Infestation

Here's my story: today I went to work as usual and ate my lunch, left work with my first paycheck (they'd been deposited back on the mainland until now). Went and deposited the check, got some cash and treated myself to a shave ice. Sat on the beach and read until paddling practice, stopped by a friend's to watch a movie, and got home. In doing my evening ritual, I go to take the leftover food and ice pack out of my lunch box, which, mind you, is a 6-pack Rubbermaid cooler. I open my cooler and find not only the few slices of gibone I have left but two dozen little bugs. You can ask me what they were, but I have no idea. All I know is that they can't swim--they met their untimely death in the kitchen sink. Now this episode in and of itself is a little disturbing (I decided to throw away the last of the fruit and the chips I had left--I reuse the baggies) but what really baffles me is how they got in there in the first place. First of all, it's a cooler that, for the most part, is pretty tightly sealed. If you turn the suckers upside down and hold the top, they hold water. In recounting the day in the life of my lunch box, it spends the majority in a drawer in my boss's office, comes out at lunch time (at which time there were zero little bugs) and spent the rest of the day closed in my passenger's seat of my Jeep. The difference in today as opposed to other days: very little. Yesterday was much the same though I opened it at the beach. The only difference I can tell was that it may have sat in my car for an additional hour or two today and I was having a really good day prior to this incident, so of course the fates have decided that enough was enough for today. The other disturbing factor in this equation is the origin of said bugs. One would have to assume the little buggers came from my car. No matter how I look at that statement, it's not good.

Just yesterday I heard a story about cockroaches in a rental car. Awesome. I wonder if I can get my car fumigated, which, by the way, is quite an ordeal. Just the other day one of the neighbor's houses was wrapped up tightly to look like a circus tent--red and yellow stripes--to rid the place of termites. Not kidding. I'm guessing gassing the car would be easier. I'll have to conduct some experiments to ensure that the passenger's seat is indeed the source of the bugs before I do anything drastic.

In other news, I liked paddling more today. I got put in seat #2 which is the yelling seat. I counted to 14 (so everyone else doesn't have to), yelled 'hut', and after the 15th stroke everyone changed sides they were paddling on. Additionally, I was the pace setter for seats 4 and 6 (since I'm in the front and we paddle on the same side) though I got my pace from 1. So I had to watch her paddling on the other side of the boat, count, and paddle (I'm still working on my form). A lot of things for me to focus on--I really liked the added responsibility. Today was the first day I can say I really liked it (but then again, it's only day 3).

The girls from paddling that work at Syngetna were really friendly once agian and we exchanged numbers. Kristin's from Ontario and Leslie's from Ames, of all places. Anyway, I'm excited to have new friends and new opportunities to meet people. Tomorrow, if I get off of work early enough, I think I'll try and catch a ride to sailing. Not sure what it entails, but I can't wait to find out!