Orthotics and Spiders!

I am back in Cali and have started my 2nd year of grad school. The week has not been horrible. In fact, today we were suppose to have class till 6:15 and we got out at 3:30. Hallelujah!!! Really all this means is I have more time to catch up on reading so I don't fall behind.

Here is a synopsis of my week thus far:

Monday started the week off with class at 9am till 4pm. Yeah! Nothing crazy to report.

Tuesday (yesterday), we learned how to take molds for orthotics. Here are some pictures of what they look like. Fascinating huh? The cool thing is we get free orthotics, so I can subtract about $250-$400 from my tuition in substitution for the custom orthotics.

It has been 90 degrees here, so Lauren and I decided that we should kill two birds with one stone by reading by the pool. I applied sun screen (I finally learned), got my towel, and reading materials and relaxed  read on a lawn chair. When I turned onto my stomach (prone) to tan my back I noticed gnarly egg sacs with spider legs hanging out by them. Then the spider moved across the lawn chair and I saw an orange hour glass on its abdomen. I instantly sprang up, screamed, and ran upstairs to google what I had just seen...It was a brown widow which are equally as venomous as black widows if not more.

Here is some info if you are curious. I don't want to post a picture because looking at it makes me want to scream.

http://cisr.ucr.edu/brown_widow_spider.html

This is what the egg sacs look like. They are very distinct. Anyways. I spent about an hour having to decompose after sitting on a chair with that thing. But I survived (luckily).

I am excited about this weekend! My mom is coming into town on Friday night. Then on Sunday we are running the Disneyland Half Marathon. We have been talking about doing this race since I started running half marathons in 2005, but logistically it never worked out. Well we finally get to run it. We are going to California Adventures right afterwards (because we get a slight discount to the park), which is another place I have never been. I can't wait!!

Okay, now that I have bored and scared you, off to finishing my reading.

Do you have any scary spider stories?