Wednesday, September 15, 2004

Slow Day at Work/Exciting Night at B&N

This morning when I awoke (before the alarm went off - huh?) I was rather alarmed to see this on my ceiling near my bedroom door:

Mystery Bug:
I don't know what kind of bug it is, if any of my gentle readers would like to tell me, that would be really helpful.

This is a representation of the Mystery Bug next to a penny to show its sheer enormousness:


This is a representation of the Mystery Bug in motion going to eat the penny:


It really freaked me out, and I couldn't go back to sleep after hitting the snooze like I usually do. I kept opening my eyes to see this enormous black thing upside down on my ceiling (how does it do that?)

This is a representation of Me as I ran out my bedroom door past/under Mystery Bug to the bathroom:


Unfortunately, I live alone, and I have to take on whatever creepy thing wanders into my humble abode by myself. This was my brilliant plan: attach the longest hose and all of the longest attachments to my vacuum cleaner, and hope it sucks the monster up. My vacuum cleaner will suck up a wooden clothes pin, so I had great confidence and was not heeby-jeeby-ing in my proverbial boots as I stood outside my bedroom door, turned on the vacuum and stuck my head in just enough to see the marauder and make a somewhat accurate aim at him from two vacuum extension tubes away. To my dismay, he did not immediately disappear (apparently he had a pretty good grip on my ceiling with all of those legs), but after a bit of waving around of my weapon of choice, he was gone. He was moving pretty fast, so I had to slowly peek in to inspect the wall and make sure I had him. Then I looked at the end of the vacuum tubes expecting him to scurry out again. He did not. As far as I know. I probably won't sleep much tonight.

[You know those ads in the back of magazines where you're supposed to draw the bear or the pirate and send it in to see if you have artistic abilities? Yeah - I can't do that.]

I also worked on this today: the plans I mentioned yesterday, well, they're for a backpack. I think I've got the basic idea down, and it's pretty solid. I'm not telling how I get the plaid, though. That's a very secret surprise, and I won't tell until I know it works.
Of course, it won't actually be perfectly square, and the pattern will go all the way around. I was just drawing on graph paper, and seeing how it might turn out.

We had a great turn out for the St. Louis Meetup at Barnes & Noble - all captions are left to right:
Donna, Ann and Mary Ann (in the dark ambiance of Barnes & Noble???)

Debbie, Kelly and Sally (new to the group):

Our political activists: Suzie and Ann (new to the group but won't be back until after election day - at least that's what she says):

Our silly girls: Ginny and Wendy:
Wendy is knitting a baby sweater, and now that I think about it, it's striped every few rows and I did that once, and I wanted to shoot myself in the head before it was over. Maybe I should have told her that.

My new knitting bag:
You should get one too. It was only ten dollars, and it stands up on its own! You can pick from several authors, I chose Shakespeare, one of my favorites. But I considered Virginia Wolff and Terry McMillan. It's a very quality bag; maybe I'll get another one. "Get thee to a [Barnes&Noble] bookery!" as Shakespeare would say.

7 comments:

Anonymous said...

Does the bug happen to have a scorpion-looking tail? If so, I believe I saw one in my office last year and screamed and jumped on my chair until an officemate killed it. My friends have spotted them in DC too. Perhaps this is a sign of the apocalypse?

Anonymous said...

damn anonymity thing. forgot to say it's lauren (almost felted):)

Marcia said...

I'm thinking either millipede or centipede. Centipede has 100 legs and millipede has 1000. I don't know if the names are accurate portrayals or just based on mythological impressions. Family legend has it that either species bites.

melanie said...

I'm with Marcia on this one, I've seen those too and am terrified of them, even when they're dead I have a hard time removing them. And can I just say that there must be a cosmic bug link between us because I was awakened this morning at 3 am to a bug (which I will be blogging about later on, so I'll spare you the details). Go figure.

Pink Ladies Unite!

Anonymous said...

Beth,
I suspect you have one of three creepy-crawlers. As someone else mentioned, it could be a centipede or millepede, but I doubt it. They tend to stay in small, damp, cool places, like basements and under rocks. Besides, I'm guessing you'd know one of those if you saw one.
No, I think you probably have a silverfish. They tend to like warmer places, like attics, although you an sometimes find them in basements. They also like paper (books, etc.) and sometimes even drawers. If you see anymore of them, you may want to spray... tis the season for creepy-crawlers.
By the way, I also adhere to the two-wand approach to evicting bugs from my home. I always look inside both tubes and the hose just to make sure it's not hanging on for dear life in there somewhere. Also, I like to cover the nozzel with my hand for a few seconds just before turning off my vaccum. It makes the motor suck a little harder, and, at least in my mind, this ensures certain execution of the creepy little offender.

Teri said...

I still don't get that famous comment thing. I must not be in the loop enough to know how famous whoever it was actually is.

Anyway, I miss my knitting meetup buddies in St. Louis. I went to the meetup here in KC and I was the only one that showed up. On an 'official' night! How lame is that? I almost called one of you but I think I only have Susan's cll # and I wasn't sure if she would be there or not.

I think I may have to scope out the yarn stores here and see if any of them have a knitting night. *sigh*

Danielle said...

Hello,

Did it look like this?

http://www.insectnet.com/dcforum/DCForumID2/520.html

My first guess was an earwig.

Either way I am sorry you had bug trauma.