Friday morning random

I decided yesterday afternoon (because I get out of lab at about 5:30) that I would get carry-out Chinese for dinner. There's a decent Chinese/Asian (they have a few Thai dishes also) place in town - not a buffet, but sometimes I think the order-off-the-menu places have a better caliber of food.

So I got roast pork lo mein. And of course, the obligatory fortune cookie.

Which I opened at the end of dinner. And found empty.

When I was a little younger and more easily rattled, I might have taken that as a bad omen. But I've decided if I'm going to "take" it any way, I will take it as "my future is so complex and interesting that my fortune wouldn't fit on a slip of paper."

Of course, what it REALLY means is someone at the fortune-cookie factory screwed up.

***

I've been seeing these enormous wasps. They're kind of scary looking. I'm not really bee-and-wasp phobic any more, not to the degree I was as a kid (where I would actually start crying if one got close to me). I tend to respect stinging insects, though. (I'm more fond of honey bees, bumble bees, and things like mason bees - critters that tend to be more mellow and tend to do pollination - than I am of wasps (which tend to be predators and also tend to be more aggressive).

I think I developed my phobia because one fall, we had yellow jackets nest near the house and they would get in. One chilly fall day I went up to my room to read and when I sat down on the bed, I sat on a hornet that was hiding in the blankets. That kind of experience can make you hate stinging insects. (I also got stung on the top of the foot one day out in the yard - I was wearing sandals and walked too close to where they were nesting in the ground).

But still, these wasps are so enormous that they give me pause. I tried looking them up in my bug book and the only thing I come up with are Cicada Killer Wasps though the ones I see seem to have narrower stripes than those pictured. (As far as I know, it's not an "outbreak year" for periodical cicadas here, so I don't know why the wasps are so abundant. This is the first year I remember seeing them)

They're one of those aposematically colored insects - aposematic coloration is thought to be an adaptation to warn would-be predators, "Hey, this brightly colored thing? It can hurt you." I think maybe we have a slightly instinctive response to that color pattern, wanting to shy away from it.

Another example of a brightly colored insect that can sting is the cow-killer, which is a type of wingless wasp. (Cow killer, qu'est-ce que c'est?)

Then again, monarch butterflies are black and orange, and most people don't fear them. 

***

I'm considering running to Sherman tomorrow, to go and get some acrylic paint. (I think the Hobby Lobby sells small tubes of it). I'm planning a repaint job on some of the extra blindbag ponies. I did one the other day as a proof-of-concept to myself. I used nail polish on her because I didn't have any paint. And I found that you really need a finer brush that even comes in the nail polish bottle to be able to paint well. But the pony came out sort of OK looking, and it certainly amuses me.

I took an extra "Flower Wishes" (recolored Pinkie Pie) and painted her body with Wild Strawberry (a very bright hot-pink color) and her mane and tail with that Rockstar Pink glitter polish. I tried to be careful around the eyes because I had no way of repainting the eyes. It mostly worked. For the "cutie mark," I was going to use a small sticker but it was too large, so I took a tiny bit of the leftover gold star glitter I had for a long-ago youth group lesson and pressed some into the damp polish on her flank, and then polished over it with clear polish to seal it.

Her name is now Rockstar Glitterbutt. No, wouldn't be Hasbro approved, but it amuses me. I picture her as being a very rude and selfish little pony...going around saying things like "Because I'm Rockstar Glitterbutt, wenches!" (Yes, there is no actual cursing in my Ponyville). 

So now I want to get some gray, yellow, orangey, white, and black, and repaint my spare Rainbow Dash to make a Derpy. (This time, I will have to redo the eyes). And I'm considering that I could take the spare Sweetie Blue (earth pony - she's off the Applejack mold) and get some blue for her mane, and maybe a gold paint pen to draw on glasses and the cutie mark, and repaint her as Scholastica the "original character" pony I made a while back. Her hair is kind of wrong - Scholastica wears a bun - but otherwise she'd work, and the idea kind of pleases me. (I can use the yellow from Derpy for her pelt, and I might need to get green for the irises of her eyes and her watchband). 

I'll also need some really fine brushes; these things are SMALL.