My Attempt

...at a short, simple, non-epic blog post, following Carolyn's sound advice (btw, people, Carolyn is a fantastic blogger :). I'm trying to break out of the mindset that says every good blog post begins with "For the last X days/weeks/months, I have done Y, and here is my profound and expert analysis." Maybe this change of philosophy will finally be the thing that makes for more frequent blog posts.

Anyway.

I think I have a 'pet' spider. It lives in the gap between my kitchen stove and counter, about an inch below surface. It's kinda cute in that it disappears everytime I start up one of the burners, but always reappears in its usual place, without fail, after a couple of hours. This has been going on since last May, at least.

I like to think that this little spider and I have a silent, mutual agreement: It's never tried venturing up north, and as a result, I've never tried killing it. Given my long history of extreme arachnophobia, this is somewhat endearing for me. But it makes me oscillate between two thoughts: 1) I hope it doesn't abuse my generosity and start making babies, and 2) Maybe I should give it a name.

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I've given some thought to the 'intelligence' of spiders, and its ability to perform regular tasks with great precision. More than once this summer, I've sat (in the company of a good friend who sometimes values insects more highly than humans) and watched spiders arduously weave webs by moonlight.

Once, curious, we threw a good-sized twig up into a web. The spider immediately scurried from center field and made a cursory sweep around the twig before deciding that it was no good. In an extremely skillfull manner, it worked its way around the twig, 'unknotting' the least number of intersections necessary in order to cut out the parts of the web that were stuck to the twig (notice that it did not simply free the twig; parts of the web came with it too). Within just five minutes, we got a nice "screw you" as the twig came tumbling back down at us.

We just stared, stunned by the precision and efficiency of its handiwork.

The spider finished off by repairing the torn bits of its web -- which wasn't very much at all -- before settling back into the center of the web. Like clock-work.

It was a simple discovery, but the reasons behind the basic web structure became clear to us for the first time: damage control! The concentric circles intersected by radiating lines is actually a brilliant little piece of structural engineering that makes it easy for parts of the web to be isolated, lest there be a need for removal. This maximizes the area that is unaffected, keeping the overall structure of the web robustly intact.

(Kind of like those mattresses that let you toss and turn all you want while keeping your partner relatively undisturbed...)

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My photography has actually spurred more of my interest in these 'little' guys, the Garden Spider:

This one was almost 3 inches long and nearly gave me a heart attack everytime I went in for a shot. Note the beautiful zig-zagging pattern down the center line! Wikipedia details its web making process almost as if describing an algorithm -- kind of neat to observe robotic-like execution in nature. I wish I were as skillful at some things as these little guys are.

Unfortunately, all of this does not change the fact that spiders are ugly, have more than four legs, and thus, still warrant blood-curling screams upon unexpected discovery.

Also, I think I fell for the epic-"for the last X months"-blog template again. Crap.

Maybe I Should Start Blogging Again... ?

I find myself having random thoughts lately... but nowhere to store them!

But now that I've caught the photo bug, words seem so last year... It's all about the photoblog now, and everyone knows a picture is worth a thousand words.

Still, the 'for some reason diane needs to publicly express things' persona seems to be missing something... Hm. What could it be?