The Closing Of The Year

Well, the holiday season is here and this reminds me a lot of the kids. I always liked this song from TOYS and it was an oddly interesting movie too.

Hilarious:

Read this email about the art drawing of a spider...ha ha! I just might have to send it to my Chiropractor!

Chagrin

Got home late from a wrestling meet and was informed by my son that the "mini me" he put into the same aquarium as Tarantula Fritz.....has escaped. The previous comment on the arachnids possibly 'webbing us into our beds' is not so funny at the moment--now that it is loose on the same floor.
Makes me wonder if Fritz was set on devouring Mini and it was able to fit through the small hole at the top of the cage in a desperate attempt for freedom. Please god, make it be awfully tired and unable to explore our bedrooms.
Better shake out the shoes from now on...

I Shall Call Him...Mini Me.

Sunday I was trying to avoid my inevitable suffering that I predict I'll endure with the forthcoming winter weather, which is due to make it's debut tomorrow (today/Monday) with chilly rain followed by more drizzle and snow, by readying several outdoorsy tasks.... Yuck. (This past week has been incredibly windy, but I have managed to 'breeze' through it by zooming maniacally on my bike TOWARDS work, and then laboriously peddling home FROM it. What a drag.)

So I hung out a load of clothes wearing gloves, ate a small icy-crisp turnip I pulled ½ out of the ground, checked antifreeze in all the antique/crappy vehicle radiators, indecisively aired up a couple nearly-low tires, put away some flowerpots, took down a hammock, and once back indoors, made some Gingersnap cookies to warm up the kitchen and headed toward the dreaded back-room basement where the furnace lurks in the cobwebs and dust....

MOTHER! Eeeeck! Ick. A huge, I mean ridiculously HUGE wolf spider was guarding the old wooden plank door. I cringed and shivered because I had performed another challenging task earlier—placing my hands on a heavy glass aquarium and actually moving the Tarantula Fritz to a new corner of the house—away from a breezy old windy, because, despite my dislike of these 8-legged critters, I still couldn't bear to see it's demise if it slowly chilled, curled up and died like a frozen upside-down flower—plus the darn thing cost $25 bucks.
HORRORS. The wolf spider sat still (probably too chilly to skitter away) so I eventually got an old mason jar and scooped it up so I could venture forward and replace the furnace filter.

Pardon the language, but this really PI$$ES ME OFF. I hate to turn on the furnace before Thanksgiving. (Last year I begrudgingly did, but only because Paula and her sis were here a lot.) I just hate to give in to winter. To adjust the thermostat and turn the knob to 'heat' means that summer is really OVER and I must succumb to the dark nights and sunless days, scraping windshields, the frozen fingers and toes, the icy wind blowing tears from your eyes, and wearing numerous layers just to stay alive with some semblance of comfort.

So today I decided to drive an old clunker car instead of biking-- stopping by the chiropractor at 7:30am—of course the battery screwed up so I got to walk on to work, then walk home in the damp cold rain and get sopping wet feet...yes, whaa, whaa, whaa; quit whining!

But I placed the wolf spider by Fritz's heatlight, gave it a small cricket and decided they could nearly be related—sneaky, hairy things...I've never seen one in the house before.... In my imagination, Fritz shall call his new friend 'Mini Me'.

And they'll plot together, build up their mojo, and eventually take over the house in the dark of the night webbing us in our beds.....

Navy Halloween

Don't even know what to type here, but it looks like it was a fun night! Very interesting costumes! Derek looks crazy...who's in the red pants? and did Sarah make the booze outfits?
Brig decides to dress up at the last minute: Rambo w/ live ammo... Paula was one of the witches from Hocus Pocus...

Thnakes in the Dark

It finally frosted this week but despite the cold morning, I decided to ride my bike anyway—so what if it froze? Last week was rainy....

All is well and good at 6:55am, but I nearly ran into 2 parked cars in the pitch black streets. Yaaaa!

I didn't realize how 'the dark before the dawn' seems extra gloomy and dense especially under over-hanging tree limbs; that and the fact that several street lamps were either burned out or few and far between. Luckily I didn't show up for work with my two front teeth bashed out or anything despite the denseness of dawn (or my brain).

I've walked home from a couple football games lately; it'd been warm enough for flip-flops (not a good idea when it's over a mile), and also discovered a couple unlit areas. The sports field is just outside of town, but you can walk down the road, then find a couple side streets connected from the country and get into town. On one of these ventures I was hustling right along (I leave before the 4^th quarter because frankly, I am a crowd-watcher, not a game watcher, yawn), and I was on the lookout (for weirdos) for chunks of gravel that would hurt through my thin soles....

Hmmm... I vaguely see a tree branch...wait...those curves are too curvy and uniform for a stick....must be....a SNAKE!

It had come up on the blacktop for warmth and I circled it a couple times and poked it with my toe (heck with those flip-flops) to see if it was still amongst the living. (Pardon me but Beetlejuice was on TV this week!) Yes indeedy. No road-kill for me. I kept circling, crouching lower, trying to distinguish what type it was. No luck. It was just too dark to see much at all....but still, I am a perseverer!

I tried my darnedest to see-- what if it was poisonous?

Finally I just tried to determine which end was the head and which was the tail and since I couldn't really tell, I had to pick it up. (If one end had looked way different I would of assumed it had 'the tell-tale triangle head' of a harmful snake. )

I continued on...snake in one hand, flip-flops in another...and as that stinker warmed up, it went wild! Talk about wiggly and frantic! I could hardly hold on to it's berserk little 18” body... but I managed to make it home and containerize it. NOT for the freezer, but just to show Briggs and let it loose the next day... It was a pleasant mild brown color.

Speaking of snakes, one morning in the mid-90's, about 6:00 am, the house-hold was awakened by a bloodcurdling scream from the bathroom. There was Bailey, dripping in a towel, mad as heck-- a huge black snake had escaped the night before and was whipping around the bathtub in a frenzy...she had stepped in and turned on the water...and then it went crazy! Why she didn't notice it before...well it seemed pretty funny for a few moments, but not to her—trying to get ready for basketball practice.

Back to the bike...as I was leaving work, I'd only gone a block when part of the gear/brake contraption thingymajig on my right handlebar fell apart. Luckily a knowledgeable kid helped me fix it because I couldn't quite figure it out. He tightened it up with his fingers, enough to make it home anyway-- all I could think of was 'thank God it worked this morning'-- I really would have bashed into something without a decent brake!

Then I would be lithping thith blog and I don't know how to type in lithp.

The Music of Video Games [119] Super Ghouls 'n Ghosts

I heard this 1 zillion times. Really. One zillion!