Who knew ants like metal?

Learned something new today. It cost me and the (pregnant) wife a night spent in a really hot, un-air-conditioned house, plus about a $120 repair bill. But hey, education is priceless, right?

Apparently, ants like to swarm on metal, and that's not my clever way of describing their behavior at loud music festivals. I'm talking about thousands (a careful guesstimate) piling onto the metal contacts inside electrical equipment until their little corpses clog up said contacts and the device in question stops working.

Exhibit A is at right. It's not a great picture, but if you look closely you can see a lot of little ant bodies packed inside this contraption, an electrical contact that the repairman just removed from my outdoor A/C unit.

Now, I don't know whether the ants in my air conditioning unit technically qualify as crazy ants. The repairman didn't say, and I did not conduct a psychiatric evaluation. But apparently my electrical equipment is not the only enticing variety. Even NASA's Johnson Space Center is reported to be watching out for the little twits.

Allegedly, there is an odor created when the silver electrical contacts arc, and the scent appeals to the ants' pheromones. This is according to the A/C repairman, so it must be true.

Moral of the story: when you're looking for ant beds to poison around your house, check for little troops marching around and into your air conditioning unit. Then, kill them. Also, the repairman warns me, you'll need to keep going back and killing them over and over.

The good news is: The cold air, she's a blowin, Brother John, Brother John. That's an old Appalachian spiritual, isn't it? Yes, I'm confident it is.

Dream-aholics anonymous

A businessman told me last week, as I interviewed him about possibly buying competing businesses to grow his company: "Getting bigger isn't all it's cracked up to be."

In his line of business, combining two medium to large companies would not create a lot of "synergies" or economies of scale, he said. The whole process would likely not be worth the trouble. Nevertheless, his company has bought competitors in the past.

Funny how ambition can tempt us to pursue things that in our logical mind we strongly suspect to be unwise. It's true for businesses that spend all the money they have plus as much as a bank will lend them to expand, expand, expand, as if a rainy day will never come or the trendiness of their crazily overpriced coffee will never fade. It's true for cheating spouses who want to prove to themselves they are still sexually marketable to the general public, or at least some tiny fraction of it.

It's true for young writers who have a good-paying job with ample benefits and flexibility of schedule -- not to mention a loving wife, nice home and an all-around happy, hearty lifestyle -- yet struggle to commit wholeheartedly and with full mental attention to all of the above because of the constant distraction of dreaming of some more meaningful or fulfilling or broadly-impacting life's work.

Stupid young writers, whoever they may be.

Well, I have sworn off ambition more than once (albeit never on the Internet, I don't think), and I am here again today to repeat said swearing off. I swear: no more ambition for me.

Life is good, and I really ought to consider the possibility that I'm having all the impact and fulfilling all the purposes that I am meant to right here and now --- or, more likely, that all of those opportunities are right here in front of me if only I would pay attention to them instead of living a constant daydream about some bigger, more important occupation for which I must keep constant vigil.

I'm not making my point well, I'm afraid. This is really better-suited to a diary entry than a blog. But, this is the closest thing to a diary that I keep. (Imagine how infrequently I would write in an actual diary, if I had one.)

I think my message here (to myself, primarily, so sorry if I've lost everyone else) is that I can and should devote my life to savoring and doing my best with the people and tasks in front of me right now -- and not feel like that will amount to a selfish kind of life, because I haven't done some great project to change the world or impact thousands of people, as I'm afraid my subconscious is prone to think.

Mother Teresa made the point much better and more concisely than I. During her acceptance of the Nobel Peace Prize in 1979, when asked what people could do to promote world peace, she responded, "Go home and love your family."

Sorry for such a squishy return to my blog. I'll try to serve up some of my usual mindless entertainment real soon-like.

Boo

Discuss.