My wife has been hearing things. At first I was alarmed. Then she told me it wasn’t voices telling her to kill me in my sleep. Instead, it was thumps, dragging and scratching sounds. “Did we forget to take our daughter out of timeout in the closet again?” I asked nervously. My wife then informed me the sounds were coming from the crawl space and inside the walls. I breathed a sigh of relief. That eliminated timeout as the issue, and saved us from an awkward talk with Child Protective Services. Since our house wasn’t known to be haunted, I ruled out a poltergeist too. Given how small the access is to the wall with the scratching sounds, I settled on mice as the likely culprit. What follows is our semi-definitive guide to catching mice humanely. [click to continue…]
Pest Control
Image Source: GreenLeaf Pest Control
We can’t win, can we? In the summer, it’s ants and spiders and other creepy crawlies I prefer not to think about trying to get into the house. In the winter, it’s bigger game: particularly raccoons and squirrels. While you might think squirrels are mighty cute, you’d think differently if you discovered one was crawling up your wall, threatening to spastically fly across the room at any moment. Barf! That’s almost worse than having a cat in the house! Unfortunately, for some people, this is a real threat in the cooler months when these animals take any opportunity they can find to move in where there’s warmth and food. Hopefully with these tips you can avoid giving these pests a home for the holidays. [click to continue…]
Ah Vegas. Remember not so long ago when Las Vegas was being marketed as a family destination? Now, not so much. I saw approximately two young children being wheeled around the Strip by parents who apparently didn’t get the memo. Luckily the kids appeared to be passed out, immune from the continual flow of nude women on cards being handed to their fathers every 20 yards or so. After chatting with some of my media friends and hearing stories of being literally chased into elevators by ambitious prostitutes, I was a little disappointed I wasn’t solicited myself. Not because I would have accepted of course, (my wife occasionally reads this), but mostly for the shear novelty factor. However, I was solicited by many eager product spokespeople at the 2011 National Hardware Show (in a good way), and, I wasn’t above selling myself a few times as well. For all (actually, just some) of the juicy details, read on. [click to continue…]
You know that movie from a few years ago, My Big Fat Greek Wedding? Remember how the father thought spraying Windex was the solution to everything, including skin ailments? It turns out that some people really believed Windex could be used on acne and have been attempting to de-zit themselves with this ammonia-based product … Which is great if you like to burn your skin off. People, you can’t believe everything you see in the movies! That especially goes for you Inconvenient Truth fans. Ha. [click to continue…]
At some point, I think I mentioned that I busted up my ankle, and how glorious it was. I think the painkillers must have been going to my head. There pretty much isn’t anything fun about the entire process that I can think of at this point. I can’t move around very well–sleeping in my Frankenstein boot is near impossible, and trying to use stairs is an exercise in looking like an idiot, feeling like an idiot, and perhaps falling on your face and sliding to the bottom of the stairs to start all over again–like an idiot. These kinds of things make me crabby. I want to choose to look like an idiot. [click to continue…]
