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.

 

getting out

It's a gloomy, grey day today. My spoiled, used-to-lots-of-sunshine self will struggle, but it's doable.

Mondays are typically my reset days - days to schedule floats and makeup tutoring appointments - of which I have neither today. I do have PEO later this evening to prepare for, so I'll need some alertness.

One of my current tutees is a precocious high schooler racking up college credits so to be well on her way to a bachelor's degree before she even graduates high school.

She asked the typical, "What is this for?" regarding her math homework last week. I think I explained its usefulness, but acknowledged that it was a good question regarding today's technology.

"I always like to know why I'm doing something", her reply.

On that note, and with the gloomy outside, I figured I would do a closet purge. Stashing summer things since it's October, and I don't think we'll return to temps in the 90's anytime soon. I plan to toss a few items to the "donate" or "rag" or "trash" pile while asking myself why I'm keeping some things around.

I was inspired by seeing a 9-item capsule wardrobe on Pinterest: 3 tops, 3 bottoms, 2 layers (coats, sweaters), 1 pair of shoes. And I'm thinking, sounds more like a packing list for a 4- or 5-day trip, not an entire wardrobe. I'm not at that level of minimalism.

In addition to Halloween scaries showing up around the neighborhood, I've noticed a few watchers while I'm out wandering about. 

This little guy thought he was being stealth, which he kind of was.

This cat, however, does not have the best camouflage. 

I think he wanted to make sure I saw the sign.

dodging runners, obligatory kisses

Fall is in the air, ya feel it?

Magnum and I enjoyed a noticeably crisp bicycle ride this morning. A welcome transition from the hot hot of summer.

It was a peaceful meander as he's just coming off a crud virus he caught from me a couple of weeks ago, and I just got my annual flu shot yesterday. It worked out since it so happened that this morning, there was a half-marathon happening on the path we took.

I'd hooked up the bike cam to catch some of the fall colors that have just begun, but we mainly had to keep our eyes out for the half-marathoners.

Coupla screen grabs from my grainy video:

I didn't get a covid-19 shot, partly because I highly suspect the crud virus I had was just that. It featured a tell-tale "razor blade sore throat" from the latest version, followed by what felt like a garden variety cold. So hopefully, I'm thoroughly inoculated.

In other news, I'd heard that this last week was homecoming week at my hometown high school. Their social media page listed the royalty, and I found it odd that for each female royalty, two male escorts were named. But, in thinking back, I remembered that yes, there were two boy escorts for each girl.

The escorts for the dance were all members of the football team, but the escorts for the parade and football game half-time were of the non football variety because the players were otherwise occupied. I'd forgotten about that, I mean, it's bean 43 years...

This had me flashing back 43 years to that whirlwind week where I found myself part of the homecoming royalty - this would've been back in my big-fish-in-a-very-small-pond days - and I remembered my full gamut of escorts.

Escort for the dance was the hunky football captain, Ken. Escort for the parade and half-time was the effeminate, good natured, Joe. Joe was clearly gay, but this was the 80's where such things were not really spoken of, but were just understood. I'm sure Joe had his bullies, but he had plenty of good friends, myself included, and he was a pretty popular kid. And again, clearly gay.

So this walk down memory lane took me back to the fun Joe and I had during the parade, and then it was on to the halftime show of the football game. This is a pic from my yearbook of halftime just before we paired off with our respective escorts.

Our names were announced, our escorts handed us a flower of some sort, then gave us a traditional smooch. Joe fulfilled this obligation, probably bregudgingly.

My boyfriend at the time - he'd graduated a year ahead of me and watched from the stands - said that Joe had a big ol' grin on his face after the smooch. I can imagine Joe thinking, "Geez, the sh*t I gotta do for school!", and just having fun with it.

As I was recalling that memory yesterday, I realized, I was likely the first and last girl Joe ever kissed.