FLEAS! SPAM!

I have had two recurring pests lately and both are driving me insane:

How my housecat got fleas is a mystery to me. I have had Scamper since around April or so and while I occasionally came across A flea on his little body, they were almost always as big as his little eyes, so I would pick them off while he bit at me and that would end the scenario.

However, when it started getting really hot the past month or so, he kept scratching. At first, I thought it was just the heat; I inspected him from time to time and rarely found anymore than the occasional flea. But he's gotten so fat now that they have much more real estate and they do not look quite as big as they used to. I realize they lay eggs and lay dormant, etc., but this is a whole lot of scratching for the occasional flea.

So I bought him a flea and tick collar the other day and would have bought him the whole dip and treatment assortment, had I known the infestation was this bad, but I did not. I waited a few days to put it on and when I finally did, he seemed to scratch more. But here's the kicker: I have been unable to sleep for 3-4 nights now because the fleas are jumping off him (thanks to the collar) and onto everywhere else!

I can't say I didn't consider this scenario; again, I simply underestimated the problem.

The other time-consuming task lately is the re-emergence of spam. As I reported somewhere, spam hit an all-time high in/around 2006-2007 and we all felt the sting. It seemed to have abated somewhat the past few months, but it has returned with a vengeance this week.

In particular, I keep receiving this insipid "CNN.com Daily Top 10" e-mail and Windows Mail is absolute shit when it comes to spam filtering. I do not care how many filters I establish to reroute this junk to the trashbin, every account I have is getting at least 5-6 instances of this bastard a day! I knew it was spam from Jumpstreet, because I never signed-up to receive anything from CNN, not to mention CNN.com was not the sender.

Anyway I have spent a whole lot of time messing with these two problems this week; they are half the reason things have been so erratic lately. True, it's bill-paying time and all that, but I could have had my bills paid by now and been knocking things out, were it not for the fact that I keep getting sidetracked by these two menaces!

Darkon is on IFC right now. It's a good flick.

© C Harris Lynn, 2008