I was in the lab feeding the spiders, and on the may out I decided I ought to check my mailbox — it’s been a month and a half! I discovered that a reader sent me a copy of his grandson’s favorite book, The Bugliest Bug, and mentioned that he “waits expectantly to see the photos ‘below the fold’ on [my] blog.” Whooops. I’ve been trying so hard to avoid scaring away readers with my spider pictures, I didn’t stop to think I might be depriving children of the information they need.

That settles it. The spiders are coming back. In moderation, of course, and always below the fold. I will not disappoint anyone’s grandchildren!

My next house has to have a Viking grave beneath the floorboards.

Hey, maybe my house already has one! Some people believe the Vikings were waltzing all around Minnesota, you know.

I wonder if Mary would object if I took a pickaxe to the basement floor…

The cat weathered my absence for a few days without a problem. She greeted us at the door with her “FEED ME!” yowl.

black cat on a black blanket (she prefers to sleep on dark objects, the better to sneak up on you)

She’s also pleased that she now has two humans to annoy.

After our long, long drive yesterday, I thought this would be a good day to rest and recover. I forgot that I’d brought Mary home. She was out in the garage at 7:30 fueling and oiling the lawn mower, eager to get to work cutting grass. I was not. I have more sedate plans.

• I was up at 6 tinkering with computers. I’ve mentioned before that my Mac is on its last legs, with keys falling out and mysterious errors cropping up now and then, but the price of replacing it was prohibitive, especially since my disposable income, which wasn’t much to begin with, is flowing outwards to deal with legal debt. After a few days in my daughter’s Reality Distortion Field, in which she pointed out that I could get a high-end Linux machine for a thousand bucks less than my Mac upgrade, I decided to tinker. I installed the free Pop!_OS on an old Windows machine that I found intolerable — Windows is an ugly abomination — and brought it back to life. I’m going to work with it for a while to see if my old brain can readjust itself to use Unix instead of the MacOS, which I hate to say has become increasingly ugly over the years. I despise iTunes almost as much as I do Windows.

• I’m going to spend some time in the lab this morning giving loving attention to my spiders, who have been neglected now for almost a week. Baby want a snackums? I have some nice flies for you.

• I will obey my mistress after the spiders are made content. She has assigned me the task of cleaning out and sterilizing the car we spent 14 hours in yesterday. This may require fire.

• I’ve got this working Raspberry Pi with a NOIR camera that we had set up to take pictures, and I’ve got this spider cage here at home, and now I have to figure out how to mount the camera above it at a reasonable distance that encompasses the whole field of view with reasonable resolution. Alternatively, I may have to build a dedicated cage of smaller size that will compromised between freedom of movement for the spider and adequate field dimensions for this camera. I’m thinking ring stands, tripods, hot glue, and popsicle sticks, because I’m focused on cheap and easy.

• Mary has been looking at this bachelor pad I’ve been occupying with a glint in her eye. Who knows what she’ll order me to do next?

• I’ve got some weekend cooking to do. I’ve been frustrated by the lack of garam masala in Morris, so I’d ordered a bunch of it online. Yes, I have a 5 lb bag of garam masala now, in case anyone needs to borrow a cup of it. I hope Mary likes curry.

I’m back! We drove home from Colorado today, and now I’m all worn out.

You know, the grandparenting thing is great because you don’t have all the responsibilities of a parent, but the bad part is that it breaks your heart to leave, and Mom & Dad won’t let you smuggle the baby home in your luggage.