...Ok, you had to know it was coming. I'm sure some of you were wondering when I was going to open my mouth and comment.

Here I go.

In recent days a rather popular board received some new members. These new members seemed... odd and unusual. One always refers to himself in third person - a highly annoying thing when not using italics to refer to something you are doing. Another, presumably his significant other, always follows to soothe or stroke his ego. A few others just follow along to call names and attack (and the former two respond in kind). I've watched this group descend on a few boards over the last year or so, and get banned almost every time they do.

And each time the first two are banned, they manage to grab a few more people into their "community", such as it is. Every time, a new thread has been started over there, and folks from the board that banned them are found complaining about the previous residence. Some even explain how to push more buttons at the banning board.

Such is sort of the case now. There are some folks that are "stirring the pot" (as some have called it) over at this person's board. There's a couple of threads on the previously mentioned popular board complaining about people who have posted over there or have shown a side that many didn't realize existed. As I posted on JPC's Heated Debates yesterday, if certain folks "stirring the pot" or complaining over at this other individual's board are bothering folks so much, why are you complaining in a thread and not complaining to the person themselves off board?

You don't think that those folks won't see *this* and take offense? Or take it personally? Yes, this may sound hypocritical coming from me (considering a not-nice thing I did a few months ago), but honestly, this is just like what I faced once upon a time: people had issues with me, and didn't bring them up to me personally - they posted them out in the community so that everyone else could jump all over me.

Yes, I've lurked at the troublemaker's board to see what he's all about.
No, I want no part of it.

Life's too short to have this petty crap about who said what, or who did what on another board, to keep going on. But if that's really what people want to debate/point fingers about, then so be it. Sometimes, that's part of the darker nature of people. Like I've said before, sometimes nice people do not-nice things.

Heck, my head was already spinning from hate mail that someone received - which I made sure got posted on The Wagon in it's own special forum. Some disagree with that action - the hatemailer should never get more attention than they deserve, but I disagree. I doubt the hatemailer gets much satisfaction about being ridiculed about their spelling, their lack of grammar, and the fact that they don't speak for a group - heavily negative attention. Personally, I have my ideas as to who it could be, assuming that someone isn't attempting to pose as this person to throw the scent off. I even wonder if this same individual is responsible for the hate mails I was getting (at the very least, they were probably applauding said individual). Ah, but I digress... back to to the topic at hand.

I've banned this troublemaking individual and his buddies from The Wagon. Extreme? Perhaps, but I really don't want that community to face finger pointing, name-calling and the like all of a sudden. It's truly like an invasion (much like what the guy himself said on his board), and it's one that blindsighted the community.

Now, personally, I don't care who pointed the first finger or who called the first name, or whatever personal animosity is going on between folks. Especially folks that are outside the stitching community. We all have our 'things' and no one's going to change that.

But for heaven's sake, do we really need to have board wars between folks over this whole thing? I suspect we might, unless you want to call what's going on now a war. I fear that this going to bring about a couple of results: one - all that will have been accomplished is exactly what that guy probably wanted: a division of people fighting within a good community. Two - more hard feelings between people. Three - people will have lowered themselves to the same thing that they're complaining about - folks following others to boards and causing situations.

Not worth it people.

Now, I could be completely wrong about those assumptions, and what could happen, and I hope that I am. I don't want to see the stitching community divided any more than it already is.

I am, however, a little surprised that some folks are being so vocal about the "trouble" they perceive being caused at this other individual's board - and they're surprised by the people who are appearing there. I'm not - people are naturally curious. People naturally want to defend something they believe in or something they have found they enjoy. Or people just like being whomever they need to be when the situation presents itself for them to change. Again, as I've said before, people can be anything they want to be online....

...and it's never pretty when someone's world shatters on the realization that someone has a couple of different sides to them that one never expected to see.

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Now, I suspect that you think I'm going to discuss the bugs that have been plaguing all of us EzBoard users, and I really wish I was.

But I'm not.

I'm going to be talking about those lovely 6 legged creatures we call bugs. The ones that are supposed to live OUTSIDE of the dwellings that humans have. Unfortunately there's a few bugs that have decided that living in my pantry is the right place to be.

That's right - I have kitchen bugs. For those who know me well, you know I hate having kitchen bugs. And these are really insidious kitchen bugs. When I was growing up, we threw out almost everything in our pantry after some nasty little mealy worms invaded all of the food. We're not sure how they did it so quickly, but they were everywhere. Then we figured out that placing bay leaves on the shelves in the pantry would keep the little buggers away.

This is logic that I have used for the last 14 years that I've had a pantry of my own. This is logic that has worked for the last 14 years that I've had a pantry of my own. My world shattered on Sunday afternoon.

I don't have mealy worms. I have little 6 legged beetle like things that are as small as ants and have invaded a great amount of my starchy items and my flour. They've left the sugars and most of the salts alone. Thank goodness for small favors.

We found a bug inside a sealed bag of jasmine rice - then we found the little hole that the bug must have either chewed or found in the bag and tossed the rice. Then we started pulling EVERYTHING out of the pantry. We threw out a lot of pasta items. We threw out a couple of pounds of flour. We tossed a lot of things into the freezer in the hopes that the buggies will die a nice cold death and we can rescue some of the food - considering that I was using the flour about two weeks ago to make chicken and dumplings, I'm pretty sure that this was a recent situation. I'm not sure where these bugs came from, but I'm fairly certain they're leaving the premises.

What really shook my foundation was the fact that my pasta shelf (the top one with all the extra stuff, and dried bay leaf up there to keep the mealy worms away) was found to most likely be ground zero. They had nested in the bay leaf that I had up there. I never looked to see what it looked like - I left that to DH. We pulled out what we could, we vacuumed, we opened packages to survey damage or save-a-bility. DH is still going through the shelves one by one with the 409 and is going to keep them clean. We put back the canned goods on one shelf last night and still have most of our pantry sitting on the kitchen island.

Considering that it's a 7 foot long by 4 1/2 foot wide island, that's a lot of food. There's still more on the kitchen table - we've been eating at the coffee table in the living room for the last couple of nights. It's been fun, but I'd rather we had done it out of a nice change instead of necessity of pulling everything out of our pantry. I'll probably have food sitting on my counter for a few days now, but it does allow us to go through things and see what's been hiding in the corners and behind other things that I may have forgotten I had, or that have grown very old. It may even give us new ideas for things to make for dinner (and yes, we'll be checking every box and bag that goes back into that pantry extra carefully for a while, no matter how clean and disinfected we get it).

I am not a happy camper. Obviously. The bugs made me throw out part of a bag of Toasted Corn Doritos. Like I said, most of the salts weren't touched. In hindsight, I know it's better that I found them before starting to cook something that they were living in - that's when I would TOTALLY freak out. So I have to thank the fates for small favors...

...after all, the TimTams were still bug free.