Tea and Dragons

There is a spider in my bathtub. 

I'm not an arachnophobe, not in the classic sense.  I don't like looking at spiders generally, but they don't make me nonfunctional, and the tiny ones don't bother me at all. 

However. 

The one currently in my tub is the largest free-range spider I've seen on this continent; it's bigger than a standard daddy longlegs and is a lot more aware than those busy trundlers usually are.  It knows I'm here.  And while I can just barely deal with it hanging out where the ceiling joins the wall (it apparently doesn't do webs), the fact that it insists on dropping into the shower while I'm using it is just not on. 

It happened this morning, and was made all the more entertaining when one considers that without my glasses all I can see is a vague movement of it crawling along the ceiling...and then it disappears. 

in the immortal words of ursulav, at that my skin goes "Woopwoopwoop!" like Dr. Zoidberg and does not so much crawl off my body as sprint wildly off it, out the door, down the street, and buy a one-way ticket to Siberia. 

Not only that, this was the second time this has happened.  I almost managed to wash it down the drain the first time--standing dripping in my bathroom, outside the tub thank you very much--until my conscience kicked in and I sighed and dipped down some toilet paper, sort of blotting the thing up as it was thoroughly drenched and immobile, like a piece of extremely long-legged lint.  I figured I was too late, but the next day....it was back above.  

This time I left it adhered to the side of the tub and hoped its suicidal tendencies (or maybe it just thinks I'm the biggest prey ever and is doing the equivalent of a spider scream-and-leap?) had done it in, but when I came home from work...it was lurking in the bottom of the tub and eyeing me malevolently. 

I'm trying to think of an object of equivalent size for comparison purposes, but I can't come up with anything and there is no bloody way I'm Googling for a picture.  It could straddle the short side of a credit card, let's put it that way. 

I'm not going to kill it.  I can't, not directly.  I'd probably have a very difficult time just deliberately washing it down the drain if it didn't get itself wet first.  It has as much right to live as I do--not to mention the potential of it launching itself at me from the ground. 

*sigh*  I miss my cats. 

I recently re-read Rebecca, and while going through boxes found a copy of the sequel-by-a-different-author, Mrs. deWinter.  Now, I generally don't approve of such things, but I'm not that huge a fan of Rebecca, so any violations of canon aren't likely to outrage me.  

Good thing, too. 

Actually, it's not so much violations as that it's a pretty bad book.  The author has the protagonist's tone down decently enough, but the...wimpishness...of the protagonist that is acceptable in the context of the original becomes tiresome ten years down the timeline's road.  The author's going for something of the same kind of suspense--or harder--than the original, but it's way too obvious what's going on and the protagonist doesn't clue in anywhere near soon enough.  I gave up and started skimming eventually, and was completely disgusted by the ending.  

Also, early in the book, the protagonist makes reference to the effect of a "permanent marker", which made me wince, because as I suspected, they weren't invented until some years after the time in which the book is set...  Careless, just careless, and the editor too. 

I do not recommend this one. 

I hate Photoshop.  All I want to do is paint over part of an image, but apparently that's not what the paintbrush symbol is for.  What the bloody heck IS it for, then?  Sheesh. 

One of the things that really annoy me: companies that call and try to put me on hold as soon as I pick up.  No.  That's rude.  Have a live person on the other end, or don't call at all.  If I call, I'm prepared to spend time on hold, but don't demand it of me when I didn't initiate the call. 

Sheesh.