I thought the black widow story was pretty good, but today I was given something new to blog about. While my car is damaged the other guy's car is totaled.

We were helping a member of the ward move into a new apartment over by Costco and had just spent four hours of moving her out of her old apartment and into the new one. I had the missionaries with me and was on my way to take them home when I decided to stop at the convenience store and get a cold beverage to enjoy. I was enjoying my Mt. Dew LiveWire while drive east on Plumb when I suddenly saw a car appear and hit me.

The driver of the other car was turning from Plumb into the Airport Plaza parking lot (where Costco is) and decided to challenge me. Traffic in the other two lanes was stopped so he cut in front of them (a very common, but very dangerious move). Rather than pull gradually into the third lane to ensure no traffic was coming he chose to dart across blindly. This turned out to be the biggest mistake he has made so far today. He knocked me off the road and part way onto the median of the parking lot entrance.

My front bumper was damaged, my tire was blown-out, there was minor body damage to the side of the car and the door. Although I couldn't tell for sure, I think the axle might have been bent and the frame knocked slightly out of alignment. There was seemingly no damage to the engine and no airbag deployment. The other car was trashed. He was driving a Honda Insight - one of those hybrid half-electric and half-gas cars. Oil and fluids were all over the place and the entire front end of the car was destroyed. He experienced duel-airbag deployment.

Fortunately, no one was seriously hurt. The other driver was unharmed, I bumped my head slightly and hit my knee on the stick. The missionaries both hit their heads on the windshield - one of them left with an enormous goose egg.

All in all, my truck won the challenge. The hybrid - even though it gets 70 miles to the gallon - ended up a mangled mess. This all makes for exciting blogging, but just for the record I prefer less destructive things to blog about.

Mission accomplished. The formidable creature has met a most disastrous fate.

The night before last, acting stealthily, I approached the front porch via the garage so as not to alert the spider of my presence. I used my NightVision-enabled video camera so the spider would not be alerted by light that I was approaching. Once it was confirmed that the spider was indeed out in the open - in a predaceous manner, ironically - I began to formulate a plan.

Knowing that I was dealing with a potentially deadly enemy, I decided to use "venom" of my own. I got as near to the spider as I dared and then doused it completely with Roundup®. The spider dropped to the cement below the web, obviously stunned but then quickly retreated to an unseen hiding spot. Using various items from the yard and garage, I attempted to "scrape" the spider from under the ledge by the door. All attempts failed, which led me to look for a more effective way to reach the suspected hiding location. I ended up using a rake, which, after several attempts, led to the extraction of the spider.

Once the spider was removed from it's "home" I placed it in the flower bed far away from any place to hide. Realizing it's vulnerability, the previously haughty spider curled up in a ball - shamefully covering it's face. Using a large spike I smashed the spider, thus bringing it's reign of terror to an end.

As a side note, I then went around the yard and poked holes in the lawn with my spike so that water could more easily reach the grass roots and hopefully make my lawn greener. Also, I did it to cleanse the spider guts from the spike.

There's a black widow (the spider, not the person) living under our front porch. It's behemoth in size and could easily kill anything that it wants. When Emilie first spotted it I tried to get it but it slinked away into some dark spot and I couldn't find it. I did the only sensible thing I could - I destroyed it's web. I thought for sure it would be crushed and go looking for another home. Instead, the spider quickly recreated a bigger and better home.

Last night I saw it again. I went and got a piece of cardboard to assist in my murderous plan, but by the time I got back to the web it was gone. Tonight I'm going to try again. I am planning on using my video camera with NightVision technology to try to catch the spider and destroy it. I'll try to get some pictures so that everyone can see how utterly gargantuan this thing is. If I don't show up for work tomorrow, call the police...

I had a bad experience the other day - I went from being an innocent witness of an attempted murder to being an accomplice to the same murder. As I was leaving my parents house last Saturday I pulled up to the intersection and was waiting for cars to pass in each direction. I noticed a small group of quail running across the street aabout half a block away. Then, to my horror and shock, I saw a single, lone quail run into the street right in front of a car. The car missed the quail, but the quail proceeded to run in front of a truck headed in the opposite direction of the car. The quail stopped square between the tires of the truck, thus avoiding being crushed; however, the quail began to panic and started flying. It flew right into the bottom of the truck, feathers flew everywhere and the quail rolled several feet before stopping.

At first, I was sure the quail was dead. I watched it for a brief moment - by this time all traffic was gone. I was shocked to see the quail begin to move and try to stand up. For a moment I thought the quail might be okay as it wobbled to it's feet, but sadly it did not last. The quail fell over sideways and did not try to get up again. It was clear that the quail was still alive, but was not going to live.

I felt a sense of duty to ensure that the quail was not suffering. The thought of crushing an animal - even an animal that is already dead - has never held much of an appeal to me, so I was naturally tempted to drive away. Duty called, though, and I knew what I had to do. I turned around and took aim at the seemingly lifeless bird. I missed the first time and had to turn around and try again. The second time I "mostly" hit the bird. I turned around to inspect the damage and determined that the quail was indeed dead.

I guess the question you probably all still have is, "Why do quail run instead of fly?" Trust me - I know what you mean.

I'm taking back some of the bad things that I thought about Apple computers. I've mentioned this before, but I have an older iMac. I recently switched out the mouse (aka the "hockey puck") and added some memory. Most importantly, I took that MacOS garbage off and got Linux loaded onto it and now it's working great! As a matter of fact, I'm using it right now to type this in. I'm surprised at how well it runs - I have another computer that has a slightly faster CPU, but has a little less memory and it is almost unusable - even with Linux. This one runs most everything I need just fine and is pretty fast. Next I need to get rid of this keyboard...

Well Jenni, my mom, and I went to California this last weekend to visit my family. We had a Bridal Shower for my cousin Stephanie and a Baby Shower for my cousin Katie and her new baby boy Lucas. It was fun to go and hang out with the girls, we dont get to do it that often so when we get together we always have a good time. My sister commented that they are just like us, and that she feels comfortable around then because she can act any way she wants, and they will do the same thing. I would have to agree with that assumption. Although maybe we are just like them. I guess it is in the genes.

Yesterday was exciting. Emilie went to Sacramento so I went fishing with Mike. We went to Pyramid and were supposed to catch lots of big fish, but apparently the lake was broken. I might have had a bite but if I did it got off the hook before I saw it. After several hours of fishing in the bizarre weather (it was nice weather, then it rained, then it was sunny, then it hailed, then it was windy and so on) we decided to call it quits and headed back to Reno.

Once back in Reno we stopped at Rancho San Rafael park and took some pictures of marmots (I'll post them once I get them scanned in). We decided to get some pizza for dinner - Ultimate Deal from Pizza Baron, naturally - but we sort of got skunked there, too. We put in our order but when we went to get the pizza the pizza place was gone and some other restauraunt was there in it's place. We had to calland ask where there were located and they said, "4th and Keystone". They apparently closed shop in south Reno and we had to take a road trip across town to get our pizza and wings. It was good, though, so I got over it. I will probably not take advantage of the Ultimate Deal as often...

A lot of skunkage going on...now I need to find out where the fish are.