wishing for a ghost, goblins

My ballot is sitting here on my desk. I've got it about halfway filled out. I should get to work on the remaining bubbles, but I'm hanging out here instead.

This last week was another fine one in my little world - trying not to think of school shootings and embarrassingly short-term press secretaries, among other things...

• A couple of my tutor students are trying my patience. One, I'm sure, does next to nothing (probably actually nothing) outside of our single 1-hour weekly tutor sessions. She's been warned that she's on track to fail. It's like she doesn't know or doesn't care that she canNOT pass a class if she turns nothing in.

Her advisor has reached out several times, but has gotten no response. And I'm a little jealous. Why does she not ghost me too?? Seriously, ghost me! It's fine that she will inevitably fail, but why did she sign up for tutoring? She's wasting our time. 

• Okay, vent over. I am grateful for my easy going tutin' job. Work is typically fun, more like a hobby, and I did have this little dialogue with another student:

Me:  How do we get the sine of x all by itself?

Tutee: Offer it some candy?

HA! I needed that after Miss Do-Nothing.

• Coworker Kitty mentioned that she's looking for a new OB/Gyn to monitor her "AMA (Advanced Maternal Age)" pregnancy. That is the term for pregnant women over 35. She was also over 35 with her first pregnancy, which was characterized as "geriatric pregnancy" at the time. Somebody wised up and changed the term. 

• And speaking of which, I hear Hillary Swank is pregnant at 52 years old?! So, was it IVF? Otherwise, that's a very old egg, and maybe should be referred to as geriatric.

• On that note, I've noticed some older ladies at the gym have been striking up conversations with me. The (adults only) gym has a pretty diverse age range, but many are 20- and 30-somethings. I imagine these elderly ladies want me to be part of their gang.
  
  
• We've continued cleaning up Helms Deep these past two weekends. Today, we prettied up a particularly gnarly part of the road.

I didn't take a "before" photo, but trust me when I say this is mucho better. Our truck nearly high centered upon our arrival, but our departure was smooooooth sailing. I think we're getting the hang of this Land Manager business.

The cows have returned to their rightful home. Most of our trail cam captures are of the dear deer family - Mom and The Twins. Haven't seen any more owls. 

• Our flatland neighborhood, however, has several new occupants as we get closer to Halloween. I find this one wonderfully creepy.

howdy, neighbor

chirping, freecycling, personhood

It's nearly mid-October. The fall semester is halfway gone. Time really does go by faster as we get older. A little wrap up of last week feels in order: 

• That tutee who crashed his bicycle on the way to tutoring a couple of weeks ago? He's fine. He did go to the ER and was diagnosed with a mild concussion. It's not his first, and he knows he needs to be careful.

Bet five bucks he still rides to school without a helmet.

• On the learn-something-new-every-day front, I learned that [mountain lions chirp] - sounding much like random bird calls. Who knew? 

Now, when we're up at Helms Deep, I might feel less Snow Whitey about the friendly "birds" chirping

• I offloaded all of those spare bicycle tubes we no longer have bicycle tires for. I advertised them on a local No-Buy group on face's book, and a woman pounced on them. I left them out for a porch pickup, and the woman pulled up in a vehicle with a 4-bike bike rack. 

Looks like they went to a good home. Saved me a trip to the bike co-op.

• Our 30-days of AI Ring descriptions expired. I'm no longer described as a child. Back to being a person.

• On Saturday, we got together with Meego and Wolfgang for our monthly-or-so breakfast catch up. Always a good time. Went for a bike ride, and I got a flu shot. The day was complete.

 

Saturday school

Goodbye, September. Seems like it just got here!

I noticed another "survey" on the adjunct break room whiteboard.

I also am enjoying the cooler temperatures. Today, I washed my capri pants to be stashed for the season. That will probably bring on a heat wave.

I had Saturday duty in the testing center today. It was a slower day than typical. I worked with Party Girl and got an update on Project Wig. 

She has ordered her wig. There is about a month-and-a-half lead time, so she should get it mid-November. Meanwhile, she has scheduled her haircut to coincide with wig arrival. I've only ever known Party Girl to have long straggly hair, so this will be different. Funny how much "power" our hair holds.

Other than that, we managed to keep ourselves busy. Party Girl also tutors on the side, so we each indulged in tasks for that in between our handful of testers.

Today is ["Tour de Corgi"], which I had to miss this year since I was at the slow testing center. Maybe that's the reason for the lull. Who wants to test on Corgi parade day?? I believe this weekend is also CSU homecoming/parent's weekend. Too many diversions.

hair, a bun, hooter

Happy Fall! Swap out your toothbrush heads? Flip the mattresses?

It's getting noticeably cooler around here, no complaints from me. It was a good week. Let's see if I can remember what happened.

• I had feed-the-cat duty for Wolfgang this week as he was once again on a travel adventure. So it was good to have Honey, my new bicycle, as cat duty adds a few extra miles to the commute. I thinks she's well broken in now (the bicycle, not the cat). And that was another reason to welcome the cooler temperatures
  
  *on a side note, the Ring camera still calls me a child. Apparently anyone riding a bicycle and/or wearing a backpack is a child*
  
  
• The previous week at work in the testing center, Party Girl was all gung-ho on the idea of cutting her hair and getting a 20-inch wig. She often gets these "obsessions", some come to fruition, others peter out. We all have those bad hair days when we just want to "cut it all off!" I think she'd had a couple of those. Went so far as to research wigs, and pick one out online.

Her hair is long - 23 inches she claims. She's mid 50's and her hair is not that of a young woman. She told me she likes having her hair long, though, because her controlling mother made her wear her hair short while growing up. 

"It's revenge hair".

This week, I heard nothing further of the wig acquisition.

• In other coworker news, Kitty is pregnant once again. Recall that Kitty had a "shotgun wedding" a couple of years ago - brought about by her and her now-husband's surprise daughter.

Things are working out so nicely, they decided to go again. A boy this time. Kitty's intention was a little sister for the 2-year-old. The universe had other plans.  

I asked her if her parents were excited. 

"Oh yes! Lots better than the last time I told them I was pregnant..."

•  In reading news, I'm up to 35 books for the year (my goal was 26, yay me). My recent completions:

Recognize any? My pace has slowed somewhat since the fall semester started. I'm currently reading a couple of books about Sam Bankman-Fried and his whole cryptocurrency sham. Love me some white collar true crime.

• Lastly, Magnum and I went up to Helms Deep earlier today. More roadwork. The trailcam shows the usual suspects - mostly deer. 

This hooter was new, though.

a walking story

"I'm on my way! gonna be a couple minutes late", so read the text from my last tutee of the day yesterday.

It was a few minutes before our appointed time, so I wandered over to the tutoring center to wait. He came in a few minutes later, looking a bit disheveled.

"Sorry I'm late", he began. "I just crashed my bike", thus explaining the disheveledness.

I think I was looking at him funnily, mainly because I'd noticed dirt patches on his shirt, a few scrapes, and most noticeably, a decent abrasion on his forehead.

Nonetheless, he commenced sitting down and digging into his backpack like we would just start doing tutor things. And I was thinking, he can't tell me he just crashed his bike and show up with visible fresh wounds without elaborating.

I sought elaboration. 

He said he took his usual route to campus, which includes a short mountain bike trail. He hit a jump he always does, but this time, he missed the landing. 

During the telling of his tale, he paused to make a little "ptooey", noting that, "hmm, I still have some dirt in my mouth".

He then began to assess his wounds, seemingly for the first time. I indicated the scraped forehead and asked if he wore a helmet. He sheepishly pointed to the threadbare baseball cap he'd laid on the desk.

dramatization of his crash description

I mentioned that I also bicycle commute to campus, but not the same way he does - and by "way", I didn't just mean the route.

He had some visible scrapes on his left arm, then he noticed more scrapes on his chest where "this didn't do me any favors", regarding a chain thing he had around his neck, under his shirt.

He said he'd come straight to the tutoring center after arriving on campus, mentioning that others were looking at him on the way in, "like I was a walking story".

I told him not to worry about being a few minutes late, and to go ahead and hit the bathroom to "freshen up" if he wanted. He did.

When he returned, he said, "huh, you were right about my forehead, I didn't even feel anything there", which I found rather concerning.

He certainly seemed lucid enough. He's naturally a very chatty person, and seemed his usual self. Plus, he's a former US Marine, so I know he can take a punch.

I reminded him how adrenaline spikes after such an event, so even though he was feeling fine at the time, the full effects might not kick in until later. He seemed more concerned about his "$150-ish" sport sunglasses he'd broken the earpiece off of.

That out of the way, he whipped out a calculus packet. Most of it was completed, but he wanted help with a word problem.

We read the word problem together, and I started making a sketch to set things up. He stared at the problem, he stared at my sketch, went back to staring at the word problem... this went back and forth a couple more times as I tried to explain the sketch in connection with the words.

Eventually, he looked up from the paper and said, "I think I'm gonna go home".

"I'm in support of that", I replied, "In fact, you should probably go to urgent care"

Be careful out there, kids.

seasonal

• A few weeks ago, I was at the college and came across Boss and a colleague talking in the hallway. It was from them that I learned that Dolly Parton had died.

Not gonna lie, when they saw me and said, "we were just talking about Dolly. Yeah, she died", my first thought was Dolly the cloned sheep. And I thought to myself *she was still alive??*. Coincidentally, I've learned that she, the sheep, was actually named after Dolly Parton because her DNA came from a mammary gland. There you go.

Anyway, the conversation then turned to an opening the colleague had in her department. K is an assistant director in recruiting and advising. She had an opening, which I actually already knew about because Sarge told me he was applying for it.

From this short conversation, I got the vibe that K was wanting me to apply. I do like K, and it would be nice to have her as a boss, but I'm just not interested in a full-time position at this "season of my life". Plus, I know Sarge is really hoping he gets the role.

The job description is nearly exactly that of one I applied for about 10 years ago at the university when we lived in Colorado Springs. At that time, it was very appealing. Needless to say, I didn't get that job. And now we're here, and I appreciate the part-time "season"

• I've been doing some decluttering in little bits the past few weeks. Despite my ongoing efforts, I seem to always manage to come across something that has me saying, "why do we have this??" 

Going through the stash of bicycle tubes, I found eight... count 'em, 8... that don't fit any bicycles in our possession. These things happen when you sell/offload 4 bicycles in the span of a couple of months. 

This, to say I have a new bicycle. I'd been researching for a few months and had been riding the hand-me-up from Meego for nearly a year. The hand-me-up's been good, but it's starting to feel its age.

So I indulged, purchased from a nice local bike shop. 

She is a joy. I've named her Honey.

take a big breath and hold it

I had an abdominal ultrasound, of all things, this morning. Haven't done that since spying on Meego in utero.

Recall that my doctor had me do some blood tests and advised me to cut back on the alcohol and fatty foods. And I was all, "what alcohol and fatty foods?"

The blood test showed a couple of elevated liver enzymes. Same thing the second time. So, ultrasound it is, and again with the "cut back on the alcohol blah blah blah..."

Did the ultrasound and got results in less than an hour while I was back home having my no-alcohol, non-fatty breakfast. Thankfully, everything is boringly normal, as I suspected it would be.

In the meantime, I had googled - as we do - these pesky enzymes. Seems they can be elevated when there's injury or inflammation somewhere. I will blame it on my back which began bugging me a year or so ago. On that, I will blame the backpack that I use for work. Meanwhile, I'm doing PT, which is helping, and experimenting with different backpacks.

So, speaking of backpacks, recall that we got a new Ring doorcam last weekend when our old one went belly up. Along with the purchase came a 30-day trial of their enhanced AI generated descriptions of the goings on.

As an example, I was brushing off this garden tool I used for clearing the big swaths of vegetation on the helms deep road. 

We got it a long time ago, and I don't remember the name of the tool. Apparently Ring AI doesn't know what it is either, so called it a metal detector.

Back to the backpack... When I leave for work wearing a backpack, Ring calls me a child.

But when I return home, I'm a person.

Clearly, that backpack is aging me.