Things That Creep and Crawl

I really do love my little cottage, but it is a small country home on a slow-moving river . . . that had been left unoccupied often outside of the summer.  So, I've become accustomed to the fact that I generally manage to let one mosquito in per night (that I then have to track and kill) and to the inevitable spiders that have come to check out my lovely warm space.

Last night, I discovered that I'd made a tragic error in leaving a small amount of flavored water in a glass in my bedroom as it had attracted . . . ANTS.  And not just a few ants, but SO, SO many ants!  Normally I can be sort of ok with ants, but in my ROOM where I'm going to SLEEP - no!

So, I removed the offending glass and sprayed a few places they seemed to be entering through . . . only for them to find another couple places.  Every time I thought there were no more ants . . . yep, more ants.

Finally, I'd sat on my bed staring at the wall for several minutes without seeing anything creep, crawl or twitch, so I decided I could safely go to sleep (at 1:30 AM).  I still sat up twice to shine my cell phone flashlight at myself and the wall CONVINCED I'd felt an ant crawling on me.

I am happy to report that I found no additional ants, no ants this morning and no ants upon my return to work.  NO ANTS!

Despite the lack of a reasonable amount of sleep, I have an actual work-related thing to post today!  During the weekly check-in call, the General Manager (top person at the French plant) said he's very happy with my progress, so that was encouraging.  Early this week I felt like I'd taken a huge step backwards and might have no deliverables to report!  Primarily, this was due to arriving with the idea that I could simply implement several things we do in the US and be done; however, I did my due diligence first in meeting with the local staff, confirming what their needs were and finding out how they were doing things currently . . . only to realize that some of their processes are better and, even where they aren't, they are different enough to require a different approach if I want my end products to actually contain meaningful data.  It was nice to hear the GM say that he actually saw this as positive since it meant they'd have a process they could use, not a cookie-cutter approach.