About 8 pm on June 14th, I was going to write the June 14th EO. I had my EO decided, and I had the time to write – and most importantly, I felt like writing it. However, I try to publish one EO each day – except when I am late – so you get a daily dose. You, know, “Daily EO”. So I decided to put it off until June 15th morning.
I had a great thing to tell you about: Postcrossing. Harkening back to your days in grade school, Postcross has improved upon and merged the antique and annoying chain letters with pen pals. It works like this. I register at their site, request an address (or 2 or 3) and then send postcards to the address. When the recipient gets the card, he takes the Postcross ID number off the card and enters it on the website. I then get “credit” for sending a card and my address will now show up when someone else requests a postcard. On your profile, you can state what kind of postcards you like, or stamps, or what you want to know about. If you want to correspond with your Postcross recipient, you obviously can, or you can just have a brief contact.
To date, there have been 12 million postcard sent and there are currently ~370,000 postcards in transit. It certainly seems to have to transcended the fizzling out effect in chain letters. I like the idea of touching someone’s life briefly across the world. Not one to do anything small, I requested 5 addresses (the max I can have at the beginning) and had addresses from Finland, Russia, USA, Hong Kong and The Netherlands. Despite the lack of postcard selection in Huntsville and the $1.80 cost to send the card, I am happy with today’s activity. I am so excited to receive my postcards when they do come.
But, that is the EO runnerup. You never know what is going to happen.
Last evening, Emile was at poker night. I spent the evening reading and watching West Wing episodes. Our cat – who normally wants nothing more than a warm body to curl up with – was on patrol in the basement. Beavis is quite an accomplished and patient mouse killer. Despite his front claw removal, he catches quite a few. Then he bats them around for a torturous couple of hours. The mouse eventually dies of terror and exhaustion. But if there is a mouse in the house, Beavis lets us know. Instead of retiring for the evening, he parks himself in the mouse area and waits. For hours. In the morning, he eats his breakfast, and then sleeps the day away after his night shift.
So, when Beavis starts the patrol, we know we have a mouse somewhere. Given that our house is for sale, we put down traps right away. Last thing you need is a mouse running through during a showing. Now, I don’t mind mice – I don’t really want to share my house with them – but they don’t scare me that much. However, I don’t like dead things – and Emile being less squeamish than me, is the trap checker and resetter.
We live in a 3 bedroom house – it’s a two-story with a rec room, 3rd bedroom, powder room, and laundry room in the basement. The main entrance is through the basement. Because of the temporary nature of our living arrangements, 1/2 of our furniture and things were not unpacked. Instead, we furnished the upstairs and then filled the 3rd bedroom and rec room with the extra furniture, belongings, etc. Essentially, the basement is used only for entrance, laundry and storage, and I rarely go downstairs unless I need something from the boxes (maybe a couple times a month).
Emile arrived home from poker about 11:30 pm. He was tired and nearing the end of a long week at work (his last week). He was going to make his way up stairs (to where we generally live), but remembered he needed to check the trap in the rec room that he put down. And reset it if necessary.
Emile found the trap in a puddle of water. He thought at first that Beavis was so intent in catching the mouse that he used the floor as his toilet. But that is unlike Beavis and it certainly didn’t carry the familiar scent. Emile called me down to look at it, and we quickly discovered that the rec room didn’t just have a small puddle of water – it was saturated along the edges of the room – floor and walls.
We pulled all of our things out of the wet area, and found that although the damage to the walls and floor is extensive (it will all have to be replaced), our furniture was only superficially wet. The only thing of concern was the leaves for our dining room table (Mom! BREATHE! They are okay after being dried off this morning). Rob (our friendly landlord) came over right away, and we got all the furniture up on foam pieces, dried off everything, and in general found the damage seemed limited to the house itself.
If we didn’t have mice, Beavis wouldn’t have let us know. If the house wasn’t listed, we may have let Beavis have his mouse fun for a couple days. If Emile wasn’t the reliable sort he is, he may have waited to check the trap. If Emile didn’t enter that room, the water would have been undetected for several days (we are going to be away this weekend also). If the water was unnoticed for several days, then our boxes and wooden furniture would have sustained damage. If unnoticed, the open house scheduled on Sunday would have likely not garnered too many offers as viewers trudged through water.
June 14th, 2012 Extra-Ordinary: With a nail, the kingdom was saved.
June 14th, 2012 Runner-up: Sending Postcards!!
The Daily EO 
2 thoughts on “The Daily EO: June 14th, 2012”