This week didn't start out so well. I woke up Sunday morning to no internet connection. After trying the obvious (connecting to modem? yes. modem connecting to internet? no. internet-dependent phone [grumblegrumblegrumble] working? no.) I went downstairs to see if it was the same problem as last time (last summer, about July 29th, fortunately well past the drawing challenge thing). It was. Gnawed! In a hole in a joist drilled for the wire connecting my water well pump and washing machine to the breaker board. On a whim, I pulled on that 14 gauge wire and 'lo! It too was gnawed! Fortunately on the white wire side so no short circuit with the ground wire (I tested it with my circuit tester), but still! I think (I hope) that the mice liked that hole because it was bigger than most with room to crawl in, and easy to reach and they're not shorting out wires anywhere else.



I waited a while for signs of life at my neighbour's house and sauntered over to use his phone. I think I woke him up anyway. Eventually, after convincing the person at the call center that I knew _why_ I had no internet connection, that no, I didn't need to unplug, then restart, my modem, _again_, and no, because of them, I _can't_ be reached by phone when the Internet is cut off by a mouse, they scheduled a repair person for Monday afternoon.

I put up two traps on the beam closest to the wire hole. Two mice sacrificed themselves in short order Sunday evening. There might have been a third one, I found one of the traps on the floor Monday morning.



Monday afternoon, the repair person replaced the chewed line with a very long length of wire, so long that he chose to thread it back and forth across the ceiling. That's not optimal. But fortunately he showed me how to unplug the wire so as soon as he was gone I re-threaded the wire in a way that wasn't confusing and in which there was slack in case I should ever need to move the modem.

That done, I still had a tempting mouse tunnel and a wire in need of repair. But I had a plan.

Now the wire feeding the washer and pump was tight, but I still managed to pull the gnawed bit about 4 inches out. I screwed a junction box to a joist next to the hole, cut the power, tested with my circuit tester three times, and cut the wire. I gave it a pull to clamp it into the junction box. I discovered that it had been gnawed further down the line (maybe Sunday night!), and on the black (live) wire side this time! So I had to trim more, not leaving me enough wire to reach the junction box.

Well, long story short, it took _two_ junction boxes so I could add about three feet of wire. Then I used tin can lids to block the hole on both sides and wrapped scrap tinfoil pie plates (from tiny pies I've eaten) around the wires sticking out at each end. My traps tell me that I have yet to get any new rodent visitors.



Monday night it snowed. It snowed a lot. Maybe 15 cm. I don't have to go anywhere, I have lots of milk and I still had potatoes. I could wait for it to melt. Except it wouldn't stop snowing and hovering just above freezing. So much for seeing any northern lights. I hear they're visible right down to Florida. Typical. Oregon ain't got nothing on our grey, wet skies. The llama didn't take more than three steps out of her shack for like two days. She didn't even see the two deer that strolled right though the back yard and came back to forage for forgotten apples under my tree. I saw them Wednesday morning on my way to serve breakfast to the llama. They saw me too and sauntered off.



By Thursday, the snow had thinned enough that the llama was back to wandering around a bit, trimming the branches on the bent-over trees. Also thin enough that I could easily drive off to go see a movie.

There is only one showing of one movie in English this week, at 7 PM on Thursday, and that movie was Predator: Badlands. I wanted to see this movie, for the ecology and the perky killer robot. It did not disappoint. I like my over-the-top alien monsters and this movie had them in spades. A predictable movie, but still, I give it 3 1/2 stars out of five thanks to the banter and the deadly fauna and flora. Worth it.



After the movie I went to the grocer next door to the theater where I scored 2 kg of shredded cheese, 10 lbs of potatoes (I'd just cooked the last ones Tuesday), 1kg of frozen sole (the fish, not shoes) and a few miscellaneous foodstuffs. I got the fish because I'd read that in winter people should eat fish, oil, avocados and nuts. The avocados were way too expensive, as was the salmon, but the sole, it looks like I can make like ten sandwiches out of it. Should be alright. Except somehow it looks like the sole _shrinks_ like crazy when getting cooked. Ten sandwiches may be stretching it.

All I'm missing is for the clouds to clear so I can maybe see the northern lights.