Wow. Who would have thought I would be sitting here with my wife figuring out how we will split up our debt so that we can split up our lives? It seems very surreal. Sort of like a dream. Except there’s no comfort in waking up. My only solace is the old cliche about time healing all wounds.
Aug 152011
Aug 082011
How can I possibly be so bad a person that my own wife, the only woman I’ve ever loved enough to marry, tells me that she’s not happy with her life? I know I have my flaws. But I think I’m a good person overall. I’m a good provider, respectful, patient, kind, loving… it feels like it’s coming to a head. And all I can do is wait and see what happens.
Aug 062011
This is kind of turning into the spider blog. But the good thing is that I’m getting to like these creatures more and more. We normally have at least one writing spider make it’s home in our yard every summer. This year, I had not seen any yet. Until today. While mowing the grass out behind our back fence, I scared this guy up. He didn’t have any web (that I could find) but was content to stay on our fence and pose for a picture. They’re called writing spiders because they weave a zig-zag pattern into their webs. There’s an old wives tale that if you see your name in a writing spider’s web, you’ll be dead within a week. Good thing this one was just on our fence.
Aug 062011
My friend Seth has a Tokay gecko that is one of the most beautiful lizards I have ever scene. It’s a shame that it’s temperament is not quite as nice as his looks.
Jul 242011
I’ve already established the fact that I don’t care for spiders. But really, that’s not completely true. It would be more accurate to say that I don’t like dangerous spiders. So this Eastern Parsons Spider didn’t bother me when I saw it scurrying across the floor. I grabbed my phone to snap a picture and after gently blowing down on the spiders head, (a little trick I learned from watching the making of Arachniphobia) it stopped and allowed me to snap this pic. I then let it go on it’s way since they are harmless to humans and pets, and their main diet is… other spiders. Yup. These are double agents and will actually reduce the number of spiders in a given location if left alone to hunt.
Jun 292011
I probably like 95% of animals and insects. One of the few things I don’t care for are spiders. They just creep me out. Then you add in the fact of a potentially nasty bite, and I REALLY don’t like them. So, seeing brown recluses in my house is NOT something that I’m too excited about. I found a rather small one two nights ago in my home office which was bad enough but tonight, I found one that stretched out to the diameter of a table spoons scoop. I caught him in a container to get some pictures and make a positive ID. It is, without a doubt, a brown recluse. Needless to say I won’t be releasing this guy back into the wild.
I’m not a big Star Trek fan although I did enjoy Star Trek: The Next Generation quite a bit when it first aired on TV. My wife and I watch a lot of reality television nowadays and this season of survivor has a contestant that made me wonder, could this be Captain Picard after blasting out the other side of a worm hole?? You be the judge.
Apr 132011
Headache in the morning. Had to stay home from work and sleep it off. So then once the headache gets under control, the rest of the day is spent nursing the after affects of all the meds I took to help the original headache. Then I finally get to the end of the day. Just about ready to go to bed. Thought I would make me a quick snack using a new fruit cutter we bought the other day. Started shaving down the apples in to wonderful thin slices (that would subsequently get covered with a warm milk/peanut butter topping. About the sixth swipe on the slicer, and I took the end of my pinky finger off. Not the whole end mind you, just a horse shoe shaped chunk of the fingernail and the meat underneath it. Bled like a stuck pig but seems to finally have started to coagulate. I’ll post some pics tomorrow of the carnage. 
I have two small fiddler crabs in my aquarium. The male likes to motion to his reflection, probably as a sort of territorial display. Here’s a clip I captured of him today. To me, it looks like he’s directing fish traffic.
Feb 192011
As Emily was cleaning the fish tank tonight she noticed an odd looking patch on one of the rocks. A closer look revealed a few hundred eggs arranged nicely along the hollow of the rock!! Looks like our Green Terrors haven’t been fighting. They’ve been courting! According to info found on the ‘net, the eggs should hatch in about 3-4 days. The Terrors are supposed to be excellent parents and it should only take about two weeks for the babies to reach 3/4 of an inch. At that time I’m gonna move as many as I can to my bigger tank for them to spread out and fatten up. Then we’ll probably take them to the local pet store for trade in credit. Here are a couple pics Emily took clearly showing the eggs being guarded by the male.
Green Terror with Eggs