Jer-Bear 2

 

Today I had to work on campus again, so my colleague and I went out to lunch. She had a coupon for $1 off a wrap and $1 off sushi, so she was going to get a wrap until seeing the sushi. It did look good, but I was happy to get the wrap, because it was much cheaper. I got a chicken pesto one, and it was so filling that I didn't eat any of my fruit today. Also, I drank a lot of green tea, both the stuff I brought and the stuff my colleague gave me.

When we came home, Travalon and I played tennis. Nothing notable about that, except my serves were going right into the net, and I had a home run - wrong sport! The most noteworthy thing is that there is a huge hornets' nest hanging from a tree right over the path to the tennis court, which we had never noticed. The exterminator came and sprayed it yesterday, and he said to stay away from it because the wasps that survived would be angry and vicious, but of course we forgot all about that, although I did notice a wasp buzzing around me when I first got on the court. It didn't do anything.

Our neighbor who told us about the beautiful sunset last night also took some cool photos of the mandevilla arch out to the dock. Another neighbor bought the mandevilla plants, and yet another neighbor is training them on the arch. It's so pretty - I hope someone can take it in for the winter so it doesn't die.

When we got home, a package was waiting for me. It was Jer-Bear 2!

For reference, here is Jer-Bear 1.

And here they are together.

If you are wondering why I ordered two, it's because I looked at Jer-Bear 2 on eBay before buying the first one, and then the seller sent an email saying he would lower the price. Jer-Bear 2 has a tag, which makes him more of a collector's item, and I usually take the tags off my Beanie Babies, but I might leave his on. It has a cute little poem inside of it:

        The Beanies used to follow him around

        Because Garcia traveled from town to town

        He's pretty popular as you can see

        Some even say he's legendary!

And then the bear has the same birthday as Jerry Garcia - August 1 - only in 1995, not 1942. I did want one of these bears back in the 90's, but they were impossible to get back then. So now I have two.

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Questions to Ponder

Today I have some questions to ponder:

Two nights ago, when I went to clean up the little wasp corpses littering my balcony, there were still some live wasps buzzing around so I waited until last night. (The wasp poison did say it could take up to 48 hours for all of them to die.) Last night there were NO WASP BODIES on my balcony! Where did they go? Did they just blow away in the wind, or did the live wasps collect them? Do they know one another by name? Maybe even now they are looking over the carnage and wondering, where are Joanie and Imelda? They followed that big, nasty thing back into the other big, nasty thing's nest and were never seen again. (Wasps, if you are reading this, Joanie and Imelda are down the sink.)

If the First Person of the Holy Trinity is named Yahweh and the Second Person is named Yeshua, then what the heck is the name of the Third Person? Surely He has a name too, and not just a title (Holy Spirit). And would it also start with a Y?

Is there a special spot in Hell for those people who, when the bus is so full that people are standing in the aisles, insist on taking up an entire two-person seat themselves? And is it the same spot reserved for those "late mergers" during road construction?

Pulmonary mascots: are they EVER a good idea???

Meet Larry the Lung

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Wasp Wars: The Final Battle (?)

Last night Rich came over with a mosquito-net hat, heavy gloves, and thick clothing to douse the yellow jackets on my balcony with the wasp poison I had purchased earlier that afternoon. They came flying out at him, but the netting protected his face, and he almost got away without any stings. (I had wanted to come out with a weapon to cover his back, but he told me to stay inside.) He brushed all the yellow jackets off of himself - or so it seemed - and came back into the house, but one I hadn't seen during the pre-entry inspection stung him on the elbow. It buzzed around my house after him, completely ignoring me. I was surprised at its memory and tenacity, that it would think of Rich and only Rich as the enemy. He swatted it with one of my word game puzzle magazines, and then we washed it down the sink. On the edge of the sink, to my surprise, I found a second one lying in a daze, possibly from the poison. I am still in awe of their intelligence, that two of them could hide somewhere on his person!

This morning I saw a dozen or so small bodies on my balcony, and I didn't feel any joy, just a grim satisfaction. Then I saw a couple of sad, confused wasps flying around, and suddenly I felt very sorry for them. They invaded my homeland, attacked me without provocation, and refused to reach a peace agreement, but they were clever and valiant adversaries that I had to admire. This must be why they don't let woman fight in wars. We're too sympathetic.

Anyway, it's true what they say: war is hell.

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Wasp Wars: The Battle of WD40

This weekend I drove to the East Coast of this state for the continuation of Tiffy's birthweek celebration. Friday night we had sushi, and for her Birthday Dinner Part II on Saturday night we went to a steak place, and my filet mignon was so rare it was practically still chewing its cud. That's more raw meat than I've eaten in eons! (Then again, I'm not generally much of a meat eater.) We made up for it at lunchtime on Saturday: Soul Food! Deep fried catfish, deep fried okra, deep fried sweet potato fries, and healthy collard greens... with tons of salt and fatback! Oh yeah! Tiffy had to go to Pittsburgh for an audit today ("Hey," she said, "at least it's not New Jersey!") so I drove home late last night. I could get the blazin' hip hop station from the closest big city, and DJ O was playing an old school mix that was hip hop heaven!

DJ O, I don't know you, but I have only one thing to say to you: Shorty wanna roll in yoe ride wid dat ice cream paint job.

Today Richard Bonomo, Kathbert, Antoshka and I went for a hike, and on the way back Kathbert told me a hip hop story: she was walking down the street when a young black guy drove by in a car going "boom." A white woman was standing on the other side of the street with her baby girl, and the little girl was bouncing up and down to the beat. The guy looked at Kathbert and said, "Dat baby be jivin'!"

Then Rich came to my house and unleashed some WD40 in the yellow jackets' nest while I sprayed them with bug poison. There was one casualty on our side (Rich got stung on the finger) and I saw four or five wasps drowned in the bleached sugar water, but the other wasps didn't seem any worse for wear. They flew around in a big, angry swarm, and we ran back inside and watched them from behind the safety of the screen door, but alas, they did not suddenly fall out of the air. Rich said it would take awhile for the poison to affect them, so right now I am at his house blogging. We'll see if this was the final, decisive battle or just the start of the war....

Good news for Arphaxad: both my faithful readers have weighed in and want to hear more of her story, so I will be letting her blog every Friday until either she gets sick of it, or you do.

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Wasp Wars and Banjo Spam

The Wasp Wars over my balcony have officially begun. After being stung without provocation TWICE in the last few weeks, I have decided the yellow jackets have got to go. Tuesday evening I put icky scented candles and a bowl of sugar water with bleach in it out on my porch (mixed messages, I guess: Go Away vs. Come Drink Some Lovely Poison, but whatever works, right?) and then I watched them. They have thus far ignored the water, and the candles seemed to have little to no effect. I felt as if I were living by a tiny wasp O'Hare as they continuously came and went, taking off and landing, as they went in and out of a hole on the back of my balcony. I started squirting them with water, which annoyed them, but they didn't come over and sting me. (Huh... maybe that smelly mango-and-apple-pie-scented smoke really did work!) Someone suggested WD40, but Hardingfele refuses to aid me in this endeavor, which she has termed "insecticide." In my mind, it's self-defense, since I can no longer sit on my balcony, and the wasps are certainly not helping me pay the mortgage! So they are squatters... STINGING squatters!!!

And now for something completely different - banjo spam! Unlike the bagpipe spam Hardingfele received, which really was about bagpipe gear, this has nothing to do with actual banjos as far as I can tell. It also has no amusing grammatical errors, but it fits with the Totally Random theme of this blog, since what have banjos got to do with fishing? If you know, feel free to tell me in the comments section.

AS SEEN ON TV!!

(Too bad I don't own a TV)

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A Dark and Stormy Night in the 'Hood

On a dark and stormy night, two chicks drove deep into the 'hood. A-Fooze and I had spent the early evening dancing on the roof to salsa music until we could barely walk: we danced to merengue, bomba, guaguanco, bachata, and cumbia... but if you think I know how to actually do all those dances, I must admit I was just kind of moving to the music. We stopped by A-Fooze's place briefly, and when we left it was suddenly storming so we had to run to my car at Our Lady of Perpetual Sobriety, then we drove to a hookah club in the 'hood to meet some of my bandmates. We didn't see any of them, but I did see another friend of mine who told me the belly dancing style was "tribal fusion." The dancer had different props, like a fan, a sword, and flaming things on her fingers that (this was my favorite part of the show) set off the fire alarm. Everyone panicked that the sprinklers would go off, but A-Fooze and I just shrugged since we were already soaked from the storm. When the waitress asked what we thought of the belly dancer, I replied that this was my first time seeing tribal fusion. Later A-Fooze was saying that she loved how I used that phrase like I had any idea what I was talking about, and I said, "Better yet, I didn't even have to give an opinion of the show!"

That was Friday night. Thursday night at Messiah practice I got the best news I'd heard since learning that reggaeton is on the way out: we will be performing with a harpsichord! And NOBODY tunes harpsichords to equal temperament, so it looks like we will be spared that public humiliation at the fronds of my dracaena. Afterwards a bunch of us went to a swanky hotel for drinks, but when I ordered a gin fizz, the waiter said, "They can't make a proper one here. Trust me, I'm from New Orleans!" I believed him, because - other than reggaeton - very little is worse than getting a drink called a "gin fizz" which bears no resemblance to the actual Gin Fizz. However, I had no Plan B so I panicked and ordered a root beer.

Charlie my boy bunny had a fever this weekend, but as he got better, I developed a bad cold. Sunday a bunch of my friends went hiking, but I could barely get out of bed. Yesterday I called in sick to work and sat around having a pity party for myself. Ugh! TWO summer colds in one summer! I tried to get some fresh air on my balcony, but after a few minutes a dozen yellow jackets ascended like tiny helicopters and swarmed around me. One landed right on the top of my head - and stung me!! I ran inside to put some onion on the sting... and the yellow jacket was clinging to my leg! I smacked it and it fell to the floor, stunned. Then I finished it off with my salsa dancing shoe. After that I was a geniune sorehead, on top of being sniffly and sneezy. Fortunately Charlie felt the proper amount of sympathy for me and sat kissing me as I lay on the floor in utter wretched misery. See, this is why I live with rabbits instead of a man.

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So Much for Karma!

Yes, I have yet another hornet story - this time, Saturday afternoon as I sat on my balcony, peacefully doing word game puzzles, a yellow jacket stung me on the left arm. It was completely unprovoked! So much for my good bug karma from helping that big black hornet... I went into the house to find an onion to apply to the sting but could only come up with a dessicated, ancient leek so I put some baking soda on it instead. THEN I noticed the evil wasp was still hanging out on my Hawaiian shirt! So I squished it with my comb. Then I went over to Richard Bonomo's house, where A-Fooze was making Hungarian chicken for him, Anna Banana II, Kathbert, and me, and A-Fooze was able to provide me with a small piece of onion. Then Kathbert arrived, and she had just been stung on the thigh by a yellow jacket while she was out biking! She suggested we use ammonia, so Rich gave us some and we went outside to apply it, since it reeks. The epicenter of the sting swelled up pretty badly right away, but by the next day it was fine.

But you are probably more interested in hearing about my drunken bike ride than my wasp sting. Friday morning I decided to save myself the trouble of biking up the hill to the birthday girl's house (she actually lives on Hilltop Road!) but it was so much effort getting Eusebius into Erin Caitlyn O'Honda that I was already sweaty by the time I arrived... and then I put the front wheel back on wrong so it was pretty difficult biking to the first stop! Luckily the birthday girl's father Dennii was able to fix my mistake, so then Eusebius was the smoothest ride ever. We biked all over town, ringing bells and honking horns and squirting each other with water guns. We stopped at several bars and several houses and had a big water fight. At a New Orleans-style restaurant, the birthday girl had a shot of sake that came from a bottle with an enormous rattlesnake in it. Freaky! She said it started sweet and then had a kick. After eleven hours of this, some people were still going strong (and many others had left), but I was worn out so I called Rich to come get me and Eusebius in the Bonomobile. (Also, I didn't have a light so I was afraid of being ticketed by the bike cops.) Rich had just come back from a visit to the Mothership, so he had lots of baklava. (He said as he was leaving, the Mothership said, "Rich, you're getting fat! Here, have some baklava.")

Saturday night I went to a "Leo party," which was supposed to be a birthday party for "all the Leos," but it seemed that the host was the only Leo there. Most of the other guests were Brazilian, and they sang and played Brazilian music and made delicious Brazilian food. (Sorry to tell you this, Hardingfele, but it seems like in Brazil they mostly eat meat.) (Which made Rich very happy to hear!) There was actually a guy there who knew all about tuning systems; he said he tuned his piano in (yuck!) equal temperament, his harpsichord in Werckmeister, and his clavichord in sixth-comma mean tone. He also told me a local piano seller HATES equal temperament (cool!) and tunes pianos to seventh-comma mean tone, which I'd never heard of. But hey, at least it's not equal temperament! But if you think sparks flew between me and this man, you are wrong because I am made of some kind of non-flammable material.

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Why a Hornet?

All 4.5 of my faithful readers may remember my story about sharing an elevator ride with a hornet. This morning I had another hornet experience: there is a window on either side of the front door of the building my condo is in, and on the lefthand window was the biggest, blackest hornet I had ever seen, desperately buzzing around as it tried to find a way out. It was three times the size of a yellow jacket, but I figured it was not nearly as aggressive, and it was such a beautiful, shiny ebony that I couldn't help admiring it and feeling for its plight. I held my auto insurance bill out to it and it climbed onto it, then it crawled onto me. I was a little leery (you should have seen the size of its stinger!) but it did not sting me, and when I walked outside, it suddenly turned into an angel and said that since I had passed the test and was compassionate to one of God's creatures, I could have anything I wanted, so I asked for a greenhouse. Just kidding, it flew off happily, but I'm sure I got lots of karma points for helping it!

Here is yet another hornet story for your reading pleasure: once Richard Bonomo, Tiffy, and I went to a picnic at an observatory, and Tiffy and I saw the biggest, most beautiful ant ever. It was a rich crimson color and seemed to be made of satin or velvet with a fierce-looking black stinger, and it ran very quickly over the ground. I wanted to follow it, thinking there must be an entire colony of these beautiful ants, but Tiffy thought it looked scary and we should keep our distance. Later I googled "satin ant" and found nothing, but when I googled "velvet ant," there it was - the Velvet Ant! She was actually a wingless hornet, and she spends her days searching for yellow jacket nests in which to lay her eggs, so that her young can devour their young. Not only beautiful but useful too! However, velvet ants have an excessively painful sting (which, unlike yellow jackets, they only use when provoked) which is so awful that one of their common names is "cow killer," so Tiffy's instinct to keep our distance was right on.

A guy I once dated said his favorite quote is from Dylan Thomas, who as a child received a coloring book that he said "told everything about the wasp but why." Then again, why anything? Why mosquitoes? Why (yuck!) tomatoes? Why hurricanes? Why a duck? I for one, not being God, do not know the answer.

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Smackdown: Hornets vs. Protestants

Once Richard Bonomo came to see me at work, and as I may have mentioned, my office is at the very top of a tall building. We got on the elevator, and as it went down, it acquired more people. On one floor it stopped and the doors slid open, but there was nobody waiting outside to get into it. Instead, an enormous black hornet flew into the elevator, and everyone ducked as far back into a corner as possible. I cried, "Don't kill it!" as someone swung a folder at it, but two floors later the elevator stopped again, the doors slid open, and again nobody was waiting to get on, but the hornet flew out. Then Rich said, "It looks like he just wanted that floor," and everyone laughed.

Now I have seen dogs window-shopping in Greece and cranes trying to get into the Pharmacy Library, but that is the first time I have seen an insect seem to do a normal human activity. It is funny to think that our first impulse is to believe the bad ol' hornet is going to get us, when maybe all it wants is to go from the 6th to the 4th floor, like all us lazy hominids who don't take the stairs. But if we are always expecting the worst out of people, of course we would expect the worst out of other creatures too. So next time you find yourself trapped on an elevator with a hornet, ask yourself, "Does this hornet want to be with me any more than I want to be with it?" After all, it can only sting you, but you can squish it, which is a little more deadly... unless you happen to be deathly allergic to hornet stings. Next time, don't kill the hornet unless it is clearly coming to attack you. At that point, it's self-defense.

Remember, it could always be worse: instead of being trapped on an elevator with a wasp, you could be trapped in an elevator with a WASP.

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