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.

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.

in conclusion

Aren't blogs handy? Before blogging became a thing, I'd never journaled or kept a diary or any of that stuff. Who knows how much I've forgotten??

But with blogging, we can dip into the archives an unearth all kinds of boring things. Let's recap 2023 on this new year's eve, shall we?

January - learned about the formation of pornographic ice

February - noped out of winter bike-to-work

March - did my last Tortoise-and-Hare race for the '22/ '23 season

April - went geocaching, thinking to restart, never to geocache again for the remainder of the year.

May - involuntarily listened to a family fight while dining out on Mother's Day

June - yessed to summer bike-to-work

July - partied with step-father-in-law for his 90th birthday

August - encountered a man in a public bathroom, only to realize "he" was a bearded woman

September - became a scribe for a college math student with cerebral palsy

October - completed all but one of the 31 inktobers

November - completed another year of life on Earth

December - gonna go make some fried rice, I think

See ya next year!

hype, plumpies, doodles

A little weekend reflection...

Random happenings:

• In this week's excitement, we got a new fridge. His name is Coolio.
  
  
• The general area seems to be on a collective hangover following last night's college football match-up between Colorado and Colorado State. The two state rivals meet annually for the "Rocky Mountain Showdown", and both teams have been pretty bad the last few years.

This year, there's the whole hype train surrounding CU football, and the showdown was expected to be a blowout.  CSU apparently got tired of hearing about it, and they actually showed up for the show down, eventually taking a loss, but making CU play double overtime to get the win. I didn't watch any of it, but it's difficult to escape the hype around here. I'm exhausted just thinking about playing 2 football overtimes.

• A childhood friend of mine invited me to friend his running-for-mayor-of-hometown facebook page. He's changed both his first and last names, and he's always been a bit goofy. At first, I wondered if it was a joke page, but it seems he's legit running. 

Honestly, I've often wondered if he's undiagnosed bipolar. Not that running for mayor of a small town is too far out there, but I think it's a bit out of his league. But hey, who knows?

 A news story that caught my attention:

Fernando Botero, the Columbian artist, died last week at the age of 91. He was known for "plump, inflated forms" like this...

He was a prolific painter, apparently painting every day, all day.

I have no idea why he focused on the plump, but it made him lots of moulah.

A Triumph of the week:

• I joined that gym I did a trial at last week. I typically go to the gym and try to get strong a couple of times a week - or at least go through the motions. This new gym is a step up from where I'd been going.

A Challenge of the week:

• My Father-in-law and his wife were planning a visit in a couple of weeks, but FIL sprained/ strained a hip, so he's resting and had to cancel the trip. FIL has always been quite fit for his age, and he's now 89.

Looking ahead:

Speaking of art and challenges, the prompt list for Inktober '23 has been released. I plan to participate once again. Highly doubtful to get all 31 prompts, but we'll see where I end up. Seems all I do is doodle during downtime, so we'll see what happens this Inktober

weekend mash-up

I'm nursing yet another spider bite. A couple of weeks ago, I had three - count 'em, three - spider bites at various locations on my head. Annoying, itchy, oozy things. I assume a spider was in my bicycle helmet when I unknowingly put it on? Then it had a munch fest?

Friday morning, I woke up with another telltale bump. This one on my chin. It has oozed for the last couple of days, and I think we're almost done, but sheesh.

Us at our flashiest

Magnum and I racked up another year of wedded bluster bliss this week. That makes 33 of them so far. Egads! 

No big celebratory antics, just mutual acknowledgement and back to it. We're both so dang low maintenance, and that's probably the biggest factor in our "success".

In this week's news, certainly the devastating fires of Maui caught our attention. We've had our fair share of scary wildfire in Colorado, and I think of Hawaii as being in the tropics and not as susceptible, but, sadly, no.

And on a local sad note, the local bike club planted yet another ghost bike. This one a memorial for a 10-year-old boy. 

Heartbreaking. 

Ghost bikes shouldn't be this small.

The work week ahead looks good with Boss and Assistant Boss away at a conference. I honestly can't imagine how one fills a whole week at a Testing Conference, but they're off on their adventure, and maybe the mice will play.

Fall semester classes begin a week from tomorrow. *WHOOSH* ← The sound summer makes as it leaves the chat.

let that one go

We're enjoying spring-like weather around here this weekend. Whoop it up because it won't last, so I'll try to live in the moment.  

On that note, Winter Bike-to-Work Day was Friday morning. It was sunny, no real wind to speak of, icy in patches. 

It was 15 degrees. We noped out. That was too cold to be spending that long outdoors and bicycling around town. The coffee and sweet rolls are only so warm.

For the record, I did bike to work later in the day when the temps made it into the 30s. So, I biked to work,  I just didn't bike-to-work. 

Other weekly reflect-upons:

It's changing of the guard time in PEO. My new chapter asked me to be Vice Prez. This means they've unspokenly asked me to be Prez this time next year. I said, "yeah okay, why not..." We'll see what the year brings.

My coworker, Party Girl, confided to me that she's cut off her bff. Bff is a friend that Party Girl grew up with and has been texting with regularly since they reconnected a couple of years ago.  We'll call him "Mo". Party Girl would give us little anecdotes about what Mo's been up to as he's a bit of a character.

So I went into work on Thursday and Party Girl quietly told me she'd cut him off and told him to not contact her anymore, she was clearly upset. She realized there were some red flags with his personality. Then, in their last conversation, Mo mentioned to PG that he'd witnessed a "sexual assault" (I don't know the details) on a girl from a boy in a high school classroom in which he was working as a substitute teacher. Instead of reporting the incident, he just made the kid do a few pushups in the hall. No other reprimand, no reporting it to school officials.

Party girl was livid, disgusted - she wouldn't detail the assault when she told me - and decided to immediately cut Mo off. She said she'd been up late the night before ruminating on her and Mo's relationship by writing writing writing.

Now, I know this is something PG does. Last spring? When we had that issue with Nurse Ratchet and ended up reporting her to HR? Party Girl went to a back room and ranted with pen and much paper while working things out in her mind. It's an effective coping strategy for her.

Anyway, I told her I was proud of her for realizing the relationship was toxic and cutting Mo off, regardless of their long friendship history. 

I give Party Girl a hard time sometimes (in my head) because of her drinking problem that she seems to take a sort of college girl pride in. But on the other hand, she is strangely observant, thoughtful, and  responsible. 

Who knows what she'd be like without the booze?