The next night was the night before Arin's physics phinal. She was pulling and all-nighter tp study for it. Oh to be young and in college again! To stay up studying physics all night! Those were the good ol' days.

Around 4:30 in the morning, I hear a noise from the living room.
"Arin, what's going on?"
"I caught a mouse! With your laptop!"
My immediate first thought was "Oh please deal god let it be my Dell PC and not my Apple Powerbook." But then I was like "There's no way she caught a mousie in my laptop." Besides, I wanted to go back to sleep really badly. But it was just so noisy out there. So I ventured into the livingroom to witness the following unbelievable sight:

Next to the futon in the corner of the room was a small garbage can. Balanced on top of the garbage can was a cardboard box. And precariously balanced on top of the box was my Dell laptop.
And what is in between the box and the garbage can? You guessed it! A mousie! She found him rummaging through the trash in the garbage can and tried to catch him inside by placing a cardboard box on top. But just at that instant he tried to run away and she caught him halfway in and halfway out of the box!

Please take this time to notice the World Rock-Paper-Scissors sticker and ATF bumper sticker on the laptop (which could be yours FREE with your All Too Flat Membership). (Also, for those of you who are curious, my Linux box is named Spangler, my Windows computer is Stanz, and my Powerbook is Venkman. (Surprisingly (or not surpisingly, as the case definitely is), my network naming scheme is the least nerdiest of any of the ATF team; Ton's computers are all named after dwarves from LotR and Kennyb's are named after Visigoths from the Illuminatus Trilogy (or something very similar, I assume))). (Note: I'm psyched to be coding this in emacs because I needed serious help figuring out how many closing parentheses to put at the end of that sentence!)

Here is a close-up shot of the mousie stuck between the edge of the garbage can and the box:

And here is a nice picture of the stupid ol' mousie with Bobble-Head A-Rod's Head Photoshopped on his head:

At this point Arin explained to me, very logically, that she had done her part and now it was my turn to take over and she promptly went to bed. Now I was faced with a difficult decision. It was kind of a sticky situtation actually. My laptop weighs (sigh) over 10 pounds and was balanced on top of a flimsy carboard box on top of a garbage can. If anything moved at all, the mousie would be able to run away. I tried pressing down on the laptop to squish the little guy, but the box was kinda floppy, so it bent every time I pressed down. That, and the mousie would go SQUEAK SQUEAK SQUEAK every time I pressed, and I didn't want to wake up Arin the 'Fraidy Cat.

So what to do? I couldn't smack the mouse with a hammer or book it for fear of knocking off the laptop. I didn't want to put a bag over the whole thing and flip it over, again because I didn't really want to drop my laptop, and (sigh) because the 10 lb behemoth would rip through a bag if it fell..

Finally, I had a stroke of genius. I took one of the extra glue traps from behind the refrigerator and slapped the mousie in the face with it! Ha HA! Now the mousie was safely stuck to the trap and I could knock over the tower without him running away.

I know, I know, I shouldn't have knocked over the tower with my laptop on top, as I clearly explained above, but by now it was now quarter to five in the morning, and clearly I am retarded at that time.

The entire thing fell with a huge SMASH! Laptop on the floor, garbage under the couch, box tipped over. But when the dust settled, I found nothing other than one stuck mousie! Ben 2, Mousies 0! HUGE!

Back to Mousie Day 1

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