The liquor board has a little notice on their website advising customers to stock up early because there are liable to be shortages around the holidays. So I did. Some $600 later I am stocked up. Should be enough to last me until after Christmas. 
Thus guaranteeing there’ll be shortages around the holidays!
What’s that old maxim favoured by Republicans – deeply believed although rarely articulared? Oh, yeah, “Who cares about you? I’ve got mine!” 
Yeah, I think I contributed to the potential shortage. One spacious part of my bottom cupboard looks like a liquor store.
I must have been a total pubbie when the stay at home order was coming out because I went right to the dispensary and bought all I was allowed to buy, then to a store that sold the handmade soaps I use and bought them out. I also bought 4 bottles of my favorite shampoo.
Shortages be damned, I was gonna ride it out clean and high.
Oh, I meant that their notice advising customers to stock up early caused shortages. You were just following orders!
OK, now that I’ve returned from my foraging for necessities (liquor) and a few other incidental conveniences (food) in the process of which I did a fair amount of night-time driving, I wish to launch into my rant of the day.
The glaring blue-white LED headlights now radiating with the brilliance of a thousand suns out of almost all vehicles these days. Who invented those? Satan? Or one of his minions from Hell? How can these manufacturer-supplied horrors of standard equipment possibly be legal? Many of them, as seen in oncoming cars, are brighter than high-beams in the old days, even when they’re low beams.
To add to the fun, when there’s a high vehicle behind me like a pickup or a big SUV, the fucking glaring light of Rigel is at just about eye level. Yes, I can flip the rear-view mirror to the position normally intended to deal with assholes who have high-beams on behind you, but the reflection from the side mirror alone is enough to burn my retinas if I don’t look away.
I ask again: what creature from Hell invented these things? Why are they now populating our highways? Surely I’m not the only one who finds these newfangled horrors both annoying and unsafe.
As someone with extremely good night vision (and thus, pupils that open wide in low light) I just want to say I’m about 1,000% behind this rant.
It’s not a minor annoyance. It’s painful and unsafe.
Thank you. If I didn’t have other things to worry about in life, I’d start a movement to outlaw the fucking things!
It’s been 5 hours and I still can’t bring myself to get near the dead mouse to remove it from under the bed. I’m going to have to sleep in the living room.
Someone should invent a disposable dead rodent disposal system, where you don’t have to see or touch anything, just throw away the whole collector portion. Sort of like a cross between a handheld mini vac and a diaper genie. Someone should invent it by morning.
That’s just silly. I mean, it’s not a pleasant thing, but it’s just a matter of sweeping it up into a dustpan or sheet of cardboard, dumping it in a plastic bag, and then sealing it and disposing of it however way you like. Double-bag it, throw it into an outside garbage bin, whatever. You can do it! We’re all here rootin’ for ya! 
I feel your pain. In my house there are reusable disposal systems AKA “husband”, “son” and “cat”. The first is usually available and reliable, and the second will do it when he’s home (which is not often since he’s in college).
The one time last summer when husband and son were both away and cat came prancing up to me with a dead mouse, I ran away to my room and then googled “how to dispose of a dead mouse”. After finding a sane-sounding procedure (see below), I pulled myself together and went to deal with the mouse–and it was gone. The cat must have disposed of it by eating it, because I couldn’t smell it decaying or anything in the following days.
I was sorry that I hadn’t pulled myself together to get rid of the mouse after reading this article about the risks to cats when eating mice, but luckily the cat doesn’t seem to have suffered:
https://thepetshome.com/cat-ate-mouse-should-worry/#:~:text=Eating%20a%20mouse%20could%20cause,diseases%20of%20the%20nervous%20system.&text=The%20poison%20that%20will%20kill,and%20even%20endanger%20their%20life.
And here’s a crazy result that came up when I googled “how to dispose of a dead mouse”:
"The following ritual against zikurudû gives instructions on how to dispose of a dead mouse that has been identified as such a ‘sorcerous device’:
That’s hilarious! If only I had a sack on hand made of mouse skins to dispose of the new one!
Okay, 1 1/2 glasses of wine later, the deed is done ::shudder::. You shamed/motivated me to do the job.
If you only knew some of the rodent disposal jobs I’ve been faced with in the past, you’d feel my trepidation*. But this one wasn’t bad - I followed your advice. My cat oversaw the removal.
*I couldn’t even describe the worst one without spoilers. People who’ve seen the photo have grown faint. I had to pay the exterminator to remove it - there’s no way I could have handled it (and he looked a little green himself). Even following the rituals in @gkster’s guide wouldn’t have protected me.
Good for you, especially for coping with rodent disposal PTSD. And I hope it wasn’t a ‘sorcerous device’!
I could use a ‘sorcerous device’! I should have saved the pelt for future disposals.
[My daughter just informed me that she stopped by earlier this evening while I was out running errands, and would have disposed of the mouse, but just assumed I’d already handled it. ! She’s made of tougher stuff than I.]
I once encountered an exterminator who claimed that dead mice don’t stink when they’re decomposing. 
Somewhere in the old file cabinet upstairs I have a repair ticket for a Geo Tracker that says otherwise.
I was looking at some family pictures online, and noticed that someone had commented on a female cousin’s photo “Ooo, you have pretty tinsel in your hair!” Thinking I had missed something sparkly, I flipped back through the pictures… And realized that this person was actually commenting on my cousin’s decision to stop dying the grey area streaks out of her hair. Huh.
That’s a lie. When we were between cats we once had one stink up the kitchen whilst decomposing. Very distinct smell also. Apparently you can recognize poison hemlock because it smells of dead mice.
@needscoffee: good job! You can be proud of yourself. My felines have a tendency to either smuggle large spiders inside or mostly earthworms nowadays. Which is its own kind of gross.
We are paperless with our local utility company great right? Except once or twice a year they forget to post the monthly bill. Then we get double billed. I’ve pointed it out, but they said it’s my responsibility to check the website, jeez !
Can you get that in writing? It seems like forwarding that message to your city council, state reps, etc., might be a worthwhile. That’s an inexcusable policy. It’s not quite up there with super-bright LED headlights, but it’s still unacceptable.
Oh I hate them too. I drive a small car and it’s always some yahoo in a giant truck behind me. I have terrible night vision to begin with and bright lights in my eyes is a migraine trigger for me so it’s a double whammy.