Today's rambling: It's chiiiiiiiillllyyyyy...
Written on Tuesday, Apr. 16, 2002 at 6:07 p.m.
while feeling a bit

Okay, yesterday I was ready to use my best Wicked Witch of the West voice and wail, "I'm melting!!! I'm melting!!!"

Today?

Today Mom put the air conditioner on, and I feel like I should be singing Frosty the Snowman. And putting on a snowsuit...though I don't own one of those, so I guess it would be sort of hard to put one on.

Is there no happy medium??

I'd go outside just to warm up, but I'm sure I'd immediately melt just like dear old Frosty. And besides that, there've been some big bees buzzing around the back porch, but I can't tell if they're bumblebees or those really ugly looking hornets...the ones I'm thinking of are sort of fat like bumblebees but they just look eeeevil. Maybe they're not hornets. I don't know what their technical name would be, but they're definitely a sort of bee I stay away from. As well as wasps and yellow jackets. I just have to look at one of those things and I get the heebie jeebies.

Bumblebees and honey bees are cute. They're all fuzzy and big-eyed and as long as you don't try to catch one you're alright. They don't try to bother anyone. All they're interested in is collecting pollen. They'd rather NOT attack you, thankyouverymuch, unless of course you piss them off. Yellow jackets need no excuse to come chasing after you, intent on causing as much pain as their little bodies are capable of. Wasps just like to build nests right next to or above doorways, so that you can't come out of your house without disturbing them.

There's one kind of bumblebee...I'm not sure exactly what its name would be (unless it still is a bumblebee)...it looks exactly the same as your typical variety except that it has a white mark on its head, right in the middle. These bees are fun. They have no stingers...or if they do, they don't know how to employ them. We don't see them too often anymore, but Mom has quite a fun time catching them (with her hands, because they're really not all that hard to grab). Then she wanders around, holding it in her cupped hand, and letting it buzz beside people's ears. :oP Mom grew up in the mountains..she likes playing with wild critters.

I've tried catching them myself a few times, but I'm still a little too wary of them...What if I only imagined that white mark, and it's really a normal bumblebee who's going to cause quite a bit of pain? Hehe...Oh well, it's still fun for when you have nothing else to do. ;)

She used to tie thread around the leg of "June bugs" and watch them fly around like little kites. It's funny to watch, but by this point I always discourage her from doing so because sometimes it pulls their leg off. And much as I dislike insects, I'm not all that interested in causing pain to the harmless varieties. Now, if she wanted to try that trick with mosquitoes, I'd let her go for it. But somehow, I just don't think that would be as interesting to watch.

Why did I start talking about bugs? Oh yeah, the bees outside. Heh. Well, insects have been on my mind all day anyway because when I woke up, Insect Enemy Number One was on my wall. Right next to the doorway. I don't know what they're called, but they inflict the most serious case of the heebie jeebies of any bug I have thus far come across. Their bodies are long like a centipede, and they have tons of legs, which splay out to the sides like a centipede. But they're all feathery legs. And they move really fast. Like cockroaches, almost. Maybe not that fast, though thus far I have thankfully not had a run-in with cockroaches. But still fast. And those feathery legs just make them look ten times more creepy than any other bug which normally graces the inside of a home. They vary in size, too. Thankfully, this one was baby-sized so I squashed it relatively easily (though by the way I was trembling afterward, you'd've thought I'd just gone up against a huge bear). I've seen abnormally large ones, however, and those have me shaking and staring at all the walls and ceilings for hours afterward. Bleh.

I hear all of you saying "Thank you for sharing that with me!" and so I'd just like to say, No Problem! ;)

Someone left me a Note and said I had a beautiful diary...I don't usually mention these Notes, because while I feel flattered I feel self-conscious saying anything about them. I just couldn't help mentioning this particular one because my entry at the time of her Note was a little on the ugly side, hehe...I know, I know, the compliment was meant for the design. But I still felt funny because the entry wasn't pretty, LoL!

Yeesh, Mom said she had the thermostat set for 70 degrees, but I know it's gotta be colder than that in here. It doesn't help matters to have one's computer desk right underneath the vent. Last night, I tried to slide the little vent-adjuster thingy shut, but it had been painted over and so it's stuck!!! I wouldn't mind so much, except I have my gerbils and my two bettas in here. Gerbils can get respiratory infections from too much of a draft, and my bettas are in those hex tanks so there's no heater or anything to keep their water at a nice temperature. So last night I put a cover over most of the top of the gerbil tanks, and I curtained in the betta houses. :oP It probably hasn't made a difference at all, but I feel somewhat better about it. Maybe I should put all their houses on the back porch for awhile and let them warm up. Hehe! No, that probably would make my gerbils sick.

Laura had a good point when she said that people are ruder on the Internet than in real life (I don't know why I made such a drastic subject jump, but go with me here). I guess most people have noticed the same thing, but I hadn't really thought about it too much before. This sense of anonymity gives people the feeling that they can be as rude--and even cruel--as they want to be, and it doesn't matter because how is the victim of such behavior going to strike back? They can't, because they don't know where their attacker lives...or even how to get in touch with them, for that matter, if the person didn't leave an email address.

That's just cowardly. If you hate what a person has to say that much, you should at least leave your email address or some other contact. I got rid of the guestbooks on all my old websites because I was tired of getting the anonymous messages telling me my page sucked. Thankfully, I only got one or two of those, but they don't hurt any less than 50 of the same messages would. Mostly, it just pissed me off because these people were such pansies that they couldn't even leave their email address.

But that's only half the problem. Even when the person DOES leave an email address, they still feel they can be as rude as they want because hey...if the person actually writes them, they have the choice not to read it. It's far different from spitting in a person's face in real life. Then you have to worry if that person is going to come back and beat the sense out of you, or if you're just going to get an earful about what a complete jerk you are. People are rude in real life, but online it's even worse.

Wow, I've been all ranty lately, hehe!

Ugh, 'Savenow' (whatever that is) just had an error. I fear for the safety of this entry, so I'm going to post it before everything collapses in a fiery ball of HARDWARE MELTDOWN!!!!

And besides that, I feel like skiiing. ;)

Frooooosty the snowmaaaaaaan....