On Sun, 18 Oct 2009 21:58:33 -0700 (PDT), eva shovelful
wrote:

Is this normal? I mean, I realize
that they are not aggressive, or at least the article about them says
they're not, and yesterday it unsettled me enough that I squashed her
good.

They can be very common, certainly are where I am in Los Angeles, but
they cause minimal problems. They have no interest in you, they can't
eat you while you can squash them on purpose or accidentally. Actual
bites are quite rare and not usually fatal unless you're allergic or
have other serious conditions - you can google for symptoms and
treatment. If I see some of their uneven corner webs I will usually
remove the web, just to encourage them to move on. But other styles
of spiders also make corner webs - we seem to be having an abundance
of long-legged spiders with corner webs this year, which seem to have
longer, less random patterns. But I remove those too, just in case,
even though AFAIK they don't have a hazardous bite for humans.

J.