Greg In The Desert

If the HGTV Dream Home Sweepstake doesn’t work out, there’s a raffle for a $190,000 house in Rio Rancho, New Mexico. I looked for it in Google Maps and found that part of the Cabezon development that the house is supposed to be in is photographed properly but not mapped properly. I had to use a few different mapping programs to find the house, which doesn’t seem to actually built yet It will probably be a fine house if you don’t mind living next to dirt lots for a while.

2483 Corvara Drive in Astante Villas Gated Community at Cabezon in Rio Rancho, NM. GRAND PRIZE: Win a beautiful brand new home valued at $189,900 or $100,000 CASH. Additional 100 CASH Prizes to be given away. Tickets are $75.00 each. Drawing will be February 27, 2010 at the home to be given away. This raffle benefits El Ranchito de los Ninos Children’s Home — a home for children who do not have a home of their own and are unable to live with their biological families.

Check out this beautiful incomplete R2-D2 frame from the Maker Faire on julianbleecker’s photo stream on Flickr. No information from the photo on what this is about but there is a link to www.artoo-detoo.net in the background. There’s a part of me that wants to complete a project like this, but I have plenty of incomplete projects already.

A few weeks ago I walked through my friends porch and destroyed this large round spider web. Later that night the creator of the web came out and we found it was a beautiful large orange spider that we have never seen before.

I have since discovered that it’s a Araneus Gemmoides also called a Monkey-face, Cat-face or Jewel Spider. The Royal Albert Museum has the best description of them:

As previously mentioned, this spider has adapted to building its webs on or near houses. It is therefore most often found in urban centres, although farm houses will often have a population. These spiders thrive when the web is built near a light. When the light is turned on at night, it attracts a large number of insects that become potential food for the spider. In this situation the spider may have an abundance of food and may get all it needs in the early part of the night. As a result the web is often in tatters by morning. The spider will rest during the day in a retreat, often under the eaves, and only come out to repair or replace the web in the evening.

This is exactly where this spider sits, under a porch near the porch light. It comes out at night and sits in the middle of it’s web. Some might see this large creature and want to destroy it but we will be very careful not to disturb it.