These Darn Mosquitoes

Ever since Hurricane Irene deposited copious amounts of water throughout the local landscape, we have been inundated with mosquitoes.

Lately it has really become worse.

You can't even walk outside without them just waiting to pounce on whatever exposed portion of skin that they think you are offering up to them. And heaven forbid if they think that you might go inside just to get away from them. They will just hang onto whatever you are wearing and take a free ride on you just to get inside your house. They are not dumb insects...they aren't about to let go of that gravy train....which is you. And this is when the fun really begins because they have plenty areas in your home to visit and keep them occupied while waiting for you to get tired and go to sleep. Then it's time for them to all belly up to the human buffet table and gorge themselves on the likes of you.

They are worse than a flock of Lilliputians from Gulliver's travels.

They are just downright unmerciful. And they don't give a hoot whether you are wearing light colored clothes, dark colored clothes, sweating or not sweating, hot or cold, wearing floral scented perfume or have a garlic clove necklace around your neck. It just does not matter to these little critters. Actually I think that they did their own Google search about themselves, so that they would have the same information that we have about them.

Let me tell you....the proper knowledge in the hands of the wrong mosquito can be really scary and worrisome. Give me a dumb mosquito anytime over book wise and street wise mosquito.

There isn't any amount of Deet that seems to persuade them to go elsewhere for their tasty red snack.

Every day it seems that the insect sprayer man in his truck, drives through our neighborhood and does his nightly attack on the pesky little blood suckers with wings.

None of the spraying seems to make a dent in this mosquito population.

I could swear that I saw a couple of them the other day flying around wearing some sort of custom made gas masks to protect them from the insect spray....and I think they were pointing and giggling at the man in the truck doing the spraying.

Nothing worse than a disrespectful mosquito.

I can hardly wait for the first real frost of the season to occur and totally eliminate the mosquito population.

Then we will see who is doing all of the pointing and giggling.

Show Us The Money

On Saturday evening Veronica and I stopped by the drive through ATM machine at our local Bank Of America.

We wanted to deposit $450 cash into our checking account.

Veronica put her bank card into the ATM machine and pressed the appropriate buttons to make our deposit.

Veronica then placed the paper currency into the appropriate receptacle.

The ATM machine could be heard going through and counting the paper currency.

All of a sudden the machine started to make a beeping sound and the screen said that it could not complete the entire transaction and it spit out some of the cash.

We tried to straighten out the money and figured that the ATM would not accept the bills because the money was crinkled.

Because the machine was still beeping at us, Veronica tried to put some more of the cash into the machine while I was still trying to straighten out a few more of the bills.

While I was straightening out the last of our cash, the machine all of a sudden stopped beeping and the ATM screen was now telling us that this machine could no longer accept deposits and that our transaction had been canceled.

This was all fine and dandy with us except for the fact that the machine still had $320 of our money inside of it and we had no receipt nor anything else to show that we had that amount of money in the machine.

We left the bank with $130 in our hands and wondering if we would ever see the rest of our money again.

As soon as I got home I tried to call customer service at Bank of America. Unfortunately all of their offices were closed until the next day.

First thing in the morning the next day I was able to contact the Bank of America customer service personnel and was told that they would have the people that are responsible for taking care of the machines and all of the transactions that go through the machines, look into my problem.

So as of now Bank of America is doing an investigation into our lost money.

I was told that our account would be credited with the $320 on Tuesday and that this money would be available for us to use on Tuesday, which is tomorrow.

I did learn something interesting through this whole adventure...the people that work in the actual bank where this outside ATM is located, have nothing to do with the ATM machine.

Bank of America has someone else or another group of people that go around and make sure the machines are working properly and make sure that all transactions done through the machine and money that is collected and dispersed balance out.

This is where our money comes in. That ATM machine should have an overage of $320 when these people balance the machine out.

I was told that the whole process could take up to 45 days before we know that this issue has been rectified.

At least we have access to our $320 that will be credited to our account tomorrow.

Midlife Crisis On A Budget Part 2

Yesterday my new Marcy Classic MCB-252 weightlifting bench combo with 120 pounds of weight arrived.

I spent the last 3 hours putting the thing together. I could have sped through the building process but if I am going to be having weights on this thing, I would rather spend some extra time making sure each nut and bolt is really tightened down.

Tomorrow I will give it a go.

The lower pegs are for storing the weights

This is for working on the legs and guess what??? It is put on upside down. Anyone out there have anything that they would like me to build and put together??? (insert the sounds of happy crickets chirping here)....I didn't think so nor do I blame you one bit.

The blue and black piece is a preachers curling bench attachment. This piece and the lat bar can be stored on a square peg that is built in to each side of the back portion of the frame

Here is the bench curl attachment except I have it in backwards. It should be turned around with the incline facing the other way...duh!!!!

Here is the lat pull down attachment in its stored position. All I have to do is pull out the pin that holds the bench curl attachment, pull out the bench curl piece and replace it with the lat bar and put the pin back in so that the lat bar will stay in place.

This is the lat bar and pulley assembly. You put the weight plates on the lower peg, attach the pull down bar to a hook and when the unit is in place, all you have to do is pull the bar down and the weights will ride up

Here is a photo of the lat pull down system complete and in place

Now I will be able to increase my weightlifting routine both in weight and in types of exercises that I can do.

More Of The Damage Caused By Hurricane Irene

These are the last of the Hurricane Irene photos

I went to the Post Office today and there were many more piles of peoples belongings and the piles were much higher than there were earlier

Yay!!! Services Are Restored

Our telephone, cable and internet services have been restored. Now is the time for me to get the rest of my photos and videos uploaded...so here they are:

This is a view from the front of our place and it was taken when the water had peaked to its highest level.

The next 2 photos are of what the flooded area looked like the very next afternoon. The photos are taken from the front of our place. Hard to believe that approximately 12 hours before this photo was taken, this area was completely flooded.

Veronica and I went out the day after the hurricane hit to see what damage it had left behind

This is the main road on the Outer Banks. This photo was taken in the late afternoon. It was very different not really seeing any vehicles on this road. This road is usually packed with tourists going here, there and everywhere.

Veronica's store sustained a bit of damage along the back side of the building

Here is the damage that one of the Food Lion stores sustained from the hurricane

A local trailer park

Damage sustained to Billys Seafood just up the street from us. They had all kinds of refrigeration units pulled out of the store and lined up in the parking lot

This is a view from the "point" You could see a built up line of debris and this picnic table was a new addition that had been washed ashore and landed where it is shown. If you didn't know any better, you would think that this table has been in this position and area for a long time.

This "point" is also an area where I walk on a daily basis. Now it is a place that I really have to keep a lookout for various types of snakes.