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. 

seize the moooment

I'm sitting here in long pants, long sleeves. We had us a cold front! 

Monday got to 100^o F and yesterday topped out in the high 60s. Magnum and I took advantage and went up to Helms Deep to do some trail bustin' in the great outdoors. We hadn't gone up there in about a month mainly because of the heat, wimps that we are.

The hill in the background took on a
fire in 2012,
so those are our burnt trees

It was a nice day and felt very productive and good to be out in the hills. I feel I'm getting better at the business of trail-building looking back on my sorry initial efforts.

We also checked our footage from the trail cam. Plenty of captures in the past month - mostly all dear deer.

Others in the area have reported bears, rattlesnakes, skunks, and a lone moose. We can personally vouch for the mouse population.

We didn't see any deer during yesterday's visit, but as we were leaving, we came upon this garden party going on at the neighbor's.

We'd heard the moos, but didn't spot any of the moocher cows while we slaved away on the trails, but there was a big old bunch of them just up the road. Too many to count.

This particular princess looked at us as if we were the intruders, inconveniencing her. She did reluctantly step aside just enough to let us through and leave her alone.

While there, I took a few pics of what is essentially our driveway. 

We're interested in getting some quotes on having it cleared out and smoothed out somewhat, as it's pretty weedy and rutty.

If only we could train the cows.

throwing hands

Official day 1 of "staycation". Fall semester begins in two weeks, so I'm currently coasting. I do still have a couple of shifts in the testing center and one day of scheduled tutor training, but that's it. 

Right now, I'm at the downtown library, which is one of my "artist date" places. The phrase was coined by Julia Cameron in her book [The Artist's Way] which I read several years ago. 

I'd checked her book out of the library where we lived at the time. I remember chatting with the librarian about it. She'd told me that the library held a series of workshop sessions built around the book, and a man tried to sue them because his wife asked for a divorce after completing the workshop - HA!

Personally, I got a few good takeaways from it, but overall, the book was nothing earth shattering. 

Anyway, I'd ridden my bicycle here, and as I was locking up, a mom and her two kids were unlocking, getting ready to leave. She has one of those "minivan" e-bikes that can hold cargo and kids. There was a girl of about 5 and a little boy about 3. 

The little boy, rather brusquely, asked his mom for something. 

Her: Can you ask it with manners?

Him: Pweeaase?

How to say no?

But speaking of instruction of children and saying "no", I've noticed an annoying (to me) trend.

Okay, first, how is a pen/pencil held? I hold mine as in this example....

Lately, I've been seeing this particular form:

And I'm struggling with that thumb placement.  I even tried to mimic that grasp and it's not working at all for me. My hand practically refuses to contort in such a way. 

These images were taken off of the tube-of-you thumbnails, and I have no idea who the perpetrators are. But I have seen a few such grips in real life, mostly young people - gen Zs and gen alphas.

What is our world coming to?

ring of power

Our power went out last night. I do what most people I imagine do when that happens. I immediately check to see if neighbor homes are without power as well, and usually that's the case. This time, however, the evidence confirmed it was just us. 

It was eerie because we had JUST finished watching [Bugonia]. Honestly, I'd just exited Netflix as the credits had been rolling. For those not familiar, Bugonia is a Sci-Fi, alien conspiracy story starring Emma Stone and Jesse Plemons. It kept me guessing until the end, and I found it brought up several thought-provoking themes. 

So I was deep in the throes of pondering, "what the heck did we just watch?" when *ZHUUUP* Power outage and total darkness and quiet.

We managed to locate our main breaker, which had been tripped, and get the juice flowing again. Logic says it tripped from larger than typical energy usage - likely our AC units - but maybe the aliens were just messing with us. 

We did discover bees or wasps starting to make a hive/nest in our breaker box, and it so happens that bees/beekeeping is a theme in Bugonia. Call me crazy... (or don't. That's okay)

We also watched [Apex] starring Charlize Theron. It was predictable, rather implausible, but entertaining enough. Met expectations, invoked no power outages.

We did a "heated" bicycle ride this morning. Apparently, exerting oneself in the heat has certain health benefits as long as it doesn't kill. We both survived, so I'll consider it a beneficial morning. Shady stretches were much welcomed, sun drenched stretches felt like riding over hot coals. Good balance.

Last weekend, I got a pneumonia vaccine. I noticed that the friendly pharmacist jabbed me nearly right on top of my smallpox vaccine scar. Those of us who own one of those are becoming fewer and farther between. 

Enhanced mine for clarity in the photo. Got one?

It's like having a special license plate that says "vintage" or "classic".

Right??

not grey gardens

This week, the summer semester comes to a screeching halt. All that densely packed material thrown into final exams, and then nothing for a couple of weeks until Fall semester begins. I'm thinking up a few small projects I can do with the downtime from tutoring.

One project I take no credit for is "our" bountiful garden. That was Magnum's thing - building the raised bed and framework to keep the greedy bunnies out, filling the soil, planting and nurturing... 

No lettuce parasites in our burritos!

It's been too much to eat to keep up with, really. Plants will likely keep thriving long after the humans are gone unless we nuke the whole planet.

Speaking of nukes, like many households, we have a microwave oven. I rarely use it, and really only for heating oatmeal or coffee that's gone cold. Magnum often uses it to cook, which kinda grosses me out. He doesn't use it to cook meat, at least (although there was that one chicken tenders incident), but anything else is fair game. 

When the kids were at home, it was useful, but now, I can most definitely live without it. But we keep it around for his sake. At least it sits in a corner under a cabinet, in a space that would be pretty useless as a surface anyway. And once the zucchini and summer squash is ready for harvest, I will confiscate them and bar them from said microwave! 

Speaking of kids at home, I find I get nostalgic this time of year with the back-to-school fervor. The school supply lists, the clothes and shoes shopping. Weird, the things we miss.

But I don't miss being responsible for dinner. Every. Single. Day.