Last night (or rather, this morning) at 3:30 I was awoken by my lovely wife calling for me from down the hallway. " Adam, there's a big spider out here and I need you to kill it." Not exactly what you want to hear at 3:30 am. For some reason Tara felt she needed to go downstairs to get her phone in the middle of the night and found her path blocked by this menacing figure.
Now I know there are some big spiders here in Australia but maybe Tara and I had differing definitions of the term, "big spider." We did not. To give you an idea of what this spider looked like without any exaggeration, take your hand and hold it with all your fingers outstretched like you're making a number 5. Then put a loonie in your palm. That would be an accurate representation of what was making its way up the wall towards me: the spider's body was the size of a loonie and its legs were about the length of your fingers (but much skinnier of course). Although Australia is home to several varieties of the deadliest spiders in the world, they are all quite small. The big ones are harmless and I assumed this guy was a Huntsman spider.
After a momentary freak-out, I collected my wits and decided how to handle this situation. Since we're not yet fully moved in, I was lacking the proper tools for the job. Baseball bat or tennis racket were the first things that popped into my head. I had to act fast or I would risk the spider making a move and I would never find him again. I quickly gathered a towel and garbage can, the best weapons I had available. At this point I wasn't sure if I would be using the garbage can to capture the spider or to bludgeon it with. I chose the latter.
I got in close to where he was sitting on the stairway wall and smashed at him with the base of the garbage can. Not a direct hit so he fell onto the stairs and scurried around the corner. I was right behind him, taking mad swipes with the garbage can until he made it behind a box. At this point I knew I had him cornered so I prepared for the showdown. I pulled the box away from the wall and the spider was sitting in the corner under an extension cord. Pounding away with the garbage can, the spider succumbed to the beating and I emerged victorious.
What was most troubling was how this giant spider got into our house. When we moved into the house last weekend, I noticed that there is quite a large gap on the bottom and sides of our front door, possibly as large as 1 cm in places. I don't know why I didn't take care of this right away, but as a result this spider just waltzed right in the front door. Now I can't get some weatherstripping fast enough but it will probably have to wait until next weekend since all the stores close by 6 pm during the week. Hopefully we don't get any more unwanted visitors before then
Monday, 24 October 2011
Monday, 17 October 2011
The Dope Ride
I should probably apologize to my loyal blog followers as I see it's been about a month since my last posting. We've been busy.
I now have 5 weeks of work under my belt and I managed to get out to the field for a few days to have a look around. I traveled through the exotic towns of Toowoomba, Chinchilla, and Roma to get to the coal seam gas fields where we are currently operating. The field trip was worthwhile and as a bonus I saw my first wallaby.
Tara and I have been spending a lot of time looking for a house to rent and a car to buy, and as of yesterday we have accomplished both. It took quite a while to find a house that was suitable. Most of the places we looked at were townhouses inside gated complexes. They pretty much all had the same layout and were usually quite rundown. We ended up finding a very nice townhouse that is close to Tara's university (driving distance) and probably about a 20 minute walk for me to get to the train station. Unfortunately the townhouse doesn't have access to a pool or gym like some of the gated places do, but it is a nice place on an island with views of the canal system that weaves through the various Gold Coast communities. Unfortunately this canal system is virtually useless because the water is unappealingly murky and teeming with bull sharks.
We took possession of our place last weekend, moved our stuff over on Thursday night, and checked out of our furnished place on Saturday morning. We lined up deliveries of some necessities for that day as well: new bedroom set, mattress ( finally we have a king size!), fridge, washing machine, and dryer. I got started unpacking and awaited the deliveries while Tara went shopping for some of the other essentials: sheets, towels, a couple chairs. Our place is going to be quite empty and uncomfortable for the next month until we get the rest of our stuff delivered.
After much deliberation on what to do about purchasing an overpriced Australian car, we decided our best move was to buy something we could get for a couple grand and not have a car payment. I have to give Tara credit for finding our car. I suggested that we should look for an older, single owner vehicle because chances are, it would be well maintained. Tara found the perfect car on the internet and we ended up buying it: a 2000 Hyundai Excel with about 211K on the clock. Certainly nothing to brag about but it was well taken care of and will hopefully prove to be a reliable vehicle for us. The next thing I have to do is get a roof rack put on the car, buy a longboard, and spend my weekends at the beach! What do you think I'll be doing next weekend?
I hooked up with my best friends this weekend via FaceTime. They were having a bit of a party so it was a good opportunity to see them all at once. Almost made me feel as though I was right there eating cheese toast with them.
Canadian thanksgiving came and went without much to note. I spoke with my parents on the Saturday, but Sunday and Monday went by without Tara and I doing anything to celebrate. I think i ruined our lasagne on Saturday (stupid Australian concection oven) and I don't think we even ate supper on Sunday. Christmas decorations are already in stores. Since Australia doesn't seem to make much of an event of Halloween, Christmas decorations end up in stores in early October. I can't even imagine that it will feel like much of a Christmas when it's 30 degrees plus. Maybe we can finally get a Christmas tree since we don't have any cats to tear it down.
Tara is lighting it up at school as per usual. She's had one exam so far which, although she hasn't gotten a mark back yet, everyone is supposed to have done pretty poorly on. But it sounds like her professors are impressed with her. Apparently professors like students who sit at the front of the class and engage them by answering questions, and asking them. Who knew? I always preferred the anonymity of sitting at the back of the class, and especially enjoyed seeing the look on the prof's face when they handed back an "A" exam to a student they don't recall ever seeing before.
I now have 5 weeks of work under my belt and I managed to get out to the field for a few days to have a look around. I traveled through the exotic towns of Toowoomba, Chinchilla, and Roma to get to the coal seam gas fields where we are currently operating. The field trip was worthwhile and as a bonus I saw my first wallaby.
Tara and I have been spending a lot of time looking for a house to rent and a car to buy, and as of yesterday we have accomplished both. It took quite a while to find a house that was suitable. Most of the places we looked at were townhouses inside gated complexes. They pretty much all had the same layout and were usually quite rundown. We ended up finding a very nice townhouse that is close to Tara's university (driving distance) and probably about a 20 minute walk for me to get to the train station. Unfortunately the townhouse doesn't have access to a pool or gym like some of the gated places do, but it is a nice place on an island with views of the canal system that weaves through the various Gold Coast communities. Unfortunately this canal system is virtually useless because the water is unappealingly murky and teeming with bull sharks.
We took possession of our place last weekend, moved our stuff over on Thursday night, and checked out of our furnished place on Saturday morning. We lined up deliveries of some necessities for that day as well: new bedroom set, mattress ( finally we have a king size!), fridge, washing machine, and dryer. I got started unpacking and awaited the deliveries while Tara went shopping for some of the other essentials: sheets, towels, a couple chairs. Our place is going to be quite empty and uncomfortable for the next month until we get the rest of our stuff delivered.
After much deliberation on what to do about purchasing an overpriced Australian car, we decided our best move was to buy something we could get for a couple grand and not have a car payment. I have to give Tara credit for finding our car. I suggested that we should look for an older, single owner vehicle because chances are, it would be well maintained. Tara found the perfect car on the internet and we ended up buying it: a 2000 Hyundai Excel with about 211K on the clock. Certainly nothing to brag about but it was well taken care of and will hopefully prove to be a reliable vehicle for us. The next thing I have to do is get a roof rack put on the car, buy a longboard, and spend my weekends at the beach! What do you think I'll be doing next weekend?
I hooked up with my best friends this weekend via FaceTime. They were having a bit of a party so it was a good opportunity to see them all at once. Almost made me feel as though I was right there eating cheese toast with them.
Canadian thanksgiving came and went without much to note. I spoke with my parents on the Saturday, but Sunday and Monday went by without Tara and I doing anything to celebrate. I think i ruined our lasagne on Saturday (stupid Australian concection oven) and I don't think we even ate supper on Sunday. Christmas decorations are already in stores. Since Australia doesn't seem to make much of an event of Halloween, Christmas decorations end up in stores in early October. I can't even imagine that it will feel like much of a Christmas when it's 30 degrees plus. Maybe we can finally get a Christmas tree since we don't have any cats to tear it down.
Tara is lighting it up at school as per usual. She's had one exam so far which, although she hasn't gotten a mark back yet, everyone is supposed to have done pretty poorly on. But it sounds like her professors are impressed with her. Apparently professors like students who sit at the front of the class and engage them by answering questions, and asking them. Who knew? I always preferred the anonymity of sitting at the back of the class, and especially enjoyed seeing the look on the prof's face when they handed back an "A" exam to a student they don't recall ever seeing before.
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