That spider

Well, after a little bit of Google searching, I managed to figure out what that spider was.
First I started at the International Society for Arachnology page. The web was kind of orb-ish, so I clicked on the Orb web spiders page. Lo and behold, there was a picture of the spider, Argiope aurantia. This spider apparently goes by several aliases: Yellow Garden Spider, Black-And-Yellow Argiope, Golden Orb Weaver, Yellow Argiope, Writing Spider, Golden Garden Spider. According to this page, the spider should be mostly harmless. Sure doesn’t look it.
So there you are. Yet another illustration of the power of the Internet :).

7 donations?

A few weeks ago, the people that run the blood donor room at work held a little party to celebrate and thank people that donated blood over the past year. I got a small award for having 6 donations, which I thought was the most anyone could donate in a year.
So, much to my surprise, they were also honouring a small group who managed to squeeze in a 7th donation. Kudos to them, but I’m still trying to figure out how they got in a 7th donation. Donating every 8 weeks, the math says that 6 is as many as you can squeeze into a calendar year. Maybe their ‘year’ is longer than everyone elses…
Anyway, go donate blood and help someone out after you finish reading this.

One of those days

It was one of those days where you’re trying to get something done that people are asking for yesterday, but you keep getting interrupted by people doing things that should have been done weeks ago. So, a task that probably should have taken 4 hours or so gets started late, and ends up taking about 6 hours to finish. Ugh.

Still Smoked

The chicken wasn’t the only thing that got smoked last week. After 4 days and as many hair washings, my hair still smells like BBQ smoke. When the wind blows from behind me, I smell BBQ and get hungry.