Eight Legged Freaks.

Ladies and gentlemen, I give you the latest specimen that I have confronted. Legs extended, it is nearly the size of my hand. Feel free to identify if you can. I only let it live long enough to take the photo.

I still haven't stopped shuddering at the thought of that thing. I think I'm going to have to nuke my house from orbit. It's the only way to be sure.

I'm not stupid... I'm advanced!

Oi vey. I'm having flashbacks to skool. For the last several weeks I've been trying to learn about cement (specifically, wellbore cementing). Fun stuff.

No, really, it's actually interesting. The problem arises from me having no relevant background with the stuff, and combining the learning process with the ongoing QC. It's starting to all merge into one massive mental ball of... stuff that I'm having difficulty wrapping my head around.

On the plus side, if I ever feel like pouring an extension to my patio, I'm fairly sure I can get a good deal on the supplies...

The heat comes and goes down here. And this weekend it came. I originally planned to use the weekend to get a bunch of work done around the house. Ah, the best laid plans of mice and men. Saturday started off good. I managed to trim back the jungle in my yard and unloaded nearly a ton of rock so that I could set up a garden section in my yard to transplant my herbs into. Sunday was supposed to be about cleaning the house (I swear things get dirtier quicker down here than in Calgary), and installing a few organizing racks in the garage, but I woke up with a splitting headache that never really went away. When combined with the heat I ended up saying "screw it" and loafed around for the day feeling miserable. Good times. All praise the inventor of central air conditioning.

I also suspect that I have raccoons hanging around my place now. I can't be positive, but I don't know of any other animal that would actually try to steal my birdfeeder. I came out one morning to find it gone and the pole it was mounted on bent over. After much searching, I found the thing wedged underneath my back fence.

Oh! New bug alert! I haven't seen one of these since elementary school.

The second pic isn't great, but gives a better idea of the size.


No, the ash-can isn't mine. Neither is the bug. It was found up by our warehouse. I was tempted to take it home as a pet.

And in case Amy hasn't been notified of this article already: The Ultimate Knitter

Uninvited Guests

Last week I discovered that I had a new house guest squatting on my front porch.


With a little prodding, I was able to get the little buggers ID.


I initially left him/her/it alone but then realized that it probably wasn't a good idea leaving a poisonous spider on my doorstep, and gave it the boot.

It's funny, but it's little things like that that really make me realize that I'm not in Kansas (or Canada) anymore. The heat, the humidity? Annoying, but they don't really stand out, for some reason (I notice them, of course. They just don't scream to me: "Hey! You're in Arkansas!") Ditto for the accents. The wildlife, however, is another matter. The other night I also found this lovely specimen in my backyard.


The strange part is that I was more disturbed by the katydid than the black widow. Bugs of all type (spiders especially) creep me out, but I was all "Kewl! A black widow in MY house!" .

Also saw a flock of vultures on the side of the road, something else that I'd never seen live before. Huge birds. Honestly though, I don't know how armadillos aren't an endangered species yet. You can practically measure you driving distance by counting the dead ones on the road.