Wasps, I'm grateful that I didn't get stung by one today.

As I wrote last week, one of the topics I was going to write about this week was wasps. What the hell is wrong with you Sutton? Why wasps in the middle of winter (ok, technically not winter yet, but it feels like it), you ask?

Well, when I went up to Ricardo's chateau in Wisconsin, there was a huge hive for something hanging from a round electrical box high up a telephone pole. Apparently there was a circuit breaker for the area attached to the box as well. Anyway, it was one of those round, garbage can sized electrical boxes and the nest took up the entire bottom and hung down in more or less a cone shape. Of course though I had my phone AND my camera, I forgot to take a picture. Damnit.

So the discussion point came up as to whether Ricardo should somehow take it down so they didn't come back next year, or if it would be abandoned and was no longer a threat. Today I did some searching on the web to figure it out and came up with little information. It was certainly NOT a paper wasp nest as I thought it might be. Wiki has some great pictures of what these look like. I'm inclined to think, like Bear Bill, that the nest was a hornet's nest. Only the fertilized queen hornet will survive the winter months. All the other wasps will die in the cold. Everything starts all over again the next spring. Crazy huh?

Today I also read a summary of three studies involving keeping a "Gratitude Journal". A GJ is where you write down five things every day for which you are grateful. Apparently people who did this, compared to control groups who just wrote a journal and who wrote negative statements, they went to the gym more often, ate better and were deemed generally happier, healthier and less stressed.

So I thought I'd start writing three things for which I'm grateful at the end of every entry I make. Let's see what happens!

1. I'm thankful for the invention of Tivo. You thought I was going to go "sappy" off the bat didn't you?
2. I'm thankful for living in a city with a wonderful diversity of quality restaurants.
3. I'm thankful for being in pretty damn good health.