Ben Kahn » life http://xkahn.zoned.net/blog Thoughts Wed, 31 Mar 2010 19:03:54 +0000 en hourly 1 http://wordpress.org/?v=3.0.1 Spiders http://xkahn.zoned.net/blog/2008/09/15/spiders/ http://xkahn.zoned.net/blog/2008/09/15/spiders/#comments Tue, 16 Sep 2008 03:21:24 +0000 admin http://xkahn.zoned.net/blog/?p=31 Every once in a while you look around and realize that you’re falling behind on life when you weren’t looking.  Maybe your universal all in one remote doesn’t work anymore.  Maybe you broke the counter-weight off one of the windows in your house and it slammed into your hand.  Or maybe the hinge on your gate broke letting your children wander in and out of the backyard and into traffic.  Or maybe you have black widow spiders in your basement.

Black Widow Spider

Black Widow Spider

Now.  I know what you are thinking:  that’s brown.  It doesn’t have an hourglass shape on it.  Here’s a professional photo:

Professional Black Widow Photo

Professional Black Widow Photo. Image By Sturgis McKeever, Georgia Southern University, United States

You can find more information at: http://www.forestryimages.org/browse/detail.cfm?imgnum=1485040

If you think I’m wrong, I welcome other theories.

]]> http://xkahn.zoned.net/blog/2008/09/15/spiders/feed/ 2 Car Fire http://xkahn.zoned.net/blog/2007/12/04/car-fire/ http://xkahn.zoned.net/blog/2007/12/04/car-fire/#comments Wed, 05 Dec 2007 01:20:17 +0000 xkahn http://xkahn.zoned.net/blog/2007/12/04/car-fire/ So I haven’t blogged in a while.  Not for lack of subjects.  My TiVo died.  We got a great new camera.  I flew to Ohio for $10 each way.  I ran over my cell phone, but it still works except for the screen.  I helped release some pretty interesting software.  I’m looking at the Zimbra plugin for Evolution.  Our 6 month old is still not sleeping through the night.  Our 4 year old is teaching himself to read.  Amy is working again.

None of those things were actually enough to make me blog, for some reason.  But finally something got my attention.

We hired a baby sitter  take care of  Josh, the above mentioned 6 month old since Amy and I are both working.  She’s very nice and arrives on time, and seems great with both boys.  But today she was late.  On a whim, I looked out the window and saw her car trying to get up our 100 foot driveway.  (Which is icy and snow covered even through our neighbor spent a ton of time clearing it after the snowstorm — which I also didn’t blog about.)

I threw on clothes and ran outside to get her salt so her car could get up the driveway, but she met me at the door.

“My car is on fire!”

Well, it really was.  Lots of smoke — both white and black.  Flames.  Melting things.

I called the fire department.  I got everyone out of the house.  The fire trucks arrived 2 minutes later.

The car didn’t explode.

I didn’t think to get pictures until the car was towed away.  I’m not sure why.

Front of the house Facing the stone wall There really was a car there Looking down the driveway

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