It was the best of times...

...it was the worst of times, it was the age of wisdom, it was the age of foolishness, blah blah blah.

Yesterday, my friends, was a roller coaster ride of emotions- highs, lows, and creamy middles.

It all began innocently enough as I was innocently wheeling our garbage cans out to the curb for pickup...innocently. Right as I was about to walk away from the recycle bin, I looked down and saw a big ass black spider hanging out on a web towards the bottom. "Wow, neat," thought I, for I have always had an inquisitive mind, particularly in regard to The Wonders of Nature. "That is most certainly a large spider. I shall now squat down so as to examine it further." Squat I did, and I proceeded to give myself the willies simply by looking at the thing: bugs and their ilk have that effect on me. "I have never seen a large black spider such as this...could it be...? No, certainly not...", I thought- and then , the fucking thing flipped over and I saw a nice big fat red hourglass on its belly! There was a giant black widow on my garbage can.

A BLACK WIDOW. ON MY GARBAGE CAN.

THERE WAS A BLACK WIDOW ON MY GARBAGE CAN. AND IT DID NOT LOOK LIKE THERESA RUSSELL.

I did my patented excited/creeped out dance, which...well, I'm sure that if any neighbors, oblivious to the spider's presence, saw me doing a little jig in the middle of the street for apparently no reason, they'd surely think that I'm retarded. I went to get my camera (yes, I am a nerd), but by the time I returned the spider had holed up in a crevice, and...well, fuck that noise.

After I returned to my house and calmed down a little (believe me, seeing a giant black widow in real life is very exciting to me), I made a shocking realization: if a black widow can live on my recycle bin, then there's a chance that a black widow could get in my hair...the point of which is, I almost died while taking out the garbage! Between this brush with a deadly spider and last week's earthquake, I'm totally convinced that it's The End of Times. This conviction was cemented when, a mere two hours after The Black Widow Incident, I bit my tongue whilst eating a peanut.

Somehow, in the face of all this death-defying activity, I managed to remain calm and cool when later in the evening this happened:

Yes, my mug is obscured to protect the innocent, but that picture is me and ADRIENNE BARBEAU. Yes, I finally...finally met my hero Adrienne Barbeau at a book signing last night. She was incredibly nice and I'm pretty sure I didn't make a fool of myself, despite the fact that I was completely excited and star-struck. At any rate, she seems to think I'm awesome.