Too many Spiders?

Sometimes I actually post to my blog. ABC Wednesday being up to the letter S, and me having some spider photos handy, was a good excuse :)

... but ... I got busy/distracted (as usual) and I didn't get to post this before Time ran out and we are now up to the letter T ... So I am changing the Title of this post from "Spiders and Stuff" to "Too Many Spiders?" ... which is probably what a lot of people think about a lot of my blog posts (and tweets, etc :)

I think spiders are Teriffic, but a lot of people seem to find them quite Terrifying ... 

(and this next paragraph was already in here - but it fits even better with the letter T :)

I don't have as much Internet access as I had, and when I do, I don't have as much time ... lol

So ... I tend to mainly tweet about stuff that I once used to blog about ... and sometimes (often while out walking the dog) I write really good blog posts ... in my head! LOL

Sometimes I tweet photos of Spiders ... because I See a lot of them ... probably partly because there at a lot to see, and mostly because I notice them ... you see, I am one of those strange people who LIKE spiders :)

Not everyone I know shares my passion for Spiders though ... My son's partner is terrified of them ... so she was not too impressed when she came back outside after I took this photo, and showed her and informed her that it had crawled out from the folds of the quilt over the back of the chair she had just been sitting on!

Sometimes I take rather dodgy photos like this one ... on the path at night when walking the dog (iPhones don't do so well in low light)

The other week I got to do something really fun - I went off with a group of people, led by someone who has become a bit of an expert on Peacock spiders, and we went walking on Black Mountain, looking to see if we could find any - and yes - we did ... only Took a short Time Too (as in a few feet from the door of the bus we went up there in ... "is this one?" says someone - and yes - it was! :)

It wasn't this particular one, but it was this species - we found a few of these ... Maratus calcitrans ...

Another photo of same spider (neither of them are perfect - but probably not bad for a photo of something about 3mm long that often jumps away as soon as u get close, taken with a macro lens clipped on to my phone!

We also found some other jumping spiders ...

You can see how small they are - Tiny! 

I also took lots of photos of other things (normal for me :)

An ant:

Another Ant:

Some Lichen:

Another one of those jumping spiders - with really cool yellow palps :)

Could be another one, or probably same spider in different place - they kept jumping away - lol

Another peacock spider (same species as the other photo I think)

I had so much fun I went back up that way, but not quite to the same spot, by myself a bit later ...

(Well, I had to drive past there to get home, after the BBQ that was after the walk :)

Trouble is ... After spending time at some place with wifi, just so all the photos from my phone would upload to my "photo stream" so I could then access them on my iPad here on the work wifi (I have finished work for the day but sometimes stay late to do stuff online, because my only other Internet is the little bit I have as part of my phone plan) ... I didn't get around to finishing this blog post when I was planning to (and am now almost too late for the letter T!)  and I have just realised that Inhave taken so many photos that some of the ones that I wanted have now gone from my photo stream again - replaced by more recent ones (it only keeps the 1000 most recent photos ... Yes - I take a lot of photos! ... mostly on my phone ... Maybe I should have called this blog post "Taking Too Many Photos"? :)

A few of the other photos I took are still there (until I connect my phone to wifi again ... which I can't do here at work - the network here lets iPads connect, but not phones ... sigh)

This is not a Turd ...

... it is a puffball (a type of fungus)

I also had one photo with perfect timing ... Well - closer than usual - I was trying to take a photo of this flower when the insect flew in for a very quick visit ... it didn't even stay long enough for the camera to focus on it ... (or for me to get the camera to focus - I saw it and clicked and hoped ... but if I had waited to see if it was in focus I would have ended up with just another photo like I usually get whe trying to photograph fast flying insects - an empty flower - lol

Flowers with ... Tongues?! :)

Ditto, with an orchid :)

... and a Grevillia :)

Spider web ... (The spider was most likely hiding inside that curled up leaf :)

Some Translucent ... seed pods (the red bits)

Trees ... and their bark ...

and some more recent photos (the others have all been from that same day on black Mountain :)

Grass, flowering (on my lawn ... I probably should mow it, seeing it has now set seed a d dried out and looks Terrible!)

Curly Tufts of dog fur :)

... and The dog :)

More a Things people Think are Terrible?! 

... A Tray of eyeballs, and the Tools used to dissect them :)

Lots of ohotos of the lake ... I Try and Take a photo from This spot every Tome I ride past ... not sure why here - just realised one day that I had Taken, and Tweeted, a few from here and it might be interesting to have a whole bunch showing how they change with Time ...

Not a T-bone steak - Lamb chops ... 

I had some for my Tea, made soup with a few, and gave some to the dog for a Treat ... Was kind of nice to share with "the man in my life" LOL (far more loyal than the other man in my life ever was!)

This was going to be the last photo, back when I thought this was going to be a letter S post :)

Something for those who survived all the spider photos and are still reading this post - a photo of some swans eating my salad :)

And seeing what was going to be an S post has now become a T one ... I guess I should find some Terriffic, or at least not too Tedious, T photo ...

How about a Tree ... Or Two, or Three ... LOL

(taken at Sunset, seeing this sort of started as an S post :)

...

and ... seeing I take a few selfies - here is a rather Terrible one? 

(actually most are even more Terrible :)

Me, and a moth :)

And ... One last one ... Because I just took it here on my desk, with the iPad 

(I was going to include a photo of it earlier, but then I noticed I had taken that one before I had added the legs - lol)

A Tweety bird that I made at an art quilt group meeting :)

and now ... after This Too long post ... 'Tis Time to fly off and do other a Things ...

(Well, I could add a photo of my "Travel Eagle" ... but unless you are into Geocaching you won't even know what it is ... and I would have to dig it out of my bag and take a photo, and then try and explain it all - so I will save that for a post That isn't about Too many other things, some other Time ... The way my blogging has (not) been going lately - we will probably be up to the letter G, for Geocaching, by the time I get around to writing another post! :)

C is for Canberra

... A City which is now 100 years old - yes, there was a rather Crazy birthday party earlier this year, and a whole heap of other Community events are happening all year long - there is an official website about it here - http://www.canberra100.com.au/ It even has a Calendar, which I keep forgetting to Check.

One of the things that happened as part of the Centenary Celebrations was the Commissioning and Creation of a rather unique hot air balloon ... which Caused quite a Controversy ... you will probably be able to guess why, if you have a look here - http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Skywhale or here - http://www.theskywhale.com/  (yes it even has a website :)

Anyway ... I am one of those who actually like it ... and I was even inspired to get Creative ... in fact I think I got a bit Crazy, because I kind of ended up Creating this hat ...

... and there are meant to be some other photos in here ... but I added (or thought I had) those on my iPad over the wifi here at work, and this one via my phone later ... and then noticed that the work wifi does not seem to be talking properly with the blogger app and they are not showing up when I log in via a work computer or the web browser on my iPad ... ahhh - the joys of modern technology ... 'tis wonderful ... IF it works ... LOL

Anyway, the ABC Wednesday Letter D is already just been posted, and the linky thingy for C posts closes in about 15 minutes, so I will post this and sneak it in there, then try and get the other photos into this post later, when I have time to mess around with stuff (or just put them in another post later - lol)  ... Then I will have to see see if I can think of something for D, and get time to actually blog (my life is still a bit upside down and hectic, with less Internet access than I used to have ...)

"... and now for something completely different" :)

Seems I had rather a LOT of hair - as you can see in this photo (me doing a "selfie" with my reflection in bathroom mirror - makes me feel like a teenager doing that - LOL) ... and in the previous blog post :)

... so - when I started telling people I was going to get it cut short, they were probably imagining something a bit like this:

but ... I had something else in mind ...

yes - doing the "World's Greatest Shave" at the assembly at the school I work at - several students and one other staff member also did the shave, and several more students coloured their hair.

here is my hair (posing for a photo, in a box on my desk :)

hmmm - rather a lot of interesting colours in there!

(and no dye/etc - all my natural colour, and grey, and the effects of the sun)

and ...


here is my new look!

scary? or not? (actually I look just a little too much like my dad! LOL)

... too bad if you don't like it - because I DO :)

here are a few more (rather dodgy) photos ... because I took quite a few "selfies" while trying to get a reasonably nice one - lol

... and now it is time to finish the other things I was doing, and log off this computer (one on someone elses desk at work, because I don't have one on mine) and get out of this place - seeing my official knock off time was almost 2 hours ago :)

Hair today, gone next week ...

Well - it wont be gone tomorrow, but it will next week! ... Unless they cancel the Worlds Greatest Shave assembly at the school I work at ... (not likely :)

Yes - this coming Thursday (less than a week from now) is entered in my Google calendar as "No hair day" ... because I am going to let somebody shave my head, in front of all the students (and staff) at the school assembly!!

... there are 2 students and another (male) staff member also doing it at the same time ... so hopefully between us we can raise some much needed money for a good cause :)

... and - I will have a rather different new look (I had decided to get a fairly short haircut sometime soon anyway - so I figured why not go all the way and do something useful at the same time :)

If you would like to sponsor me/make a donation to the cause - you can do that here:  http://my.leukaemiafoundation.org.au/aykayem 

Here is a "before" photo:

... and one from the back - showing just how long my hair is (this is probably about as long as my hair ever grows - has been this long for a while)

apologies for slightly blurry/taken in too much of a hurry photo - the person taking it for me (with my phone :) was rather busy, and was wanted for something while taking this photo, so she kind of snapped in a hurry and dashed off (the front office of a school is rarely ever quiet! LOL)

... I probably should have removed the ball point pen from my pigtail? ... hmmm - I am going to have to find some other creative place to keep a pen once I have hardly any hair! LOL

"After" photos will be forthcoming ... after the event :) 

(How long after depends how busy I am - next week is looking like it is going to be a bit hectic - I have a few different things I have to do/organise, and my life is still rather all over the place/up in the air - so it may take a day or 5 for me to get a chance post photos here.)

we apologise for this break in transmission, normal service will resume eventually :)

Sorry for my lack of posts here (or anywhere else, for that matter) ... I do still exist ... I just kind of got busy, and life got in the way ... and then I made myself even more busy doing even more stuff, to distract myself from stuff going on in my life that I was not happy about ... or something like that ... and then, on top of all the other stuff going on - something that came as a total surprise to me - my husband walked out on me (with no intention of coming back) on Good Friday.
... so now I still have all the other stuff going on/to worry about ... and all the stuff to sort out that has to be sorted out when, after about 25 years being part of a couple, one suddenly finds oneself having to do it all alone ... and having to work out what the heck I am now going to do with the rest of my life, and start sorting out stuff to do with property settlement, and all the other legal/etc stuff ... not to mention sorting out a house full of stuff (some mine, some ours, some his ... but none of which he wants - he took a few things, and bought a heap of new stuff when he found a place to rent) ... so I think I might be a bit busy to blog much for the next few months ... but I have been meaning to get back to blogging, and I like blogging ... so I will be back ... eventually ;)
Meanwhile ... I do still tweet stuff here and there ... my tweets (and a link to me on Twitter) should be showing up here in my blog, provided it is still working - lol