Surprisingly, I got a 98% on my first French lesson. Though already familiar with several words, French pronunciation is definitely the killer of the romance languages! Either way, I’m still surprised I got a higher score than my first Portuguese lesson where I scored a 93%.

Tomorrow’s Chinese day. That’s both exciting and scary, as this is my first non-European language.

We didn’t end up losing power after last night’s thunderstorm which lasted about 15 minutes. It rained hard as hell, like down in the desert. Tom got woken up when the smoke detector started chirping which amazingly failed to wake me up. So he removed the battery. This was around 3am. He said that at that time another storm rolled in. This also amazingly failed to wake me up.

When I got up at 8am to pee it was so cold in here that I didn’t want to get up. So I went back to bed till 11:30. When I got up then it was still only 67º indoors. Yet come 3pm it was 84º in here. Damn, I’m sick of these wild fluctuations! I didn’t come here to be cold at any time of night or day in June of all months! I wish we had a normal home with normal insulation. That would help a lot.

We didn’t run the cooler because it’s going to be even cooler tomorrow. These series of storms have a couple of days to go before they’re over. Then will summer finally be here to stay? I hope so!

The smoke detector wasn’t the only thing to wake Tom up. He eventually fell back asleep and was still asleep when I got up. I was surprised to find the mouse we caught last night still alive. It was one loud mouse too, when I went to remove it by lifting the edges of the glue board it was stuck to from under the sink! It squealed so loud it woke Tom up, but he did need to get our check and groceries, so it turned out ok. He can just crash earlier if he needs to. I didn’t want to, but I smothered the mouse by sticking the whole board inside some plastic grocery bags. Tom got poison that we’re going to put around the outside of the house once the storms blow on through.

We now know that those times we heard squealing under the tub like something was terrorizing one of the millions of mice that live here, were actually coming from under the kitchen sink. The sound echoed and carried down the pipe, making it sound like it was really under the tub. That means that whatever got caught that time I thought a cat was terrorizing it under the tub, eventually got free of the glue board. It is possible depending on how they come in contact with it, though it catches them way more often than the live traps do.

Tom said he thinks Jesse may be out of town because he had to remove a branch from the driveway which didn’t appear to be driven on since the last storm. Yeah, I heard Whiskey give a few scattered barks throughout the day. Nothing too serious. I hope Maryann picks up our trash if he is out of town. And that the rest of the rent will be ok till he can get it tomorrow. It should be. No one drives through here that doesn’t live here and no one else uses that box but us. The regular mail goes to the box way out by the main road.

WTF? I just heard squeaking from an obviously trapped or wounded mouse supposedly under the tub again. But when I checked the new trap under the kitchen sink there was nothing there! Then it sounded like it may’ve been in the part of the pipe that runs along the back wall of the living room. So now I don’t know what the fuck is going on, but we’re definitely going to have to make use of the poison Tom got. I just hope it works. After all, this is Jesse’s place, not ours. So it shouldn’t be our responsibility if there’s any type of serious infestation going on.

And yeah, Jesse’s out of town. I hear Whiskey going off at something in back of the house. I’m just glad he hasn’t gotten carried away and I hope it stays that way, too.