Saturday, September 13, 2008

Intersting Fact

This summer while on a camping trip as a way to occupy my niece i made up a story about a daddy long legs spider named Jack. She, her mother and her grandmother (my mom) all ended up in the story. She loved it and we have now become obsessed with finding 'Jack' everywhere we go.

So, i had the idea to actually write a story about Jack for her and my nephew who has also caught on to 'Jack' fever. I hope to be able to write something (and maybe illustrate it) for her birthday and/or Christmas.

So, in order to write the story i wanted to know a little bit more about Daddy long legs. Well i was surprised with the information i found. the 'spiders' that we have been looking at are not actually spiders. The following is from an article I found online.

"Although they resemble spiders, daddy long-legs, more correctly called harvestmen, are neither spiders nor insects. Taxonomically, they are arthropods, in the same class as spiders, Arachnida, but in a different order, Phalangida. Anatomically daddy long-legs differ from spiders because their three body segments -- head, thorax and abdomen, are joined as one compact body segment. Spiders have two body segments -- the head and thorax are joined as the cephalothorax, and the abdomen is the second body segment. Insects, which are taxonomically in the class Insecta, have three distinct body segments." (Carpenter, 2000)

I just thought this was very interesting and now i need to continue my research so that i can write a proper story that will teach my niece and nephew about these interesting insects and help to dispell the thought that they are spiders. You learn something new everyday!

Back again

I got the best email from one of my employees yesterday. Some of you may have had it forwarded to you from me but i just have to share it with everyone. I find it to be the most hillarious forwards i have gotten in a while. Please read:

If you don't laugh out loud after you read this you are in a coma! This is even funnier when you realize it's real! Next time you have a bad day at work think of this guy.Rob is a commercial saturation diver for Global Divers in Louisiana. He performs underwater repairs on offshore drilling rigs. Below is an E-mail he sent to his sister. She then sent it to radio station 103.2 on FM dial in Ft. Wayne, Indiana, who was sponsoring a worst job experience contest. Needless to say, she won.

Hi Sue,

Just another note from your bottom-dwelling brother. Last week I had a bad day at the office. I know you've been feeling down lately at work, so I thought I would share my dilemma with you to makeyou realize it's not so bad after all. Before I can tell you what happened to me, I first must bore you with afew technicalities of my job.

As you know, my office lies at the bottom of the sea. I wear a suit to the office. It's a wet suit. This time of year the water is quite cool. So what we do to keep warm is this: We have a diesel powered industrial water heater. This $20,000 piece of equipment sucks the water out of the sea. It heats it to a delightful temperature. It then pumps it down to the diver through a garden hose, which is taped to the air hose.

Now this sounds like a darn good plan, and I've used it several times with no complaints.What I do, when I get to the bottom and start working, is take the hose and stuff it down the back of my wet suit. This floods my whole suit with warm water! It's like working in a Jacuzzi.

Everything was going well until all of a sudden, my butt started to itch. So, of course, I scratched it. This only made things worse. Within a few seconds my butt started to burn. I pulled the hose out from my back, but the damage was done. In agony I realized what had happened. The hot water machine had sucked up a jellyfish and pumped it into my suit. Now, since I don't have any hair on my back, the jellyfishcouldn't stick to it However, the crack of my butt was not as fortunate. When I scratched what I thought was an itch, I was actually grinding the jellyfish into the crack of my butt.

I informed the dive supervisor of my dilemma over the communicator. His instructions were unclear due to the fact that he, along with five other divers, were all laughing hysterically.

Needless to say I aborted the dive. I was instructed to make three agonizing in-water decompression stops totaling thirty-five minutes before I could reach the surface to begin my chamber dry decompression. When I arrived at the surface, I was wearing nothing but my brass helmet.

As I climbed out of the water, the medic, with tears of laughter running down his face, handed me a tube of cream and told me to rub it on my butt as soon as I got in the chamber. The cream put the fire out, but I couldn't poop for two days because my butt was swollen shut.
So, next time you're having a bad day at work, think about how much worse it would be if you had a jellyfish shoved up your butt.

Now repeat to yourself, 'I love my job, I love my job, I love my job.' Now whenever you have a bad day, ask yourself, is this a jellyfish bad day? May you NEVER have a jellyfish bad day!!!!!

So, i hope you all find this amusing. I know i really did. My work has sucked lately but i have not had a Jellyfish bad day and I pray it never gets so bad i can say i've had a similar day.