching TV, eating crap food playing with the computer. I'm enjoying this time off with no expectations and no strings.

This week I've slept soundly every night. I haven't done that in months.

I did fix the drain in the fridge.

RO arrives back at 9:30 tomorrow morning. Back to reality then.