Friday, December 05, 2008 - Tuscaloosa AL
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Passing Towboat, Foscue Creek Park, Dec 02, 2008
Best laid plans and all that
The painting didn't happen. First off I got involved with cooking up a new scheme for managing the Journal Archives and then later went off to find some propane - nights have been cold here and my tank was getting low. From there I went off to Lowes to see if I could find a new mini blind to replace the ratty old one in the kitchen. Success! - accompanied by more time than I would have imagined figuring out how you shorten the darned thing to fit the window.
It looks nice.
Night Camp
Wal-Mart Parking Lot in Tuscaloosa AL
Wal-Mart Supercenter in Tuscaloosa AL
Wal-Mart Supercenter Store #715, 1501 Skyland Blvd E, Tuscaloosa, AL 35405 - (205) 750-0823
This Wal-Mart is one of my favorite parking lots for overnight dry camping. There is good, level parking and access to lots of shopping and services useful to the traveler.
- Good level parking, reasonably quiet
- Books-a-Million & Michaels Craft store across the road
- U-Haul propane nearby, Lowe's and Home Depot 1 mile
- Major shopping centers nearby
- Verizon cell phone service is excellent
- Verizon EVDO Broadband service is excellent
- Find other Wal-Marts in the area
- Check the weather here
Five Trillion Spiders
Spiders begin their hunting with a few handicaps. They're often smaller and weaker than their prey, and they have no wings to give chase in the air. Some species extend their legs by hydraulic pressure, using the same liquid that carries oxygen from their lungs, so they have a hard time running and breathing at the same time. Even their poison may be no match for their victim's: a crab spider's bite is to a honeybee's sting as "an air-gun compared with an elephant rifle," John Crompton wrote. Yet spiders kill at an astonishing pace. One Dutch researcher estimates that there are some five trillion spiders in the Netherlands alone, each of which consumes about a tenth of a gram of meat a day. Were their victims people instead of insects, they would need only three days to eat all sixteen and a half million Dutchmen.
From Spider Woman by Burkhard Bilger, The New Yorker magazine, March 5, 2007, page 69