Of Mice and... Me?

Of mice and... Me?

So everyone who knows me, knows I've lived in some interesting places. When I moved back to Halifax in the winter of 2010 I moved in with three girls who were very lovely and progressive. Unfortunately I also moved in with mice. One morning we awoke to discover that a mouse had chewed clear through a loaf of bread and so my room mates agreed to get mouse traps. I found the first dead mouse and disposed of it without incident. They found the second dead mouse and insisted on removing the traps.

In the autumn of 2011 in Ottawa I moved into a place, again with three girls, probably better described as young professionals then as progressive. In this instance we had an infestation of pantry moths.

When I looked at the apartment I'm in now one of my first questions was whether there had been any problems with infestations. No. Of course not.

In May, one month after moving in I started hearing scratching and running and discovered that squirrels had invaded my crawlspace. I informed my land lady who called an exterminator. I thought that was the end of it.

Last Thursday I found evidence of mice when I woke up in the morning, I optimistically thought it was a lone mouse passing through. When I returned home in the evening I discovered that they were not just passing through and that in fact they had defficated over my clean dishes. This was 5 minutes before I was expecting dinner guests. In a blind panic I then turned and watched as a tubby mouse waddled across the floor.

So I cleaned, I cooked dinner, cleaned some more and set traps. The next day there was less evidence of the mice, and less still Saturday morning. On Saturday night, returning from Swing Dance and I found what I hoped was the lone mouse dead in the trap. The next morning I awoke to discover that all of the blossoms had been eaten off my African violets by another mouse. I guess they were getting angry because I cut off their food supply. Later in the morning I saw another mouse waddle across the floor and called my landlady who informed me it was too expensive to call the exterminator a second time and had the audacity to ask me if I wanted to renew my lease.

No more mice were caught.

Last night (Monday) I got home late from karaoke, read and went to sleep only to be woken up by some motion near my hand at 1:30. I moved my hand only to realize there was a mouse at the foot of my bed. I turned on the light, waited, and went back to sleep. I was woken up again at 4:45 in the morning and this time I saw the mouse right away, again at the foot of my bed. I flipped. I couldn't go back to sleep knowing I was being stalked by a hungry mouse. So I tidied my room and watched the sun rise. Unfortunately I hadn't had enough sleep to go to work so I didn't and took things into my own hands. I bought mouse poison which I set out and promptly left the apartment. I returned two hours late to watch a mouse eating the poison from my bed. This of course made me feel sad for the mouse, but optimistic about a good night sleep.

Later this evening I was at home and discovered that at some point the mice also started to eat plastic lid to one of my food containers and the aluminum plate in my stove top, which is more than somewhat unnerving.

And now I have to go home and try to sleep somewhat comfortably while wondering whether the mice are still alive, and if so, what they will eat next.

Back to the Blog

Well hello there,

It's been a while. If you followed my blog in the past you might wonder what ever came of me. Okay, that's probably an exaggeration since you're probably my friend if you're reading this so you have an idea. After some major ups and downs I've decided to return to my blog since I still have more to say.

If you were wondering what's happened over the last year or so here's the scoop. I finished writing my thesis in October. I didn't receive any revisions from my committee until mid-November, two weeks before my scheduled defense date, which was stressful but actually completely manageable. I made the revisions and defended my M.A. thesis on November 30th 2010.

Going in to the defense a lot of people told me not to worry. To sit back and relax because my committee was going to ask me easy questions. Well, I don't know what happened at their defense but I faced some pretty grueling questions from my committee including whether I though justice should come before peace or peace before justice, which is a major question within modern peace building. My answer was of course that question had no answer and that there needed to be a balance dependent on circumstances. I was write.

Prior to my defense I had prepared myself to have at least two days worth of revisions, as is standard after a defense. So you can imagine my surprise when I was called back in the room after the defense and told that there were none. My initial response was "so what do you want me to do?" "nothing." "nothing?" "nothing". It somehow seemed anti-climatic, but I enjoyed the rest of my time in Halifax immensely.

Back in Ottawa I had continued to work 3 days a week as a student at the Center for Mitigation Excellence at Public Safety. Unfortunately when I finished my degree my contract was not bridged in to a permanent position because of a hiring freeze. Being resourceful, I set my sights on Foreign Affairs and made some phone calls and landed a casual position with the Anti-Crime Capacity Building Program which was also supposed to become permanent if things went well. That job didn't start for three months after I finished with Public Safety so I spent my time fund raising for the Red Cross and Amnesty International through Public Outreach. These were interesting and cold times as a fund raised outside in the winter. Although I had a bit of a rough start I ended up liking fundraising enough that I still work with Public Outreach one day a week. I also started volunteering for two NDP MPs on Parliament Hill.

I have a lot to say both about Public Outreach and working with DFAIT. However, I am going to leave that for future blog posts. It's suffice to say that because of an internal HR error at DFAIT, that is completely unrelated to me, that I will not become permanent there either and I'm looking for another job!

Anyway this is just a little note to let you know that I'm back to blogging and that you'll be reading from me real soon!