Spiders...

Well this past weekend I decided to work on my truck a little bit. A hose had been hanging down from under the engine and had melted a little, so I figured I'd take a look. So I went outside and started organizing my tools and stuff and I happened across the garbage can, where I noticed quite a menacing looking spider web. I had never seen anything like it before. It was fairly large as spider webs go, and it was not symmetrical at all. It was just crazy, no rhyme nor reason too it, just all over the place. Well needless to say I was taken back a bit by it, and was cautious. So I got out my handy dandy Ortho Home Defence Max™ and sprayed the whole web to see what was going on. Then all of a sudden a big black spider (See photo insert) started lowering itself down from under the garbage can lid to the ground. I was able to identify the spider as a black widow. This is the first one that I have seen down here, we are warned about them, so I kinda wasn't all that surprised. My first inclination was that looks like a pretty bad ass spider. Something I would not want to mess with. The spider now laying on the ground twitching still from the poison, I thought I'm pretty sure Lisa would like to see this. So I went and got her out of bed, normally that is not really a smart thing to do, as she can be quite grumpy but as soon as I said you like scary things right, she jumped out of bed grabbed her glasses and darn near ran outside. Well after we looked at it for a while and poked it with a stick we decided that this would be a good blog post, so we ran and got the camera. After taking some pictures Lisa noticed another spider still on the garbage can. So we sprayed more poison and down that one fell too. It was kinda a brownish color but still had the red mark on the abdomen. Well come to find out it was a male, I guess only the mature females are black. There was also a egg sack that I crushed. The one other thing I took from this experience was that the web was pretty strong. It was stronger than any other spider web I've run across. Take a look at the pictures below, pretty neat.


Female black widow.


Male black widow.

-Jason

hey guys, its me! i've been busy with school and studying so i haven't had much time for anything else. hope all is well with you guys back home in MI. =) i'm almost done with my first week of school! we have a workbook which we have to complete certain chapters by our exam dates, so i've been busy with that. today in school we got to practice manicures on each other, it was pretty cool! ;) i think i will really like this field of work. i've always wanted to work at a high class day spa or something.... anywho, my instructors are nice and very helpful in explaining things if we need; my classmates are nice too, there are only 9 of us in the class so it makes it nice. although, i have to say i'm kinda nervous about taking the state board exam. i know i will do fine because i will have the knowledge i need by then but i'm still kinda nervous.... i don't know, i think i worry too much! lol! i gotta get some sleep, so nighty night! luv, lis

Friday 17August

Hello all,

Well not much new here, over the last 2 weeks I've completed the last of my 200 volunteer hours needed to obtain the Military Outstanding Volunteer Service Medal, so I will now have the grand total of 2 ... count them 2 ribbons / medals. I've been considering going after my marksmanship medals but the price tag is $120 USD to attempt to qualify and there is no guarantee so if I fail the first time we are looking at $240 USD, which is really not worth it to me. So this is what my "rack" will look like:




Lisa has had a couple of days off this week so not much is new there, just getting ready to start school on Monday. We really don't have any plans this weekend. I plan on running and to watch the Tigers vs. Yankees on Saturday.

Speaking of running, I've been doing pretty good running almost everyday, I do take a day or two off during the week, but other than that I usually run about 4 miles a day. I've been trying to eat healthier also and I'm seeing results. The lightest I've been down to is 205 which is a loss of 16 pounds in less than a month so I think that is really good. But my weight that I pretty much stay at now is 208 - 210 ish, with dropping to maybe 205 ish after a run. My goal is to get to 190 by the time I start school and ultimately get to 180ish, which would be a 40 lb drop. We will see if I continue to run once school starts.

Now that I am done with the volunteering everyday I will start focusing on studying for my advancement exam, not that I really have much of a chance of advancing but I'll sure give it a shot. I think last year 3 out of 600+ students were advanced. So my chances are not that great, but I have nothing better to do than study so study it is.

Well hope everyone has a nice weekend.

-Jason

hey people!

so......... i'm doin great! i'm about to start school in like 11 days so that's exciting! =) i bet ill make some new friends too! speaking of friends, i'm gonna go out with my BFF's Brook and Erica tomorrow night, we are going downtown to hang out! anywho, I climbed the rock wall on base and i reached all the way to the top and i got to ring the bell! hehe i was sooo freakin happy! all i wanted to do since we have been down here was to ring the bell and i did it! lol! but of course we didn't have the camera so i guess i'll just have to do it again so jay can take a picture! i'm pretty tired so i'm gonna get some sleep, nighty night! *lisa*

Library

Well I have about 23 hours volunteered at the library in about a week, well on my way to finishing up my requirements for 200 hours for 2nd medal. Usually I go through the shelves and orginize the books remove duplicate copies that are no longer needed and find misplaced books, but yesterday I got to do something that I thought was pretty neat (although kinda lame at the same time) we loan out audio books on cd and cassettes and one of the cassettes was broken so I got to splice the tape and put it into a new cassette, which took me a lot longer than expected. I was fixing it fine but it was taking me a little while having to manually wind the entire tape on a new spindle, so I decided that I would try to use the old on instead, big mistake. Once I finally got the tape straightened out and the new cassette back together I realized that I put the tape in backwards so the player was playing the sound in reverse. So after fiddling with it for an hour or so I fixed it. Which was pretty cool because the other option was to throw the tapes out.

well talk to you later
Jason

Running on garbage day stinks...

Hi

Well today we are going to a river dogs minor league baseball game with church so that should be fun. As Lisa said I'll be going to class soon so that is really good, we've decided that most likely we will try to stay down here after school as well for about 6 months or so, but we will see. Other than that I get to take my first advancement exam, so I'll be busy studing for that. I've been running a lot lately, I actually ran 7 miles the other day took my a little over an hour, I'm still down around 210 which is good but I'd really like to drop about 20 more pounds at least. Not much is going on so I'll post later

Jason

so i will start school on august 20th. i can't wait, I'm really happy about that. hopefully it won't be too hard. i will probably be working one or 2 nights a week and then Saturdays, but we will see. Jason is finally going to school in September so he is happy about that. besides that, nothing new is really going on. i will learn how drive jason's truck tomorrow, so that is kinda cool. and tony is still his crazy self.... anyway, ttyl. Lisa