One such adventure concerned our water heater. Our water heater and furnace (and maybe the dryer, we think...?) are all gas-powered, which is something totally new for both of us. Our water heater is in the master bedroom closet, and we had been smelling gas in there so we had to call the company to come out and look at it. The guy was really nice and told us that our water heater had a couple little things to fix- which weren't that big a deal but needed fixing before we could use it again. So we had someone in the ward who knew about water heaters come help us figure out how/what to do to fix it- and eventually we had it fixed and no one had to take freezing cold showers. But we also learned that the water heater is about 22 years old... so we'll be having to replace that pretty soon! But it was an adventure and after much toil and strife and struggling with tools and so forth, now Thomas can beat his chest and say he conquered the gas water heater.
We've also encountered some interesting creatures that we don't have problems with back in AZ! First of all, we have the most amazing yard that we've been... renovating... since no one had really taken care of it in the last few years! That's been an adventure- Thomas is really excited about getting to care for it and I'm loving it too! But anyway so we had to pull (we meaning Thomas... and his buddy Michael came over and helped...) a bunch of the overgrown stuff out from under the bushes and ferns and beautiful things that grow in our lovely little yard. Actually this process has come in several installments, but over the course of doing so we found out several things...
First of all, we think that there is a black and white (kind of cow-looking, if ya know what i mean) cat who lives under/around our house, which explains the meowing we heard the first week or so. We see it skulking around every now and then.
We then discovered that the reason the cat liked our house so much was that there were mice under the house! But apparently the cat wasn't doing a good enough job, or the mice were really good at hiding, because Barrett (neighbor across the street from us) was mowing our lawn for us the first few days we were here and he chased a few out from under the house in doing so. We also found one of them stuck (dead) in a trap that Carol (the lovely little old lady who previously owned the home) had left under one of the kitchen drawers. Thomas was pretty grossed out... he made me take care of it. :)
Thomas also discovered a real live caterpillar- not the faky teensy greenish kind that we are used to in AZ. A real, fuzzy, big huge caterpillar! So exciting!!! See- look!!!
How cool is this guy?! He looks so cute and fuzzy! We found him on one of the weeds growing next to our amazing raspberry bushes. But even more exciting than that, we have finally entered the lovely world of Hobo spiders.
Disclaimer: This isn't an actual picture that we took of the hobo spider. It's just one I found online. We've found two so far, and at first we thought it was a big Wolf spider or something, but upon doing further research we learned that they were Hobo spiders! Apparently they only live in the northwestern US, and their bite is pretty poisonous (hence the scary-looking fangy things) if they actually inject any venom into you when they bite you, but that doesn't happen every time apparently. But the bite is kind of like getting bitten by one of those Recluse spiders they have back in AZ. Eew.
The first one we found was skittering across our bedroom floor one night and we caught him in a glass and looked him up online, and discovered he was indeed a Hobo spider. Then we had to figure out what to do with him. He was inside the bottom of this glass and kind of freaking out that we had caught him, and so we didn't want to go dump him outside and try and squish him (this thing moved FAST! we were scared he would get away!) so we decided to pour some rubbing alcohol into the glass and see if that killed him. And it was really crazy- at first he just kinda curled up and held still, and then every few seconds he would spaz out like crazy! After a while we decided he was pretty dead, but Thomas decided we should take him outside and light him on fire anyway, because it was the manly thing to do. So burn he did, all blue and crispy in the moonlight. We didn't take pictures- but my sister was witness to all this so just ask her if you don't believe us.
The second spider we found didn't meet such a grand end as this first one. We found the second one all up inside the packaging around a big huge picture that everyone signed for our wedding. He had gotten himself all stuck inside the bubble wrap somehow (and my mom did such a great job of packaging it, the poor guy couldn't get out). So this one just got unceremoniously squished inside the bubble wrapping stuff. Then we gave it to our neighbor who was moving. Not the spider- the bubble wrap. It's ok, he knew it was there. He was there asking Thomas to give the Elder's Quorum lesson the next day in church when we found the little guy.
So every time we are outside doing yard work and ripping out more and more grass that has overtaken the plants beside our house, we usually end the day by saying something like "well, I think we've ticked off the hobo spiders enough for one day!" and go inside and wait for another one to pop out. So for none have dared... *evil laugh* I just hope I don't wake up one morning and find one lurking in my slippers...
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