Keeping one step ahead of the ants

Last week I discovered ants were returning to my kitchen. After doing some observing of their movements I realized where they had to be coming from: A slight opening between a wall and the counter backsplash.

Caulk to the rescue!

License Plate Watch 4

Saw this plate on the way to work yesterday morning: "HUSTLEN".

I'll assume that was referring to the car itself, which was painted a very bright apple green.

I had it easy in high school!

I know I'm really aging myself by bringing this up, but I graduated from high school in 1977. I have been coming to the realization people going to high school in that era had a pretty easy life with regard to being able to graduate, as compared to current students.

First off, there's the California High School Exit Exam. As the site says: "Beginning with the Class of 2006, all public school students will be required to pass the exam to earn a high school diploma." There's been all kinds of publicity about this, at least within the state, so I won't make any comments about it here. Except to say in 1977 there was nothing like that!

Here is the web site for my high school, Patrick Henry. The thing that really caught my attention here was the Portfolio and Exhibition page, which is about graduation requirements set by the San Diego City School District in addition to the state's Exit Exam. This amazes me because, like with the Exit Exam, my class was not required to do anything with any similarity to these Portfolio and Exhibition processes. But, looking through all the details via the links on this page, it occurs to me these procedures might have been a real help for me in preparing for life after high school.

License Plate Watch 3

A Texas license plate, seen last evening in San Diego, that read: "E NOT A".

No clue what it means, I just thought it was interesting!

A very small disappointment

Image via Wikipedia

So I'm re-reading In a Sunburned Country by Bill Bryson, which is full of stories of his travels around Australia. And I came across the following line in it, which I had forgotten from my original reading of the book: "We wanted proper outback: a place where men were men and sheep were nervous."

Reading that made me laugh aloud, and since I couldn't recall seeing it before, I assumed it was an original joke. Well, something led me to do a Google search for "men were men and sheep were nervous" and that revealed the line is by no means original to Bryson. Which disappointed me a little, but then I reflected a writer certainly has a right to use old jokes if they work in context, and this one certainly does.

At any rate, it's a marvelous book with many wonderful stories about Australia and it's people. Very highly recommended!