The volume was just fine. The freaking snooze almost got me this morning. Almost.


One of my favorite made for tv specials ever was FOX's Man vs Beast. (Wow, they show repeats on the FOX reality channel. (Someone record it for me if you get that channel. I don't think my local cable provider has Fox Reality in my area.) The shows has great stuff like Kobayashi challenging a bear to a hot dog eating contest, or a man racing a giraffe.

Anyways, I have been engaged in a long running feud with a little creature. Call it Cal vs. the Spider. Let's break down the matchup.

	Cal	Spider
Height	5'6"	<1"
Weight	275 lbs	.2 oz
Legs	2	8
Web browser	Firefox	Self

Cal's career record vs spiders: 1,455,283 - 0 with 1,455,281 KO's
Spider's career record vs humans: unknown

For the past 3 months, there has been a spider living in the left rearview mirror of my car. It constantly made its web in the gap between the mirror and driver side door. And somehow, this spider must have found a very nice place to stay behind the mirror because I could not get rid of it. I tried brushing it out by sticking papers in around the gaps. I flushed the mirror with water using the hose. I even built a giant laser beam and put it on the head of a well-trained shark to try and get the little pest out of there. (The shark mis-aimed the laser and caught a piece of the mirror, resulting in the shark being blasted in the left eye. If you see a great white constantly crashing into the walls at the Monterey Aquarium, well now you know why.)

Nothing worked. I kept destroying its web every few day when I get to my car and within 2 days, it would be back. It got to the point that I would peek over to my left mirror just to see if I could spot the spider while I was driving. Every potential lane change became a dangerous situation for the spider.

Finally, today as I was leaving an appointment, I went back out to my car and I saw the spider sitting in the middle of another newly created web. The little bastard knew it was over and didn't even try to run. Chalk up another victory for mankind. Or in this case, victory number 1,455,284.