Waiting for the next thing

Yeah... we're not leaving this moonbase quite so soon as we thought, and not for the destinations we thought. We're camping out in the house, sans most furniture/clothing/cookware, for maybe an extra month. Then we move to another desert location. At least we'll be together. And we have our mattress, and some borrowed things, and I really haven't been cooking lately anyway.

Since there's so little stuff around, Mungo can't get into much mischief, but this morning we found that during the night he had collected three rolls of packing tape and hoarded them in his crate. The most used-up roll bore definite signs of having been chewed.

We had a pleasantly busy Memorial Day weekend. Saturday afternoon we brought the dog for a puppy playdate. The dogs romped while the humans chatted.

On Sunday, we went with other friends to visit some rock formations about 45 min. east of town. The shape of the rocks is such that there's water in there most of the year, making the place something of an oasis, and they have prehistoric pictographs on them as well as graffiti from the 19th and 20th centuries. The area has natural beauty anyway, but the cultural additions make it even more interesting. Then, for lunch, we went to a steakhouse we'd been told about since we arrived in this city, which has its own on-site petting zoo.

Monday we watched the new Terminator movie, which was mostly about chase scenes and fight scenes — good entertainment. (Sam Worthington is better looking than Christian Bale, IMO. However, if he's playing an American character, he needs to maintain an American accent; or, what's probably easier, the writers should make his character Australian, since it's a new character anyway!) The cyborg premise is handled poorly towards the end, but somehow I found less to pick at in this movie than in Star Trek. Later in the afternoon, we attended a barbecue, although I enjoyed the baked potatoes and bread pudding more than the meat.

Unexpected visitors

(cross-posted to urban_nature)
Last week, on returning from dinner out, we found a big hunting spider in the garage, next to the door to the house.

( spider #1 )

Two days later, I found a big hunting spider in the bathroom closet. My husband thought it was the same spider, but I thought the one in the garage was bigger.

( spider #2 )

At the end of the day, I trapped spider #2 in a cup and put it in the back yard. The dog followed eagerly, but I don't think he caught it.

The reasonably sized photos are linked to Flickr, where you can see huge versions for full detail.