Attack of the Spider

I have, surprisingly, not been harassed mercilessly by Matt about nearly killing George with my deadly pasta. I fully expect to meet a total stranger on my next trip to a big city that knows the story, though. I think he told everyone he knew.

Today’s Exploit:

I noticed some spider nests in the upper corners of my doorway a while ago, just before Cupcake came to visit. She was overjoyed by the fact that I had spiky egg-sacs living in both corners. She would stand about 3.2 feet away and eye them suspiciously before sprinting through the door as fast as she could while Arley held it open for her. I would have made her open the door herself. 

Anyway, I decided that I should probably move the nests to some place else, because I didn’t want spiders hatching all over my door and getting into my house. I have enough of them hanging out in there already. 

I prepared myself with a piece of cardboard and a piece of sand paper, because those are the required spider catching materials. Then I took a deep breath at tried to gently remove the egg-sacs from the corner.

It turns out that Widows (I now know that Widows can be identified by their spiky egg-sacs) do not make delicate webs and egg-sacs. They make something more along the lines of scratchy-sticky wool/kevlar nests that do not like to let go. So I scraped a little harder with my cardboard, the sand paper held up to catch anything I dislodged. 

Suddenly I did dislodge something, something that hit the sand paper, rolled down it and flew of with a trajectory to my exposed cleavage (this is Texas people, and Texas is HOT! I wear the smallest tanks I can find when I am not “really” in public and standing outside my front door does not count as public). Luckily it hit me and bounced off landing about a foot away from my foot. I squeaked and did a panic dance and then started to investigate. 

My attacker was not large, considering I had a pet Black Widow with a body about the size of a quarter living in my garage (that might be a slight exaggeration, but not by much). But she was brown, with dots and swirls on her back. AND SHE HAD AN ORANGE HOURGLASS! This beast is a Brown Widow, which the internet says are more poisonous but less aggressive than their black sisters. Naturally I had to go get my camera and take some nice photos to prove that I wasn’t making this story up.

After retrieving my camera I chased her around my breezeway trying to get not-blurry photos. Naturally she came to and was being quite feisty by the time I had my camera and would not cooperate with me when I tried to take a picture of her belly. 

After torturing her in this manner for about 5.7 minutes I carted her, on my sand paper, over to the dumpster and released her, shortly to be followed by her egg-sacs, which are not near as fragile as most of those I’ve seen. 

Then I went back to remove the second nest from the doorway. This removal went much smoother, and I discovered that it also housed a Brown Widow. Which I’m told is pretty rare, Matt couldn’t believe that I’d actually seen two together, and that they were both nesting in my doorway.

As soon as I finished moving the nests I went and requested that the pest removal guy come take care of my doorway, and spray for the ants on my porch while he’s at it. 

The Time I Almost Killed George

I have just over 2 months left to be ready to run 26 miles, in a row, all on the same day, and it might be really HOT because it’s in TEXAS.

I have to run the purple line and the red line.

Today’s Exploit:

Yesterday I made birthday pasta. That’s the pasta that I’ve had almost every year, ever, for my birthday. Except that one time, and I don’t remember what we had, but it wasn’t as good.

I made birthday pasta because I said “Happy Birthday” to my cousin, and we talked a little bit and he mentioned that one time I made it at his apartment. Or maybe it was two times? Whatever.

Anyway. I made birthday pasta, because it’s amazing and it’s my birthday month, so it still counts. 

So, there I was, cooking butter and garlic. Every time I do that George and Matt act like I’m cooking up some ambrosia, or something equally appetizing. Not that it ever is, but they sure act like it.

I cooked the butter and cooked the extra chopped garlic and chopped some parsley and chopped some clams. And then I Matt attacked me asking if I’d put the cork back into the wine yet, and when I said it wasn’t open yet he attacked the bottle and opened it right up. Then he couldn’t figure out which way the cork went to fit back in the bottle. 

So I cooked the butter and the garlic and the parsley and the clams, with one clam juice. And then I added the wine and had some awesome purple sauce. And it cooked and cooked and cooked while I waited for Matt to come back with the parmesan cheese. 

He got back and I added the cheese, did a quick heat up and dove in head first. 

When I came up for a breath George was hovering. I thought it was pretty much a given that when I cook everyone eats, unless I hide it within 23 seconds. But since he was hovering I asked if he wanted some pasta.

He jumped in head first, too, quickly followed by Matt. 

We were sitting there stuffing our faces when Matt asked what was in the pasta.

Matt: This is really good, what’s in it? And how difficult is it?

Me: It’s REALLY easy, it’s just Butter and Garlic and Parsley and Clams and...

Matt: WAIT! It has CLAMS?!?!

Attack of the Sugar Ants

I just had to write a paper selling something. So, naturally, I chose Hello Kitty backpacks. Nerdy Hello Kitty, no less. When looking up reviews of this product I found some lovely gems that were something along these lines:

OMG! Hello Kitty is, like, so cool and I (heart) her so much! I totally, like, love this backpack and everyone should, like, totally get one to be as cool as I am now! OMG It's so exciting and I love it so much, everyone in, like, all my, like, classes is going to be, like, so totally jealous that I got this, like, totally awesome backpack. (;

Except with worse grammar, capitalization, punctuation and emoticons.

Today’s Exploit:

I had a nice long break between my last one and this one. Almost 2 1/2 weeks! In that time I worked on shelves (I’m ALMOST done), ran a long way WITH OTHER PEOPLE, and fought some ants that took up residence in my closet on my porch. I think I almost got rid of them, but we’ll see when I get back.

In the mean time. I arrived at the rig to find all my boxes piled up and ready to be unpacked. Which I did, in the heat, all by myself. I put the computers in the box, along with all of the cables and nonsense that needs to be hooked up. I ran cables to my sensor and a separate monitor, and I set up the satellite. By then I was nice and soaked from sweat and covered in dust from crawling around on the floor and sitting in the dirt to untangle some cables. 

My night hand arrived in time to run one last cable and set up his own computer while I showered and got some dinner. When I came back to the box, after a few hours, to set up some computer files I was assaulted by itty bitty sugar ants. These things like to bite. And then you feel all creepy-crawly with phantom ants for about 6.32 hours. 

After the one bit my hand I looked around to discover that they were EVERYWHERE! They were in Logan’s keyboard, on and under his mousepad, under all of the computers in mass quantities and hiding individually under cables. 

I killed 487.

Then I went and got some bleach, because I heard a rumor that they don’t like strong smells cause it means they can’t follow their neighbor’s trail.  

After about 2 hours of alternately killing mass quantities of ants and spraying the heck out of the counter and any possible entry space I started to feel sick from the fumes and gave up for the night. I still have to kill one or two every day, but it’s much better than being swarmed by them every time I try to work at any of the 172.6 computers. 

And now I have the creepy-crawlies again.  Gah.