Vacation - Day 2

The kids woke up bright and early excited about the pancake breakfast that the KOA Kampground was sponsoring that morning. We got dressed quickly and headed over to a small playground where David met a brother and sister from Germany, and Charlie played with a 4-year-old boy named Damian. At 8:00, the pancake breakfast started. A man with a huge outdoor grill took our egg orders, and piled the food high on our plates. After our hearty meal, we hit the road again.

Although we had to cover about the same mileage as the day before, today's journey was much smoother. There was no traffic, and the only glitch (if you can call it that) was that we couldn't find a place to have our picnic lunch. We were in the Mt. Shasta Recreational Area, and the only picnic tables we could find were in areas that required a camping fee. So, we finally threw in the towel and just ate in the car.

When we checked into the Best Western New Oregon Motel at about 5:30 p.m., something wasn't quite right. The room stunk. I mean, it literally stunk. Like maybe a pet had had an accident behind the bed that never got cleaned up. Sherry went back to the front desk and they gave us another room that smelled like freshly cleaned motel. Much better.

David picked the restaurant for dinner: The Oregon Electric Station which was built around an old railroad depot. David had fish and chips, Charlie had chicken strips (after sending back cheesy noodles 'cause they weren't enough like mac 'n' cheese), Sherry had a Caesar salad, and I had fettuccine Alfredo.

After dinner we took a quick walk around downtown Eugene where we saw a great big freight train hauling logs go by. Then we drove around the University of Oregon campus (I had more than a little trouble getting my bearings), and it was back to the motel for a little indoor swimming pool action.

Vacation - Day 1

We dropped off Buddy at his boarding house about 9:00 a.m., and we were on our way!

We made a quick stop at "Grandma's Chevron", then headed to Lincoln Park in Los Angeles for lunch. The traffic was very heavy, so we didn't get there until around noon. The kids played on playground equipment, and Sherry made us a nice lunch of sandwiches, carrots, chips and... pudding!

Back on the freeway, traffic was still real tight. We finally hit the Grapevine around 2:30. It was pretty smooth sailing after that, although we did have to stop for a while at a Carl's Jr. while Charlie tried to go potty. We powered through the rest of the drive, and arrived at our KOA Kampground in West Sacramento at 8:58 p.m. Turned out the office closed at 9:00; had we been any later, they would have been closed and:

• We wouldn't have gotten our Kabin for the night.
• We would have been out the $55.00 deposit.
• We would have had to find a motel to stay at or sleep in the van!

But, we weren't late, and we got our Kabin. And since we didn't even know we had to get there by 9:00, we avoided the stress that would have come with trying to meet a deadline.

The kids were Krazy with joy when they saw the log Kabin we would be staying in. It sat beside a small lake and had bunk beds. It was pretty late by the time we settled in, but eventually the kids drifted off to sleep.

Spider Man Visits

The spider man from the Natural History Museum came out to the house today to take samples of our brown widows. Unfortunately, I had killed an adult this morning before work, but luckily we had a big ol' egg sac with hundreds of babies to give him. He said he'd have to look at them under the microscope to make an absolute positive ID, but that based on the shape of the egg sacs, they were indeed brown widows. Our backyard is the furthest east in San Diego County that they've been discovered.

While Sherry was showing spider man one of the old abandoned brown widow webs, a black widow came out and surprised them. (Spider man said it wasn't unusual to turn over an outside bench or table and find a brown widow living in one corner and a black widow living in the other.) He carefully coaxed her into a jar to add to his samples. He later went on to say that when brown widows make their way into an area, black widows sometimes mysteriously disappear...

Sherry also got to talking to him about brown recluses because she thought she had seen one a few years back. Spider man said that, based on the number of brown recluse diagnoses being made in California, there should be at least 30 million of them creeping around. Yet not a single one has been found here since the 1960s. He then directed us to a web page written by an exasperated arachnologist at the University of California, Riverside titled "Myth of the Brown Recluse" which ends with all-capitalized red letters, "THERE ARE NO BROWN RECLUSE SPIDERS LIVING IN CALIFORNIA."

Donkey Kong Jungle Beat

David gave me an early Father's Day gift this week: Donkey Kong Jungle Beat. It's a Donkey Kong adventure game where you use bongos to make DK run, jump, punch, etc. Pretty fun. Plus, since it came with its own set of bongos, we now have two sets of bongos to play Donkey Konga 2 with!

San Diego County Fair

We hit the San Diego County (nee Del Mar) Fair yesterday, and the experience was great. Even though it was the opening weekend, it wasn't that crowded for a Sunday. We arrived around 11:30 and didn't hit any traffic.

Highlights:

• We parked in the dirt lot right by the tram pick-up. (Charlie liked when the tram went through a tunnel.)
• We saw pigs, sheep (getting sheared), goats, and cows.
• Charlie and David had corn dogs.
• All four of us rode the Sky Ride over to Kiddieland.
• David and Charlie went on eleven different rides, including some roller coasters and giant slides.
• I had deep-fried cola with whipped cream (just felt like eating strips of deep fried batter).
• Sherry had a frozen banana... with nuts (first time ever)!
• David and Charlie split a HUGE bag of cotton candy.
• We all split an order of freshly made potato chips.
• We saw two different model train set-ups.

GDTVD

GDTVD is not what it once was. For its first seven years, it was single people sitting around in an apartment for three days watching television and eating junk food. Now, almost twenty years since its inception, GDTVD has evolved into a single-day party for kids, including swimming in the pool and playing on the swing set. The TV and the junk food are still there, but now they're secondary.

But before you start pining for the old days, consider all this:

• We're not as young as we once were. Sitting around eating junk food for three days was hard enough in our twenties. In our forties, it's downright dangerous.
• Classic TV is more accessible now than in 1988. You don't need a party like GDTVD to catch episodes of "Green Acres" or "I Dream of Jeannie". Just turn on TV Land.
  
• The kids really, REALLY like the new GDTVD.
  

Plus, GDTVD is still a great way to catch up with people that we only see once a year. And, if you like, you can still plop yourself down in front of the tube with a Ding Dong and a corn dog and watch Gilligan screw up yet another rescue.

GDTVD is dead. Long live GDTVD.

Brown Widow Spiders

So, while Sherry and I were setting up for GDTVD, we saw a spider making a web over by the pool shed. The spider looked very suspicious, and on closer inspection, it turned out to be a black widow. (Or so it seemed at the time. It was black and had the distinctive red hourglass marking on its abdomen.)

I tried to capture it in a jar to show the kids the next day, but I ended up wounding it pretty badly so I had to kill it.

The next day, Sherry was cleaning out some swim goggles for the kids, and there hiding in the corner was another black widow. Yikes! However, this one was more brown than black. In fact, it wasn't a solid color at all; it sort of had black and brown and yellow markings. But that red hourglass was unmistakable.

The next day, Sherry was cleaning under one of the TV trays that had been outside, and she found yet another widow. This one was brownish like the one that had been in the goggles. But this time, there were three egg sacs sitting in her web. The egg sacs proved to be the crucial key in determining the true identity of these spiders.

Turns out these were all brown widow spiders. (The egg sacs of brown widows are unique in that they have pointed projections, giving them a shape similar to a World War II naval mine. The egg sacs of other widow spiders, including the black widow, are smooth.) Brown widows vary from light tan to dark brown or almost black, and their hourglass marking is typically more orange than red. Their venom is twice as potent as black widow venom (however that's measured), but they do not inject as much venom as a black widow. They are very timid and do not defend their web. They're also slightly smaller than the black widow.

The chances of getting bitten by a brown widow are low because of their skittishness, and dying from their bite is quite rare, but it can still be painful. Of course we've told the kids to watch out for them, and we're going to do some cleaning to try to wipe out any webs.