That's okay...really. You can have the bed. I insist.

I have a confession to make. I am terrified of spiders. No, wait. Let me change that: I am terrified of a certain kind of spider. Like the one that tried to lay claim to my futon.

This monster was sitting on a book less than a foot away from my thigh. I was proud of myself - I didn't even yelp. Granted, it was more due to being interested in Lost than my spectacular phobia fighting skills. That was also probably why I tried to knock it off my bed with a 3x5 note card...and discovered that this particular species of spider fights back. That damn spider was determined not to move! It was a heated and pitched battle but in the end, I won.

Or so I thought.

Less than a minute later, the monster was back and it looked as if it was sizing up my worth as a meal for the kiddies. This time, not only did I yelp but I almost jumped off the bed. I caught myself before it could claim victory though. I trapped it in a Sonic cup instead.

It was classic nightmare imagery when I put the white, almost opaque top on that cup. I turned the cup sideways and I could see the lower half of those legs as the spider tried to get out. Beyond that, they just blurred out into a big, grey suggestion of "spider." I could hear those legs too, as they scuttled against the top and sides of the cup.

The lid of a Sonic cup has three rings on it. The inner one, composed of eight (appropriate) domes is surrounded by a solid, raised ring. Then there's a trough and the third ring fits over the lip of the cup itself. The silhouette of the Monster Spider took up a lot of space - at one point, all eight of its legs were spread out and touching the second ring. That's about 2.75 inches across on a medium size cup.

That's one damn big spider for this area. I'll go to bed and halfway expect to be carried off by the damn thing now, even though I released it out in the driveway. It was big enough to watch as it scuttled through the leaves and gravel. In low light. Six and seven feet away.

So much for sleep.


[Technorati tags: Daily Life, life]

Odd occurrence #1546285462 (or there abouts)

I had an interesting sounding message on my machine this afternoon when I came back from the studio. It was my mom. She called to see if we were going out on Friday. Right in the middle of the sentence, she quit talking and there was a dull thud as if she dropped something on the floor. Then I hear "Hello? Hello?"

Things got even more interesting when I called her back. She swears my answering machine talked back to her and cut her off. She said that right in the middle of her message a voice said, "Thank you for calling!" and hung up on her.

There's no other voices on the recording, just hers. I heard a thud when she heard the voice and I heard her say "Hello?" when she heard the dial tone. The only thing, other than the greeting, the machine is supposed to say is "memory full" - and there is still plenty left.

So evidently, I now have a smartass answering machine...or some one/thing decided to liven things up for my mom today. Is that cool or what?

[Technorati tags: Daily Life, life, weird, strange]

Good Stuff

A friend of mine gave me some new Celtic music: the Brobdingnagian Bards (thank god they have the pronunciation of that on their website!) They do a great version of Whiskey in a Jar. I also love Donald, Where's Your Trousers? and the Jedi Drinking Song. There's more traditional songs as well.

I usually get tired of Celtic music rather quickly. Not this. It's good. Go listen!

[Technorati tags: Daily Life, celtic music]

My fate is sealed

Oh yes. Yes, it is.

I thought it was fairly certain how I would be when I get older. I'd be that little old eccentric lady on the corner, who lives with fifteen or twenty feline chilluns. Nope. Today, I got a glimpse of who I just may truly be in twenty or thirty years.

Three guys pulled their Jeep SUV into my yard this afternoon. When I heard the engine turn off, I waited a few minutes. You know, so I could ignore them when they knocked on the door. Nothing. I went to the bedroom door and looked into the driveway from the second floor window. Nothing. Now, when I say they parked in my yard, I mean that literally. They parked so far into the yard, I couldn't see the Jeep until I came downstairs and looked out the side window. They had come about twenty feet past the driveway and missed the Bertgarten Sage by about three feet.

If they had come much closer, it may have been a killing offense. They may not look like much but nobody messes with my animals or my plants!

So, out the door I go (_insert George Thorogood guitar licks here_). I get to the corner of the house and these twenty something-ish guys come from out from the backyard. I see three confused smiles on three confused faces. Honestly, I was only thinking, "What fresh hell is this?" but I can only imagine the smile on my face. I think it may have said, "Hi. You can leave or I can kill you. I don't care which."

Here's the conversation that followed:

"Hi. You want to get out of my yard?"

"Somebody told us this place was abandoned, I mean, no one lived here. We were looking at buying it."

"Nope. Sorry. Ciao."

"Oh. Sorry to have bothered you."

"Yep."

Before they could say anything else, I headed back to the door. They pissed me off and I'm not really proud of what I did next. It was petty and childish but I slammed the door behind me. All the while, I thought, "Granted, it isn't Better Homes and Gardens quality, the house could use a good coat of paint and the grass is a little long but abandoned?! Don't people see me going back and forth to the studio all the time? Don't they hear me blasting my music when I'm there? Besides, who the hell puts laundry out on the line of an abandoned house - which they drove by when they nearly murdered the sage?"

That's when it occurred to me that I have just gotten a taste of my possible future if I stay here. No, I'm not going to be the little eccentric cat-lady. I'm going to be like the witch in Big Fish, with the neighborhood kids making up scary stories about mean old me and all my evil exploits. "They say if she sees you, you're going to turn into a zombie! Then she buries you in that cemetery until she needs zombie parts for her evil spells - or worse, paint for her evil paintings! Oh, and her cats? They're the size of tigers and they will EAT you!"

Imagine it - me. Possibly a future urban legend. There's only one thing I can say to that. Cool beans.



[Technorati tags: Daily Life, Diary, Life]

Ah, Technology. Ain't it grand?

Hello? Is anyone still out there? Anyone?

Ye gods, I missed blogging. My computer died. Again. Slowly. One bit of hardware at a time. A monitor here, a year old hard drive there. I think lightning may have been involved but I'm not sure. I guess we'll see what the official diagnosis will be. My computer tech is pretty much family - which means while the work is free, it's done in between and after the payin' folks. It may be a while before I know anything, especially if I lost a year's worth of photos and various kinds of research. Of course, I was going to back everything up...next week.

Oh god - all that research. It literally hurts to think I've possibly lost so much information. Kitsune and other fox spirits. Chaos magick. The Egyptian mythos. The Cthulhu mythos. Epona. Cernunnos. Articles on Psi. Coyote. Nalbinding. Period clothing. Anne Bonney. Mary Read.

So in tribute, let's just go ahead and say I've thrown myself on the ground and pitched the biggest, most melodramatic fit the 'net has ever seen. Let's throw it all in: the wailing, stomping, kicking and screaming. Of course, the whole melodramatic effect is spoiled when I start laughing. I mean, honestly. How could we not in the face of such great silliness?

In the meantime, I finally have this nifty little temp computer. Hopefully, I'll get a setup for downloading photos from my camera next. I've got a few more things to post, although I don't know if they're quite up to to snuff. I don't know if anyone else goes through something like this or not but August seems to be my Month Of the Crap Paintings. Everything I know about painting just seems to go right out of my head and on vacation to cooler climates like so many geese. Now that October is here, maybe they'll migrate back where they belong.

I'll be around various blogs to see some folks in the next day or so. Tonight, if you don't mind, I'm just going to see what I've missed on Indra's Cyberweb.

Technorati tags: daily-life, life, Personal