2nd of May 2012 - Slugs, they're faster than you think

In again, boss is still sick, I wonder if I could just sit in the office and do nothing but click between spreadsheets for eight hours? The only thing stopping me is my own boredom I think. When I was a child and I would say (as all children with a house full of activites and a world of opportunities available say) "I'm Bored" my dad used to say "you're not bored, you're boring" who knows, maybe my dad knows best and I should commit myself to doing nothing all day, wouldn't want to be boring.

I wonder if in a few years my children will be moping about, huffing, groaning and wailing in the hope that I will ask them "what's wrong?" so they can retort that they are "so bored", I guess they will as "kids having nothing to do" is still cited as the reason for youth crime, despite the kids of today perhaps having more to do than any other generation preceeding them. I'm not sure what it is that criminal kids wanted to do, perhaps they want to ride dolphins to the moon and since the Government or local council has not made this available they mug people? I think the general thing blamed is the "closed community centre" which the criminal youth of course would never have attended anyway.

I do so hate when the line "...because the kids have nothing to do" is rolled out, maybe I'm being too harsh, perhaps posters of my dad wagging a finger with the slogan "YOU'RE NOT BORED, YOU'RE BORING!" should adorn the innercity streets and kids would see it and think "hey, Adam's dad's right, maybe I'll pick up a football or go to the library instead of smashing a window or snatching a purse and winding up in juvenile detention".

Last night I was feeding the guinea pigs when I noticed an infestation of slugs making their way into the bottom floor of their hutch (the pigs live in the top floor, yes, they live like rockstars) I had to scoop them out into a bag and throw it in the bin (the slugs, not the guinea pigs) I'm not sure what the correct procedure for slug disposal is but it seemed a better bet than my wife's suggestion which seemingly by hand gesture appeared to be scoop them and flick them into next door's garden. It's just as well she's an interpreter and not an exterminator. She did later explain she meant flick them down our own garden. I'd have preferred next door's.

We need to get some copper or salt down, I went for the salt but we only have coarse, rock sea salt, we weren't sure if pouring that out would work and the other option of me actually working my way along the guinea pig hutch grinding the salt mill like some insanely hungry, french Wil E Coyote (Do the french eat slugs as well as snails? You'd have thought they'd be less work) wasn't really appealing to me. They're quite quick slugs, I was surprised, I'd not really paid attention to them before but they cover a distance more swiftly than you would imagine, I guess they're not hampered by carrying a shell like their snail cousins, I reckon a slug would leave a snail standing .... Or whatever a still snail is actually doing. Are they related? I mean they look the same to me, I'm finding I know very little about slugs and snails right now.