Check around in places for a mouse hole if you get a lot of them. I live next in a rural setting next to a field and had about 20(!) in the winter. But I found I had a hole in the wall under the stove where they were just come and go as they please and probably had a nest in. Well, actually I knew they had a nest in because my cats found the baby mice (poor things). Closed that up and so far no more mice. Also, pack any food they like to get into like flour, rice, crackers, etc. in plastic or metal containers and if you have a pantry with a door put a rubber door sweep on the bottom of the door just like what's on the bottom of the front or back door to the outside. Helps keep them out of the pantry. Mouse can't get to the food? Fewer mice. Cats did a nice job, too, but some of the older smarter mice could wait them out...for a while that is.

Your "memo" was absolutely Sweet! Classic. Your logic is beyond clockwork. Made my week! Note to Editor: if you don't star this one, you've missed the best!

You know, whenever I started a new job, I was a paranoid nut job the first month. I'd laugh too much and at the wrong thing. I was absolutely sure I was doing everything wrong and that everyone saw it. I was also sure that the bosses would figure out they made a big mistake and I would be out the door, forthwith. It just took a while to calm down and get my bearings. Eventually, I just expected it to happen whenever I started a new job and held on for the ride until my anxieties died away and I found my confidence.

Maybe LW, you could do something to help your new employee feel more comfortable. Take her out to lunch, say. And if her laughing continues, you might just want to have a human heart-to-heart and find out why she's doing it and let her know it concerns you a bit. But give her a chance to get acclimated. That may need all she needs. When she starts to feel more comfortable, she may just turn out to be a great assistant.

Sorry, Stentor, your logic still doesn't add up. You can add up all your credentials into it, all your facts, all the famous people who share your field, fecund multiple universes, black holes rotating and what that doesn't mean. And I'm impressed along with everyone else....really. But it still won't sum up to proving God or not God. Your 1 + 5 + my far out university diploma doesn't add up to 2. And really I don't think anyone minds THAT MUCH that you don't believe or want to prove that God doesn't exist as much as you obviously mind THAT MUCH that some people want to believe in whatever they want to believe in.

What I find interesting is that both Christian fundamentalists and atheists somehow insist that believing in God means believing in a "sentient being", specifically in the way that we think of as being sentient. Maybe our human version of "sentient" has nothing to do with it. Maybe whatever/whoever created the universe, or however it happened, is in a whole other class of things as to what it all means other than a specific "creator" of the universe or a "god" per se. Or not. Maybe what's really out there isn't even in that concept. In addition, maybe letting it be this vital and life-informing mystery to people is what some people need as meaning in their lives. Maybe that meaning, the vitality of that mystery is important to how people get through the suffering in their lives. And maybe that's for each person to define for themselves. And maybe, considering this is America, that's okay.

Regardless, what this really means is that you feel "called" to convert believers into nonbelievers no more or less than the next missionary in Africa somewhere (lest they be damned by you!)... with less actual logic than what's in the bible. Go back to your famous university and take a freaking course in logic. Then write something that makes some actual sense.

Got it now? Didn't think so.