brown widow, eh?

Brown widow venom is twice as potent as black widow venom, but is usually confined to the bite area and surrounding tissue, as opposed to the black widow's. Mere toxicity of the poison is not the only factor in dangerousness. 

That's reassuring.  This is the little guy who hangs out on the floor at the bottom of his web in my garage, and when I approach my car every morning he climbs his web to my neighbors storage box.  I have a bag of Diatomaceous Earth in my car but haven't had the heart to dust the edges of my garage with it, yet...  It would wreak havoc on the the whole spider community...  Do I really have the right to do that?  I'm just a renter, after all...

dropped off the face of the earth

But back. (For tonight at least...)

Yesterday as I was starting to move a wooden patio chair into my car I thought better of it as I noticed all the crazy spiderwebs and egg sacks crammed into the corners and cracks on its underside.  I decided to spray it down instead so turned on the hose and power washed away as much of the debris as I could.  I watched a lot of poor confused spiders come out from the webs and cracks and I let them scurry into the bushes nearby without bothering them.  But then I saw the giant black widow that was clinging to the chair's leg.  *shudder*.  How can such a small thing make me feel so threatened?  I knocked it onto the ground and killed it with the toe of my sneaker.  It's innards were off-white, like the inside of a blueberry, almost.

I left the chair there to dry, but I don't know that I'll go back to pick it up.  Maybe put it on the street with a 'free' sign on it, instead?  Is that too extreme?

And now to get that whole thing out of my head I will look at this picture of flowers I took at lunch today...

hi lizard.

Thursday pattern

animals with things on their heads

nice hats, you strange little animals.

American Apparel

What I want to know is how American Apparel found my mailing address.  I got this ad in the mail yesterday- addressed to me specifically.  And then for the model to be all bloody like that, and calling my boyfriend by his first name?  I just don't like any of it...

another blog

My friend Kristin came to LA for a conference a couple weekends ago, and it was great to see her.  When she wasn't at the conference we walked around a lot, cooked and ate lots of vegetables, drank wine, and talked. After she left I had the idea that we should use our crappy cellphones to send photos to each other every day.  I like the idea of being nostalgic for the look and feel of crappy cellphone photos.  I have a few old and outdated cellphones in a drawer of random electronics- maybe I'll work on some sort of project using their cameras?  In the meantime, here is the blog of Kristin & my photo correspondence so far:

www.littlemegapixel.com

marshmallow branches

I guess some of these are just mutations on the branches, though, since a marshmallow couldn't be threaded onto a branch like some of these are.  Perhaps they're marshmallow-shaped galls like the oak galls that I would find on branches in the woods when I was little.  Even though they were like infections in the tree I always thought they were so pretty...

flower in the pocket of my windbreaker

I found this flower out on a walk this morning, and tucked it into the pocket of my windbreaker.  I just remembered about it so got it out and put it under my digital microscope to take a look.  I have some work that I should be doing, which makes it a perfect time for using my microscope to check out little flowers...

zebra on my patio

I once did an internship with a rug weaver in Oberlin Ohio who taught me that any woven rug can be cleaned successfully using plain water and a little pressure.  I decided to clean this zebra print rug that I got from my sister-in-law so I draped it over two chairs on the back patio and sprayed it with the hose.  I left it to dry and when I came back later, having forgotten it was there, I honestly thought there was a zebra on the other side of the door.  It was just for a split second, and then I quickly figured out what was actually going on, but for that instant I believed a zebra had managed to find his way onto an enclosed patio in the middle of LA.  Hmmm...

grapes

I have been buying grapes lately, because they are a good start to a lot of the different juices I've been making in my Vitamix.  They are sweet and juicy and I throw them in with a half a pear, some kale, broccoli, pumpkin seeds, and pieces of mango for a pretty fantastic drink.  I love my Vitamix.  It is truly helping me take full advantage of the amazing produce available here in Southern California.  *sigh*

rabbit groceries

mother of pearl button

my work space

I'm coming to terms with the fact that I'm really really messy when I do work.  I don't particularly like it- there's something so nice about a big clean desk and a lack of clutter and everything having its place...  But inevitably my desk becomes a big old cluttered mess.  Pliers, glue, scissors, electronics, fabric, receipts, charcoal, empty cups and glasses, sketchbooks, bills...  I do think it's worth noting that in this photo of my current work space you can find 3 decorative unicorns.  At least it has that going for it...

my fantasy football team

This past Monday, the day after the Superbowl, I asked my friend Ryan who had won.  He told me that it definitely wasn't my fantasy football team.  I'm surprised, since my fantasy football team is pretty strong;  A salamander, two dogs, a duckling, and Hulk Hogan.

police sketches

Am I crazy or does this police sketch that I took a photo of outside the Boulder Police station look a bit like Bill Murray?

I took a photo of this one too.  I'm not sure who it resembles, but it's pretty great...

bridge to nowhere

Today Chris and I hiked to the Bridge to Nowhere, a giant concrete bridge built in the 1930s that was originally meant to be part of a road through the San Gabriel Mountains.  In 1938 there was a flood that washed out the road, which left the bridge standing awkwardly in what feels like the middle of nowhere.  It's a 9 mile round trip hike up a river bed with lots of scrambling and river crossings.  We saw big-horned sheep, lots of amazing rocks, and when we got back to the parking lot as the sun was setting we saw a guy getting pumped up for some evening solo hiking- the trunk of his car popped and some tinny hip-hop blasting as he laced up his shoes and stretched, sipping from something that looked like it was a McDonald's milkshake.  

Then we drove back to Culver City and ate at the Hare Krishna temple.  All in all, a good day...

Chris Burden’s 'Metropolis II'

I went to LACMA this past weekend with my brother and sister-in-law and niece.  Chris Burden's installation was mesmerizing- all the little cars whizzing around what feels like a bubbly shiny version of the 'future'...  Here's what LACMA says on their website:

Created by artist Chris Burden, Metropolis II (2010) is a complex, large-scale kinetic sculpture modeled after a fast-paced modern city. The armature of the piece is constructed of steel beams, forming an eclectic grid interwoven with an elaborate system of eighteen roadways, including a six-lane freeway, train tracks, and hundreds of buildings. 1,100 miniature toy cars speed through the city at 240 scale miles per hour on the specially designed plastic roadways. Every hour, the equivalent of approximately 100,000 cars circulates through the sculpture.

Monday pattern

box of succulents

Our landlord left a bunch of wood in the driveway that Chris and I were planning to burn at some point...  We never got around to burning it but I did make some boxes to plant things in on the back patio.

I be making bracelets

I've been making leather bracelets lately.  I'm making some of the hardware out of stainless steel wire but I imagine it could be really nice in a higher quality metal.  I like combining the leather with unlikely materials... felt, bits of copper tubing, embroidery floss...  I don't usually wear bracelets since I always have my watch on my left wrist and I don't like anything on my right wrist that will interfere with drawing or using a computer, but I seem to keep making these anyway...

Rody

This is Maggie's Rody- an inflatable rubber horse which is pretty awesome.   I got some new paper and charcoal, along with some chunks of graphite the other day and I feel rusty but excited to do some drawings...

Saturday night pattern

animal zombies

The other day some friends and I were wondering if animals could be zombies, too.  I think we decided no, unless the infection could somehow pass from human to another species, which doesn't seem to be how it works...  But if it *did*, these guys would surely terrorize...  

first day of school

We have a drawer of bags in our kitchen for groceries or whatever else needs carrying.  This is the bag that Chris decided to use to bring to school today, filled with his books and binders.  I think it's appropriate that he would bring such a special bag to school on this, the first day of the new semester.  I know I always use to try to put my best foot forward on the first day of school...

I wish Google + were cooler

So sad, right? This was what I saw when I clicked on 'Hang out' under a friend's photo on Google + (Though after I took this screen shot I actually chatted with Duncan and Vanessa for a while...I'm guessing we were the only ones using the Google + 'Hang out' feature at the time...)  Google does things so well, but I guess people are just set in their ways with Facebook.  Bummer.  That robot looks so rejected...