Arachnophobia!

I decided to rake the leaves outside today as it was a wonderful day out and I didn't want to get far behind like in past years. I changed out of my work clothes and into a pair of shorts and a t-shirt and flip-flops. After all who needs shoes for raking leaves?

I got about halfway down the hill when I noticed what appeared to be a white plastic bag sticking out of a hole in the ground. I pulled and pulled and finally got a large piece out. Then it moved! At first I was spooked but curious, I thought it might be a cocoon of some sort that had come unraveled. When I peeled it apart, out fell a spider. Not any little spider but a big as my thumb, menacing looking spider. I got my camera and a piece of paper to try and get a photo. He was not shy about showing those shockingly big front fangs. I got some photos and then let him go in an area I had already finished.

Now, I'm not normally afraid of spiders, I actually find them fascinating to watch. But when I continued to rake the leaves, I found my hair standing on end and I was checking my legs and feet at each 'tickle' of a leaf or heaven help me when something got in between my flip-flops and my feet. Unfortunately you'll have to settle for this other photo as none of mine turned out and when I went to find the spider where I had tossed him earlier, all I found was a cricket.
Needless to say the yard isn't going to get done today.

Salem loves Banana Republic

It sure is nice having pets for cheap amusement. This Banana Republic bag is one of Salem's favorite toys and it was free! Well, almost.

Now that we've got Sherlock, we've got double the fun. Salem is good at chasing toys thrown down the hall but as any other stuck up cat, he's too good to fetch. Instead he'll chase the toy till it stops, take a sniff and then come back, wanting someone to go pick it up and throw it back the other way. Sherlock loves to play fetch. What's even better is that he loves to chase the cat off when the cat is also chasing his toys. I'll throw a toy down the hall, they'll both go after it but it winds up with Sherlock chasing Salem into the bedroom, returning to the hall to retrieve the toy and then running back to me as Salem comes out of the bedroom to chase Sherlock back down the hall.

I love pets. sometimes.

The Pizza Incident

Ok, so tonight Camille was in a really pissy mood. She wanted to go out with her friends but they all had better things to do, like clean the house. We had skipped lunch and were getting pretty hungry early. I didn't really want to go out to someplace nice to eat and spend a whol lot of money so after suggesting a few places and getting turned down, I ask if we can just order a pizza. To which I get a resounding NO! So we decide to hop in the car and go out to Qdoba, but on the way Camille says, lets just go to the mall so I can get some Chinese food. After looking at the variety of choices she says, I'm going to Sbarro for some stromboli. I head over to Great Steak for a large super steak, come back to the table and what do I find she has gotten? Pizza! Grrrr!

Demolition = Fascination

I had some time to kill for lunch and saw a wrecking ball tearing into the old Parisian building at Kenwood mall so I grabbed some lunch to go and went parked in the lot across the stree to watch.

The funny thing is that I wasn't alone in this idea. I was only there for about 45 minutes but I think I was the only one actually eating lunch while watching. There had to have been around 10 other people in cars for a period of time, all watching the destruction. A group of people returning from lunch to the eye center across the street even stayed outside for a few extra minutes watching. People returning to their cars from shopping all had their eyes fixed while going to their cars.

Home at last.

Well, after a really long weekend, I'm back home and able to sleep in my own bed again.

As much as I like to travel, I think going on such a short notice is a colossal waste of time and money. The Company flew myself and one other up to cover the Boston South team for the labor day weekend. We managed to work through about half of the backlog, but if we had better dispatchers and were better prepared, it could have been down to near zero. Fortunately, one of their techs who was on disability came back on Tuesday. The TM for that territory seemed deeply appreciative even of the seemingly miniscule amount that we got done.

With all this travelling that I do, I should write up a guide for TM's in case they are ever put in the position of calling for outside help.

Boston Bound!

The Boss called tonight around 9pm to ask if I wanted to go to Boston for the weekend, and after a little deliberation I decided to say yes. So I'm in the midst of packing a bag for my Labor Day weekend from hell. I guess the territory up there has lost 4 people recently and they're a little short handed. I don't really know what I'll be doing while up there but i'll find out when I get there.

Just a bit warm.

While I don't know yet how hot it actually got today, I know it was somewhere in the upper 90's. Today I had the luxury of carting 5 boxes with desktop power supplies 4 blocks from my parking spot to the Federal Building downtown. After making it through security and up to the office where I needed to go, I was drenched in sweat. It didn't help that it felt as if the air conditioning was barely working in that building. I managed to replace 4 of the power supplies and then just when I'm putting in the last one, the power goes out to the whole building. Talk about fun. A couple of the elevators were still working which was good considering I was up on the 9th floor. The only light in the elevator though was a little tiny emergency light, no brighter than a child's night light. I can only imagine how much hotter it must have gotten inside that building as the AC was definitely not working at that point.