User pick and recent stuff

[same_difference]

As you can no doubt see I have put a user-pick on my LJ - for those who are curious it's a cropped photo of me taken at St. Michael's Mount on my recent holiday.

In other news I went to a Magic tournament last weekend, just another prerelease, and didn't do particularly well, but enjoyed myself. Worth missing the play test larp for? Possibly. Since then I finally went to the Wednesday magic pub thing that I've known about for several years, but had not ever got around to, or been particularly interested in going to. Apart from the smokey atmosphere (come on smoking ban!) I enjoyed myself and did better than I did on Saturday which was good. Not something I'll do particularly frequently, but nice now and then.

I've been deliberately trying to limit my exposure to cigarette smoke over the years, because it disgusts me. As a result I'm very sensitive to it, and can normally tell if someone has been exposed to it, even several hours afterwards. So the 4 hours of it in the pub weren't good and when I left my chest hurt and continued to do so until I went to sleep.

The thing I've had a cold, or cold like symptoms, since about Wednesday, and I suspect the smoke made it worse. I'd had a sore throat all of last week, which went away over the weekend. However it's back again this week, and I have been sneezing a lot recently, and had a running/blocked nose from Wednesday evening too. Having already taken last Friday off because I felt nauseous* I don't really want to take more time off again now. The upshot of this is don't expect I'll feel well enough to go to the Parade Saturday, or the larp Sunday.

Ah yes larp, I have so far completely and totally failed to get any kind of costume sorted for my character for this year. My usual anti-costume apathy seems to mean that at the moment I'd rather monster for a year, than actually get costume sorted. The thing I know what I want** - I just have completely failed to do anything about it.

One last thing behind a cut for some of my friends sake.

I found the following in my sink last week, when I lifted a colander out of it to do some washing up. The photo has been cropped so the spider is about actual size. For reference the plug in the photo (and yes I did actually put it there deliberately to give a size reference when I took the photo) is about 4.5cm in diameter.





*Which messed up my plans for that day. Apologies to alexrothis and fourmyle, for failing to come over. Trying to get the things I wanted finished before I left to collect P on Saturday, when feeling ill and having slept through a large part of the day, meant it took a lot longer than I'd hoped.

**Wide brimmed leather hat, leather adjustable head band with two asterix style wings on it (to be able to go around both head or hat er not-brim), thin leather bracers with a wing motif, silvery or matt darkish grey waistcoat with long tails - think more a split arse-cape attached to a waistcoat.

Comments

[almosthonest.livejournal.com]

Yuck - tegenaria domestica: a house spider. Male, apparently - females have big fat bodies, though I've never seen one. Brutally fast, they do build webs, but largely eat via hunting. You tend to find them roaming the house at night. Known weaknesses: poor climbers. Hence they can't get out of sinks, baths, or open tupperware. If you chase one up a wall, it will probably fall off. If you see one on the ceiling above you - get out from under it!

I don't mind photos, but I really mind finding those sods in my sink, like, three or four times a year.

[same-difference.livejournal.com]

A particularly big specimen or about average size would you say?

[almosthonest.livejournal.com]

Tney're all too big! :-) But yes, that's a big bastard by their standards. If it's coming up accurate size on my screen (and the plug looks the right size), that one's around the size of the infamous one me and Adrian chased into then out of my oven. Which was way TFB, and that's "Too" and "Big" for the purposes of abbreviation expansion...

I'd guestimate they're more often 75% that big (male), and assuming the black, bulkier ones are the females, those are around 60% as big but even faster. There's one AWOL in my bedroom at the moment...

[kipperfish.livejournal.com]

Was the one that I came round to help you deal with a female version of this one?

[almosthonest.livejournal.com]

Apparently (says Google), the males are the bigger ones of that species. I'm surprised, but if that's right, we fought a male. And putting my hand over the photo here, actually, I'd say ours might have even been a touch bigger, come to think of it. I actually have a photo somewhere...