onward

I took a morning bicycle ride today. We're back to high temperatures in the 90s, so best to get out in the morning when the gettin's good.  I enjoy a route that takes me along a shady path near to what is left of our river at this time of year.

As I emerged from the trail, I heard a ruckus from nearby. Further exploration in that direction revealed a morning outdoor spin class happening. 

Here I had just enjoyed a lovely ride along a shady riverside path, and there were people riding bicycles to nowhere on a slab of concrete? Oh well, to each their own. I will add, however, that it was in the outdoor area of a local brewery...

Curious, I googled afterwards, and learned that yes, [this is a thing]. It happens every third Sunday, May through October. 

For fifty bucks, cycle to nowhere, lift some heavy things, buy some beer and hit up the food trucks after. It was well attended, from what I saw. They probably think I'm a weirdo for riding a bicycle that goes somewhere.

In other news, school kids went back this week. Ugh, traffic is gross. We live near a high school, so I'm back to planning my trips around the horrendous first bell/ last bell traffic.

The college where I work and the local university start their fall semesters tomorrow. 

Mother Nature needs to heed the memo that summer's over. Turn down the heat.

did she know?

When I was in high school, I ran on the track team. I was a sprinter. Ours was a small school, and the girls' team was not well populated. As it happened, we had three sprinters on our team - myself and two of my good friends. These friends were Carolyn and Debbie, and the three of us were inseparable and each others biggest cheerleaders. 

We did pretty well for ourselves, gathering a pile of ribbons between us. We also did all of the sprint relays together, the main hitch being that relays consist of four runners, not three. But we were okay with the fact that we would not be finishing near the top in the relays. Coach would find a 4th participant - a distance runner or shot putter or something - and we'd go do our thing.

In fact, I enjoyed the relays the most - the excitement of the baton exchanges. It turned out that I was the fastest of us, so I always had the anchor position. Debbie always ran first, Carolyn ran third, and the [insert 4th runner here] ran second. By the time the baton got to me, we were inevitably behind, but not necessarily last. This was extremely motivating for me. I always had at least one other girl to chase down. 

One race was at the state qualifying meet. The three top teams would go on to compete with the best in the state. We NEVER went to state in a relay nor had any expectations of it. In that particular race, we finished fourth.

As we hugged and congratulated ourselves at our decent showing, Debbie suddenly stopped and said, "Omigod, we got fourth. Just think if one of the teams that beat us dropped their baton or did something else to get disqualified..."

Carolyn and I pondered, realizing, "Omigod, we would go on to compete at state".

Then we all heaved a great sigh of relief over the fact that we would NOT be progressing to the state track meet to be shamed by the best relay teams in the state. Yikes, that was close!

I'm thinking about that because of all the hype about Raygun, the Olympic b-girl from Australia. Clips of her breakdancing performance have been all over the internet. She earned a grand total of zero points through 3 rounds of competition.

I'm just curious, was she truly excited about being selected to compete at the Olympics? Did she realize how embarrassing her "dance" was? Or did she really think she belonged there? Her showing was truly bad, and a bit upsetting, but I'm starting to feel sorry for her for the viral backlash. As such, I will not post one of the many many many related memes to decorate this post. 

But really. What WAS she thinking?

hooky day

I have an atypical Tuesday off today. The college is having an "in-service" gathering - sort of a pep rally to incite excitement for the beginning of fall semester next Monday.  And since we're currently between semesters, the tutor calendar is empty empty.

Full timers are "expected" to attend, part-timers can if we want to, but are not obligated. Suffice to say, none of us part-timers are at the in-service. They tried to entice us with "There'll be food! You'll get paid!", but they lost us at "You hafta stay all day".

We're part-timers for a reason.

I'm sure Boss and Assistant Boss will give us the CliffsNotes. Besides, I'm working all the rest of the week, including Saturday. Star is going on another of her adventures, so I'm filling in for her while also covering for the ready-to-give-birth-any-day Kitty.

As predicted, we got our few glorious days of cold and damp late last week. I, for one, was not climatized and had to break out a fleece.

The sun and heat are back, but not as full on as it was. I sketched this fire ant in response.

I'm at the library under the guise of, "I need to return a book", but really, I just wanted to indulge in a bike ride. 

I dunno, I feel a bit guilty doodling in a sketchbook and going for a joyride on a weekday.

But it beats obligingly attending an in-service for the food and hourly wage.

we're here

Yesterday, Magnum and I were partaking of an old folk's walk, when he said, "We should go somewhere tomorrow", implying an eating establishment perhaps. 

Now, we rarely go out for meals - go on plenty of coffee excursions, maybe throw in a bagel or such - but going out for an actual meal usually involves our kids as well. So I thought for a moment, and responded, "why?"

"It's our anniversary", he smirked.

"OH, heh. I knew that!", I quickly responded, pulling up the calendar in my head.

I do know the DATE of our anniversary, I just hadn't realized it was here already. August?! Wasn't it just May??

As is probably obvious at this point, we don't make a big do on our anniversary. I think of it in the way Vince Lombardi (I think) didn't like touchdown celebrations because he wanted his players to be all, "of course we scored, it's inevitable. Chill out".

Actually, I think the quote is "Act like you've been there before", but that might not carry the same meaning when applied to a wedding anniversary. *AHEM*

Anyway, here we were back then.

Coupla kids signing our lives away.

The wedding was in a little church in my little hometown. We did the traditional things - the flowers, the cake, the white dress, etc. 

The date itself was not particularly "special". As for many, I assume, it was a day on the calendar when the important people were free of other obligations and available to be in the little hometown, and the venue was available.

And *poof* here we are 34 years later.

So yes, we've been here before. It's inevitable, we planned it that way.chill out. ❤️

We did partake of a lovely bicycle ride this morning. I will miss these perfect mornings when we are in the thick of frozen winter. 

We stopped downtown for a coffee break - doesn't count as "go someplace" yet - it was relatively quiet. University students are starting to arrive for the fall semester. Freshmen start moving into their dorms tomorrow.

We sat near a window of the coffee shop and watched as police people walked around, investigating. There was a shooting nearby last night - one dead, one injured. A suspect has not yet been caught. 

We have a pleasant, typically wholesome, downtown area. But sadly, we also have our share of thugs.

mystery machine

I walked out of work today, and there was a helicopter hovering above the campus. I honestly didn't think much of it, didn't even look up, because helicopters are a thing. It's fire season, it's HVAC installation season. 

So I went about doing what I'd planned to do, which was eat a sandwich at the student center. I came back out about 20 minutes later to head home, and the helicopter was still there. This time, I looked up to see it hovering, just hovering above campus. Weird.

I fiddled getting my bicycle unlocked and got my act together. The whole time, the helicopter remained in one spot, pointed in one direction. I figured if there was a dangerous armed fugitive in the area, we'd have been put on lockdown, which we weren't, so I was outta there.

Once at home, I checked my main sources for local news: reddit and facebook. We don't really have a local up-to-date news source, and I don't have a twitter X account, so those would have to do. All I learned was that there'd been a bomb threat at a nearby transit center (bus station). Who / why threaten to bomb a bus station?

Otherwise an uneventful ride home. 

I played with my new pen. I've always liked comic book drawing style, even though I've never been that interested in the comics themselves. I recall "studying" the style in the Sunday funny pages when I was a kid. Now I'm kind of an old lady, and still appreciate it.

So I drew this chibi (short and stubby with a big face) version of Black Widow. I know nothing of her origin story, or her current story for that matter.

She's part of Marvel Comics, but I only know that because I looked it up. 

In other news, we Coloradoans are anticipating a coming cold front. Highs in the 70s, and rain for a couple of days. Sounds glorious. I don't mean to complain but, I am rather sick of the heat.

ridin' in your car, you turn on the radio

 I was on a walk with Pooch Penny last evening. Snapped this pic of the sun. We can't usually look directly at the sun here without burning our eyeballs, so I took advantage of the conditions. There's fire in them thar hills.

The latest on the Alexander Mountain Fire has that it's approaching 10,000 acres and has destroyed 24 structures. Another summer in Colorado. This fire is mostly in the boonies, and is typical and "healthy" in a natural sense. Still tragic for people who own property there.

We had a supervisor from a different campus come to learn from us at work on Monday when this fire first broke out. She'd lost her home in the Marshall fire - an  UNnatural, UNhealthy occurrence - the same [fire that destroyed my brother, Hagrid's home]. 

"That smoke plume is giving me some PTSD", she commented, only half jokingly.

In other, totally unrelated news, I bought some drawing pens that I'm chomping to play with. One thing about traditional (as opposed to digital) drawing as a hobby is that it's so darn inexpensive cheap. I saw someone drawing with this pen while I boredly scrolled instagram recently and determined that I "had" to have it.

But truly, the pen is nothing particularly special. It's just nice for drawing. In fact, it is so unspecial, that I couldn't buy just one. I had to buy a 5-pack for a whopping $8. Jeff Bezos had them delivered to my house for free after I bought some other stuff.

So I'll draw something later for playtime. Now, I'll go tutor. Do the left brain thing, the responsible thing, the people-will-pay-money-for thing. 

smoke and mirrors

It's another day of plentiful staff at the testing center, so I took today off. Boss is a good guy who "will not cut hours", but we know he has a budget to answer to, so Party Girl, Sarge, and I tag team on making ourselves scarce.

Thing is, we're currently overstaffed. Grandboss allowed Kitty to move from a different campus to our campus (closer to where she lives) because of the impending birth of her baby. This is her last week before going on an extended family leave. So it's been a bit of musical chairs.

Today's day of hooky included the fun and excitement of getting  the emissions tested on one of our cars. We have to check emissions every two years, and time was up.  As is typical, the emission test place was staffed with friendly teenagers and young 20-ers. There is a permanent help wanted sign posted noting the perks:

• On the job training
• No evenings or weekends
• No HS diploma required

Then the hitch - "Must be 16 years old and able to drive a manual transmission"

I wonder how many prospects the manual transmission requirement weeds out. Anyway, vehicle 1 (manual transmission😊) passed. Vehicle 2 is up in another month. 

On Sunday, we got together with Wolfgang and Meego to acknowledge Wolfgang's recent birthday. After a delicious lunch where we watched some of the USA women's rugby team literally run over Japan's team, we checked out Wolfgang's new apartment. Nice, modern, priced for the prime downtown location. Pay no attention to the railroad tracks. 

It's another hot one today. Despite that, I indulged in a bicycle ride and am now typing this from the downtown library, where the air conditioning is much appreciated. Adding to the heat struggles, our air quality is in the tank. We've got a [wildfire] burning just over there. It made itself known yesterday, late morning. I'm sure my lungs are mad at me. 

This fire is in the same area that burned back in 2020, just when we'd thought 2020 couldn't get much worse. Magnum and I went hiking near there just a few weeks ago.

If anyone has tips on rainmaking I'll take them. I might wash a car later, that often works.