8/24/2012

Arachnophobia

MargaretMargaret
Filed under: @ 4:18 pm

Anyone who has known me for more than about 10 minutes will quickly become familiar with my opinions about spiders. I don’t do spiders.
That having been said, I have mostly gotten over my childhood reactions to anything with eight legs. I say mostly because while I don’t run and shriek at the very thought of creepy crawlies anymore, I can say with fair truth that a wolf spider in my laundry room taught me how to teleport a few years back. And my interpretation of the Save Me From The Spider dance could be done in three separate acts with a full ballet company and a complete symphony orchestra.

Let’s just sum it up by saying that so long as it’s smaller than the ball of my thumb, not crawling on me, not venomous, and doesn’t startle me, I’m just fine with spiders.

And I can seriously appreciate what spiders do for my gardens. I’ve not had a single leaf hopper or aphid on my roses this year.

But I’ve never really appreciated how cool spiders are. Mostly because I’ve never had the inclination to sit and watch one for long enough to see it do anything more than just be an ikky little octopod that needs to be squooshed.

This morning though…

I’ve been seeing a physical therapist for a massive and gnarly tweak in my back that has been making me miserable for about the last six weeks. The physical therapist is a sadist, as all of them are, but at least she’s a nice sadist and she is helping un-tweak my back. Ideally I should be back in shape to then tweak the rest of me on the three day in 3 weeks.
In addition to being a sadist with regards to her expectations of my abilities to turn myself into a pretzel and flail around on the floor, she’s got a rotten schedule. At least she’s got a rotten schedule as far as it interacts with my schedule.
So I’m scheduled for my PT appointments on Fridays at gawdawful a.m. meaning that I get up early on the first day of my weekend to go and visit with a sadist who wants me to turn myself into a pretzel and flail around on the floor.

And this morning at gawdawful a.m. I went out on to the porch to dump the cat’s water dish on the basil planter when I spotted a spider. I’ve been keeping track of this spider for at least a week. Mostly because she(?) has been in my way having inconveniently strung her web between the main support for the pink rose trellis over our kitchen window and a frond of said rose that I’ve been wanting to weave back into the main body of the bush. But I don’t like to disturb occupied spider webs so I’ve been holding off until Ms. Spider packs it up and decamps for other realms. Which may never happen at this rate, Ms. Spider spent the morning weaving a new web.

I don’t think I’ve ever actually sat and watched a spider weave her web before. This morning it was quiet, it was just past sunrise, it was a very pleasant temperature, the neighbors’ chickens were burbling about behind the fence, and there was Ms. Spider doing some very cool things with her back legs and her spinnerets.

I still don’t like spiders. I’ll still jump and screech the next time a member of the colony of wolf spiders that lives in our house during the late summer and fall shows its ugly, hairy self.
But I’ve gotta appreciate Ms. Spider in my rose bush. That was really cool.

8/17/2012

The dreaded hamwort

MargaretMargaret
Filed under: @ 4:23 pm

It was through the genius of B. Kliban (the “B.” stands for Bernard, who knew? I thought the “B.” stood for “Bill”.) that the world was introduced to the concept of the dreaded hamwort.

Pogo is a hamwort. I have rarely known a critter so determined to eat one particular thing that comes out of a human kitchen. Pogo is serious about ham.
Andrew and I often add a slice of ham to our lunch salads for a bit of protein. We frequently have ham in the refrigerator.

What I want to know is how Pogo can hear ham.

See, we keep the ham in a Ziploc bag in the meat drawer of the refrigerator. We keep a LOT of things in Ziploc bags in the meat drawer of the refrigerator. Cheese, the occasional vegetables that don’t fit in the crisper, sometimes nuts, fresh herbs…. a lot of things.
So Pogo isn’t taking his cues from hearing the drawer open then hearing the plastic rattle. Pogo never teleports himself into the kitchen when I’ve opened the meat drawer in the fridge to get out a package of cheddar cheese.
If you even think about getting the ham out of the meat drawer….. WHOOSH! There’s Pogo.

Flitter has some sort of weird sixth sense about when I’ve got my hair loose so she can jump on my shoulder and try to eat my hair.
Pogo hears ham.

We’ve got weird cats.

8/12/2012

Ah HAH!

MargaretMargaret
Filed under: @ 5:53 pm

I’ve got it!

Ever since I posted this debate about how I hear music, I’ve been asking pretty much anyone that will put up with me for long enough to listen, how they hear music.

And it’s hard to explain to people who can hear lyrics how it is that I, who can’t, hear music most of the time.

Until I got a walking music disc from my friend Rob. Rob has rather eclectic tastes in music, but has one of the best ears for a walking beat that I’ve ever run across. The first walking disc that Rob made for me is absolute freakin’ genius. This new disc is also right up there, but what I love most about it is that in the play list Rob added some Japanese pop songs that illustrate EXACTLY what I mean when I tell people I can’t hear lyrics.

It’s nice, bouncy music with a good beat. But the lyrics, of course, are all in Japanese. At least, I think they’re in Japanese. Andrew pointed out that with the way I hear music it would be difficult for me to tell! 😯

So what I hear when I listen to these two tracks on my new walking disc is nice, upbeat, bouncy music and syllables that I think should form words, but that I just can not form into words.

So as a demonstration of how I hear music I invite you to look up some music of your chosen genre with lyrics in a language in which you are not fluent.

That is exactly what I hear.

8/4/2012

No, nope, I was wrong!

MargaretMargaret
Filed under: @ 6:22 pm

This is awesome!

The only comment that I’ve got to make is: there wouldn’t be enough brains at one of these events to attract even a zombie mouse, let alone 300 full grown human zombies.

Editor’s Note: Sorry about the broken link, I think it’s fixed now. Usually I test the links before I publish, but apparently I was in a hurry.


All portions of this site are © Andrew Lenzer, all rights reserved, unless otherwise noted.