Still enjoying the Olympics, aren't Team GB doing well!

Still enjoying the Olympics, aren't Team GB doing well! The trampolining last week was amazing even though there were no British competitors, it was just great to be there. I have won tickets to the Paralympic swimming next month, we will be going to the Olympic village and it includes an overnight stay in Covent Garden so should be a super trip. Back to the bugs, with everyone away and watching the Olympics, business is still slow so I am continuing to enjoy the school summer holidays. I have been out and about with my nephew's three kids this week, I am again writing the blog early as we are off to Roald Dahl's museum tomorrow (yes, another competition win). In between all this fun I am still constantly feeding and cleaning the bugs and they are continuing to flourish.

My tarantula breeding is going pretty well this year. I discovered that my Violet Tree spider was carrying around an egg sac and I'm not sure if my Cameroon Baboon has an egg sac or has just decided to burrow away forever. I can see her at the bottom of the plastic box but I cannot see all that well. I did have a sneaky look under her piece of bark that covers the main burrow but again I couldn't see much so I decided to leave her alone. I have another pair of Cameroon Baboon spiders that I intend to introduce to each other this week. It is a bit iffy this time as the male may be past his best and I cannot decide if the female is fully grown. It is so difficult to tell, she may still have another moult to go? Often it is a huge disappointment when a tarantula moults into a male, they don't live long and if I don't have a female of the same species then there is really nothing to do with him. I often keep male tarantulas until they die (I couldn't possibly bump them off), nobody wants them. If I do manage to sell them it is generally for far less than I paid for them BUT this week one of my New Mexican tarantulas moulted into an adult male and I am delighted. I thought they were all mature females but now I can introduce him to the others, one at a time and very carefully! I just hope my females are mature, they are huge but this is not a species that I have ever seen as adults before.

Although I am continuing to cut back on stick insects I still have way too many. Bramble collecting is a frequent pastime of mine and I am holding one finger up as I type as there is a thorn sticking in me when I press down. I will get it out with a pin after the blog but I don't want to lose my train of thought! I'm looking out of the office window and my poor garden is more wild than I have ever seen. The weeds are loving this wet summer. I have never seen so much Convolvulus and Ground Elder, I absolutely hate these two weeds. I have tried everything to eradicate them from our garden but they always come back. I had never seen Ground Elder until I moved here (we didn't have it in London). I have consulted Google but I cannot find a specific treatment, biological or man made for either. If you have any tips please let me know! I do like to get feedback from my blog. People often think they are 'bothering me', I like to get 'proper' questions and I really appreciate helpful hints and pointing out mistakes on my website. It really is just me and it is difficult to proof read your own work. Only yesterday I wrote something (non-work related) and then my hubby pointed out that I had left the word 'you' out of the sentence. It was really odd as I had read it several times and not noticed, I was obviously just adding the word in my mind as I read it. I know I moan about aimless questions but honestly if you think you are a problem to me, I can practically guarantee that you aren't! The people who drive me nuts are generally selfish and totally unaware.

The Giant millipedes would have been here this week but I am now collecting them from my supplier on Sunday 19th. I am out far too much at the moment to arrange a courier, I couldn't possibly stay in for an entire day and I don't always hear the doorbell, especially if I am walking between the bug house and my office. My lovely next door neighbour continues to be very ill in hospital and there is no way that I want to trouble his family by taking in my parcels. I have a permanent notice by my bell asking delivery men/women to leave parcels next door. Some people go directly next door as they know they will get a quicker answer. I generally have to perform athletic events to reach my front door. If I have cages open I have to shut them, run down the path, unbolt the middle gate (if I let Teddi up there she runs all over my vegetable garden), if wet I cannot run on the decking outside our back door, it is like a skating rink. I then have to get past an excited dog who loves me running, shut at least two doors to stop her dashing out and as you can imagine this takes some time. I cannot tell you how annoying it is when the person ringing the door bell has gone by the time I get there, or it is just someone selling something!.

I spoke to my website guy this week, I am looking into the possibility of upgrading my site. I will have to see how much it costs but I do find this one a bit limiting. I need to be able to change things frequently which probably isn't the case with most online shops. Selling live animals is obviously a little different. I have abandoned the 'links' page as I was getting so frustrated that the print kept changing and things were disappearing off the page when I uploaded it. The program has a mind of its own, I just cannot get the formatting to work and consequently the print on most of my information pages is not as I would like it. I may well be fussy but if I am putting in all that effort I need it to work better than it does. I do have lots of new ideas and once the schools go back I will be implementing them. I have been fretting for ages about my postal charges. I am now losing money on so many parcels that I cannot possibly add heat packs to an order without charging for them. I don't want to put my postal prices up so I have come up with a plan to make heat packs an optional extra when ordering in the colder months of the year. Hopefully my web guy will be able to work this into my website design and it would need a 'tick box' to ensure that everyone understands that I cannot give a live guarantee on anything sent without a heat pack (yes, I am expecting everyone to take up the option of a heat pack!) but people need to see that I am not charging extra postage, it is just the price of a heat pack. Any comments or alternative suggestions are most welcome.

Must get on now, nice as it is sitting here, it is Thursday and I need to get my parcels packed and posted.