mychai's Diaryland Diary ----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Little Miss Muffet Can't Hold a Candle To This I think it is safer to just not try and clean your home. Simple things like deciding to go into your bathroom, slide open your shower curtain, and scrub the "supposed to be white but it is now black" shower floor end up being death traps if you aren't looking. And good thing I was looking. In fact, good thing I am currently wearing contacts. Two easily conceivable possibilities could have occured to make this shower visit really, really bad. First, I could be in my "wear your glasses" phase, which I only got out of when I went skiing. It's hard to go skiing wearing Eddie Bauer glasses. Second, I could have been in the shower to actually shower. And when I wear my glasses and go to take a shower, I take my glasses off. Remember... I had to get a special medical waiver just so I could join the Air Force. My eyes aren't exactly "A-1" quality. I could have easily missed the little death trap waiting for me. Well, what the hay-ell are you talkin' 'bout, JP? you must be asking yourself. Well... at first it was just a little spider. Cute little thing. If you read my 100 Things list (linked over there in the blue), you will realize that I don't like killing house spiders. They do enough good to justify leaving them be. So, I found a clear, plastic packaging container that I easily scooped the spider in. Usually, I just toss them out the back door. But I wanted to see if I could identify it. A few looks here. A few links there. A few glances at the thing as close as I could get my eyes, all the while storing my new little buddy on my lap -- still in the container, of course. Then, I came across a website with this picture on it. In case you are too lazy to click on all of the links, it is a picture of a brown recluse spider. It was a link that made me do a double take at my lap. ** GULP ** Let me show you a picture of the little spider that sat inches from my gleaming love sword. (That pic was taken while it was still in my (admittedly dirty) bathtub. I assure you, it was in my lap while I was doing research...). So, yeah. I have VERY POISONOUS spiders lurking through my apartment. Ones that could cause, according one one website I read, a fist-sized area of flesh to just kinda... you know... rot away! And your flesh just doesn't grow back. Nuh-uh. It stays like that for years! So, you betcha I'm not going to go to the shower sans glasses or contacts ever again. I did find a professor from University of California -- Riverside who is doing a study on brown recluse spiders. I emailed him about my little encounter, and he is going to have me ship my little buddy to him. The spider. Not the other "little buddy" I usually talk about. So, Mr. Spider is currently enjoying an extended schvitz in a tube of alcohol until I can get to a Mailboxes Etc. All of this spider stuff doesn't bother me a bit. But I went to Waffle House, and the crabby waitress had a cold. Now I feel like my whole body is collapsing -- my throat hurts, my head hurts, my muscles ache... That's right. Highly deadly spiders sitting on my crotch don't bother me. Waffle House waitresses give me the heeby-jeebies. Paging Dr. Freud. I will be extending my Postcard Project for another few days. I have several people on board. Not enough to do a Diaryland-wide postcard project. Sorry guys. I guess I'm not popular enough. I will extend it to Sunday night. So, if you want to send me a postcard and get one in return, email me and get on the list. I have some really neat Columbia-area postcards I plan on sending out to yooz guys. The deal is, I send you a postcard from the area where I live, and you send me one from your area. Great fun, right? Riiiight. Well, this diary entry has deteriorated into yet another blabbering waste of nonsense. I will close off with one of my favorite all-time quotes from the Muppets, quoted by Statler & Waldorf: Statler: That was wonderful! 11:59 p.m. - Thurs., Jan. 16, 2003 ----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- |
||||||
|
||||||
