wasps – Imaginary Sunshine

Workish and not so W.A.S.P.-free

Michelle — Thu, 13 Aug 2009 05:58:29 +0000

Haven’t felt up for anything today… Went to work and lazed about (working, granted). I cleaned and entered data and cleaned some more and entered more data. My desk has never looked so clean. I’m going to take a photo tomorrow to remind myself that my desk can actually be clean. Huge contrast compared to my earlier photo, what with Post-Its and candy and work papers everywhere. I have a filing system (not in a filing cabinet…) on my desk with these plastic doohickeys. Yes, that is the technical term. I’ll take a photo tomorrow.

I did do some crafting today after work – I sewed a Blythe dress with my ‘scrap’ fabric (upcycled from an old dress shirt). But once it was in dress form, it looks so much like grid paper (my sister even went and pulled out a sheet of grid paper to compare, haha). Photos over at Chelle-Chelle.com. I’ve also made a few (… 3) pair of earrings today, but no photos yet. My photos didn’t turn out very well (too blurry), so I’m going to wait until I get a chance tomorrow to take some in natural light. I should have used the time to actually work on my cheap-o version of a lightbox… But I just don’t have any energy these days.

I took a bunch of photos of roadside construction and uprooted and mangled trees today, which is going to be for my blog entry tomorrow regarding… hugging trees? I’m not sure. But it’ll be about something. I just need to go through the photos and edit out license plates of the cars that got into my photos (stupid cars on the highway…). So there’s that as well…

Oh, and on the W.A.S.P. front… I’m not wasp free after all (insert sad face here). Turns out there’s another hole in the roof of my carport. The wasps have started to enter and exit via that hole. And a bunch of them avoided getting foamed so… No waspicide around here, unfortunately. So my dad has sealed up that hole with a bunch of duct tape until he can go to the store tomorrow and get more foam wasp killer stuff and repeat the whole process of donning bee keeper-like gear. I so wish I’m going to be home tomorrow while he does it so I can take photos – I don’t think he’d be very appreciative of that though.

And… Because I’ve been in a cruddy mood lately, I’ve been taking more photos of my dolls. Not quite sure why, but there’s just something about those eyes and expressions that make me happier. Even if Belarus looks permanetly gloomy. So, just because they deserve some attention too, please check out Little Miss Sophie. ^^

And another and… Ask me questions! I need questions to answer that don’t involve “So what have you been doing all day at your desk?”, hehe. Please and thank you in advance.

W.A.S.P.-free and summertime blues

Michelle — Wed, 12 Aug 2009 03:57:26 +0000

Jenna – It’s just another Bob-bomb (photos of my first one are over at Chelle-Chelle.com). I didn’t see the point in taking photos of the new one as I used the same pattern (I wrote out what I did for the first one when I was doing it, just on a whim – good thing too, or else I’d have to recreate it from memory).

On the W.A.S.P. front, my dad went out and bought this wasp-foam stuff. Basically what he did was get some kind of screen (think bee-keeper attire) and wore thick clothes and went outside and cut a slit into the duct tape over the opening to the nest (in our carport roof) and sprayed 3 entire bottles into it. Why 3 bottles? Because we honestly have no clue how large the nest is (given the fact that it is inside of the carport roof and… we’re not dismantling it when there are live wasps inside? Yeah, smart choice!). There are still wasps hanging around outside of the entrance though. Hope this whole thing ends soon… Wasps give me a disgusting creepy crawly feeling on my arms (joining the rants of spiders and ants). … I essentially have issue with things that come in swarms and things with eight legs.

And… I’ve been feeling really tired lately, I’m not sure why. I’m impatiently waiting for mail from school and an online seller (not another doll! honest!). And there was just so much that I wanted to get done this summer and it’s already August and there’s only a little over 3 more weeks until I go back to school, but work’s been getting stressful since people know I’m going to be leaving in less than a month, so suddenly it’s time to pile on more work. And I tripped down the stairs at work today and twisted my ankle, so that hurts. And there’s just so much I wanted to do and I haven’t done most of it at all this summer. I mean, besides work, save money, spend a little money, go through the headache of registering for courses… There’s not a whole lot that I’ve done.

So, on that note, time to go and do something. There’s a fat quarter upstairs with my scissors’ names on it and I intend to cut it up a bit (then put fray check along the edges… let it dry for 24 hours… iron it… sew…). I’m getting a few dresses worth of fabric cut out before I break out the (old) sewing machine. Figured I may as well be remotely efficient…

Hope you all had a wonderful, stress-free Tuesday.

Work-a-lot Bear* & Buzzy W.A.S.P. update**

Michelle — Tue, 11 Aug 2009 05:36:52 +0000

Dane – I tend to just refer to them by their first names amongst my family, or go “so-and-so’s kids”. But I call them my second cousins, but they call me auntie. Which is kinda awkward since the oldest of the three is only 6 years younger than I am.

Heather – I don’t have that much discipline. In August of last year, I sat down and made 5 theme headers in advanced so all I had to do was update colours and such. I didn’t use all 5 of them, but I did use a couple. But umm, I’m kind of feeling lazy this year.

I got a commission from someone at work to make them an amigurumi (the little bomb critter from Mario). Which is pretty cool. Luckily, it’s pretty small and was pretty fast to work up, so I got it done while watching tv tonight. I’m going to be bringing it into work tomorrow. Of course, I told my family and my dad just goes “… People buy that kind of stuff?” and my mom just goes “People buy a lot of stuff, just because you think it’s useless doesn’t mean that everyone else thinks that way”.

Work was pretty okay. A lot of data entry today. A lot of “…” and “Is that a 4 or is it a 9? again. Oh well… I have meetings to attend on Wednesday… Which will apparently last all day long (whoot?). I’m just so excited. I can hardly contain it. But work’s been going okay, I guess. I spend more time at my desk entering in numbers (oh, the excitement!) then talking to people nowadays. Which is good, because I’m being productive. But at the same time, I’m not being very social at all… The only people I talked to (beyond ‘hello’ and ‘have a nice day’) were my supervisor (who told me about the meetings) and my mom. Like, for real, that’s about it. I didn’t even see the boyfriend at work today and there was probably a 30 to 60 minute time period when we were both in the building. This is getting depressing…

And because it’s getting depressing, I’m going to stop writing right about here. The W.A.S.P. situation hasn’t changed too much – it’s been raining all day so there hasn’t been a wasp in sight! But we’re sure they’re just hiding somewhere… Where it’s a touch warmer. Or they’ve figured out a way to get back into their nest. Ew.

Oh, and when you’re wearing a yellow and brown striped shirt (known as my ‘bee shirt’ at work… ugh) and coworker asks you “What’s the buzz today?” (that would be from A – the pervy older male coworker), the appropriate response is “Leave me the f**k alone. Please and thank you.”

Especially after having another pile of folders worth of work dumped onto your desk.

Just saying.

* I heart Care Bears (probably always will). My favourite is Funshine Bear, but I get called ‘Cheer Bear’ and ‘Grumpy Bear’ a lot at work because I have shirts with those bears on them (and yes, I am 19). But D gave me a new nickname (Work-a-lot Bear).

** Missed the previous couple of entries? W.A.S.P. = unWelcomed Annoying Stinging Parasites & … and W.A.S.P. part deux

Family dinner, lazy Sunday and W.A.S.P. part deux

Michelle — Mon, 10 Aug 2009 05:41:41 +0000

New layout for August (a few days late, but ehhhh, at least it’s not an August layout in September?). Also, there’s a new header and colour scheme up over at Little Miss Sophie.

I spent a couple hours at volunteering today, which was fun. We did trivia questions. I knew none of the sports question, but the one that I did get (that no one else got) was “What is the name of a fish that has both lungs and gills?”. I learned about it in my vertebrate biology class last year (the answer: Lungfish!). Thank you, university, for teaching me something education and almost practical and useful! The rest of the time was pretty okay, just spent some time playing cards and serving cookies to people.

I did a bit more baking today (more cookies) and I started a thread crochet project that I’m currently cursing at (… because it’s thread crochet). I didn’t get any sewing done today, which was rather disappointing as I had planned on doing it. But my parents decided to have company over (my uncle and aunt). My aunt spent the time during dinner gushing about how well behaved my sisters and I are compared to her grandchildren (who are spoiled hellions, to put it as politely as I can manage it).

The last time we went out for dinner with my aunt and uncle, my cousin and my cousin’s kids, they refused to eat something that *they* wanted to get off of the menu and my aunt (their grandmother) was about to fold and just let them order something else (even though no one wanted what had been previously ordered). So my sister intervened and told them that they would have to split the cost of that dish (it was like $5 from each of the three of them) that they had ordered in order to be allowed to get the second dish. They absolutely balked at the idea of having to “actually” pay for food (that they wanted and then changed their minds!) that they weren’t going to eat. So they opted for eating (the entire dish!) so they wouldn’t have to give up their “hard earned cash” (they don’t do chores and get allowance… and they complain about how difficult it is to be a kid these days, really?!).

And on the W.A.S.P. situation (mentioned yesterday)… Not a whole lot has changed. We’ve set out an empty pop bottle (the 2L variety) with a mixture of honey (smells sweet) with dish detergent and some water. There’s already a few wasps inside. They go in for the sweet smell, but end up getting trapped and dying… Yay for insecticide that’s somewhat non-chemical-filled and somewhat natural! So there’s a few wasps floating around because, well, they’re kinda dead… Don’t worry, we’ll make sure they’ll get a proper burial (a la garbage can – with the lid on the bottle).

W.A.S.P. = unWelcomed Annoying Stinging Parasites

Michelle — Sun, 09 Aug 2009 03:03:19 +0000

My family had excellent entertainment tonight as we watched our neighbour (whom doesn’t talk to us much after some little fiasco involving trees and the municipal government…) randomly spraying water at a tree. Or we thought it was random. Until we also noted that he was wearing a shirt all around his head except for his eyes and was holding onto a long pole and was poking at something. My dad later noticed (when he was outside) that my neighbour was spraying at a hanging wasp nest. At which point, he reminds my sister D and I that we should pipe up whenever we see a wasp nest around our house.

I’m the one who spotted the last 2 (one in a tree – which later got hacked to death – not the lovely silver birch was previously gracing my front yard that I was incredibly pissed off about; and the other that was in the wall of our shed – which turned out to also be infested by ants so the entire thing got dismantled and rebuilt and everything’s kosher now) wasp nests that we had on our property. And then my sister was like “Oh yeah, the other day I saw a few wasps hanging around the car port…”

My father was not impressed. Turns out that there is a wasp nest there (there’s a small hole). Which is now covered with duct tape as a temporary measure. Within 10 minutes, the ‘one or two’ that were hanging around the entrance turned into 10-20 wasps hanging around there. Ick. The problem is that the nest is in the roof of our carport. Which is, well over the width of a standard sedan and well over the length of a standard sedan and is probably about 1.5 feet at the highest point. And the roof? Also hollow. So the nest could be huge. So. Not. Cool.

And I’d love to say that I was able to get photos of the nest entrance or of the wasps, but I’m kind of a chicken that way and I’m not into getting stung by a wasp at all so I left well enough alone. Because, well, I’m sure the wasps would love to use me as a pin cushion… But I’m not into that.

But in other news… Today I made a cutesy little teddy hat for my dolls (there are photos over at Little Miss Sophie!), made cookies (no photos yet – chocolate cookies with white chocolate chunks… Mmm… Baked goods…), went to the bank to deposit my ‘omg, money that I haven’t taken into account for my budget that I suddenly feel the urge to spend but I won’t’ cheque and made tissue-paper dress patterns for doll dresses so I don’t have to continue to print out the same pattern every single time that I want to use them. They’re all currently pinned to the fabrics (that finished drying and I ironed them today) so I’ll be cutting them out, then fray checking everything… then waiting until tomorrow to sew (the bottle says to wait 24 hours, but forum people say that waiting overnight should be fine as well, just a lengthy amount of time). Whoot.