Day 1606

This is the time of year when thousands of tiny sweet ants join forces for an all-out assault on the house. All it takes is a tiny crack for them to get in and once they're in, they're everywhere. I started noticing these ants yesterday, and today there seemed to be twice as many. Sweet ants are hard to get rid of unless you can find where they're coming from. My guess is that they're getting through small cracks in the window sills, because that was where they were swarming today. I went outside with a bottle of ant and roach spray and tried to seal off any potential entrance. We'll see how that works. Usually, nothing works. Luckily, these little critters are just passing through. They come every year about this time, and by the time I've come up with a workable plan to get rid of them, they're gone.

I got an e-mail today saying that the yearly rent for my storage warehouse is due again. I can't even remember how long I've had this storage space. Suffice to say, it's been a very long time. It has occurred to me occasionally that what I've paid in rent over the years is probably quite a bit more than the actual value of the contents. The longer I keep this stuff, the more I tend to forget why I stored it away in the first place. At some point, I'll come to my senses and either start selling things, or just toss it all in the nearest dumpster. It's doubtful that I'll reach a tipping point this year. I'm sure I'll just renew the warehouse for another year, take a quick look inside, and continue to wonder what is in some of the unmarked boxes.

My mechanic called today and told me that he had a buyer for the non-running car he never found time to repair. Since he and I are about the same age, I don't think he'll ever find time to repair the car. If I had unlimited resources and a younger mechanic, it would be fun to fully restore the old car and drive it around occasionally. That's not going to happen though. I reluctantly agreed that, even though the offer I received was not great, it was probably time to sell. It took me a long time to remember where the title to the car was. I transferred the title when I moved to Texas in 1977. Eventually, I found the document, but it wasn't where I thought it was.

I though I was going to have an easy day, but somehow it didn't turn out that way. The ants took a long time to kill. The title took a long time to find. And unfortunately, I tried to balance my checkbook. Since I do all my accounting using Quickbooks Pro, I start to think that these are the real numbers, forgetting that I occasionally type things in wrong. Every six months or so, I try to reconcile the Quickbooks entries with my bank statement and usually fail. After three tries today, I was still off by $2.88.  I finally just made a journal entry for $2.88, under the heading of Miscellaneous Stuff.

I still haven't gotten the water from Thursday's torrential rains off the roof. Since it was hot today and will be even hotter tomorrow, I'm hoping that it will just evaporate.

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