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Today I was smacked down by Mother Nature. Twice.

The first time involved my perennial fight with the plant life on my property. Since both of my immediate neighbors have now asked me, politely, to get *somebody* to deal with the vegetation from my yard that is invading *their* property, I went outside this afternoon to see how bad the problem is, and at least get a headstart on dealing with the parts closest to the house before I put in a second call to my Landscaper Guy.

It was pretty horrifying. One plant, *not* the house-climbing ivy I've always had, and secretly loved, has attached itself to the rear northwestern corner and has almost made it to the roof. A honeysuckle vine is attacking the spruce on the southeastern side of the property--and winning. The storage shed at the rear of my property (admittedly, not something I use much in light of my hatred of gardening), is vanishing under vegetation.

Meanwhile, the grapevine my first neighbor complained about a little while ago looks about ready to file for citizenship. ;-)

An hour later, I had made about half of the shrubbery in the flower bed on the western side of the house look vaguely like planned growth again, and had an overflowing trash can of weeds to show for it. Maybe if I do the same tomorrow, I can at least get *that* section under some control. :-(

The second smackdown by Mother Nature happened just after dark. It started with a thundershower, which announced itself with a (nearly) silent, distant clap of thunder and a complete power outage on my street.

A few minutes later, I had located a couple of flashlights (functional but in need of fresh batteries) and my two hurricane lamps, and esrblog and I attempted to continue to play Race for the Galaxy. Unfortunately, one of the lamps has a tinted shade, and the other was short enough on oil that the wick was no longer immersed, so the quality of light we got was unreliable at best.

We decided to decamp to a nearby 24/7 diner until the power was restored. Fortunately, it was restored when we returned about half an hour ago.

So now we have had more rain to encourage the weeds' terroristic attack on my house. It's looking like a great time to escape to Michigan where the weeds aren't mine. Though I now have to split my packing time tomorrow with another weed assault.

Ugh.

Yesterday afternoon, one of the keys on Eric's laptop started sticking. So he popped the keycap off to blow the cat hair out. Unfortunately, as he did so, the interlocking plastic ring-like things that act as the spring for the key popped out, and one part of them hit the floor.

I succeeded in finding the spring thing, but neither Eric and I can get the rings back in place to make the key function properly again. Eric understands the mechanism, but his hands are too big. My hands are small enough, but I don't understand the mechanism. :-(

On the bright side, it's finally stopped raining here. Today was a bright, warm, sunny day. Which reminds me; it's long past the time of year when I have my annual bout with the Weed Demon....