traffic

Last Saturday was Tour de Fat here in Fort Collins. It's an annual bike-beer-and-stuff festival thing sponsored by New Belgium brewery. 

People dress up and parade bicycles, logging laps around Mountain Avenue near downtown, and there's music, events, and more fun to be had on the brewery grounds. 

SOURCE

Magnum and I biked over and caught a good portion of the parade. We had no silly costumes - other than what we normally wear - so enjoyed the spectating.

We headed out along the parade route until able to make a clean exit. While waiting for the crowd to part, I got a couple of good lungfuls of burning cannabis to help on the journey.

Tragedy struck on the day with all of the revelers in the downtown area. Story has it an elderly man in a pickup truck backed out of a parking space and hit a vehicle. He then rushed forward in the truck, up onto the sidewalk, and plowed into a group of people before a tree stopped his forward motion. One person died, 5 were hospitalized. Police are "investigating".

I put that in quotes because locals are still questioning what happened to the woman who was struck and killed on her bicycle about two months ago now. She followed the rules, but was struck and killed by a construction truck. Hmmm.

So a sad event on what is normally a fun filled festive day. I can only assume the person who died, a 33-year-old man from Denver, was in town to enjoy Tour de Fat with friends.

On a much smaller medical note, I went in for a blood screen today. This was a follow up to an earlier screening my doctor routinely ordered. For the follow up, she told me to "cut back the alcohol", which is pretty impossible for me since I can't drink much less than already.

I got the feeling my phlebotomist was new. I've been told I have "great veins" from a bloodletting perspective, and phlebotomists typically make short work of my draws. Today was a young guy, he played around with different vein options, then had a bit of trouble getting the flow going. He seemed a bit nervous from the get go, but I was a patient patient.

I think phlebotomists practice on each other while in training, but eventually, some "real" person has to be the first. I don't know if I was the first, but if I was, I guess he'll always remember me.

pretend you don't see it

Happy full moon Friday! Anything weird happening?

This week got busy as it closes out the second week since the fall semester began. Technically just one available time slot remains in my tutoring schedule, but theoretically, I could open a couple more time slots if push comes to shove. 

Honestly, I thought in-person tutoring was something that would be swallowed up by AI and other free online resources years ago. I guess some people still like having an actual person to lead them through the valley of the shadow of math. Plus, their tuition already pays for it, so they might as well take advantage if they've got time for it.

So far, all my tutees seem nice and hard-working. When first meeting a new student, I'll ask them what brought them to tutoring and get typical responses like, "I failed this class, so I'm taking it again and don't want to fail again", or "I get easily distracted/discouraged when I try to study on my own" or "You tutored my friend/older sibling, and they recommended you", etc.

One particular student I asked this week smiled at me and responded, "Mommy made me". 

So after this two-week frenzy of onboarding new tutees and the paperwork that requires, I think I've settled in for a fall semester. I worked in testing earlier today and observed this scene from the adjunct instructor break room - home of the querying whiteboard.

Theirs is just across the hall from our breakroom in testing, and they have a bigger fridge and sink, so we've been known to freeload over there. 

The sign above the sink, asking to "Please wash your dishes..." stood out to me as new.

Juxtaposed with all the dirty dishes in and around the sink, I'm wondering. 

Is the sign in response to the mess? Or is the mess in response to the sign?

wrap it up

And so it begins.

Students returned for the start of the fall semester this week. It's nice to see the increased activity on campus after the lazy days of summer. I've already gotten a few tutees filling my tutor schedule.

Today, I noticed the adjunct instructor breakroom whiteboard has awakened:

We stuck around here all summer, and I'd say my highlight was purchasing Helms Deep and getting to work cleaning up its rough edges. Plenty to do in that regard.

We were up there last weekend, it was nice to have Wolfgang along to help out. We got a few more captures from the trailcam, mostly deer. But they were eventually usurped by these party animals.

They didn't just dine and dash, however. They left us some fertilizer... until next time.

end of a waiting, talking to the trees, bones

Yesterday, I sat through a 5-hour Zoom recording in half the time. Doncha just love 2x speed playback?

It was a semester kick-off tutor meeting, and thankfully, the bosses recorded it so we could watch it on our own time if unable to attend live via Zoom. Honestly, I could've managed to make the meeting live, but when we were told the recording would be available, I opted for that.

• The semester begins on Monday, and I've had a nice 2-week break since summer finished. This week, I managed to sort through a few items to donate or trash and also $$old a couple things we no longer need but have good resale value. That felt productive.

• Got the mammogram off the to-do for another year.

• Met another of our neighbors at Helms Deep. He told us they bought their property after the 2012 fire, then built their house and now live there full-time. Betcha he got a good deal on the land. They still had a house in town at the time, and also lived in a shed - like the kit kind from Home Depot - while building the house. 

We're still in early brainstorming stages of some sort of shelter for us. We just have a windowless tool shed, and we would need to evict the mice if we want to move into it. Maybe we just dig a hole in the ground, like the hobbits or Teletubbies.

• On that note of living primal, I will give a product shout out. For the first time in my life, I bought one of those devices for women to stand up when nature calls.

Once I got past the cultural paradigm shift, because it was weird at first, I realized I wished I'd have gotten one years ago for camping and hiking. Not gonna post a pic, it's basically a flexible [funnel].

When I was a kid, growing up in a neighborhood full of boys, my playmates would often head into the woods to "talk to the trees". Well, now I'm making up for lost time, having some good conversations. 

• Lastly, this week, we met another marriage milestone. 36 years?? I googled to see the gift material of choice for year 36. The answer: bone china.

"Bone china is a type of soft-paste porcelain made from clay, feldspathic rock, and a minimum of 30% bone ash derived from cattle

Well, seems fitting. Since we've got them cow neighbors.

drumming, reading, watching

As I sit here, there is much drumming. 

School starts next week for the local kids. I've noticed activity has begun at the nearby high school. This morning, on my morning jog, a large pack of teenagers -  x-country practice, no doubt - made their way along the path. 

And now, the drumming. Marching band percussion sectional happening. Yep, summer break's as good as done.

My two-week break is coming to a close as well. I've enjoyed the lack of commitments. As mentioned, my reading challenge continues. I've completed 31 of 26 (goal) books so far this year. Here are the latest titles since the last report.

Bad Tourists was a mystery thriller that I audiobooked while doing boring things around the house. The rest were book books. I've started writing down quotes that I like from books I'm reading. I'm not much into the mystery thrillers, but will get an audiobook, figuring there won't be anything I particularly care to write down.

Note that there were a pile of DNF's in the meantime, and none of these 6 that made the cut disappointed me.

Hotshot and Wildfire Days were both memoirs written by women firefighters. I learned some stuff about fire suppression and mitigation while also getting some good drama. I am currently reading [Lab Girl] by Hope Jahren - another memoir with stuff to teach me about plants and dirt.

So speaking of which, Magnum and took another play day and went up to Helms Deep yesterday to commune with the plants and dirt. 

I love the quiet up there - no sounds but our struggles and wheezing as we smooth out a few areas for us humans - along with the animal noises. No cows this time, but some deer came along to be nosey. Adolescents loosing their fluffy fawn fur in patches. A couple of hawks circled overhead looking for lunch/sizing us up.

We have a trail cam in place, and had several captures - mostly deer.

See the twins trailing Mom?

Daddy?

Trail cam also picked up a few individual members of this strange pack.

a little squish

I just finished reading [Chemistry] by Weike Wang. It's a novel about a Chinese woman working toward her PhD in chemistry and dealing with the stereotypical strictness and high expectations of her Asian parents, among other things.

It's quirky, it's relatively short, I liked it. It marks 30 books read so far this year in my quest to read 26 books this year. I've overachieved even though I'm not a child of Tiger Parents.

But this isn't a reading challenge update. When I read the above quote, I immediately thought of a conversation I recently had at work with Party Girl and Daffodil. Party Girl was feeling self conscious about having a realtor come to her house.

Party Girl has a little house she bought and lived in after divorce from husband #2. She then married husband #3 (current), moved into his house, and turned the other house into a rental. Now, she's looking to sell the rental.

So the realtor was coming over to the house she currently lives in, not the one she's looking to sell. But due to the realtor being a realtor, Party Girl was self conscious of the scrutiny of her carpets, the colors of her walls, etc.

Daffodil jumped in with some soothing advice:

"When I'm dealing with something like that, I tell myself, 'I'm sure they've seen worse."

...which I feel is a corollary to the above quote from Chemistry. Much less anxiety inducing.

All this to say that I had my routine mammogram today.

Despite my having the nickname ["Cow"] for most of my formative years, it was not for my "udders". I've never been "busty", but rather quite an un-busty, small boned, 50% Filipina.

So while I'm certain my mammographer has seen more voluptuousness, I know I'm at the low end, and I was reminded of Daffodil's counsel. I was further put at ease when I noticed a couple of Asian women in the waiting area, if y'know what I'm sayin'. It's possible that I "outranked" them?

Now, I don't mean to make light of breast cancer. I'm personally at low risk, so I guess I find something else to worry about on mammogram day.

casualty

I worked yesterday at the testing center. It was my one day of gainful employment for the week since tutoring ended the week prior.

Working  just one day a week there, I often miss out on worthwhile shenanigans, so I had to get caught up. Turns out they had both a cheater and a secret shopper.

• The cheater had snuck a cheat note in, had it tucked in his sock - verified from video recording after the fact. Boss noticed the little note, sticking out from under the keyboard, mid-test. It was strange because it was for a professional certification test. We catch cheaters every once in a while, but they are typically for student exams, not the professional ones that people pay good chunks of money to take. I was kind of sorry to have missed the momentous once-in-a-lifetime event. 

• The other was a secret shopper. As the name implies, secret shoppers are sent by various test companies, come in pretending to be test takers, but are actually checking to see if we will catch them breaking any rules. This particular SS broke all kinds of rules and never even made it into the test they were supposedly there to take.

After being told they would not be allowed to take their test, they even offered a bribe to be allowed, which I find quite funny. Another missed performance I wish I'd seen.

In high school, I had a friend who would sometimes wear flowy skirts when it was a test day in our History class. She would affix a cheat note in the folds of her skirt and nonchalantly "flip" to the note as needed.

I recall that she was actually a pretty good student with a strong work ethic, and I'm pretty sure she never got caught cheating. I guess she just wanted the extra insurance. 

Kind of ironic, now I think about it. That was the exam that Cheater Guy was taking: 

licensure for casualty insurance.