If I Were a Carpenter (Bee)

Imagine if you will that you saw a pile of fine sawdust near the support beam of the stairs leading down from your deck. Next, imagine that you heard faint, pained singing coming from the direction of that pile. The closer you approached the pile, the louder the song became. Until you finally recognized the melody was this:

Drawn closer to the song, you realized that it came from a perfectly circular hole carved into in the support beam. It's as if an itinerant handyman with a circle cutter stopped by to make a hobo sign on part of your house. Well, if you take out all of the stuff I've written up to this point involving Tim Hardin's classic song, that's what we discovered this weekend at our house. We have carpenter bees!

Actual photo of the circular hole made by the bees

Despite this beam being treated with stain, the bees made themselves right at home. According to the ever useful about.com, the next step to take to avoid structural damage is to apply insecticide to the entryway.

Comments

Human Resources: Featured Sci-Fi on Wattpad

Some exciting news since I've last posted anything. My novel, Human Resources , has been a fe atured science fiction story on Wattpad! It's hard to believe it's been over 10 years since I wrote the story, and almost 11 since I self-published it - starting with iUniverse in October 2015. It's also hard to believe, given my career choices, that I've not done a whole lot to market the book outside of social media and word of mouth but I think I'll save that energy for my next burst of creativity. Anyway, please check out the book at the link above and let me know your thoughts either here or in the comments on Wattpad!

Reflections of a Commuter in the New Year

Every month my wife and I try to give each other one afternoon off. It's meant to be pure discretionary time, spent on doing whatever you want to do: take yourself to lunch, go to a movie, relax at the library, etc..The only rule is really is that each of us should get out of the house. More often than not we spend at least a portion of the time doing at least one chore. Yesterday was my day off and I kicked it off by going to the car wash. Look at that grime fly. When all was said and done, I spent the afternoon at the library planning out my week and reviewing some goals I have for 2014. This morning on my way to work I filled my gas tank. When I went to enter this week's numbers, I realized that today marks the completion of the first full year that I have been tracking mileage. Take a look at what a year it's been: 2006 Hyundai Sonata Mileage driving to/from Atlanta from Buford, GA Prior to moving to Atlanta, I used to walk to the train and walk to work...

Kids' Reward Charts and the Treasure Box

Being a parent to two children under 4 and caring a great deal about how our kids turn out with respect to manners and courtesy, I am so glad my lovely wife devised a daily rewards system ritual for the kids. The Process The kids need to behave a certain way consistently throughout the day and perform specific chores in order to get stickers. These stickers go into a chart or grid and at the end of the day we review and provide feedback on how the day went. If they fill up their charts, then they get to pick anything they want from the "Treasure Box". The Template Each child gets his or her own chart. The tasks or behaviors are "SMART" (Specific, Measurable, Attainable, Realistic, and Time-bound). Don't worry, we aren't trying to micromanage our children like the " anal retentive chef ". Here's a link to a PDF of our two kids' reward charts if you're interested in trying this yourselves. The Review Process We tre...

Walldren's World

Search This Blog