Orb weaver spiders have been taking over our backyard. Yesterday one created their signature oval web between the house and a bush, blocking sideyard access. We left it alone all day, and this morning it was broken and he was gone. Such is the life of a spider.

The photo is actually of another one that’s made its home near our garbage cans. He’s been there a while now. What amuses me is that the spider is actually positioned with it’s head pointed towards the ground…but if you flip the image (which I did), his mandibles etc. look like a face. Arms raised, he’s coming to get you! Hahaha

The other thing I like about the photo is the spinnerets on its behind are very noticeable. Lastly, don’t forget this is a macro crop, they are nowhere near giant sized or anything. ;)

I love cats and always have. So don’t take this the wrong way:

If you live in a city/suburb and have multiple outdoor cats (more than 2 per household) and don’t care that they turn your neighbors yards into stinky, messy litterboxes, I don’t like you.

To be fair, here’s another gripe:

To whomever used 200pounds of small tanbark as decorative yard mulching for this house that we bought, I don’t like you, either.

The front yard has too many dirt areas near the front door and the windows, and the last month I’ve noticed the smell whenever I have the doors/windows open. It stinks and it permeates the house worse than my own cat’s indoor litterbox. I am not happy.

The entire area under front bedroom window was a litterbox, with the tanbark scrunched up in visible little piles of kitty-burying-activity. So I’ve spent some considerable time the past couple weeks trying to turn the front yard into an area that cats will not, generally speaking, want to pee and poop in.

Rocks as a groundcover in one spot. Shoveling most of the befouled tanbark into garbage bags and then more rocks and cheap cement pavers. That will do for a start. But after that, there’s the backyard, with more dirt strips under the back bedroom windows and all around the backyard fencing that need to be dealt with. Perhaps some chicken wire on the ground for those areas, because the backyard would equal at least a few tons of river rocks, and that’s a bit much to deal with. A long and tiring project. I know about the motion-sensor water deterrent thingies, but they might also keep the squirrels away - as well as humans - and while I’m currently really PO’d at neighbor cats, I still love squirrels. Same thing with the ‘get a dog’ ideas. :P

The occasional cat turd/spray is no problem…that’s life in the suburbs. But apparently our yard has become the claimed super-bathroom territory of the (one) neighbor’s 4 or 5 cats, and I’ve had enough. I shouldn’t have to clean up after YOUR pets simply because YOU don’t want to clean litter boxes in your own home and dump your cats outside. And you better believe if I see a cat in the yard, I’m chasing it away with a hose. And maybe a tossed shoe.

I loved the first Overlord game. It’s one of the few games that have a sort of Dungeon Keeper flavor…twisted, silly humor that turns the usual ‘good vs. evil’ in games on it’s head. Plus, it was one of the few games that my husband and I played together, or at least enjoyed hanging out/watching while the other played. So I was happy to hear that a sequel was being made. The demo was released this week and I tried it - it seems like more of the same awesome evil-cute and simple, but enjoyable, gameplay. The demo did its job and made me want more.

Supposedly it should be in stores tomorrow (24th) so I’m ready to get up semi-early and dash over to Best Buy and/or Gamestop to see if they have a copy. Please be there. Please please please. I want to send my little minions out to pillage and plunder and hear their gleeful cheers. It’s so much fun.

…to what lengths I will go to in order to avoid reformatting my hard drive. I used to do it once every year at the least, but once I realized how much more stable WinXP was over it’s predecessors, I started slacking. The last time I think I did a reformat was…um…three or four years ago. Point is, I need to reformat/reinstall XP, but I keep putting it off. Tweak the registry here and there, defrag constantly, and so on. It works…but no matter what you do, the system becomes more and more unstable. And the longer you go without, the more stuff you have to remember in order to reorganize the computing system back to the way you prefer it. I’m not talking about just backing up your “important files,” either. That’s easy. It’s more…

“Which settings did I tweak in Firefox, again?”
“Which things did I tweak in XP and how to do it, again?”
“What mods/patches did I use with that program/save game files/whatever again?”

…BLAH.

Of course, the other bottom line in my case is that I also really need to build a new computer altogether. I keep almost doing it, but each time something (or my husband) convinces me it’s better to wait (more bang for your buck later). But frankly, there’s always a reason to wait…it really only, and always, boils down to “do I feel like spending money on that right now?” And unless you’re rich or a tech trend geek, the answer is usually “not really.”

….BLAH.

Penny vs. Sabathia. Didn’t seem like a level pitching match up. I think a lot of us fans weren’t truly expecting to win last night. Hoping, but not sure if we believed in Penny enough.
But then Penny pitched a gem of a game. A quality start and more. And Ortiz blasted another homer, causing fans everywhere to scream in joyful delight for the long-slumping Big Papi, who seems to have finally found at least part of his groove again. His home run gave the Red Sox a slim one run lead, which held for quite some time.

Then the Yankees scored some runs, pulling ahead in the 7th. Red Sox Nation groaned, wondering if the streak of wins against the Yankees was going to end. We had time to get it back, it’s not over, our guys can do it. We held our breath, we hollered at our screens, we pounded fists on tables, we wrote furious notes back and forth via whatever internet social network we had chosen to express ourselves.

Then Rocco Baldelli made a fantastic catch in center field in the top of the 8th, and along with relief pitcher Saito’s strikeouts, that helped keep the Yankee lead from growing.
And then in the bottom of the 8th, Nick Green hit a single. And Pedroia toughed out an amazing 10 pitch at bat to finally wear out Sabathia and gain base via a walk.
Then JD Drew got a hit and Green scored. Jason Bay hit and scored Pedroia. Mike Lowell managed a sacrifice that scored Drew. Suddenly Boston was ahead again, 4-3. Red Sox were making another bid for a comeback win, and as always it felt tingly-dramatic.

Then Jonathan Papelbon, the star closer, walked to the mound at the top of the 9th.
He got some help from Nick Green, who made a stunning, superb grab/spin/toss of a hard liner, stealing a base hit away from Yankee lead-off batter Derek Jeter.
Two more Yankees came to the plate - and two more Yankees were gone.

Red Sox beat the Yankees to sweep the 3 game series. More importantly, the Red Sox have played the Yankees eight times so far in this season, and they’ve beat them eight times. It’s a grand feeling, beating an “arch nemesis” like that. We can feel smug, we can revel in the emotion of being First. Oh, we all know it cannot and will not last…the Yankees have too many good players, and they must win against Boston someday. But the Red Sox/Yankees don’t play against each other again for a couple months - and in the meantime, it is glorious.

This weekend we finally bought an outdoor gas grill. We’ve talked about it before, but have been deterred either by price or by the fact we haven’t done much BBQing in ages. Oh sure, we used to BBQ a lot on the ol’ round charcoal Weber’s when we were in our early 20’s. First we had the Smokey Joe…a common staple among young adults who have little space and even less money…and later we bought the much larger ‘normal size’ Weber. Don’t ask me what normal size actually was, I have no idea. Probably a 22-inch grill diameter or something. But charcoal BBQ’s are dirty, and you have to deal with waiting for charcoal to reach the proper cooking state. Thus once our household income soared, our Weber became a black metal yard ornament which the squirrels and birds like to perch on.

Anyway…I hate cooking in the kitchen in summer. It’s often too hot and icky to be slaving over a hot stove. In the past, we’d get around this by ordering take-out food. A lot. We had a little more money to blow back then. Now our bills are bigger, the economy tighter, and our age is such that we’re more concerned about what we eat…so we’re trying to stop doing that. Problem: I still don’t like to cook in the summer. So…outdoor grill. Perfect solution, right? Perhaps. We shall see.

As you can tell in the photo above, we chose a cheap unit that didn’t have a side-shelf on both sides…which makes the thing smaller, something I liked. It does have the side gas burner tho, just in case you wanted to heat a small pot of chili while grilling hamburgers. Frankly, I’d heat the chili in the microwave and doubt I’d ever use that burner, but whatever. Overall what we bought seems fairly sturdy, although for the macho-inclined, the $700-$1200 Weber’s were quite the showpieces. We weren’t ready to spend that much on what amounts to a flimsy-ish file-cabinet-like metal box with a propane tank attached to it, so we opted for a $270ish unit we found at Lowes. That still seems outrageously expensive for what it is, but that’s just the times we live in, eh?

So far we’ve cooked hotdogs and steaks. They were both all right, but the flavor just isn’t the same as charcoal BBQ’ing. I mean, essentially you’re cooking on a gas range/oven. Not much different than what’s in the house. Broiling a steak in the gas oven would taste about the same. However, I did notice that once there was enough heat in the gas grill to cause meat drippings to smoke, it improved the flavor. Smoke - and keeping the lid closed - is the key I guess. There is no leaping, high, open flame to char things over, so closed-lid/high heat charring is the method of gas grilling. At least if you want smoky flavor. Either that or buy those wood chips I guess. At any rate…it’s fun to try out I suppose. Whether it will actually save us money or keep us from ordering take-out remains to be seen.

And tomorrow, it’s chicken.