Wonderful. Dragon*Con ends and everything goes to hell in a handbasket. And it didn't start out badly, either.

We watched "Frances" warily all weekend. Her main effect over the four days was shaking the trees with a perpetual rattle and providing a nice breeze. The clouds came in on Sunday and hung high, not threatening, but watchful. We were in the house, safe and cozy, by the time the rain began Monday night.

Sometime around six, something happened in Atlanta. Every story I've heard on the news--trees falling, power dying, etc.--happened around six a.m. Our power went out for two hours. It stayed cool in the house, even with the windows closed, and wasn't much of a problem.

About 8:10 I called my supervisor. "Are the lights on there?" Yes, she said, so I went on in; the 40-minute drive lasted 75 minutes.

The lights were sorta on. Mostly the building was dark, the computers wouldn't even boot up, and the A/C was dead. One microwave in the break room was working, so I had my breakfast and read a book. At eleven they told us to go home.

With my advanced case of bookstore attraction, I ended up at Kudzu, the remaindered bookstore on Peachtree Industrial Boulevard. They had enough power to light three banks of fluorescents, the "open" sign, and the cash register. While I was there even that died. I gave them a check. I also stopped by Borders for Best of British and bought Sudden Sea [1938 hurricane book] with coupons.

The plan was to go home, toss clothes in the dryer, do some other tidying, then sit with my books and watch my Goodies DVD. I had watched the little restoration short on the DVD, and had wandered to the computer to see if the BBC had finally gotten smart and decided to release a set for Dave Allen.

I got as far as typing "dav" into the search block when I saw an ant on the keyboard. I killed it. Oh, well, ants get in.

Except there was another ant, and another, and another. I grabbed a good flashlight and found the damn things parading up and down the feet of my computer desk and into my wastebasket. (What was in the wastebasket that attracted them? Dunno–we'd emptied it for the trash men the night before, which I expect means they were in the house earlier and we didn't know it, perhaps even before I sprayed the front door on Sunday.)

Mildly put, I went berserk. I put Pidge's cage upstairs in the spare room, shut Willow in the kitchen, and grabbed the can of Raid (because it was raining and Raid has petroleum in it) to spray both doors outside. The breeze was blowing every which way, so I had Raid on me when I came in. Without touching anything else, I then got the container of Ortho (which has a low scent that disappears eventually) and sprayed both the glass doors and the other door, the baseboards between outside doors, the perimeter of the parquet near the glass doors (where I guess they got in; I couldn't find the ant trail to the outside), the feet of the computer desk, the base of the bookcase next to the desk, behind the sofa, under the sofa, behind the phone stand and the printer, behind the computer. And then I washed hands quickly, undressed, ran upstairs and had to shower again.

Once redressed, I decided that since it was raining pretty steadily and I wouldn't need to water it down, I would go outside again and spread ant granules around the side door and on the lawn near the glass doors;. Finally it was over, I could wash again, and relax-

Willow was at the glass doors staring at me. She'd slipped under the gate while I was outside. All right, all right, think...if the Ortho wasn't quite dry I could just wash her feet...

I told her to stay. Completely misinterpreting my being upset, she instead rolled on her back. Arrrrgh! So I had to carry her upstairs, give her a bath, then lock her in the room with Pidge while I washed again and then vacuumed downstairs and disposed of the vacuum cleaner bag in case it had ants in it.

By this time I was knackered and my back was one mass of pain. I collapsed on the futon in the spare room and stared glaze-eyed at the television. I felt chastened about my ant furor as I watched people who had trees fallen on their homes--but damn, I hate those lousy little creepers. Finally both Pidge and I dozed off until James came home. I had called him sometime during this debacle and he brought home wonton soup and fried rice. I was so exhausted all I could get down was the soup,

I stayed upstairs with Pidge for the rest of the night and James sat for a bit, too. Since there's no cable upstairs, we were stuck with network. We watched the highly touted animated thing, Father of the Pride, which we'd missed the premiere of last week. Actually we missed nothing. This show is really stupid. Afterwards, this show Scrubs that has been such a good goer for NBC came on. I'd never seen it. I watched for five minutes before I changed channels. If this is what passes for humor these days I don't want to watch it. I can't believe how unbelievably bad it was. And this is a "hit" series!

Now I'm back at work. The lights work, the computers work–the A/C is still dead. When you're in an inner office with six other people, this sucks. There is no air circulating in here and it's 85° at my desk. I feel like I'm smothering.

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. . . . . noted and logged by Linda at 3:19:00 PM

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