Invading Armies and an Obscure Fact for the Day in Everyday Ramblings

This morning I woke up to the semi-annual invasion of sugar ants. I’ve had a manageable few for about a week and put out traps and sprayed my orange peel spay and rubbed petroleum jelly over the lips of my kitchen counter but still they managed to discover the quart of peach blossom honey on my counter. Luckily it is in a very tightly sealed mason jar but still…yuck. They are using every battle tactic available and I have spent the morning defending my territory against additional encroachment.

At least this time I didn’t have them in the cat food.

I am getting closer and closer to getting a kitten. You can tell…I am entertaining names. I have been telling myself that I wanted to travel to San Francisco and Victoria B.C. before getting a new feline companion but those travel plans are not happening. The truth is I can’t afford it and helping my oldest sister out with her medical bills. And… I admit that I am tired of traveling alone.

So what the heck; I think I’ll just get a kitten. My cat sitter would be very happy to assist with caring for a healthy happy little one so if I do decide to get away I can.

What is a little cat hair between friends anyway?

The new Charlaine Harris series about a small town in rural Texas has a most amusing marmalade cat in it. I found the book in the “Lucky Day” section of the library and just inhaled it over three days. Not Sookie Stackhouse, but then, she is/was one unique character.

I was happy last night walking to the first of the classes on Dante’s Inferno. It wasn’t raining, which is not the norm here lately. Here in climate change land, the weather gods are saying, you want rain, we’ll give you rain! On Wednesday we had more rain in 9 hours than we had had in any single day in two years.

The instructor of this class is a professor of literature at Portland State. Apparently he is an institution there. He’s been teaching at this one college for 47 years. He is in his 70’s, hard of hearing, and extremely eccentric. But he knows his Dante, inside out, sideways and upside down. And he is none too shabby on Shakespeare knowledge either.

I’ve never been to Florence but most of the 22 folks in the class have. There was a lot of brainpower in that room and that was enjoyable. A bunch of them are going down to Ashland to see The Tempest this weekend so we talked about that some too.

I am tired though. Got a bit over-stimulated and am still trying to recover from not having a weekend because I was at the yoga workshop. Oh well.

Tomorrow night is my first experience with Pictionary. I think it will be fun even if I am awful at it.

Did you know that Christina Queen of Sweden (there are many variants on the spelling of her name in English) asked the philosopher Rene Descartes to be in a ballet after she asked him to come tutor her at 5 AM each morning during the winter at the castle. This is your obscure fact of the day.

A little philosophy can be a dangerous thing. He died of pneumonia after a few months. And he had all his letters with him. They were sent by ship back to Paris and the ship sank. What a run of bad luck he had.

I think he would have been better off if he’d stayed home with a new kitten.

Last updated October 24, 2014