Summer’s over.

I don’t care what the thermostat says; I don’t care that Labor Day Weekend hasn’t passed yet. (I don’t get Labor Day off anyway, so it isn’t much of a holiday for me.) School has started, and summer is over.

Our halcyon days of choosing any parking space we wanted to are over. I’ve transitioned from my summer work wardrobe of cropped cargo pants and polo shirts to blouses and skirts and heels. Incidentally, the transition hasn’t been so smooth – this morning, in an award-winning display of clumsiness, I managed to cut BOTH of my feet and ruin my stockings with the heels of the opposite feet. Don’t ask how, ’cause I couldn’t possibly tell you. The cuts are small, but there is definitely blood and bruising, and these aren’t even fierce heels!

Our freshmen came to campus to register and move in last week. The parents programs department is loosely tied to mine, so I was asked to spend an hour or so answering questions and giving directions in the registration area last week. Normally I’m able to get out of doing it, but this year I felt like I needed to make the effort, and so I did.

This college gives an extraordinary amount of personal attention to its students. It’s one of the qualities that really make us stand out from our peer schools, and one of the reasons I work here. I heard from a lot of parents who had kids at other colleges, and were shocked that we had a hospitality room, and that we had volunteers on practically every corner, and that many of our staff members actually help freshmen move in to their dorms. It’s kind of funny – I had none of these things when I started college, and never missed them. And now, I can’t imagine our campus not providing those services for people. Side note: if anyone can tell me why it’s necessary to attach a U-Haul trailer to your Escalade in order to haul all the stuff you’re moving in to a DORM ROOM to campus, I’d appreciate it. Seriously, what is up with that? Do they know how big dorm rooms are, and that there tends to be another person living there?

I was driving out to get lunch today when I passed a group of what had to be freshman women, although they definitely looked like middle-schoolers to me. They were small, and young, and this has been happening a little more each year that I’m here, but I just can’t believe they’re in college.

I love fall. I know it’s not quite fall, but I just want you to know that I love it. It’s a good time of year, and I love the energy on campus right now, but I’m still weirded out by how young the kids seem this year, and I think I might be getting old.

Side note: Last week I found that the stores are stocking Pumpkin Delights and I totally bought a box. But then I felt kind of guilty about it. Is it too early to be eating Pumpkin Delights?

Man, I totally love those things.

I feel kind of gross today and this writer’s block isn’t helping anything. The piles of number-crunching I need to get done this week also aren’t helping anything.

So on Friday night, I was dozing on the couch and my mom went to our back door to let the dogs out. When she opened the vertical blinds, she found herself face-to-face with a spider much like the one pictured at right. FUCKING HUGE, in other words. The spider was on the outside of the glass in her giant orb web and my poor mom was startled to death. In all the squealing and “Oh my GOD”-ing I woke up and promptly freaked the hell out.

I know I’ve told you a couple of spider stories before, but I don’t think I’ve mentioned that I have major psychological spider issues. In fact, just looking for a suitable picture to use in this entry has caused my throat and chest to tighten up and now I’m itchy all over.

And the sight of this enormous spider calmly pouncing on and eating a fly sent me into near-hysterics. I was seriously frozen on the couch, paralyzed with terror, tears streaming down my face, unable to move.

Finally after Mom and Jamie tried to talk me down a bit, I was able to get off the couch and get the fuck away from the huge spider. But I couldn’t stop watching. It’s this crazy train-wreck fascination or something.

It was too big to kill, and it was eating bugs attracted to the porch light, so we left it there, and stopped using the back door for the time being.

As of last night, she was still there, and by now everyone’s calling her Charlotte (of course) and watching with some interest. I can watch now if I stay far away from the door. Every night she builds a new web, spanning the entire width and about half the height of our sliding glass door, and that is truly fascinating to watch. She’s fast and fond of bouncing the web to catch stuff flying nearby, and our Charlotte is a bit of a gourmand – she skips on the little, not-tasty bugs in favor of the big juicy ones. On that first night, a grasshopper tried to attack her several times and she kicked the shit out of it. We, of course, were sitting on the other side of the glass (or across the room, in my case) squealing and gasping like a good audience should.

My mom ruined the web the other night by mistake – she intended to just clear the web strands away from the door latch, but when she hit them with a corn dog stick (weapon of choice) she discovered that they were anchor lines and she knocked the whole damn thing down. Way to go, Mom, corndogging the spider.

Last night, she had just finished her web and was hanging out in the middle when our dog started freaking out and we saw a frog sitting on the deck railing. It definitely had its eye on the spider.

We thought about intervening, but decided to let nature take its course. Over the next half-hour or so, we watched as the frog slowly, a millimeter at a time, made its way up toward the web.

And at one point, I was horrified to hear myself saying, “I kind of feel sorry for Charlotte. I hope the frog doesn’t win.”

Everyone else agreed and we kept watching. Charlotte was clearly freaking out, snipping off web lines and huddling down in the corner. Finally, all of a sudden she raced up toward the frog and we braced ourselves for a showdown. But all that happened was that she cleaned up some more of the web, and the frog went over to the side and proceeded to feast on whatever wasn’t getting caught in the web for the rest of the evening.

The frog and Charlotte, I believe, had come to an understanding.

Sammi and I are just waiting for the morning that we wake up to see “Some Pig” written in the web. That will kick ass.

First off, I still need a little help getting my free iPod, so please consider clicking that link and signing up for something.

I had physical therapy for my shoulders again today, and when I got to the rehab center there were about nine people waiting in the very small waiting room. People were tripping over each other and stuff – not a great idea at REHAB where everyone’s all injured and crippled and crap.

An aide came out eventually and called a name, and this very, very old lady struggled to her feet and started moving very slowly toward the door.

Right as she got to the door, she let out the biggest, crunchiest, most wall-shaking scorcher of a fart I’ve ever heard in my entire life.

And then she just kept on walking very, very slowly through the door, without a word, a glance, or even an errant motion to indicate any awareness that she’d just ambushed us with a fart she’s probably been saving up since she was born ninety-nine years ago.

I did shoulder exercises and got pumped up with electricity today, and some of it was a little difficult and uncomfortable, but you know what was more difficult and uncomfortable?

Trying to laugh hysterically without making any noise while eight other people were trying to do the same thing. Oh man, that was hard. We didn’t want to embarrass her, but my GOD, I didn’t think an old crippled woman could fart that hard without dislocating a hip or something. My goodness.

Thank the sweet baby Jesus that at least it didn’t smell.

It’s official: my hair dryer is a piece of shit.

We don’t have nearly enough hair dryers in our home to cover five women. Actually, we really only have one. So a few weeks ago I decided to go out and buy my own so I’d never have to fight over the dryer, or worse, so I wouldn’t have to wait around while my hair began to air-dry and curl up into a mess.

I have to start drying my hair when it’s completely wet in order to get it nice and smooth – if I let it air-dry for too long, it’s a lost cause.

So I got this new hair dryer, the Conair Ceramic Speed Styler, at Target. It’s very cool-looking, all silver and purple, and because I’m shallow I must confess this had an impact on my decision to purchase it. It was also 1875 watts, and supposed to dry really fast, and had a turbo switch, and was on sale.

The first time I used it I noticed that it didn’t feel very hot (and I used the turbo setting the entire time). I prefer a more scorch-the-head hair dryer, so that bugged me a bit, but I decided to give it some time. Which I have done. And my hair has looked like flat, floppy poop every single day since I got that damn hair dryer.

Today I went back to the old dryer, and my hair is back to its usual healthy, flippy self. So now I need to go find another new hair dryer. Maybe I’ll sell this one on ebay or something. Sigh.

My dream hair dryer is a Farouk Chi dryer, but they’re like $100 – $200, and I’m just not in that socioeconomic sphere at this time.

In other news, I started physical therapy today for my bad shoulder, which I actually may have never mentioned here so far. I have a bad shoulder. I actually have two bad shoulders, but one is significantly worse than the other. If they don’t improve in a few weeks I may need surgery. Yuck.

So anyway, this morning they hooked me up to the TENS unit (which delivers electric impulses via those little sticky circles) and packed ice over it and let me chill out in a dark, quiet room for twenty minutes. That, my friends, was awesome. And really seemed to help the shoulder, too.

Finally, I want to share with you that I’ve jumped on the free iPods bandwagon, after the article at Wired.com claimed its legitimacy. If you love me and want to help me get an iPod, you could click on my referral link and go sign up for BMG or like pay $4 to get a 7-day sample of weight loss pills or some crap like that. And I’d love you forever. I’d even pitch in on whatever Internet advertising strategy that might be tempting you.

This weekend: going to support my sisters at their volleyball car wash, bingo, sleep, choreography. I was supposed to go hear John Edwards speak tomorrow, but someone forgot to go pick up tickets for me today, and so now it appears that we won’t be doing that after all. But that’s okay. I’ll sleep in, instead.

Thanks for all your thoughtful comments on yesterday’s seat belt post. I’m really glad it inspired such discussion.

Last night Dad, Ginny, Sam, and Jamie traveled to Chatham (about 90 minutes away) for a volleyball scrimmage, and Mom and I plowed through some Chinese food and decided to spend another evening competing in the Couch Olympics.

Seriously, you guys, the Couch Olympics are strenuous, and they’re killing us. See, Mom and I have to get up early for work (she gets up earlier than I do, even) and on a normal night she’s usually sacked out by ten, and I shoot for eleven.

Well, this week we’ve both stayed up past midnight every night, because we have to be good Americans and watch the Olympics, and also because NBC is sneaky and puts the good stuff in chunks at the end so you’ll watch it all, and we are sheep so we do exactly that.

So we’ve been staying up way too late, and we’ve both been dead on our feet all week long. I was just talking to Mom on the phone and she said she was afraid she was going to fall asleep right on her desk, and then she said it too: “The Olympics are killing me!”

It’s so true. I feel that I need to come in late every day next week, because I need my sleep in order to maintain my Olympian schedule.

Also, around ten-thirty last night when Mom and I were sprawled out like slugs, overloaded with MSG, I said, “I hope my pin connector gets here soon, because I want to play my damn Nintendo.”

“Oh,” she replied, “there’s an envelope addressed to you on top of the printer. I forgot.”

So I raced in there and ripped open the envelope and got out my new pin connector, and I grabbed the screwdriver and the Nintendo and some newspaper and proceeded to take it apart again. I put the new connector on, screwed all the screws back in (except for those two I forgot about), screwed the case back on, and picked up the system.

And it rattled.

So then I took apart the Nintendo again, shook out all the screws I’d set in the holes and forgot to tighten down, put them in, tightened them, continued to omit those last two screws (long story, but they aren’t necessary) and put the case back on.

I raced over to the dedicated Nintendo TV, hooked all the cables back up, put in Super Mario Brothers, held my breath, and pressed the power button.

And screamed my damn head off like a crazy Clay Aiken fangirl when the Super Mario Brothers/Duck Hunt menu filled the screen.

I talked Mom into playing 2-player with me, even though she was reluctant because I used to kick her ass at Nintendo back in the 80s. So she made some comment about how she’d never get a turn, because I’d never die, right as I ran Small Mario directly into the first Goomba thing and got killed.

Oops.

It’s taking a little while to get the hang of it again, but we got into Super Mario Brothers 3 last night and played it until it was (again) well past time for me to be in bed.

It’s the best thing that’s happened all week.