make like a tree

 Wham! This week went by fast, although I can't put my finger on anything in particular that made it so. Oh well, here we are, Saturday. Not complaining.

The semester is winding down at the college. Less than one month to go, and one of those weeks is fall break. I've had a few tutees jump ship from their math classes already, realizing they can't pass even if they pull wizardry on their finals. I'm a little mad at the advisors who allowed them to sign up for classes they clearly weren't ready for, but sink-or-swim seems to be the strategy.

We survived the first week back to standard time. It is now dark on my bicycle commute home, and I'm decked out with lights and reflectors again. There are three busy roads I must cross to get to and from the college, and I found a route that uses the lesser of the evils for all three crossings without being too much of a detour. 

A little photo dump from the week:

• One of my fellow paint-n-sippers shared some pics she took of our get together a couple of weeks ago. Here's a group photo:

Our artistic leader is 4th from the left, next to me, in case it's not obvious from her Best-In-Show painting.

• I came across a few deer during one of my early morning jog arounds this week

There were about five of them hanging around together, but the others went and hid in the trees as I got my phone out. These two seemingly couldn't care less. 

It's gotten chillier, and we've definitely had our first freeze, but still no snow for the season. Any day now. I avoid politics on the blog, but I gotta say, this government shut down is getting old. 

Rant over. 

 

antlered things

We took a day trip to Estes Park yesterday. Nothing particular in mind, but I was in need of a getaway. Estes is about an hour's drive away, so easy to leave our pets to fend for themselves until our return.

One thing Estes Park is known for is its hefty elk population, and yesterday provided the full experience. We went for a nice walk on the waterfront path, stopped for lunch, and on our way back to downtown, we noticed more people along the path than had been there earlier. 

"It's almost like there's some event going on", I pondered.

As we got closer, we saw that there was a sort of event. At some point during our walking and eating, a huge freaking herd of elk had taken over the golf course.

Where had they all come from?

So we hung out for a bit and gawked at the wildlife along with the other humans. None of the elk seemed to give a crap about any of us, and, thankfully, no stupid people tried to go into the herd for a social media op.

These two big guys put on a nice play fight show for a good while

Their womenfolk paid no attention, having seen it all before, I'm sure.

And so begins November.

Our Halloween "bash" was pretty mellow. I counted 5 groups of Trick-or-Treaters, but may have missed a couple. 

The next day, our Ring®  notifications featured several user complaints and video evidence of stolen bowls of candy that had been left out. That's the world we live in - put a bowl out under the honor system, and it really just serves as miscreant bait. 

We get off our butts and answer the door. I'd say most of our visitors were "older" kids - middle and high school aged, by the looks and sounds of them. I used to think that kids that age were too old for it, but I've grown to appreciate them. All had put thoughtfulness and work into their costumes, and all were polite. I think this whatever-it-is skull guy was my favorite (captured from our aforemention Ring®)

I'm thinking there's some character - video game, most likely - depicted here, but am clueless as to what. I doubt it's an homage to Georgia O'Keefe. And I'm not sure what the companion is dressed as. 

I checked the front camera footage to see if I could figure anything out, but no. Maybe some other video game reference? 

She does appear to be toting both candy bags while skull guy is unburdened. 

So maybe that's the costume: groupie

less words Wednesday

Wordless Wednesday. 

As if. 

I can't seem to do it.

We'll go with "less words"

On this morning's traipse around the neighborhood, I came across this lovely mailbox adornment

She was too cute, I just had to stop and snap a pic. Did she borrow the dress from her friend, Barbie? They're both about the same percentage of body fat.

I've got tutee appointments this afternoon. One texted and asked if we could meet online,
"I woke up and everything hurts and it's hard to swallow"

Sounds yucky, maybe that latest iteration of covid with the throat thing. You betcha we can meet remotely. 

paint, pumpkins, pedals

 I did a thing yesterday. I'd played around with painting in the past, but hadn't touched the stuff in a good long time. Yesterday, I did a Paint 'n' Sip with a few other ladies, something that had looked like fun, but I'd never done.

Seven of us plus our able instructor got together to create "a fall scene" in acryllic paint. The event was deemed a fundraiser for my PEO chapter, but was mainly an excuse to get together and goof around. Both purposes were served.

I brought my result home, and there it sits in the corner of my "office", between the dry erase markers and kleenex, for lack of any place else.

Maybe I'll touch it up and name it "Children of the Corn"

Speaking of evils, how did everyone fare with the amazon web service outage of Monday?

It's a bit concerning how dependent many of us are on our apps and cloud services, eh?

For me, it was a full-on first world problem as I had a haircut appointment on Monday, and found that my Pinterest wouldn't load. Pinterest held my hair reference photos! What to do?

Sigh of relief when the issue was corrected in time, but it was touch and go there, I tellya!

Also this week, I took in another bicycle. These things are wrecking my minimalist image. I have the lovely Violet, which I mainly take for relatively long joyrides, like this morning's beautiful fall ride. Then there's Daisy, my trusty single speed commuter. I also have Lily, the buxom mountain bike. 

Well, now I have the yet-to-be-named newbie-to-me. We bought her 10 plus years ago for Meego. He rode it through high school and then college, but hasn't ridden it much in recent years. 

With the temperatures getting cooler and days getting shorter, I was thinking it would be nice to have a little softer ride on the cooler, darker commutes. Violet and Daisy both have skinny tires and zero suspension. I rattle with every bump and crack. For grins, I asked Meego if he used that old bike much, and if not, could I buy it from him. 

Well, he brought it over, free of charge he says. I gave it a little spa treatment and have been enjoying her cushiness this past week.

That's her in her yet-to-be-named orangeness, parked alongside the zippy Daisy who takes a well deserved respite. And no, I won't name it Donald or Trump. 

Or will I?

midterm swamp and corn

Magnum and I took a typical Sunday morning bicycle ride this morning. Had to bundle up, temperatures were struggling to get out of the 30's. But it was a sunny, calm breeze ride that included a coffee stop. Win.

This week, I noticed another whiteboard question at the part-time faculty break room: 

Not many responses as yet, so maybe the ink was still wet. I noticed the "Super Pretzels with Cheeseツ" is no longer, but I think it would apply to mid-semester decompress.

So yes, it seems we're halfway through this fall semester. I've got a couple of concerning students who stand a good chance of failing their math courses. No fault of their own, really. They work hard, but just didn't learn enough in high school and were shuffled off to college anyway. A global pandemic didn't do them any favors.

In other horrors, we watched "Children of the Corn" this weekend. I'd never watched it but recall it was considered extremely scary back in its day. We found it not scary at all, but entertaining enough in a nostalgic kind of way. 

A lot has changed in the "extremely scary" genre in the last 40 years. Zombies took over?

We took a family road trip throug Nebraska several years ago. There definitely is a LOT of corn in Nebraska. Where there's no pavement or concrete... there's corn. Watch out for them children.

hunting and pecking

I was on a darkish walkabout this morning - a lazy fog making things seem somewhat middle earthy. 

I didn't come across any hobbits or elves that I know of, but did encounter this gaggle of turkeys. I've seen them around before, as have others who chime in on Next Door, Reddit, etc. Is it the same wild group moseying all over town or is there more than one gang?

They look healthy and happy enough, to my untrained eyes.

I recall a boy I knew many years ago, a country boy, who told me how difficult it was to track and nab a wild turkey at hunting time. He told me this while showing me, with pride, one of his turkey feather trophies.

So my first experience of spotting these wild turkeys had me thinking back to that, making the event all, "Wow, a rare sighting!". But now I'm starting to wonder... is it really that difficult?

Recall a while back I admitted to having the odd thought that I would enjoy birdwatching. Now I'm thinking about that again after coming upon this group in the business park. The real appeal to me is to be out in the boonies with a purpose. Hunting has always sounded fun to me - all except the killing part. THAT doesn't appeal to me at all, despite my being a failed vegetarian.

I feel in need of a nature fix, anyway, in the midst of another semester of dealing with students barely keeping their heads above water (how did they even meet the prerequisites?!). I mean, it's only the strugglers who sign up for tutoring, so it's the nature of the beast.

So no nature getaway today. But at least I had wild turkeys by the dumpster.

whazzup?

The weeks continue to seemingly fly by. We are already nearing the end of October. I'm looking out my window thinking that I need to get on with the leaf raking. I haven't gotten beyond the thinking.

• Got together with Meego and Wolfgang for breakfast yesterday morning. We do this about once a month. There are plenty of good breakfast places in Fort Collins, and we've yet to go to one I wouldn't recommend.

Today's destination was recommended by coworker, Blossom. She's lived here her whole life (whopping 25 years) and is always ready with a food recommend.

• At the start of the year, I'd made a resolution to read more. Fiction and non-fiction both. I think I've done all right by that, but recently hit a slump. I was slogging through two books I'd checked out based solely on the fact that a couple of friends on Goodreads liked them. 

I was halfway through both of them when I realized I wasn't enjoying either and should just take the losses. One of the books was Luster which seemed pretty pointless and just, *ICK*.

The other was The Bee Sting, which was just stressing me out, and I don't need stress from a novel. There's enough of that in the real world.

Anybody read either of those? They weren't for me, but plenty of others like them. 

Now, I'm rereading James Herriot  books. I enjoyed them over 25 years ago, so decided to revisit. Nice thing about that is that I'd forgotten a lot of the stories, so it's like reading them for the first time. Reading is, once again, enjoyable.

• This week in "tales from testing", we had someone leave their cell phone on when they stashed it in the locker. We always ask people to turn their phones all the way off, but there's always those who think, "bah, mine won't make any noise" and ignore us. 

The guy's cell phone started to emit an unending alarm. After tracking down whose it was, we interrupted his test and had him come out and turn it off. 

At that point, he was very apologetic and opened the locker to turn off the phone. While turning off the alarm, he said, "sheesh, that's annoying", to which Siri immediately replied, 

"I don't mean to be"

She sounded so remorseful, I *almost* felt bad for her.