Thursday August 5th 2021

Today was a little cloudier than the last couple of days. The breeze was still strong out of northeast. The high temperature was a little higher in the upper eighties, but the cloud cover keeps the inside temperature better.

Another battle with the little ants turned today into a domestic chores day. After declaring victory in today’s initial battle with the ants, I got out the vacuum to suck any more soldiers out of the carpet and clean up any appetizers for next battle. The vacuum didn’t seem to have its normal power. To diagnose that issue I needed to get into the basement compartment the vacuum hides in. All it needed was a new dust bag. The old one was full. I don’t know the last time I changed it. At least the vacuum was back to sucking dirt and ants.

One of the places I found more ants was on my fitted comforter / bedspread. It spends most nights during the summer half on the foot of the bed and half on the floor. Last night it became home to a few ants. Yesterday’s success with the laundry provided the perfect solution. The machines seem ideal to wash the comforter. The last couple of times I’ve tried the results have been less than successful. The comforter doesn’t have any care instructions, but I set the fancy washer to the towels setting, modified the temperature to cold, increased the soil level to heavy, dropped the spin rate to medium and gave it a go. An hour and twelve minutes later when I moved it from the washer to the dryer it looked pretty good. It looked even better when it came out of the dryer thirty five minutes later. The ants got me to do something that had very good results.

Again today the barge traffic wasn’t exceptional. There were a couple of big units early that I caught a glimpse of out my bedroom windows. During the day there were mostly just small, probably local traffic barges going by.