puberty and connections

I just polished off the last of a big ol' batch of fried rice. I know, big whoop.

Thing is, when I make fried rice, I go big with the egg. I like a lotta egg in my fried rice. I made this latest batch with duck eggs.

Recall that coworker Sarge's family took on three baby ducks a little over a year ago. By late last fall, the ducks reached puberty and began earning their keep.

Sarge typically collects three eggs a day - ample supply for his family of 5. Ample enough that he often brings surplus in to work. 

I brought six surplus eggs home and turned them into fried rice. 

Three duck eggs in hand, one store bought
 large chicken egg for scale

They are noticeably bigger (duh!) than chicken eggs - nearly double the volume. I made double the amount of fried rice I usually make with 6 chicken eggs.

I give 5 stars. The duck eggs are bigger, fluffier, lovely to cook. I don't know how much of that pleasure is from them being duck eggs and how much is from them being homegrown fresh.

Sarge said, at first his kids were all, "Ew, you're eating duck babies?!"

So he explained they're not babies since they're not fertilized. 

Saying they're eating the product of a duck ovulation cycle is much more appetizing.

And speaking of sex ed... I don't remember having that taught to me in school. I only remember "health" class where boys and girls went to separate rooms and we talked a lot about periods and tampons and all the fun that entails. 

The real sex ed came in the form of a book, circulated among myself and several friends.  I was reminded of that book this week. 

Okay, anyone play "Connections", the NY Times game? I play occasionally, and did so this last Tuesday - May 19. One of the categories was books by Judy Blume. Spot them?

I'd heard of Fudge and Superfudge, but never read them. Never heard of Deenie. But I'd most certainly heard of AND read Forever.  

As I recall, there were two very worn out paperback copies that circulated among this little impromptu adolescent girl book club. We read the sh*t out of that book. 

I'm pretty sure it's the only Judy Blume book I've read. I understand it was quite controversial at the time - maybe still is. Also, as far as I know, my mom didn't know I read it, but who knows. She seemed to just know stuff without me knowing she knew it.

In my case, yes, it was educational. 

I don't remember much of it now, but in summary:

Two high schoolers fall in love. They have sex. It doesn't last forever. Everybody's fine. 

192 pages of that for my 13-year-old friends and I to discuss. Dang we were studious.

Buzz bite, bottoms

Coworker Buzz got bit by a dog a little over a week ago. Apparently, he was just walking along in a park when a rando dog - that was on a leash with its owner - suddenly decided to try to take a chunk out of Buzz's arm.

While the incident ruined Buzz's shirt, it didn't really break the skin, but left a decent bruise. And Buzz seemed pretty shaken up about the whole thing. Such a surprising, unprovoked response from a dog who's "never done that before!"

I commiserated with him with my own dog bite story when I learned of his ordeal a few days after the fact. The surprise of it, the confusion as to how to react. I won't rehash it, but I did (of course) blog about it [HERE].

And it really just grew out of swappin' stories, but that's when I realized that Buzz was pretty shaken up by it, emotionally. Later, as our shift together ended, he thanked me for sharing and talking it through with him. Said it was helpful to talk with someone who understands.

In my case, I chalked it up as a "weird" incident. I went home and cleaned up and that was that. In hindsight, I should've at least gotten a tetanus shot. 

In Buzz's case, Buzz called Boss because he didn't feel "stable" enough to drive himself. Boss drove him to urgent care. At urgent care, Buzz wasn't sure how to get his VA coverage, so he called Sarge - our other veteran coworker - who got him set. He was inspected and tetanused and sent home.

All this to say, don't judge a book... 

Buzz is about 40 years old, single, lives with a roommate. He's a military veteran with a large percentage of veteran disability. I don't know the extent of his disability other than he's got a bad back, but I think a good chunk of it is mental. 

On the surface, he seems pretty resilient. Stocky build, likes to joke around, does martial arts. But deep down, he's kinda vulnerable. And based on the way he discusses things, I get the feeling he regularly goes to therapy.

In other news, I'm still enjoying this little break between spring and summer semesters. Summer session starts next week, and I know nothing of the tutoring load yet to come. I've been using the break to take care of some to-do list things that have been back burnered for a while and do a few extra shifts in the testing center. 

Yesterday, Boss received some batteries he'd ordered. He showed us the underside of the box they were packaged in, so I figured I would share:

In case you ever need to say 'this is my bottom' in French.

something old, something new

ME: So... y'know we close at 4:00, right?

HIM:  I thought you close at 5:00

ME: Nah, Fridays it's 4:00

HIM: FUUUUUUUCK

Just one of the conversations I had last Friday in the testing center. Aah, finals week. This particular student walked in at around 3pm for his 2-hour final, due that day. I know him from tutoring. He's a concurrent enrolled high schooler, racking up college credits. He'll be halfway to his engineering degree already by his high school graduation.

He's intelligent for his age, but not the most punctual... or time aware.

Once resigned to his fate, "Welp, I only need a 38% on this final to pass the class".

"I'd hope that's doable", I replied. And apparently it was.

And just like that, the semester's done. After the frenzy of activity in the days leading up to finals, things are now very quiet on campus until summer session begins in a couple of weeks.

I've got a few things on my to-do list between now and then. For one thing, I have a doctor again. Recall that I was doctorless for several months as my old practice underwent upheaval and is no longer in our network. The new place wouldn't take me until it'd been a year since my last checkup. I finally reached that milestone.

Saw the new doctor, who then got the ball rolling on all the things: blood screen, mammogram, colonoscopy...

In the chaos of the old office upheaval, some of my stuff was missing from the records. For one, I knew I'd had a mammogram since the last they'd reported.

This to say how handy this blog is, because I figured I probably mentioned the last mammogram here because how weird is that? Bingo. Found it. Who needs medical records?

And speaking of archives, I did manage to find our Sam signed napkin from the wedding as well as Sam and Katherine's page from the guest book:

         

My brother made the annotation of where they were from, lest anyone wonder.

In other activity, we're this close to completing the purchase of that big pile of dirt we looked at a few weekends ago. About 50 acres of dirt, actually.

There goes the neighborhood.

a cake, a kid, a mustache

I've just emerged from our crawl space, empty handed. It's dark in there, I went looking for the guest book from our wedding, of all things. It's in there somewhere.

Peggy over at https://straightupnochaser.blogspot.com/ posted about celebrity sightings, of which I've experienced little. When I worked at a hotel in downtown Denver in the mid 80s, we often had professional wrestlers stay for WrestleMania type events, but I've never followed professional wrestling. So, despite the throngs of fans in the lobby, the wrestlers weren't anything more than typical hotel guests to me.

However... How Ever... we did have a couple of well-known movie stars at our wedding:

Mr. Sam Elliott, along with his illustrious mustache, and wife, Katherine Ross.

No, it's not like they are long-time family friends who made our wedding guest list and RSVPd "Yes!". They actually, more or less, crashed the reception with the help of their young daughter, who is now 41 years old. I got this photo after googling from around the time of the wedding crashing.

SOURCE

So, the story of how our worlds collided

• I grew up in a small town in Colorado.
• We got married in my hometown.
• My hometown is surrounded by boonies. Lots of boonies.
• A movie adaptation of a Louis L'Amour novel was being filmed
• Louis L'Amour wrote westerns. Lots of westerns.
  
• Sam Elliott (and sometimes Katherine Ross) starred in lots of westerns
• Sam Elliott and Katherine Ross starred in this particular western
• The movie was filmed in the boonies surrounding my hometown
• The movie cast and crew stayed at the hotel of my wedding reception

BOOM, celebrities at our reception.

Our wedding cake was set upon a table, and this little blonde girl walked in and asked me, "Can I show my dad your cake?"

"Okay", I replied, nonchalantly.

She returned with freakin' Sam Elliott in tow.

And honestly, my mom was already practically best girlfriends with Katherine Ross by that time. My mom worked at the hotel in the restaurant. Mom was very easy to be friends with, and never went all stalker on Katherine Ross. 

She told me she treated them like any other restaurant guests, and one day slipped Katherine a note saying, "I loved you in 'Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid' and 'Stepford Wives'", to which I can attest is true - those were probably Mom's two favorite movies. And the friendship grew from there, at least during their time in my boonie hometown.

Magnum and I got a picture with Katherine Ross and their daughter, a.k.a. chief wedding crasher, and I'm sad to say WE LOST IT - THE PHOTO.

There are lots of other photos of the wedding weekend, but that ONE is conspicuously MIA, lost during one of our earlier moves. I lost that photo along with my diploma for my bachelors degree. Of those two things, I am way more disappointed about losing the photo.

But we've got a signed wedding napkin, and the couple did sign our guest book - which is somewhere in the crawl space... maybe.

nieve seis de mayo

We're having us a snow day. First one for the whole school year, and it comes in May?

But we'll take what we can get after our long, dry winter.  Poor awakening trees, welcomed by drought only to get dumped on with heavy, wet snow. Their roots are loving it, but their branches, not so much.

So, I'll be zooming with the tutees today. No complaints from me or them. I have an easy commute to campus, but remote sessions mean I need only be presentable from the shoulders up. 

 I took a soggy walk-about the neighborhood this morning. Pretty quiet out with all the schools and colleges closed - a precursor to summer break when many of the university students go away. 

Monday is the last day of our semester. Then it's a couple of weeks until the summer session begins. I've made myself available for summer tutoring. There are less students in the summer, but also less tutors, so it seems to balance out. 

Welp, time to try to make myself a quarter presentable.

proms, snow, and dopamine

We made it to May. Snow in this coming week's forecast after a whole lotta nothing all winter. 

I'll take it, better late than never.

But this weekend's been lovely. I went out to take care of a couple of easy errands yesterday via bicycle. At one point, I rode through a picturesque part of the university campus. It was teeming will well-dressed folk.

It's too early for graduation, I pondered. Plus, graduation would bring out caps and gowns, none of which were present. As I got closer, I noticed the well-dressed folks were a bunch of kids - broccoli-haired boys and gowned girls. 

Ah... prom.

Apparently, that location on campus is a popular place for prom pics.

I thought back to high school prom days and to how oh-so-important it seemed at the time, and how oh-so-unimportant it actually is/was in the grand scheme of things. But I hope they had fun - didn't get too drunk, and no one got pregnant.

Speaking of almost graduation, one week remains of the semester. Do-or-die for some students heading into finals. One of my tutees has very long, decorative acrylic fingernails. They can be cumbersome to deal with when she's doing her online homework - needing to use her chunky knuckles instead of fingertips when using her laptop touch screen.

"These nails make it difficult to do my math homework", she acknowledged, to which she added, 

"but I need the dopamine to do my math homework"

Hey, it's a balance.

watch out

"Wanna arm wrestle?"

Party Girl asked me this on Friday at work. Friday mornings in testing are nearly always very busy, but then things typically quiet down by noonish. We were at noonish. She suggested the arm wrestling to see which one of us could clock out early.

I asked what made her think of arm wrestling, "We could just rochambeau", I suggested.

But then I said she could go early since I had to tutor later so wouldn't be leaving campus anyway. She then admitted she just really felt like an arm wrestle match. So fine, I granted her wish, weird as it was. I don't think I'd arm wrestled since maybe middle school?

I won by the way.

• Speaking of granting wishes, two of my PEO friends and I interviewed a woman who applied for an educational grant. Bottom line, we learned she has too much financial aid already, so is not eligible for this particular grant. I need to draft an email to inform her, so am procrastinating by blogging instead. 
  
  
• We trudged around another property-for-sale in the boonies yesterday after deciding the access road to that other one was a deal breaker. Meego has come along both times, but Wolfgang had conflicts both times, so I meant to take photos of yesterday's site for Wolfgang, but plum forgot.

These are from the listing.

Again, there is some fire damage - from a fire in 2012 - but it's not nearly as stark as the last place we visited. And there are gorgeous views. I think we might put an offer on this one after a bit more research.

• After working up an appetite, traipsing around in those woods, we stopped at nearby Vern's just outside of town. 

Vern's is very popular, known for it's hearty meals and humongo sweet rolls. We'd never been there. It's an interesting contrast to restaurants in old town Fort Collins, which are more trendy, for lack of a better term. 

from Google reviews
What is that little thing below? A wolverine??

The Vern's decor is plentiful taxidermy, dead eyes watching from every vantage point. And there was a lot of camouflage clad clientele. 

Breakfast was delicious. Mine was meatless, which seems rather contradictory upon reflection.