The ant invasion is over! I don’t claim to understand ant minds, but they must have decided that it was pointless to constantly replenish the supplies their troops carried in daily only to have me sweep them out twice a day. At any rate, the troops have stopped marching in. I still see an occasional scouting ant, but that is normal.
Another challenge came up yesterday. We lost electric power at about 4:30 PM. That is not unusual here. When it happens, large university generators kick on automatically so we can continue basic functions, so I completed my office work without a problem.
Stoves in the faculty houses do not qualify as essential functions. Although I had lights, my stove had no power when I began to fix supper. I have eaten cold cereal for supper on other occasions, but I’m out of cold cereal. All I had in stock was part of a cabbage that I got at the university farm last week, plus half a loaf of bread and some fresh greens and corn.
I still had hot water in the hot water tank, so I shaved and took a bath as I thought about my options. There was still no power at 8 PM, but as I checked the stove, my eye fell on the electric teapot. It plugs into a wall socket that works even when the stove has no power. Ah-ha, I thought to myself, I can cook greens and an ear of corn with water boiling in the electric teapot. It worked! Thanks to the Magic Teapot, I had a late supper with cold cabbage as my salad, a sandwich of hot greens between slices of whole wheat bread (surprisingly good,) and fresh corn-on-the-cob.
