Not Back at Work Yet
It turns out my government work, believe it or not, is non-essential. I went in at my usual time (up at 5:45, swim shortly after 6:00, drop car at home at 7:00, catch bus at 7:15), and found virtually no one in the complex. I caught up on 2 weeks of e-mails, and spoke by phone with my Director (who's on vacation).
I'll await further direction, but I may not go in again until Friday. Then I can truly catch up for next Monday.
We're restricting our computer use to after 8:00 p.m. We also got our 13-year-old to cut the back lawn. Because of a long semi-drought, he hasn't had to do it much this year.
We had our coolest find for a long time in the back yard. A huge wasp's nest in our storage shed. They had built inside and around a blanket, which was piled in a wash basin. I sprayed last night to kill all the adults, and today I slowly removed the whole mess, piece by piece. The outside was beautiful: a checkerboard pattern of dark brown and beige, like some kind of beautiful wood. Deep inside was the actual nest, with eggs and a few wriggling larva. The nest was in 3 layers, and the colour was bit different again--reddish.
I can't find anything quite like it on the web (Google Images); I guess I should have taken pictures. Here's something. 
There's supposed to be something closer, but I can't get the image (under "Hornet's nest") to open: entomology.tfrec.wsu.edu/pearent/ images/misc/nest.jpg
But I would note that ours was not hanging upside down; it was spreading up, out and around this scrunched up blanket.
|
