Friday

was trash pickup day, so when I got home from work and went to get the trash cans from the end of the driveway, I noticed a really tiny bright orange spider in one of them. It was by far the smallest spider I've ever seen, maybe about the size of a match head, and also the brightest in color. The web it had made covered more than half of the entire opening of the 42-gallon can. It seemed like a pretty ambitious project for something of that size because the can had been emptied just a few hours earlier.

I was careful not to disturb it when I moved it to the back yard, but later when I took out the trash it was gone and the web was almost completely broken up, probably by the wind because it was really delicate. I have no idea what species it was.

How was your Saturday?

Today was another beautiful day. We spent a good part of it getting the spare bedroom ready to be painted - everything is out, the walls are washed and the holes are filled in. Tomorrow we'll put on the killz and the paint'll go on either later tomorrow or Monday. Done!

Former President Reagan died today. He was very popular and did some good things, but there's one issue I have with him that I just can't let go of. My feeling about this may be misdirected, but I think his administration ignored the AIDS situation for way too long. It probably still would have ended up becoming known as a crisis, but I can't help thinking that far fewer people in this country would have been infected if there'd been an education campaign early on. Or maybe not. I don't know for sure.

It seems strange that we had three triple crown winners in the 1970s and not a single one since. I really wanted Smarty Jones to win today, but he didn't. Oh, well.