Before blaming one’s internet connectivity problems on one’s spouse who insists on running a Windows 98SE box with no virus protection on it, always consider that the ages old modem you access the internet with may, in fact, be faulty.

The cable guy just left. We now have a nice, new, tiny Ambit U10C018 modem. I didn’t do any speed test with the old one, so I don’t have numbers to compare, but perceptually, I am surfin’ the ‘net blazingly fast. Yeah! It works! And the cable guy managed to swap out the modems without losing all my email addresses and email (which happened the last time)!

Life is good.

Life will be better when I finally get some damn sleep. Just as I decided to lay down on the couch and grab a nap, the phone rang and then the cable guy was here. He was here forever too, which is a good thing. He checked all the lines, even the main one out on the street, and he wouldn’t leave until the TW system caught up and actually activated my modem and he could verify that everything was working as it should. It’s always nice to get a smart and thorough cable guy.

I guess I am going to go try to grab a nap now. It’s getting pretty late to do so, but I could really use more sleep right now. I don’t think we are going to go out anywhere to eat. I think I’ll convince Lin that, owing to my having to fuss with Time Warner all day and being so damn tired, we need to get fast food tonight. This weekend, maybe I can hit him up for an anniversary dinner at Mongolian BBQ (or somewhere nice but not TOO nice). I need me some sushi soon!

I have some other stuff to tell, but it has to wait until later. My eyes are closing on their own.

When I finally got Lin to install and run an anti-virus and anti-spyware software, we were both a little amazed his computer was clean of everything but one search toolbar installed in IE (which he doesn’t use anymore), and that was one he chose to install (Google or Yahoo or something). You’d think, after years of not running any anti-virus software, that box of his would have been infested!

Lin’s lunch today is significantly more like a real bento box meal. I tried anyway, and I had to avoid being cute with the food. There will be grumbling, of course, because there is not a turkey or peanut butter sandwich to be found anywhere. It doesn’t look like much, but adding up the calories, it’s a pretty healthy meal. Maybe a little lighter than Lin would normally eat, but then what Lin normally eats is the reason for the spare tire and love handles. Change is good.

Two boxes with a whole wheat biscuit, two picks with cucumber, lettuce and cheese (which can’t be seen), some cherry tomatoes, a vinaigrette pasta salad, cocktail weenies, and a boiled egg. Not pictured is the small container with three peanut butter and chocolate chip cookies in it. It all fit, albeit very snuggly, into a standard brown lunch sack. I really need to make Lin a bag for his lunch boxes.

I made all the food but the biscuit and cookies this morning. The pasta, sausages and egg(s) boiled in the same pot while I did the veggies and got everything else together. Took no time at all, and I made enough to pack my own box for lunch today, even though I’ll be going no further than the living room.

The egg would be soooo much better if it was shaped like a bunny or fish or Hello Kitty.

Today started bright and early with a crisis: the cable was non-functioning. Some hours and many phone calls later, I am sitting here with functioning cable TV and internet access. That wasn’t the case a mere hour ago when tech support told me my modem wouldn’t hook-up to my account and reboot, and someone would have to come out. No doubt imagining the lightening bolts of doom blasting from my eyes when she said that, the nice lady on the phone was quick to reassure me that someone could come out today … “between now and 9 pm.” Groovy.

After I used up all my kitchen-organizing energy making Lin’s side of the den look like a human and not a chimpanzee lives in it, I noticed the cable light was no longer flashing on the modem. My internet had miraculously returned.

While I suspect the intermittent issues I have been having recently might be connected to having one of the oldest cable modems in Austin, I now must decide if it is worth it to tie myself to the house all day (and to being awake all day and not terribly involved in any large projects) waiting for the cable guy who will likely just walk in, make chit-chat, poke at a few things and swap out the modem for a newer one, or if I want to call Time Warner back yet again and tell them not to bother, it’s working for now, and I’ll bring my modem in and swap it out myself. Decisions, decisions.

I think I will go about my usual morning internet routines, and then go about my normal day, and should the internet successfully maintain functioning ability until late afternoon — because I know they won’t get here before late afternoon at the earliest — I will call tech support and tell them to forget about it. I most especially don’t want them showing up just as Lin is getting home from work, and being as it is our 16th anniversary today (and Halloween), I might like to get a little bit of sleep today so I can be pleasant later. We might go out to eat or something. You never know.

Oh screw it. After I have my caffeine and make a quick trip to the corner store to replenish my caffeine supplies, I’m going to go ahead and call them and tell them not to bother. If they haven’t called me by then saying they are on the way, I am not going to feel like dealing with it. I’m sleepy and cranky, and all I really wanted to do this morning was move some stuff around in my kitchen and do last night’s dishes. I did not plan on cleaning Lin’s side of the den (which I never, ever mess with, being as it is his stuff), and I most certainly did not plan to sit around during a 13 hour window of opportunity waiting for a phone call to tell me some cable guy is on his way to be ignorant and annoying in my house.

But first … I need me some Dr Pepper.

The problem with possums is … they have a high intelligence. I’m not suggesting they could be brain surgeons or even sentient, but they learn from their experiences, and they later apply that knowledge to new situations. Possums know things. A possum once trapped will not be so easily trapped again, and so on.

Peyton seems to be a possum of age, and as such, he has had at least a few years of life in the city. In fact, I suspect Peyton has had a few years of life in my back yard. I do not believe this is the first winter he has set up house by my hot water heater. It’s entirely possible his residence at Casa de Orb predates ours. The previous owners used that room as their box room. It was filled floor to ceiling with boxes and junk. They hadn’t opened the outer back door in years. They also did not have a dog in the yard, and none of the under-house access points was blocked in any way at all. Peyton would have been living the high life in a small room filled with boxes and a hot water heater … and no pesky humans wanting to do laundry or go through the back door. How annoyed he must be to have to share that space with us!

He’s awake now. He’s been awake for about an hour. The plastic bottles I set in front of the hole to let me know when he crawled out from under the house fell over right before The Daily Show, but the brat won’t go out the door. Unless he has learned to fly, he has not yet left the premises. The layer of cornstarch across the threshold is undisturbed. We are now playing a waiting game, he and I. Will he get hungry enough to leave before I get too tired to keep watch? The answer is “no”.

I have been piecing together evidence: things I noticed in the laundry room from time to time that were odd, but not odd enough to set off any critter-in-the-house alarms. One bit of evidence I had overlooked before was the presence of empty snail shells on the floor. See, we have snails. Owing to our habit of letting nature run wild on our property for the most natural and healthy environment possible, we have a wealth of wildlife all all types.*Note below. As far as snails are concerned, we have a variety of species and, among those species, we have a variety of sizes from the extremely small to the disturbingly large. Large empty snails shells can be found on the floor of my laundry room on a somewhat regular basis. I never, not once, thought anything about it. Now I am finding myself thinking about it.

Possums like to eat snails. They do. Actually, possums like to eat anything living or dead they can get their hands on, being something of a perfect omnivore, but they do like to eat snails. When I was walking the perimeter of the house earlier today, I did remove one of the large concrete blocks to look under the house, and there be snails there. Many snails. Peyton the Possum is sitting under my house, toasting his toes on the pilot light for my hot water heater, and snacking on a rich supply of escargot. Fat … smart … happy. He doesn’t have to go out to find food. It’s crawling right up to him begging to be eaten, and there’s probably more than just snails under there too.

So while I had hoped that leaving the door open would entice him to go out for dinner, all he sees is that the laundry room is really, really cold, so he might as well stay in! Yup, Peyton won’t come out when the door is open, because the room is just as cold and damp as it is outside, and when the door is closed, it does me no good to have him come out, because the only place for him to go is back under the house … or heaven forbid, the attic. Let the battle of wills begin!

Peyton has won for tonight. The den is far too cool with that door open, and it’s making the furnace come on too often, so I will have to close the door soon. Additionally, I would really like to take a nice hot shower, which ensures the hot water heater will be blasting away for a while tonight providing him with a cozy place to hang out. Also, I do not feel like staying up all night listening for the sound of scuttling in the laundry room. All he has to do is wait me out. It’s as if the brat knows that too.

I will tell you one thing Peyton knows: the sound of empty plastic jugs falling over makes me open the laundry room door between 15 and 30 minutes later. He appears to be taunting me. I set them up. He waits a while. I hear them fall. I wait a while. I open the door, and there he is running under the house. I have so far captured several excellent indistinguishable grey blurs on my memory card, and he looks like he wants to play this game all night.

My current plan is to call his bluff, partially close the door, so the room warms up a bit while I am taking my shower, and hopefully he will believe I have lost interest in his comings and goings … and then he will just GO already.

Yes, I am using all my mental resources to out-think a semi-prehistoric marsupial of gargantuan proportions. I must have already gone through all the standard life experiences and have now moved on to the Critters In The City expansion pack.

*Note: Yes, we have wild life of all types, like possums. Peyton is, without a doubt, nature’s response to our snail overpopulation. We also have too many frogs (of all kinds of sizes) … another possum treat. We wanted a natural environment. We got one, didn’t we? Unfortunately, possums don’t have many natural predators. I have yet to see a fox or coyote this far into the city, and this is probably a good thing. I don’t think we have a strong enough eco-system on our lot to support a pack of coyotes. Not yet, anyway.

A cute little fox would be cool … though I am certain the chicken owning neighbors would see that differently.

Naturally, just as I realized I needed something out of the laundry room, I open the door, and there is Peyton staring at me with those beady, beady eyes. Instead of running out the door, he ran back under the house. Not immediately, mind you. No, both of us just sort of stood there holding our breath and gawking. Then we both exhaled and ran in opposite directions.

OK, OK. I will admit that if Peyton didn’t smell like he had been rummaging through garbage, which I imagine he has been — not ours, thankfully, and if he wasn’t pretending my laundry room was his bedroom, there might possibly be some tiny little bit of cuteness apparent. Just a bit. He’s really just too large to be cute though. I’m not kidding. Biggest possum I have ever seen in the city. Huge.

Must keep camera on me at all times for the rest of the night. Positively must get a good photo of Peyton for posterity.

Too busy to sit and babble, so here’s the latest:

I have named the possum Peyton. No, that does not mean the possum is going to be a new and much-loved resident at Casa de Orb. It has to go. Alas, I need Lin’s construction assistance to make sure the thing no longer has free run of the underside of my house. Therefore, we are going to have to get along somewhat in the meantime, and it’s easier to call it Peyton the Possum than it is to call it Big-Huge-Ugly Nasty-Freaky Stinking-Mammoth-Possum. Also, because my friends all seem to think possums are cute (Are YOU sharing a room with one? No? Talk to me when you are!), I am going to attempt to see something cute about this creature. At the very least, I want one good photo of something other than its butt.

The back door is open to the great outdoors. The doorway has been sprinkled with cornstarch. As soon as I see tracks in the cornstarch and know Peyton has gone out for dinner, I am blocking the access to my laundry room and closing the door. It can get under the house elsewhere, should Peyton really be Peytona and have babies needing tending. I don’t think there are babies, but I suspect there may be babies. Always best to suspect there are some rather than assume their aren’t. I may hate possums, but who can hate baby animals of any sort (except snakes, which I hate no matter how young they are).

Lin’s new lunch boxes came today. I’m sure I looked like a crazed person when I answered the door. I don’t think I had been asleep for more than an hour, and I was all rumpled and groggy. Still, I managed to sign my name and get the box opened. They are a wee bit smaller than expected. I may need to use two a day for Lin. Good thing I got four. I like them. In fact, I like them so much, I think I may order more next payday and get some other sizes as well. They are really nice storage containers, and these 15 oz ones are actually perfect for doing bento meals. OK, so they aren’t cute. I can live without cute until the right bento box comes along.

Those bento sauce bottles I won on eBay arrived today too. They are soooo cute. I’m glad I got them.

I have no idea what I am making for dinner. It’s already 6:30 pm, and I haven’t put any thought into it at all. I think I’ll make quiche. I haven’t made quiche in forever. I don’t think it’s hard, is it? I already have pre-made crusts in the freezer, so it shouldn’t take too long. Quiche and a salad sounds tasty to me, but then I had a really light lunch and, of course, am now starving to death.