Deck, part 2

After two weeks, during which I applied paint remover and scraped off paint four times, somehow injured my hamstring while squatting, kneeling, and/or bending over for hours, sanded it twice, and cleaned it twice, I finally decided enough was enough and stained my deck this morning. Here's a picture of it right before I did that:



Later at work I saw this brown praying mantis outside our building. Too bad my camera decided to focus on the window ledge instead of the insect!



Then after work I saw this car. At least they have a sense of humor about their job:



UPDATE: By popular demand, the snake picture! Sara (who took the picture) and Paola had a snake crawling around the hallway outside their office. After one person tried to use a dustpan and a broom to scoop it up, the foot-long snake was riled up and struck at anything that got near it. After letting it calm down a little, I was able to slide a newspaper folded into a giant scoop-like shape underneath the snake, carry it outside, and deposit it near a big bush about thirty feet from the building.



This incident reminded me of another snake-at-work story from a few years ago when Chuck discovered a tiny one hiding in the cord of his telephone!