wayner

I have ants in my backyard. What started off as one anthill in the back has now become one close to the steps and a new one starting by the air conditioner.

This, of course, means war.

Unfortunately, it’s more like Vietnam then WWII. I’ve tried liquid ant killer, ant traps and powder. None of which have had any effect. I think it’s actually feeding them.

I’ve placed the various ant killers next to the various entrances and covered them with a flower pot to ensure that full “ant-on-poison” action.

The little buggers and taunting me with it. They actually enveloped the ant traps into their home. And the powder disappears with no drop in ant numbers.

I’m starting to get sick of it. This afternoon I decided to try the boiling water technique. I actually took the kettle outside to boil a few pots worth to try it out. I’m experimenting with the smallest anthill first to see if there’s any problem with killing the grass. (The biggest one is at the base of our only tree/shrub and I’m trying not to kill it.) I dug down a little bit to try and get the water as close as possible and then soaked the little buggers. You can actually see the water drain down into the little paths in the soil.

We’ll have to see what happens over the next few days to see if it actually works.

It’s just started to rain heavily here now, with the bowl shaped hole I left I’m guessing it’s going to funnel even more (cold) water down the pipes. I wonder if that will effect the accuracy of my results. Like, if the ants do die off in that colony, was it my hot water, or the large amount of cold water?

With my luck the little bastards are building an ant water theme-park complete with swimming pools and water slides. *sigh*

We think know there’s a slight mold problem in the bathroom. And we think that it might contribute to Anita’s asthma problems. It seems that Dirty Guy must have made a habit of getting water over the floor ’cause the bottom of the vanity is damaged.

Obviously we want to get this fixed, but we also don’t know how big of a job this is going to be. Once this gets started the problem could turn out to be a lot worse then we think.

Right now, I’m operating under the assumption that if we’re going to get the bathroom fixed, we might as well go all the way. It’s a small space, so how much could it cost? (Right?) I’m only brainstorming at the moment so I’m not paying (too) much attention to cost. I’m not planning on covering the walls in gold leaf, but I’m not ignoring an idea because I’m afraid it’s too expensive. Later when I actually start working out the cost I’ll start trimming.

I started thinking about decorative tile in the shower and I’ve been hooked on a constellation theme. The one thing I want most for my house is for it not to be the same as everyone else’s. So when I was thinking about what to do with the tile I started to think about how to make it different. Tiles immediately make me think of pixels and Pixel Art. Depending on the size of the tile you could have a resolution to make some detail in a image. But, while cool, I’m afraid it might be too difficult to pull off and we may never be able to decide on a image to use.

So I was wondering how to simplify even further… what could I do with less colours? For some reason I started to think of star charts. Nice and simple, take a solid colour wall, add in different colour points of the most recognizable constellations and then you have something that’s both different and interesting. The constellations will have to be spaced fairly far apart so they don’t run together visually so we might need to use a small tile for it. I’ve also pondered how to continue this theme in to the rest of the, very small, bathroom. The idea of tiling all the walls has occurred to me but I’m afraid that if I use the traditional colours of the classic star charts you think about from movies: dark blue for the “sky”, yellow for the connecting lines between stars, and silver for the star itself, then the room might be drowned in blue. But then there’s also the chance of inverting the colours, making the walls white and the stars blue.

Something I stumbled across tonight seems like a cool idea. Commeleon prints images on tiles for you. Anything that could be printed to a printer can be printed to tile. Obviously, this opens up a lot of possibilities, but to stay focused on the original one for now I could have the classic star chart with not only the stars but the super-imposed sketches as well. Or maybe a full shot of the milky way stretched around the room. Tho all of this is probably too damn expensive.

One last thing I can’t get out of my head is the idea of a night-light for the bathroom made from low-voltage LED’s in the ceiling. Once again in the shape of a constellation. At least I think it’d be cool.

This is a rough mock up of my, um, “most realistic” idea so far:

So today is one year of owning a house.

There are still walls to be painted, rooms to be finished, boxes to be opened and ideas to be implemented.

But it looks like I’ll have plenty of time for that. “Freedom 55″ will be a mortgage paid off. (‘Cause I’m sure as hell not going to be able to retire….)