Egg-in-a-hole!

We  wanted to cook something for breakfast.  Shasta suggested pancakes but I felt like making egg-in-a-hole.  I used to make these quite often when I was in Cub/Boy Scouts.  Our methods were a little more primative but the results were still very tasty.  And using a heart cookie cutter was a little something extra I did for Sofia and Shasta.

Amazing spider!

We have had a fairly big spider making it's home around our entry door on our garage.  Shasta does not like spiders but she has been OK with this one.  Last night, Sept. 1, I was in the garage doing some exercising and I was trying to keep an eye on this spider.  He had built his web across the door frame and was in an ideal location to catch some sort of flying bug.  Out of the corner of my eye I noticed the web was shaking quite violently.  The spider had caught a praying mantis and at first I believe it was biting the mantis' head.  Then he took to wrapping his meal.  I asked Shasta to come out and watch and we were both amazed.

I checked this morning and the spider was on the frame of the door next to a cicada shell and  he had the praying mantis very tightly wrapped.  We took some photographs with Shasta's camera and I took some video with my cell phone.  I hope I don't scare too many people.

WHAT ARE THESE?

I found these 'things' while digging up a stump in our front yard.  I don't know what they are.  The bottom one in the picture looks like to has roots growing out of it.  Or maybe they are some sort of tentacles used to read our minds.  Not likely.  They also have some sort of liquid in them and feel like what I would say an eyeball feels like.  The top one is broken open and at first I thought it might be an egg.

If anyone has any ideas or if you want to come by and pick them up for further study, please let me know.

Over and out.

Has anyone ever dug up a stump?

And I mean do you personally know someone that has removed a stump by hand!  I've heard of people doing it, but have never actually seen someone do it.

Well today I dug up a stump!  When we bought the house, we cut down a half-dead red bud tree in our front yard.  So for those that remember when we moved in, that was two years ago.  So I've been putting it off for awhile.  You would too if you were going to tackle it by hand.

I started digging around it, oh, about a month ago or more.  My excuse for waiting over a month was to let all the rain we've gotten soak in and make it easier to pull the stump.  NO SUCH LUCK!  Wet or dry, a tree does not want to be removed from the earth.  FYI: it took me over 4 hours using a shovel, snips, heavy scraper/chopper, and, most necessary, an electric chain saw, which actually belongs to my grandma Nita.  So grandma, if you have been wondering where your chain saw has been hiding, it's been in my garage.  Oh, and don't forget to wear gloves or you may end up with several (three) blisters.  I look at the effort I put into this job as training for the Urbanathlon.  More on that race later.  Or you can Google it.

If anyone needs help removing a stump, I know someone that has a stump grinder!

The ants are GONE....for now!

Last night I removed trim, caulked, replaced trim, vacuumed up the ants with both a handheld vac and the house vac, removed the food they were eating, and squished any lingering ants.

Today we have only seen a couple of stragglers. So we are hoping this is the end of them for now. Next I am going to spread some ant killer around the foundation. I pray that is the last of them for awhile. We will see.

You might be thinking, why not just call pest control. If you know me at all, you know the I hate paying someone to do something that I can do, or at least attempt. After all attempts fail, then I will call in the experts.

As an example, last year I changed the crank position sensor on my '92 SHO. In the process I also changed the crankshaft pulley/harmonic balancer, timing belt, and both regular belts. So as you can see, I like to take things apart and fix them, most of the time.

I HATE ANTS!!!

Ants don't like all the moisture that we've gotten this spring.  They DO like the inside of our house.  I can't put all the blame on the ants though.  Having a 17 month old and just not feeling like clean and picking up the house all the time, we do leave/forget some sort of sugary food somewhere in the house every once in a while.  And ants have an amazing sense of smell and can/will find it.  We once had ants in our upstairs bedroom and found that there was a hard candy under some clothes.  They climbed clear up the side of the house, through a tiny gap around the window, and somehow found a wrapped piece of candy.

My weapons include homemade Terro bait, some brand of Home Defense indoor/outdoor bug spray, a handheld cordless vacuum, and my ten digits.  After using the bait for several days and spraying for the ants, I put the final boom down.  I first follow their trail to find our what we left behind that they are now eating and then follow their trail to locate their point of entrance.  That way I can remove their food source, seal the opening with caulk and then start sucking them up and eliminate them from our house.  I think I have used about 6-7 tubes of caulk inside and outside the house.  I don't think our house would ever blow over in a storm.  It would just flex.

My next goal is to get rid of all the ants from our property.  Maybe I just need to post a sign:  ANTS NOT ALLOWED ON PROPERTY!  Shasta would prefer it to say:  NO BUGS ALLOWED ON PROPERTY!

If anyone has any suggestions or experience about getting rid of ants they want to share, I welcome your feedback.

Frustrations in starting a blog!

I've been "reading" Waiter Rant, (actually I am listening to the audio book) and got the idea to start a blog to just write about whatever is on my mind. I should probably start out telling about myself, but I figure that most people reading this already know me. No really, the first thing I want to write about is the frustration I had just trying to figure out what to call this blog. My wife and I spent about an hour trying many different titles. I even looked up some of the blogs that were unavailable and found several that hadn't been updated since 2006 or had only one post. Such a waste of good blog title!

I hope to write about many different topics such as our family, religion, sports, ordinary life, jokes, strange facts (ex. Did you know that there are over 100 millions ants for every person on earth), photography, and anything else that comes through my mind.

I hope that if you have stumbled onto my blog, you will come back often to read about what's on my mind.

Just a small clarification.  This blog is being written by Brian, not my wife Shasta.  We decided to link this blog to the two that she writes.  So the profile information is about her and our family.