Butcher, baker, and candlestick maker - and one uninvited guest.

All came over yesterday. And all were late! Really it was the insulation estimate guy, the window bar installers, and the plumber. The insulation guy said that his company didn't do my kind of attic and referred me to the group I had already spoken to. The window guys did a great job (pictures soon), though I kind of wish the bars had been painted with a matte finish. Should I have tipped them? I hope not. But I did give them water. And the plumber guy was really nice and really thorough (it turns out my chimney is clay lined, yay! - though the seams aren't perfect - not so yay), and will give me multiple quotes for my oil to gas conversion in a week.

And there was an uninvited bug guest. A big one in the basement. I missed it with the Raid (b/c I refused to go down there without Erin backing me up - yes, I know I'm a wuss), but did spray it where I thought he might be, causing my clean laundry to smell like Raid. Apparently to no avail, since Erin spotted him the next morning in the kitchen. At least, I hope it was him. One is enough. Ew. Think it might be time to call the exterminators again, and then put down some bait traps in the basement...

Go AWAY bugs!

We saw another waterbug on Friday. There was some screaming involved, I admit it. I really really hate those things. But the cat had spotted this one and was kind of playing with it, so at least it wasn't moving too quickly... Ick. I called an exterminator. He came this morning at 8 am (so early!), and I learned waaaaaay too much about waterbugs. He also had some comments to make about my columns downstairs, and the termites. Why does nothing ever get fixed without creating more things to worry about fixing?

One of the things he said was that if you don't use a sink/drain for a while, the water evaporates out of the trap, and the buggles come in through there. This piece of info provided the sharp prod I needed to actually call the plumber to fix Erin's sink - don't want any more entrances for those uninvited guests! He comes on Monday morning. He's also fixing the leak on the expansion tank and the weird pipe in the funny little kitchen room...

Have to admit, it was kind of odd to have someone fix something in the house without any involvement from me. A little bit nice, too ;)