In other news this week:

1. Ants invaded my bed for two nights. That was unpleasant. Waking up because you have ants in your hair is not a good way to wake up. They freaked out the new cat, too, who has been sleeping on my head. She saw one on the pillow and jumped straight up. It would have been amusing had it not been *my* pillow.  This house is built on the roots of an old walnut orchard.  Ants live in the roots.  They like to come into the house when it rains.

2. I am such a spaz. I just had a good cry over someone [no idea who they were, I got there via a damned google ad in my gmail] who built an expensive new mission style house and then bought and transplanted some big old grandad Manzanillo olive trees to the property. The part that made me cry was happy – I’m always so sad when the old olive trees around here get bulldozed down to make room for progress. So somebody is saving them, somewhere. And probably making big bucks on it.

3. We get to go see live music tomorrow night. Mark Hummel, Kenny Neal, and John Fucking Mayall [w00t!11!!] at the Sierra Nevada Brewery Big Room, one of my ATF venues for live music. I am even going to take the last John Mayall CD I bought and have him autograph it, fan-grrl that I am. It’s going to be great, even if it is on a school night. Luckily I’m working from home on Tuesday so I don’t have to get up too early.

4. God, but it’s gloomy here today. Raining off and on, but not too too hard. We finally cut that tree up that fell during the big storm earlier this month. Bob got to try out his new chainsaw. He cut, I dragged branches over to the cement pad to await further chopping and and hauling. Didn’t take all that long. Couple of hours, maybe. The whole time we were doing it the hummingbirds were chiding us loudly for upsetting the status quo. They’ve been very happy with the tree down, it gave excellent perching places convenient to the feeder.

Last week I was looking out the kitchen window at the tree and a really beautiful big woodpecker or maybe flicker was there, not six feet away. It was pecking away (sideways) at the downed trunk. I’ve seen them numerous times on the far side of the yard but could never get a good look. See, now I’m sorry we’re disposing of the tree.

Bob’s been out there fighting to get the stump out for the last three hours. I went and helped push until I saw stars, with no effect. I’m all for tying it to Andrew’s truck bumper and giving it a yank but Bob says that’s a good way to have a weird accident and he’d just as soon not have to redo the siding on the house. Spoilsport.

Muddy yard, cutting up the fallen tree