Saturday, August 8

First of all, update on Ariadne: She has obviously created her egg sac and filled it. Boy, just like any other pregnant female who births her offspring, her size has reduced by about 2/3! Good girl, Ariadne! You aren't like the humans who get big with babies and then stay big. She's sticking close to the sac, so we'll keep an eye on it. But I don't know how much longer Ariadne will be around. According to one source on the internet, "female orb-weavers die soon after producing egg sacs containing several hundred eggs. Eggs may hatch soon after or not until the following spring." So based on that, I'll let you know when and if Ariadne stays around or not, and if the egg sac hatches this season. If not, maybe Larry will let golf bring it in and put in a big, empty 55-gallon aquarium they have. Ooops, Larry says "no dice" to that idea. (He says golf can take it to work with her, to keep her two bettas she has there company. Probably not . . . . Her bosses tolerate her two big bowls for the bettas [and one even feeds Frito and Concord, the bettas, while she's on vacation], but I have a feeling they might object to a 55-gallon fish tank, especially if it's full of thousands of spiderlings. Picky, picky, picky.)

In the meantime, golf and Larry received their replacement video card that died, and since they had ordered a replacement anyway, in case the manufacturer didn't replace the one that died, they had a spare, so golf asked Larry to put it in the gaming computer on which Flight Simulator 9 and 10 are installed. golf didn't see a significant jump in fps, as she had hoped, but the graphics were better. Of course, then she went flying around Oahu in T.C.'s chopper. Here she is approaching T.C.'s Island Hoppers homebase, which is actually the Makai Research Pier. Whoever created it for FSX didn't know what it really looks like. Not even close to the real thing.

Also, though golf successfully landed on it, it wasn't an easy task, as visually, where FSX allowed the "touch-down" of the chopper's skids, the "landing zone" was about 5-6 feet ABOVE the pier.

AHA! The picture below probably shows this best. She has landed here and isn't just hovering there. Nice little airplane with floats there, to the left.

The far east end of the pier where the helipad actually is has been turned into a sort of fishing boardwalk.

Where she touched down does not exist on the actual pier, and that "leg" of the pier off to the right below is also inaccurate.

Another addition of a motorboat beside the pier.

She then took off, heading for Robin's Nest, to see what it looks like in this scenery. Well, the tidal pool shows up (I guess it should, since Google Earth is the basis for the scenery).

But the buildings -- the main house -- on the estate are conspicuously absent.

Nice to see Rabbit Island off in the distance though.

Apparently, with this scenery, the only building on the estate is the boathouse, which is far too large.

In the picture below, the boathouse is on the far right. Well, at least the doors are correct . . . . sort of -- there are two doors on the boathouse that face the shore.

But no fence or sea wall.

Beside the boathouse, where in reality there's no room for a helicopter to land or even come close.

No way could a helicopter be here at the actual estate. But I just wanted to show you what it looks like in FSX.

Monday, August 3, 2009 -- New Camera

Poor golf! She has a new camera and nothing special to take pictures of! She got a Sony CyberShot DSC W220, and she really likes it. So she takes pictures of Ariadne and her "home" (click on the pictures to get a bigger view and you can see this WONDERFUL spider web and detail of Ariadne sucking the innards out of something-or-other!) (and "dinner," I think) and tries to create dioramas for me. Sad efforts . . . . .

The camera also takes videos, so she tried a little of that while out playing golf with Larry on Friday and Saturday, but she had more success with posting something here by just capturing a frame from the videos. (After waiting 12 hours [started last night before 8 p.m., STILL "processing" at 8 a.m. the next morning!!!] for a 6-second video to upload, she gave up. What kind of junk program is Google running here? They don't even have a support desk where you can actually contact someone and ask a question. She is seriously irritated.)

Sunday, August 2, 2009 -- The Return of the Arachnid

Well, not exactly the return -- more of an update. Note the size of Ariadne's abdomen (that's what golf named her -- don't know why, maybe because the name seems rather similar to Arachnid?) compared to her cephalothorax in the picture below. The two outside views are from yesterday, the center one is from July 22. She has also moved her web from the middle of the garden to the end of the garden, reaching from potted pepper plants on the opposite side of the walkway from the garden, which is up against the house wall, so the stretches about four feet wide by about six feet high, in a sort of triangle shape. We've tried to get a picture of it, but it just doesn't show up. We're hoping for an early morning view with dew on it, but that hasn't happened yet. We even tried spraying it with water, but it's so hot, the mist evaporates almost as soon as it lands on the lines of the web. golf just went outside and got a couple of more pictures. Ariadne was positioned the wrong way for golf to get a picture of her, top-down view, and golf could get pictures her only from the underside of her body. Still . . . shows her size pretty well. Plus, you can really see the size difference between her abdomen and cephalothorax.

July 25, 2009 -- Final Appearance of Risers

Remember golf's bargello needlepoint risers she made that she showed a while back? They are now in final form and in place. Her father (bless his 90-year-old and pace-maker'ed heart!) was kind enough to "lace" (with carpet thread) the canvas pieces on strips of masonite, cut by golf and Larry (with great care on the table saw -- do you know how hard it is to cut a straight line along masonite for 52"??) to fit the height of each individual step (necessary because each step was a different height by +/-1/4" , which they really never had felt when just walking up and down the carpeted stairs). golf was able to tack the covered strips in place on the stairs with brass nails and had to paint the heads of only two nails to match the color of yarn where the nail went in. Where she could, she put the nail in through gold yarn so it wouldn't show when in place (I asked her just WHO did she think was going to get down on his/her hands and knees and LOOK for the nail heads, at which time she told me the unpainted ones against burgundy and navy blue yarn would catch the light and visually "announce" where they were if they weren't covered, so I backed off questioning her installation attempts). Here I am, standing about midway, showing the top four risers. Click on the picture for a bigger view and you can see more detail of the bargello needlepoint patterns -- and keep in mind that every single stitch was done by golf by hand!


Here I am on the foyer tile floor at the bottom step, showing the first five steps' risers going up the stairway.

And here I am in the middle, so you can see almost all of them in place (not showing is the bottom one, which you can see better in the picture just above, anyway).

It took golf about eight months to make these (not counting the time when we were in Oahu in September and the Dominican Republic in January). golf came up with this idea last summer when she ran out of projects to do and recalled a time during college (40 years ago!) when she had visited a friend's house and the stairs down to the basement game room had needlepoint pieces on the risers. For all this time, she has remembered those stairs and finally was in a house where she could make the pieces and install them in her own house. She is pleased with them -- and hey, it'll make her keep the stairs vacuumed more often! And that can only be a good thing, with three long-haired cats (two bluepoint Himalayans and one sealpoint Himmie) running up and down the stairs all the time, leaving cat hair all over them. It's also a good thing Larry and golf had dark green carpet installed when they built the house. Imagine how less dramatic these would look with tan or beige carpet. BORING! Now, these will stand out and showcase themselves.

Wednesday, July 22, 2009 -- A Little Bit of Nature

We have had a spider in our garden since spring. When we first noticed him several months ago, he was just a little thing, about 3/8" body. He's grown. I'm surprised he's still around. But he obviously is!
I told golf to get a ruler to measure him. Doncha just love the little stringy thing in his web?



I wonder how much longer he'll be hanging around. Anyone know what kind of spider this is? Leave me a Comment if you know anything about him.

Sunday, June 28, 2009, St. Thomas, USVI

Okay, here I am, kicking back on Sapphire Beach on St. Thomas. Actually, you probably already know that I am there. But now I need to tell you how we got here.


Larry has been urging golf to use his Delta flight privileges, so she decided to do so. She emailed a buddy of hers -- let's call her . . . . Kathy. So golf invited Kathy to come down to Atlanta and then go on to St. Thomas with her (you may recall that golf is still on her "wanting to snorkel" jag, and this is about the closest place to her to go to, and she knows her way around St. Thomas). Well, Kathy was happy to join her, so golf got her set up as a Delta Buddy for flight privileges (NOT free, just significantly reduced cost, but still flying stand-by), and Kathy came down from the Chicago area to meet up with golf at the Atlanta airport. UNFORTUNATELY for them, the 10 a.m. flight to St. Thomas (STT) wasn't able to seat all its stand-by passengers, so they rolled over to golf and Kathy's 11:30 flight -- and bumped them off that flight. BUMMER!!! The next flight was at 5:30 p.m. on that day, Thursday, June 25 (and they couldn't fly the NEXT day if they got bumped again because Delta had an embargo on Buddy pass travel on June 26-27 -- we don't know why). So with a six-hour wait, they left the airport and went to golf's house to check things and then headed back to the airport.

Where they WERE seated on the 5:30 flight and did arrive in St. Thomas after 9 p.m. Thurs. night. This is not an ideal time to arrive in STT, as you may know if you ever been there -- the roads aren't the best or the best marked, not like roads and highways in the continental U.S. of A. However, having been here twice before, golf had a relatively good idea of how to get where they were scheduled to go for their accommodations. And without more than one minor missed turn, they did arrive safely over the "roller coaster" road to Sapphire Beach on the northeast side of STT. Whew! A slight stutter with finding the right condo building, but finally in and able to unpack.

Promptly the next morning golf wanted to go snorkeling, so they went down to Sapphire Beach, to check out the options. It was a bit of a hike down there from where they were staying, so they hiked BACK up to the condo and decided to run errands first -- groceries, etc. -- and they were delighted to find cartons of cigarettes at K-Mart for $18 a carton (compare to $35-50 in Georgia!!). They stocked up -- DUH!

Back to the condo, where they donned swimwear and headed for Sapphire Beach (driving down this time). They snorkeled east, middle, and west ends of the beach. They had the most luck in seeing sealife on the far west end of the beach, where, among all the tangs, parrotfish, grunts, damsels, butterflies, etc., golf spotted 6-9 little squid. She didn't have an underwater camera with her to get a picture of them, but this is what they looked like, about 12" long.

She promptly called me for assistance . . . .

Yeah, right . . . .

Kathy was having a bit of a difficult time because she didn't have fins to help her with snorkeling, so golf kept paddling off on her little air mattress and rather leaving her behind, so Kathy decided just to sit in the sun and get a tan and read her book. golf took a break too and decided that I needed some photo ops. Kathy was rather dismayed initially, while golf did her usual looking-for-places-to-pose-me routine.

There was a lot of beach volleyball in "Magnum, p.i.," wasn't there? So, of course, we had to get me at the volleyball net.

And golf just can't resist putting me in the water . . . .

And she always sticks me up in a seagrape tree (though this tree had a rather intriguing look, but, then, don't they all? They are great trees - and it doesn't hurt that they're always down on the beach).

But then Kathy started to catch on to the idea -- rather the way Larry does when HE suggests a good place to take a picture. And Kathy came up with a GREAT idea!!

golf's snorkeling air mattress looks just like a "my-size" dinghy! Not exactly a surf-ski, but then golf can't find one of those for me. So since this appears to be my only chance to get out on the water, I'll take it.

Soon they headed back to the condo where they cooked a steak and baked potato for dinner.

Luckily for them, golf was able to get the laptop to pick up an internet connection out on the balcony. The individual units didn't have WiFi and it was supposed to be available only down at or by the office. But golf's laptop piggybacked on something so it worked for them on the balcony. As I said, that was a good thing because there was no TV! Well, there was a TV, there just wasn't any cable connection. SUPPOSEDLY, it was being changed to a new company and should have been installed on Friday. Wasn't. Or Saturday. Not. So the internet connection was an major entertainment asset (Kathy's just about as internet-addicted as golf!).

Soooooooooooooom, all in all, it was a good first day in St. Thomas.

June 26, 2009 -- Back in St. Thomas, USVI

And you're not! More pictures and "travelog" later, but I thought I would give you a taste (it's HOT and HUMID here . . . .)

That's the view off our balcony at Sapphire Village at Sapphire Beach, where golf and her buddy Kathy went snorkeling (and had a BLAST!) for several hours this afternoon. Don't know how many pictures we'll get of me, as golf isn't quite as willing to carry me around and take pictures -- some people aren't as tolerant of me as Larry is (poor baby, stuck at home working while WE'RE here!)

Stay tuned. More later. ;-)