an (too) exciting night

so i'm feeling kind of sick right now. i have whatever head cold is going around now that winter has set in. my roommate has been painting her room, so there's a mattress for her to sleep on sitting on the floor of my room upstairs. last night, as usual, we headed to bed around midnight. i quickly discovered i couldn't breathe at all, laying down, so i made my way down to the reclining couch downstairs.

about 30 minutes later, i hear thudding upstairs. and then roommie appears downstairs, and exclaims, "there's a mouse in your room." oh, dear. i quietly ask, "are you sure? like you actually saw the mouse, its eyes, it's little nose?" roommie confirms that she did actually see the mouse. so she proceeds to go to sleep in her paint-fume infested room instead.

about 30 minutes later, i decide to return to my room. i'm not getting any sleep, and just want to lay down. i'm a little freaked about the mouse, but it's not likely it will end up on my bed, so i should be ok.

so i fall asleep. i wake about 3:00 a.m., having to blow my nose, which i do, loudly. i lay my head back down on my pillow, and hear some noise. uh, oh. so i freeze, thinking that perhaps i can hear where the little mouse is hiding. all of a sudden, "twang!" i hear my guitar string move. that is not natural.

so i flip on the light, and tiptoe over to the window, where my guitar is leaning against a curtain. slowly, i pull back the guitar, looking for the mouse. nothing.

hmm. can it be? is it possible? could the mouse be IN my guitar? so i pick up the guitar & shake it a bit. sure enough, there's some thudding in the guitar that sounds like it could be a rodent.

so i quickly try to figure out what to do. clearly the mouse is contained, for the moment. so it would be good to get the awful critter out of my room. but what to do next . . . ? how do i get it to stay in there until morning? or how do i get it out in a place that's not in my house?

so i walk downstairs to roommie's room. i open the door. "ah, the mouse is in my guitar. what do i do?" awakening from a dead sleep, roommie very rationally suggests that i take it outside & dump it out. so i set down the guitar, put on my coat. at this time, dog decides that he would also like to go outside. so he jumps down from roommie's bed, and plants himself by the door.

so i'm putting on my shoes, stepping out onto a little porch, trying to open the outside door, close the inside door, let the dog out, and hold the guitar in my hand. all of a sudden "plop!"... the mouse jumps out and runs down a little hole in the porch.

i return to roommie's room and say "the mouse has taken this opportunity to jump out of the guitar." and proceed to let the dog out, where he romps in the snow.

i make it back to bed by about 3:30. the next morning, roommie asks, "was i imagining it, or did you come to my room in the middle of the night and tell me the mouse was in your guitar?"

yep. sure did.

really delayed life update

i passed the bar exam... yay! last night i had a bonfire where i burned up all my old bar exam study materials. it was quite a sight to behold. there were a few times when i was afraid that some of the papers were going to blow away and start a forest on fire. it took at least 2 hours to burn all the paper. i had some great friends there to help me celebrate. so i'm done. i never have to go to school again. nice to know, though i'll probably study again eventually.

in other news, my heater's circuit board is shot. during the bar exam, you may recall that i was attempting to move and teach classes, etc. so as i was switching over my accounts, i signed up for an appliance service plan. you can't get out of it for a year. total rip-off.

or not. turns out for me, it will be quite a lot cheaper to pay the $20/month for 12 months than to pay for a service call on a Sunday & a new circuit board.

so my bar-exam stupor/stupidity has turned out to be a blessing, after all.

and tomorrow's Veteran's Day so i don't have to work. instead, i'll be meeting with a former professor attempting to get the non-profit's 501(c)(3) paperwork completed. one day at a time, i guess

closing day

i bought a house today.

it's a big old farmhouse-type structure in the middle of the city. it's a long, long house. it's so spread out that you could have a lot of people living here and you would never feel it. it has an attic that smells like my grandma's house (actually, i think it smells like every one's grandma's house...)

it's been wonderfully remodeled so that i really didn't have to do anything to it to move in. eventually i would like to undo a lot that's been done so that it's closer to the original, but i'm not sure that's actually going to happen. i have so many other priorities. but at least i have the option, if i want it.

i'm so glad i moved in here 2 months ago. i would not have made it if i'd had to move this week. there's just too much else going on.

it was kind of fun for me to read the note and the mortgage (now you KNOW i'm soon to be a lawyer). it sort of brought alive the whole process. i am, of course, now concerned that it gets recorded properly...

small things

i found the light switch to my garage today.

this may not seem like a big deal, but it is to me. i've moved into an old house, and it's a little quirky. i've been here for 2 weeks, and never was able to figure out how to turn on the garage light. i had just figured that it was burned out, but it was so high up that i hadn't tried to change it yet. so imagine my surprise when i tried to turn on the hall light (to shine out into the garage) and finally found the right switch.

yes, this is the type of thing that gets me excited these days. since all my time is spent studying and working, it's the small things that make me smile.