The Sting

  • July 9, 2009

Yesterday, whilst mowing the lawn, I was stung on the back of my right calf by a wasp.

It hurt like hell!  Within seconds the area around the sting had started to swell up and turn a deathly white. It would eventually be about egg sized before (about an hour later) starting to return to normal. Of course we had no appropriate medicine at home, so I just endured. Even now, almost 24 hours later, I can still feel a slight tinge at the place of the sting.

I did manage to see the culprit. It wasn’t a yellowjacket – it was bigger and blacker.

Or maybe not. The wildlife camera was turned on yesterday and I just now retrieved this shot, taken at the exact moment I was attacked.

dsc09333.JPG

As you can see I am lucky to be alive!

MHFU Update

  • July 8, 2009

For those interested in how I’m doing in Monster Hunter…

cutestmhcosplay.jpg

240+ hours on the savefile now. HR6, 8-star elder quests. I’ve downed some landmark beasts, such as Shao Gaoren and Lao Shun. I’m alternating between a True Devil Slicer weapon (longsword, thunder element) and a Hellstinger (gunlance, ice element). Wearing 3 pieces of the Ceanataur U armor set and 2 pieces of Death Stench S.

In the near term, I plan to hunt the elder dragons, specifically Chameleos and Kushala Daora. In the long term, well I want to upgrade my flame longsword and my Devil Slicer again, so I need to unlock the G-star quests from the guild 🙂

And, completely, utterly unrelatedly, isn’t it weird I know all the lyrics by heart of this song?!

  • Posted in Games
  • Robert

A Little Birdhouse In Our Souls

  • July 5, 2009

We got a ‘wren house’ and hung it from a tree in our backyard:

dsc00680.JPG < Can you see it?

Now we didn’t know what a wren looked like, or even if they were in our area. We certainly hadn’t ever seen one! But KLS liked the little house so we got it.

At some point, perhaps a week later, we began to regularly hear birdsong. It took a few days for us to realize it came from a bird constantly sitting on the house, as so:

dsc00686.JPG < Bird

Our “Guide to Backyard Birds” identifies this as a ‘house wren’. He (?) has filled the house with pine needles to capacity, and sits on it for twelve or more hours a day happily singing his beautiful song, trying to attract a lady (man?) to have baby wrens with. Our hope is for success, because it would be great for the house to actually be used.

Here’s a brief video of him in which you can hear his song. I wonder what he’s saying?

And – to continue the backyard animal show – here’s another video of this years new crop of baby deer, spotted in our backyard last week. (Mum and Dad, were you hear last year when we had the babies?)