She shrunk!

She was huge last time I saw her and now she's nice and petite. Bad news is, she'll die soon. I don't know when or how long she's got, but I'll keep watch hoping I can find out.

Ok, she's a spider. Big mamma spider until sometime in the last day or so. She's still hanging upside down in the corner of one of the large windows in the dining room, right next to the silk covered ball of spider eggs. A big Mamma spider lays a lot of eggs. I counted and there's exactly one Brazillian of them.

I'm not much on washing windows, particularly when they sit about twenty feet off the ground, but this is the time of year when I can't stand it any more. The leaves are dropping out of my view of the gorge, hidden for the last six months, and I get to see the cliffs with the freshness caused by absence. Of course they were there all along but I would have had to cut something to see them. Now it's time for Mom Nature to show me her stuff and drop those leaves out of the way. Suddenly, the spots on the glass become significant. That brilliant red soft maple tree on the far side is about the same size as the smudge that lies in direct line of view. Smudge gotta go!

...Time for the window washing contraption I make up out of aluminum poles, a sponge mop, and duct tape. Clean windows are coming...except for one. Folks are generally too polite to ask why we have one dirty window. (Actually, folks who know me marvel that any of them get washed in the first place, let alone all but one.) As it is, I'm not about to abort one Brazillian spider babies. Only about six of them will make it to adulthood anyway.

Fishing in the air can be a tough way to make a living.

And if you're a male spider...Your life ends with being eaten as part of sex. I mean really eaten...

Peace,

Steve

*****

Personally, I get the maddest at people who try to manipulate me with false information. Here is something written by Mike Scanlon, a former aide to Tom Delay, who, like his boss, has now been indicted.


Via Kos:


"The wackos get their information through the Christian right, Christian radio, mail, the internet and telephone trees," Scanlon wrote in the memo, which was read into the public record at a hearing of the Senate Indian Affairs Committee. "Simply put, we want to bring out the wackos to vote against something and make sure the rest of the public lets the whole thing slip past them."

...Scanlon confessed the source code of recent Republican electoral victories: target religious conservatives, distract everyone else, and then railroad through complex initiatives.


"Where's the threat?" Factoid of the day:

Deaths in the United States from Terror during the Clinton and Bush administrations: Less that 3500.

Deaths in the United States from medical mistakes in the last 12 months: Approximately 195,000 (Business Week)

Think we spend 50 times more on health care than terrorism?

At the Tennessee Theater last night:

I looked up the origin of the word "Politics."

"Poly" is from the Greek word meaning "Many"...

"Tics" are a bunch of blood sucking parasites!
Tommy Smothers