The biggest one I've ever seen

I ran down to the basement to get a pair of knitting needles and nearly stepped on the biggest spider I've ever seen outside of a zoo exhibit. I went back upstairs and approached D. with my VERY SERIOUS FACE and told him what I'd encountered. I held my fingers apart spanning about 2/3 of my palm to emphasize how big this spider was. Not quite believing my story, he followed me downstairs and agreed it was the biggest spider he'd ever seen in this state. He used to live in a state with tarantulas so this caveat doesn't diminish the size of our little friend. Here he is next to a 3 x 5 index card for comparison. Those grid lines are 1/4" squares. Think about it.

For another perspective, and to let you know how close I got to him the first time. Remember, that's a size 10 foot facing off against the arachnid.

I'm just glad neither of us are afraid of spiders and our little friend isn't living in the basement anymore. Then again, I have noticed a lack of cave crickets recently and thought it was due to the cold weather. I hope we didn't remove our cricket-catcher!

What a find!

There's a large year round flea market here in town. The main building has permanent shops, including a coin shop - our usual reason for going. It's an odd building, the front part is somewhat ok, but the further back you go the scarier it gets - the outer edge shops are made of plywood and chicken wire. Out back is the main flea market full of random tables of junk and treasures. It also has an incredibly diverse Hispanic food section with fresh produce I didn't know you could get outside of a border state. There's also an antiques area - still a mix of junk and oddities, but worth a visit to see what's there. I've always loved skeleton keys and recently started collecting them, and sometimes find some for a good deal out there.

But what we found last week was definitely unusual. As soon as we walked in the garage we saw a dusty Victorian sofa pushed up against the wall. We both were intrigued, but knew it could have all sorts of problems. We looked it over in detail - I even bent down to smell the fabric, which got odd looks from D and the booth owner. It was in remarkably good condition, still supportive and comfortable, just in need of a good vacuuming and oiling.

We walked around the other tables, trying to decide why we should buy it. It's pretty and we have a place for it, but seriously - are we really going to randomly buy a Victorian sofa? There's no good reason to do it. Then D said we should look at it from another angle - why shouldn't we buy it? We both grinned at each other and hurried back to start haggling.

Not quite baby chicks

My SIL recently got a herd of baby chickens and has been blogging about her chicken escapades.  While I don't have a whole bunch of peepers growing at home, I do have some recent egg laying and baby hatching activity at the house.

It's pretty neat to be able to see things like her weaving the egg sac so close.  And once all the babies hatched, it followed a very slow moving flock dynamic.

The thing is, there are SO MANY insects invading, we're letting all the spiders be to help combat the problem.  Well, until I looked and found that every single spider of this species hatched her egg sac on the same day. Sorry, a few spiders per room I can handle.  But thousands of baby spiderlings all over?  Nope, not gonna happen.

New Year Deer

I woke up fairly early on New Year's Day (can you tell I'm a bit behind in my posting?). Like 7 am, which is roughly when the dogs' desire for me to be mobile overrides my ability to ignore their ear-flapping head shakes just inches from my face. God forbid I burrow under the covers, or a cold probing nose will worm its way in and guarantee I shoot out of bed in an instant. Still, I figured I'd enjoy a nice quiet morning since it's the one day per year you can pretty much guarantee everyone stayed up past their bedtime the night before. I brewed a cup of my awesome Teavana white ayurvedic chai and sat back to appreciate the morning stillness and snowy backyard scene. The deer in the photo was standing next to our fence, still enough I was able to run and get the camera.

The echoing gunshot that sounded next was uncomfortably loud even in our closed house, causing the dogs to whine and bark. No wonder the deer were hiding along our back yard - we all hoped the hunters had the sense not to fire towards the houses. I fully respect the right of someone who wants to kill a deer for food, but not in my damn backyard, and not at 7am on freakin new year's day! Thankfully deer season has ended and I can stop worrying about misfires finding their way into our yard and dogs.

Pathetically little time

I still don't have real internet access at home, and with the added commute I don't like staying at work late just to email (although I do sometimes). There's something effed up about our router at home, and until we get it figured out only D's puter has teh internets.

About 5 minutes from our house is a great park with paved walking trails paralleling the river. I took the dogs there for the first time this morning. We went down to the water's edge and I took them off lead to go swimming. There was enough of a rocky shoreline I could easily follow them upstream and we spent about an hour exploring the riverside. If I had been in more swimmable clothes I probably would've joined them. The water wasn't nearly as cold as the high mountain streams I've been accustomed to. We encountered another dog who kept splashing and then biting at the splashed water in the air. Kayla didn't understand what he was doing, but knew it looked fun enough to dash up to him to join in.

I got a bunch of ivy and other groundcover plants including some Stepables to try and start making something of the overgrown disaster of our yard. It's not really that bad, but definitely looks like no one has tended it, except for mowing, for the last 3+ years. I was able to clear away and evil rooty plant and get 7 of the ivy plants in the ground but had to give up before I fainted and ended up buried under a gossamer coating of gnats. Digging in hardpacked dry rocky never-dug dirt is WAY harder than working a garden. I watered the ground well, and hopefully will have an easier time of digging later.

Still loving the house, and happy just to be at home. I don't feel the same urge to be constantly busy that I had at our old place. Now just sitting in the back yard watching the dogs play seems a great way to spend the day. Especially with a nice cold beer in hand. Hmmm...I wonder what the dogs are doing right now?

The first one

Check it out --I packed my first box to move to our new home! That's right, by this time next month we will be living in our own place. I know the month is going to pass in the blink of an eye, so I'm trying to casually do as much as possible ahead of time. Of course, looking around the house I'm amazed just how much stuff I use daily and can't box up. And again there's the question of where to put all these boxes, since boxed-up stuff takes up way more space than stuff on shelves. My winter clothes were an easy choice to pack, and it was a great feeling to write "basement" on the box. Finally we will have real storage space. I think we've spent more time planning the basement than we have about arranging all the other rooms combined.

More to come...