Monday, July 17, 2006
another apartment update
So lately it has been getting extremely hot in our apartment (in the Boston area, it's been in the upper 80s & even 90s for a while now). We already had a small AC (5,200 BTU) in our bedroom (which works great) but then of course every other room in our apartment still felt like a sauna. Probably explains why we hadn't be doing that much cleaning up in the living room, for example, because after just 10 minutes of cleaning and organizing we'd feel like we needed to take a break in the air conditioned room, lest we collapse from heat exhaustion. So on Saturday we went to HomeDepot again and bought a larger air conditioner (8,000 BTUs) for our living room. So now cleaning up that room will be less of a toiling experience. And that way when we finally get a TV in there we will actually want to sit there and watch it. :)
Anyway, it does seem to work pretty well. It takes a while to get started but it does the job. I swear, if weren't for the energy bill, I'd install ACs in every damn room of our house! Especially the kitchen..I have temporarily given up baking, cuz once you turn the oven to bake your pie you essentially begin baking yourself as well. :)
Oh, and about the mice situation...we had thought they were gone, since we no longer found droppings in the kitchen and they weren't going for the traps. However, it turns out they just have been going to a different place! Over the weekend I discovered mouse droppings in the office room (on my Pilates mat! DAMN them!!). What's worse is that they had chewed up my favorite sandals (I had to throw them out). I don't understand why they were in that room, as we never have food in there! ARGH! We ended up spraying the place with that mint+eucalyptus air freshener, which seems to keep the mice away (earlier we had sprayed our kitchen and bedroom with it, and it seems to have worked).
Anyway, it does seem to work pretty well. It takes a while to get started but it does the job. I swear, if weren't for the energy bill, I'd install ACs in every damn room of our house! Especially the kitchen..I have temporarily given up baking, cuz once you turn the oven to bake your pie you essentially begin baking yourself as well. :)
Oh, and about the mice situation...we had thought they were gone, since we no longer found droppings in the kitchen and they weren't going for the traps. However, it turns out they just have been going to a different place! Over the weekend I discovered mouse droppings in the office room (on my Pilates mat! DAMN them!!). What's worse is that they had chewed up my favorite sandals (I had to throw them out). I don't understand why they were in that room, as we never have food in there! ARGH! We ended up spraying the place with that mint+eucalyptus air freshener, which seems to keep the mice away (earlier we had sprayed our kitchen and bedroom with it, and it seems to have worked).
Tuesday, July 11, 2006
update
so Joe and I got back on Friday from San Antonio (we were there for about a week). We actually got a lot done...basically, we found a church, reception site, caterer, and a bakery! so our date is set to be October 13, 2007. Even though that is 459 days away, I still like getting ahead of the planning. Especially since a lot of the nice places book really fast, and since we are out of town we will have very limited times to visit with vendors. the next time we are planning to go over there is probably around thanksgiving, where hopefully we can meet with the bakery and do some cake-tasting (yum!), and to interview some photographers.
anyways, i'm glad we're getting a lot of this stuff done now. this year i won't have very much time since i will be TA'ing in the Fall, and in the following semester I will be writing my thesis.
oh, and about our apartment, the mice seem to have left for the most part..we put some traps out, but still haven't got a single mouse yet.maybe it had something to do with the fact that we didn't leave any food out (we recently bought a set of Lock & Lock containers from QVC). Also, before we left for San Antonio, Joe sprayed the place with a mint+eucalyptus air freshener (we've heard that mice don't like mint). well, whatever keeps them away. I still would like to trap and kill at least one mouse though...it pisses me off that they've outsmarted us each time. The first time we put the regular snap-traps out, and they ate the bait without setting it off. Then we got two kinds of covered mousetraps, where the mouse actually has to go into the thing (and then it sets off the trap which kills it). Well the other day we discovered that on one of the traps a mouse had chewed through the top of the trap, and had somehow disabled the trapping mechanism! DAMN, these mice are smart!! Makes Joe and I feel like idiots...I mean if 2 MIT engineers can't figure out how to trap some teeny mice, what hope is there?!
anyways, i'm glad we're getting a lot of this stuff done now. this year i won't have very much time since i will be TA'ing in the Fall, and in the following semester I will be writing my thesis.
oh, and about our apartment, the mice seem to have left for the most part..we put some traps out, but still haven't got a single mouse yet.maybe it had something to do with the fact that we didn't leave any food out (we recently bought a set of Lock & Lock containers from QVC). Also, before we left for San Antonio, Joe sprayed the place with a mint+eucalyptus air freshener (we've heard that mice don't like mint). well, whatever keeps them away. I still would like to trap and kill at least one mouse though...it pisses me off that they've outsmarted us each time. The first time we put the regular snap-traps out, and they ate the bait without setting it off. Then we got two kinds of covered mousetraps, where the mouse actually has to go into the thing (and then it sets off the trap which kills it). Well the other day we discovered that on one of the traps a mouse had chewed through the top of the trap, and had somehow disabled the trapping mechanism! DAMN, these mice are smart!! Makes Joe and I feel like idiots...I mean if 2 MIT engineers can't figure out how to trap some teeny mice, what hope is there?!
