garage, and a spider

blueeowyn and I spent most of yesterday working on the garage. Snow's coming soon, and we'll want to have space for the Honda inside the garage. I heard recently that garages can be used for storing cars, and I've been dying to try it out. So we moved a couple of hundreds of boxes full of books, games, souvenirs, knick-knacks, and something really smelly from the garage to the basement. Mostly Blueeowyn carried boxes from garage to basement stairway, and I hauled them down the stairs and stacked them in the basement.

The task wasn't too bad, though it took most of the day. We paused about once an hour to rest and watch MASH on DVD.

Some excitement at the end of the task, as I noticed a small crinkled ball of black string -- no, that's a shirveled up spider. Black and shiny, small red spot on its back? Hmmm...black widow maybe. I'll turn it over to be sure. Yup, black widow with big red hourglass on the belly. And it's not shriveled up, it's scampering! I usually just take spiders outside, let them keep down the insect population. But black widows have a neurotoxin that can make a person sick, and can kill a cat or small dog.

I knew that black widows were in this area, just never saw one before. I suspect it was in the garage, and fell off one ofthe boxes between garage and basement, but we'll be keeping our eyes open for a while to make sure it didnt have friends.

Dinner came with more MASH -- the double episode where Radar leaves. The final sequence is very anticlimactic, until the last shot when over eight seasons of character development are summed up with one very poignant shot.

EDIT: Radar left early in the eighth season, not the ninth.

Also, for lots of MASH trivia, check this IMDB MASH trivia page.

Poison in Pet Foods (recall notice)

If you use Diamond, Country Value, or Professional brand cat or dog foods (all manufactured by Diamond Pet Foods), there is an aflatoxin recall on many varieties. Lots of sick pets, more than 70 dog fatalities. The toxin occurs due to fungus which can contaminate some feedstock used to make pet foods, and leads to liver damage.

Here is an article about the recall and a list of brands and affected states.