Well, as of yesterday, Simon returned home and took the husband with him. By the end of Simon’s visit, Kitty was getting tired of having another person around the house, and I’m sure the random opening/closing of windows to let in/prevent cold air got to her as well. At any rate, it was a fun visit with Simon and I hope he gets to come up for a while this summer.

The water thing. Well, they’ve returned the pile of dirt to the trench in the front yard, but I have no idea if they’ve finished whatever they were doing or not. I figure I’ll ask when I drop off the rent check here in a little bit. I am also going to ask about the electricity. Lately, it has gotten dangerously retarded.

See, it’s fairly normal for our lights to dim a bit when something kicks on, and we’ve gotten pretty used to it, but over the weekend, it started to get somewhat extreme. The lights would become excessively bright for a few seconds only to drop to normal or lower, or they would flicker down to almost extinguished along with every other appliance in the house. Computers were getting shut off or reset, the refrigerator was kicking on and off at random. The air conditioner got killed in one of the lower drains of energy, and yesterday evening for several hours, the living room lights were only at half their usual brilliance. I shut damn near everything off–all the computers but Buster, the air conditioner, almost all the lights, several clocks, etc.–and even went so far as to shut off power strips and unplug many others. It got to where just Buster, the upstairs alarm clock, the bathroom nightlight and the living room light were on. That was it. And yet the spikes and dips continued. I have no idea, and I plan on questioning the landpeople about it. I’d like to be able to work on-line for more than ten minutes before the router and modem get shut off. I’d also like to be able to cook stuff in the microwave for the usual amount of time rather than having to triple it like I did last night. I also don’t want to wonder if I’m going to get zapped by anything exploding thanks to psychotic power surges. Stupid electricity.

So I’m going to spend tonight with minimal electrical doodads operating, probably just enough to get a pile of papers graded and get through some more Star Trek: Voyager. After that, I’m going to bed. Without the AC, my allergies act up and I don’t like sitting around with a headache; I’d rather just sleep it off while the allergy medicine knocks me out. Here’s to a fun-filled evening.