Fall in Florida

Fall in Florida...  for now the days are still in the 80s, but at night it gets down to the 60s and sometimes even the 50s.  I have the windows open in the house most of the time.  The sun is not quite as blazing as it was in August.  It's beautiful here, but the Facebook feeds of my friends back North are full of the trees in fall color right now and I miss that so much.

Faith and Holly at Thea's school

Last weekend we went to Thea's school for her first orchestra concert in four years.  Unlike when she was in elementary school and was, for a while, the only cellist, she is now one of nine cellists in the high school orchestra.

Thea strolling like Big Man On Campus

The unfortunate thing about being the only freshman out of the nine cellists was that she was seated in the back, and I couldn't get any pictures of her while she was playing.  I got plenty of lovely pictures of the senior girl who was sitting in front of her.

That's Thea on the top right;  you can see she is actually holding a cello and I am not making all this up.

We finally acquired a television.  We still don't have cable (seven years now!) but now there is something on which to play the Wii, the PS3, and the Nintendo64 (vintage!), and watch DVDs and Netflix.  So you can see that if I seem to sound pompous about not having cable, that's really meaningless.

Holly likes to watch Dan play Little Big Planet

In other news, Emily the cat has a serious sweet tooth.

Sneaky cat going after the butter/honey mixture I was dipping a soft pretzel in.

Mmmmm.

Back in Baltimore Emily eradicated the spricket population in my basement.  Here in Florida, we have other issues.  We have those huge nasty cockroaches.

Notice this dark shadow inside the kitchen light.  Yes, you guessed it.

I would say I see two or three a week.  Out of those two or three, one is usually dead -- presumably killed by Emily or Benny during the night.  If the cats can work their magic on the cockroaches and make it so I don't have to look at live ones, I would be forever grateful.

In other bug news we have been watching a spider rebuild a web every day outside on the back patio.  It's a very disturbing looking spider called a Spiny Orb Weaver.

I looked it up online and Holly and I read about it -- that it is not venomous, and is considered beneficial -- and, as often happens, something that was scary became much less so thanks to the power of information.  Next thing you know, that spider had been named "Mrs Spiny," and several times a day she was checked on and reported excitedly on.

Days later I was puttering around with my morning coffee and came face to many-eyed face with Mrs Spiny's sister, sitting in a web that stretched across my dining room.  Thanks again to information and familiarity, I did not freak out, and instead watched the spider for an hour or so before relocating her outside.

But don't let you cockroaches get any ideas.