Excuse me, Sir, there's a Spider in my keyboard

Arachnida In the Machine

I have one of those white and clear plastic keyboards. The kind that catches, and more importantly, displays every crumb, dust particle and random staple on it's tray. Yesterday morning, I was surprised to see one of the crumbs moving. As I had just wiped the night from my eyes, I couldn't rely on what I was seeing. I tipped up the board, and, yes, a tiny arachnid had somehow gotten into the cracks of the alphabet. It couldn't resist the angle of the tip, and fell further into the board.

I contemplated if this webmaker would be destroyed once I began typing. It stilled me for a moment. But, then I began clacking away. I'm an optimist and I believe she's making a home under my keys. Besides, it's not the worst way to go.

Arachnida |əˈraknidə| Zoology a class of chelicerate arthropods that includes spiders, scorpions, mites, and ticks. They have become adapted for a terrestrial life and possess book lungs and tracheae, and many have silk or poison glands.

What in the world are "book lungs?"

Littering in Space

I keep track of the goings-on in space via CBS News. Dry and horribly formatted items are messaged to my inbox. I see a need for tabloid reporting on this beat. What a lovely idea to put on my back burner. Anyway, they had a spacewalk yesterday, which they successfully completed: all tasks checked off and nobody sucked into the void. During this mission, they threw away a 1,400-pound ammonia tank. A thingy filled with ammonia that NASA never ended up needing. And, they just jettisoned it because there wasn't a convenient space shuttle flight to bring it back to earth. I also gather they were influenced by some deadline Our Glorious Doofus set; though why a bunch of overachievers from Cal Tech and MIT would listen to a legacy that scraped through Yale on a "C" average, I don't know. They calculate that the doohickey (which is the size of a refrigerator) will float in orbit for almost a year, and then drop back into the atmosphere. They claim most of it will burn up in re-entry and whatever makes it through the fire will land in a body of water. I sense a lot of hopin' and wishin' on that last bit.

I don't like this precedent of littering. The environmentalists really need to start thinking "universal." Let's face it: Americans are going to be biggest pest from this planet. And, one of our biggest talents is creating waste. We need to incorporate sustainability into our space travel. I don't think the Creator (or whatever you choose to call her) will really dig us turning the Milky Way into a junkyard, although she probably won't be terribly surprised.

"Space station astronaut Clay Anderson, an avid sportsman and former multi-sport college athlete, will perform a feat during a spacewalk Monday that would impress Charles Atlas: tossing a 1,400-pound ammonia tank overboard. 'It won't be a problem,' Anderson said before his June launch. 'It's about the size of a refrigerator. We've been doing some work on the air-bearing floor here at NASA and I've been relatively consistent with being able to chunk it at around 40 centimeters per second (0.9 mph) and we really only need five centimeters a second. ... So I think I can send it on its way.'"

By William Harwood
CBS News Space Consultant

Withdrawal & Dividends from the Subway Karma Account

Sunday night, I was completely drained after work. I had been up since 3:30 a.m. and I was heading home at 10:00 p.m. My dinner up to that point had been a bag of Circus peanuts (the orange marshmallow treats, not the real stuff) and all the nervous energy that had helped me power through my first solitary shift at the marble counter now dissipated into the night air. I boarded my train, and I took a seat and promptly started a waking nap. I peeped at each door opening in case someone who needed a seat boarded, but I got through my ride without rising.

And, then something remarkable happened. First, I had to wait at least 20 minutes before an Alewife train barreled into the stop. Again, I was perched on a bench. That night, I was wearing my blue T-shirt emblazoned with the slogan, "More than Ever...", which somehow promoted Wisconsin Public Radio. This caught the eye of a tall, avuncular gentleman with bright eyes. Ever a city dweller, my antennae pegged he was a tourist and I concluded the wine must have been good at dinner.

He was prompted to ask if I was from Wisconsin. "Just high school." was my conservative reply. He persisted, and since he was joined by his wife, I became less wary. Eventually, a chain of locales (Green Bay - Milwaukee - Hales Corners - Shorewood - Greendale) led us to the surprising stitch that Mr. Luck had taught at the same school as my grandfather. Not only that, he knew him! We exchanged remembrances and our desultory chat made those 20 minutes less painful for an exhausted lady.