Oh, that dead father on train story is so sad, but it's funny too. How horrible for her.

fantastic!

Secret Word was tough today! I got very very lucky and got it in 5 guesses, but even now I think it must have been some latent psychic power because there's no way to get KNAVE that quickly.

Scariest spider I've ever encountered... 3 years ago I moved into an old-ish house in New Jersey. The basement was pretty wide open, but had plenty of scary parts (not to compare with my current terrifying basement, which I only visit when the need is positively critical -- I think there are more spiders in there than in Harry Potter and the Chamber of Secrets)... okay back to my story... I was doing laundry one day (current house has washer and dryer upstairs, thank god) and on my way back to the stairs, I saw a large black spider out of the corner of my eye. It was sitting halfway up the wall, and it was SO LARGE that my first thought was, who left that silly Halloween decoration down here? Seriously, it was at least 1 1/2 inches across the BODY ALONE. Plus big legs. Oh my god this was the biggest spider ever. So I went upstairs and got my can of Raid. I never let my Raid supply run out -- it is more important to me than food or toilet paper. Back downstairs to face down Mega-spider. By now, the spider seemed to have doubled in size. Deciding I needed a good strategy against a beast of this size, I first sprayed the Raid on the floor beneath the wall where the spider sat. I created a poison puddle about 18 inches wide and 9 inches out from the wall. Then, from a distance of about 8 feet away, I started spraying up the wall.... When I hit the spider with the Raid, the spider immediately dropped into the poison puddle. UNDAUNTED, the spider looked me in the eye and began walking out of the puddle towards me ("Ha! I spit at your puny poison, human!"). The 8 feet between us got a lot smaller pretty quickly, as I backed up, and kept spraying and spraying the spider. The fumes were overwhelming. I was seriously imagining myself fainting from the poison spray, and all I could think was that that THING would surely get me then. At long last, the power of the spray pushed the spider in the other direction, and I continued to use the liquid to push the spider against another wall. I kept spraying until the spider drowned -- I don't think the poison touched him. (Okay, I know the poison finally got him, but it took half a can of Raid to do it!) I called Orkin the next day, and have never been without an exterminator since.

I've heard Caesar salad dressing is poison to spiders as well.

This was so interesting. Of course I had to go research what Tisha b'av means, and then watch/listen again to see if that added context.