Yikes!

There was all kinds of clusterfrak on the other side of Operation Empty Shore House. Both my uncle and cousin hre full speed ahead perfectionists who butted heads the whole time, disagreeing on what to keep or throw. And then sent away most of their helpers before they were finished.

It resulted in my 85yo uncle driving a UHaul truck from Newark to the Catskills getting in around 1am.

All's well that ends well.. I hope.

Annoyingly, my neighbors have a yellow jacket nest in their eaves, and I told them (it's the back of their house but the front of mine) and they said they got someone out who told them it was yellow jackets, but "they'll all fly away in about six weeks or so, and we are going to wait until that happens to seal it up". Ugh.

So, if you get stung does that mean you can sue the pants off them? Negligence and all that. (IANAL)

I use to be terrified of bees, wasps, hornets, etc. Years of gardening have made me fond of bees and tolerant of mud dauber wasps. But yellow jackets still need to die.

I'm rather fond of whatever type of bee/wasp thingie it is that eats meat. When we had cookouts, we'd put out the steak scraps and watch the wasps neatly snip off bits and fly off with them.

I helped a girl deal with her panic about bees at an SCA event by telling her to just sit still as a bee flew around her, that it was looking for food and once it knew she wasn't anything edible it would fly off and look elsewhere. She was thrilled when it went off after a couple of seconds and we watched them fly around for a bit. Unfortunately, when she tried to share her triumph and the bees with her mother, Mom shrieked and began flailing around at the bees. No, she wasn't allergic, it seemed to

... to be just a case of overreaction to nature.

stupid touch screens.

Praise be all things educational. School is back in session.

From the radio, so no link available: There is "an active shooter" in Fort Lee, Virginia.

Do we have anyone in that area? (Edited to add: Fort Lee is near Petersburg, south of Richmond.)

Heh. It'll be interesting to see how that shows up on my sleep quality stats.

Jawbone Up data shows how many people woke up during Sunday's Napa earthquake

Heh. Yeah, I'm in that blue spike, my parents are in the "barely registered" Santa Cruz, although they definitely woke up. I wonder if it got false "wake up" data from the shaking itself. I don't know about Jawbone, but my iPhone app tells I'm awake by the vibrations of the bed.

Did I tell y'all a bee landed on me at the art show a coupleweeks ago? Just landed on my arm. I stood as still as I could muttering "please don't sting me" and it just walked around grooming itself for a minute or two and then flew off. It was interesting, I had never observed that behavior before.

Propos of nothing: I am weirdly outraged at the news that Burger King might buy Tim Horton. That just seems wrong.

Stay safe, Virginians.

I've never been stung by a bee in my life and it's always been fun to watch them amble from flower to flower. Wasps, however, get the flyswatter or hornet spray as applicable. (Dad's actually deathly allergic to wasp stings, so we've always had a kill first and ask questions later policy with them.)

Dammit, I forgot to bring a knife for my avocado.