The turn of events

Earlier tonight my mom commented on a large spider that was spinning a web by our front lamp. She asked if it was a Black Widow. "Pshhtt, Mom, we don't have Black Widows here," I said.

I just went down to start a load of laundry and I noticed a huge shiny black spider handing upside down from a web in the corner. I looked as closely as I dared and there was something red on the belly. I started my load, and then looked back: the spider was gone.

I think she came just to spite me, prove how stupid I was to dismiss my mom's comment. Lesson learned: Black Widows do in fact live here, including our garage (yikes!!!).

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So I've been bored out of my mind recently. I haven't gotten any temp jobs yet, which means
1) I'm home all day with little to do and 2) my mom has the car, which further reduces what I can do. I have an appointment with another temp agency tomorrow. I hope I'll get some jobs between the two agencies. I will lie through my teeth of course and say that I'm only registered with them and that I'd like to work for 6 months.

I went country line dancing Friday and Saturday night with a friend. It was lots of fun the first night because it was really novel, there were lots of people there, I had two drinks, we played pool, and a cute guy asked me to dance twice. Saturday night was kind of déjà vu, with fewer people dancing, a clumsy guy who asked me to dance, and a reminder of how much money it costs to go out. Drinks were very reasonable, but it was $8 to get in the door. I can now say I know a few line dances. B's brother's girlfriend said I'd have to teach her some when I get back to France.

I love how some French people are really into Country dancing. I don't know if it attracts as diverse a crowd as here, but there were lots of people there this weekend: older folks, little Asian ladies, young kids (16-20 are allowed with a huge x on their hand so they can't buy drinks), and lots of marines from the nearby base. My friend said she'd seen goths there that knew all the dances. Who'd have thought that country line dancing would pull such a crowd?

I bought some more clothes on Saturday with money I shouldn't have spent, but at least now I have a second pair of pants and a long-sleeved t-shirt (plus other things). I went to Nordstrom Rack, which has all the stuff that didn't sell at the regular Nordstrom's but at discount prices. You can get some great deals (and I did), but you have to slog through so much crap. If you think about it, a lot of the clothing is there because nobody else wanted to buy it. Some of it comes because they only keep clothes in the store for 30 days or something like that, and there just aren't enough customers to buy everything up in that time. But I think the first reason happens more often. I found an adorable Esprit linen dress in between hordes of ugly synthetic dresses with the gaudiest prints I've ever seen. The stuff if really unorganized as well, since it's left-overs, so you have flower prints next to stripes next to polka dots on the racks. No color coordinated seasonal collections. I went into the dressing rooms with the max 10 items three times where I only kept 1 piece. Then you have to go back out and hunt for more things. There were some to-die-for designer pants that I wanted, but of course not in my size.

Well, that's that. Until I start getting some temp jobs, I'll be back to trolling the blogosphere, watching way too much television, sleeping in and generally flopping about. I can't even revel in the fact that I'm on vacation because 1) I'm not really and 2) I'm not getting a break from any work.

Here's to hoping that I'll get a temp assignment, my mom won't have me help her re-organize her files, and I'll find the cable I need to recharge B's psp so I can keep playing Lumines (wonderful game).