I went back to work today. The people who had subbed for me ended up doing the things yesterday that I thought I was going to be doing today, so I just took everybody on a long hike. We found some bobcat and raccoon prints in some dried mud, and shortly afterwards found an old Rattlesnake skin under a rusted, tin pipe. Then we caught an Alligator lizard, even though I had to reach into a Poison Oak plant to do it. That's what I get for reacting instead of thinking. I may not get it though. We'll see.
This week's group has been whittled down to 12 kids for some reason. The ones who are left seem to like hanging onto arms, hair, and/or backpacks, making it somewhat difficult to hike. It must seem strange to anybody passing by to see me and the camp aide walking along with all of these children hanging onto us like limpets.

Now I have to go try to deal with my car, which no longer seems to want to shift into the higher gears. It's not that I haven't been expecting this...

cds I listened to on what was apparently my last night driving with my car's original transmission: Uz Jsma Doma "Fairytales from Needland" and "In the Middle of Words", Tom Waits "Cold Beer on a Hot Night" (okay, so it's a bootleg, but I just read in an interview in The Onion with the man himself that he's not above buying bootlegs of his own material from sellers on Ebay. Quote "I didn't know where those tapes were"), and Silver Mountain "Breakin' Chains"