The rat is still in the compost. He jumped up again when I was watering it down. This time I was able to see where he went, and when I squeaked at him in my best rat voice he actually stopped and came back, perching on top of the wooden, rafter-like beams above the compost bin, probably thinking to himself, "you ain't a rat, so why the hell you squeaking?".

The boys have completed their second day of school, and seem to be enjoying it. Jen took Lexy this morning, and later on we all walked Nate to school. The girls managed to displace all of the water in several puddles outside of his classroom, laughing and smiling all the while. And getting very muddy, of course. Next time we'll stop them before it gets so out of hand. But dammit, it was so cute.

There are signs up in the neighborhood warning people about local coyotes. It seems that the partial remains of several cats and dogs have been found littering peoples' yards. The town paper had an article about it as well. Gives a whole new meaning to the term "pet food".

No new news on the job front. And to make matters worse, it's supposed to get hotter by the weekend. That's insult to injury. Poor and sweltering. At least the nights are cool.

The patchy clouds have done little to cut down the heat, at least during the middle of the day. I'm finding that one of the benefits of actually getting up in the morning is that it's nice and cool for a few hours. This is a good time to get things done, before the heat sucks all the energy away and all I want to do is sit in the shade.

I'm nervously checking my bank balance, waiting for that last summer camp paycheck to appear there. I like direct deposit, but sometimes it seems like just one more way for things to go wrong. What if my paycheck gets electronically transferred into the internet equivalent of a dead letter office? What if a retiree from Des Moines was the recipient of my e-mailed timesheet? I'll check again tomorrow.

I took Willow to a barbeque at an old friend's house on Saturday. That's right. House. You know you've hit some sort of temporal plateau when your childhood friends start buying houses. Especially in this area. That's more of a feat than having kids. Anyway, Willow had a great time pulling up the decorative pinwheels stuck in the dirt out back, chasing the small dogs, and eating handfuls of mini chocolate chip cookies. She also expressed fondness for one of the doormats - the one emblazoned with pictures of small dogs. As for me, I got to try barbequed portabello mushrooms (with soy sauce and garlic) and barbequed rice balls (also with soy sauce and garlic). Yummy. I also admired the hardwood floors that my friend was crazy enough to put in himself. I left when Willow started acting tired. Not that she was about to admit it, of course. She was having too much fun. She pointed to the rising moon as we left. She always notices the moon. She was asleep before we were off the block.

(Slight pause while I go and rescue Nate from the really large, apparently fearsome, spider in the bathroom)

Almost September. Hopefully it will be a good month.

I saw a guy driving on the wrong side of the road on the way to work today. I think that he realized his mistake at the very moment I spotted him, because he came to a stop and started directing traffic, making little "after you" gestures with his hands, all the while studiously avoiding any eye contact. Drunk or just really confused? From the UK? Reckless performance artist? I'll never know.

At work, I discovered that a large rat had moved into one of the compost piles in the garden. It shot straight up into the air while I was hosing down the pile, vanishing into the large rosebush above. Try as I might, I couldn't find where it was hiding.

The weather was boring today - cloudless and warm. It's hard to be inspired about anything under these conditions. I need some fog, or clouds with the threat of rain. Maybe one of those freak storms where it rains fish.

It looks like our financial situation is going to get pretty grim before it gets better. I have a few job possibilities on the horizon, but things on the horizon always seem to take their sweet time getting right up next to you. I've done one interview for a full time position, I have another interview (for a part time position) scheduled for next week, and I just filled out another online application. This last job looks really good, but doesn't start until the middle of October. This last fact relegates it to "plan C" status. There's at least one other place that I haven't heard back from at all.

I hate that lag time between the interview and the final decision. I know it's necessary, but I still hate it.

Hopefully soon I can look back on this with the contented smile of a person with a full time job. Or at least a couple of good part time ones. If I was independently wealthy, I would just volunteer at wildlife centers or Hidden Villa or wherever the hell else I felt like working. Money is just an abstraction. It's just dirty little bits of metal and paper. It has no intrinsic value.

Bring back the barter system!

Below: Would you shake hands with this cat?

I once got severance pay for a job that I didn't lose. Today I had a job interview at my current place of employment. Life is funny.

There is a reason that I'm drawing pictures of myself. Really.

The boys' bedtime story tonight was another biography about the Wright Brothers. After reading a bit about early flight experimentation with hot air balloons, I decided that the boys had to see the opening scene from Andrei Tarkovsky's Andrei Rublev, which I am now certain must have been inspired by an incident in France when a pair of inventors got their balloon to fly for around a mile, only to have it torn apart by frightened peasants after it settled to earth. Both of the boys found it interesting, even though the film is in black and white, and subtitled - two nearly unpardonable sins in the eyes of the young. Kids these days...

We should never let our fear of the unknown inspire brutish behavior. It's just uncouth. Loutish, even. Oh, wait, the president does it. Must be okay then. Imagine all of those french peasants with the face of George W. Bush - semi simian, and not quite comprehending what it is that they're in the process of destroying. It's a frightening image to be sure.

I had planned to park in the loading dock on friday morning, but they had chosen that day to start putting in a new gate, so I parked on the lawn next to the garden instead, which is the best parking place I've ever gotten. I wish I could always park there, but sadly that just isn't going to happen. They let me do it only because I had all of the reptiles and bugs and such with me.
It didn't take me long to discover that it doesn't matter how often or well I wash my hands - if I've been holding other critters, the Water Monitor is going to try to take a bit out of me. Consequently, he spent the morning in his cage. The python spent the morning in the plants in the garden. All of the creatures were popular, so I spent hours rotating them in and out of their cages.
Author Gary Bogue (see previous post) and illustrator Chuck Todd showed up at around 1:30 or so, and I had a good time talking to them in between answering questions and getting out animals. Gary had lots of interesting anecdotes about strange, exotic wildlife encounters, including a time when he had to rescue a Wallaby from someone's garage. Sounds like a dream job to me. At 2:00 they gave a short talk and handed out some cool posters to the assembled children. At this point, I was already packing up so I could make it over to my next engagement (this makes me sound busier than I actually am somehow) at the church summer school. Too bad. It would have been fun to stick around longer.
The church presentation took place outside, with small groups of small children coming and going. The python kept trying to sneak off while I wasn't looking, but since he's slow I always caught him. The Monitor remained in his cage.
I was delayed going home by heavier than usual traffic, which I found out later was caused by a freeway closure that came about when a woman threatened to jump off an overpass. It took hours for the police to talk her down. I'm not sure why they needed all of the helicopters though.

Last night I went up to Berkeley to see The Mysterious Mr. Looney, a play about the controversy surrounding the authorship of Shakespeare's plays. Sound by G. An enjoyable evening out, as is always the case with Central Works plays. Next weekend is the final one. Go see it if possible.

Today I cleaned the yard. Wahoo!

There were a few wispy clouds punctuating the blue today, but not enough to make it much cooler. The air conditioner at work did the trick though.

It's strange only working one job - kind of like being on vacation. It's funny that while I'm enjoying not having to set my alarm clock, I'm looking forward to having to set it again. Actually, I will have to set it tonight because I'm working the morning shift tomorrow so that I can present another animal program for the church summer camp people. I'm really going to have to rush though, because I'm staying an extra hour at the museum so that my shift overlaps with the arrival of Gary Bogue, who wrote a book called The Raccoon Next Door - Getting Along With Urban Wildlife. I'll be on hand with my wildlife. Should be interesting.




Here's a drawing I did for my Wild Images camp last month. It's a Water Monitor skull, which illustrates why I don't let kids hold my Water Monitor. He's got a good sense of smell, and if you've been holding or eating something that he likes, he'll smell it and try to eat you.

The post I just wrote fell victim to an "internal server error". Figures. There's something to be said for paper and pen. Handwritten stuff never gets sucked into the ether.

I made another convert to the "snakes are all right" club today, which always makes me smile. I had the Milk Snake with me today at the museum, and a girl who was terrified of snakes found the courage to touch it (with some help and encouragement from her mom). It's always heart warming to see somebody work through their fears like that.

Then, looking up, I discovered that the "felt art" sign had been tampered with again. The sign is made of felt stuck to a felt board, and the idea of the exhibit is to create your own art by sticking little scraps of felt onto the pre-framed spaces on the wall. I've lost count of how many times I've looked up to find that the sign has been changed to spell out "felt fart". Kids.

Here's a picture of a Horned Toad that was taken on the same trail as the last lizard picture I posted, but two years earlier.

I went to a couple of shows this weekend. The first was the Cowboy Junkies at the Mountain Winery. I'm not sure whose idea it was to put a winery at the top of a narrow, winding road. On the plus side, all of the larger tree trunks are painted white to help the drunks navigate on the way down. There were plenty of people wandering around at the show with little, plastic wine cups, comfortable in the knowledge that the white trees would see them safely home. But I digress - the show itself, which started minutes after we (Jen, Lexy, and I) plopped our butts down on the wooden bleachers, was quite good. They've added an accordian player, who lends a little extra something to the songs, making them perhaps even more melancholy than before. The sky darkened above us as they played, which is an added bonus. Outdoor shows in the hills are great, even if the damn corporate venue charged us ten dollars to park our van. Oh well.
Having only Lexy with us, I was reminded that he's still quite a little kid. He always looks so big when compared to the other three, who were home with granny. Willow, who had never been left behind before, did well. She's starting to realize that those grandmother people are part of the family, and so must be trusted. She even cried a bit when my mom left the other day.

The other show was last night, and featured three bands, two of which I saw. I went with a couple of old friends, Allan and Steve. We got to the Bottom of the Hill in San Francisco in the middle of the first band's set, but stayed outside talking until after they were done. The second band, Earthless, did a two-song set comprised of one monstrous seventies inspired instrumental jam and a shorter song with vocals. The drummer was pretty incredible. The guitarist wheedled on a bit though. Minor quibbles aside, they were enjoyable.
Om headlined. This time, unlike their show last month, I could hear the vocals, which had a mantra-like quality to them. The absence of a guitarist is not an issue here. The wall of sludge created by the bass and drums is more than enough to satisfy. I'm looking forward to hearing the cd when it's released in February on Holy Mountain records.

Today, it was hot and I worked at the museum. No more summer camp. Too bad.




These are the final two pictures in a series of 125. At least for the present.

I forgot to mention that I finally found out what the instrument I always refer to as "that wooden recorder-like instrument" is actually called. It's a tarka. People had been asking me what it was so often that I finally got online and researched it. Pretty easy actually - I just typed in "Bolivian musical instruments" and ten minutes (or so) later I had my answer. I feel pretty silly that it took me a decade of owning the damn thing to find out what it was.

And now, you must find the lizard.

The sun has set on the last day of summer camp. This morning, the fog that has kept me company on the way to work for the bulk of the week was mostly missing. We started things off by making small compost columns out of plastic bottles - a portable compost pile! What will they think of next? The rest of the day was largely given over to hiking and playing a variation of hide-and-seek called camouflage. The seeker had to stay put, and could do nothing more than rotate in place. The hiders had to hide in such a way that they could be visible, at least in part, to the diligent seeker. Afterwards, with very little time to spare, we went and visited the Pacific Giant Salamander larvae in the creek. The kids wanted to name the one we caught, so I told them that it was a wild animal and didn't need a human name. They persisted, so when I put it back in the creek, it was saddled with a name. "Squirmy". Good God.

One of the girls told me that when I played music that it made her happy and glad to be alive. Everybody had a great last day - even the immature genius. We had more good discussions about the need for wilderness and the need for wilderness protection. This was the only camp all year that was old enough to really get into this type of discussion. It felt good to really get deeply into the matter and not just scratch the surface like I had to do with most of the other camps.

So now I'm semi-unemployed. I only have one part-time job. This has to change soon. Tonight I wrote yet another cover letter for a position that looks like it won't start until late September. I don't quite meet the qualifications either, but I think the experience I do have substitutes quite nicely. We'll see. I will apply for others too. We're a bit stressed though.

Times are interesting. It's too early to tell whether it's a curse or a blessing. I've just noticed that I can do all sorts of crazy stuff with the text too. ha ha.

Once a year, towards the end of summer, the more or less monthly staff meeting at the museum becomes a party. This year it was a karaoke party, which made me less than enthusiastic... until I noticed that there were some Black Sabbath songs in the karaoke book... A co-worker joined me in a rousing rendition of "War Pigs", which hopefully won't ruin my chances of securing one of the coveted full-time positions there (As a member of the floor staff, I work less than 20 hours a week) that recently got posted.
Jen and the kids were all there too. Lexy, with the help of a musuem staff member, sang a couple of songs - "Zip a dee doo dah" and "All Star" by that band Mushmouth or Fatmouth or whatever they're called. He did a really good job too - much better than most of the adults. Nathan, with a little help from me and some hinderance from The Dickens, sang "Twinkle, twinkle little star". The Dickens pouted and shouted and threw her inflatable microphone to the ground before stomping off stage - all because nobody would let her near the real microphones. Somebody commented that she was acting like a real rock star. Willow splashed in the decorative fountain, which is really more of a decorative rivulet, perfect for floating those little pencils (at every table for signing up for karaoke songs) in and watching them go over the waterfall at the end.

Okay, gotta go get cookies out of the oven. Bye.

The computer is being extra slow tonight. I'm sure a species became extinct somewhere in the world during the time it took to load the blogger page. That's sad in many ways.

Speaking of extinction, the deer population at Sanborn Park is one individual closer to it. There was a dead deer out in front of the visitor center this morning. It didn't look like it had been attacked - it was just sort of laying there with its head thrown back and its eyes half open. The ranger came and removed it before the kids arrived.
This week, I have nine campers, although so far only eight have shown up at the same time. There seems to be some kind of illness going around again. One of the kids is sort of surly and fed up with being shipped off to various camps every week for the whole summer. Another one is really intelligent, and reads Scientific American when he isn't tackling complicated calculus problems (or so he says). He does seem to know a lot of things that I'm surprised an elementary school kid knows. He's also an athiest and hates the president, which is fun. As a whole, this group seems to like discussing politics, which I allow as long as it doesn't stray too far from the environmental issues we're studying. Now if I can just keep the surly kid from needling the smart one and making him shout, maybe we'll make it through the week with our collective sanity intact.
At the end of camp, we found half a rat. A Yellowjacket had bellied up to the open end and was feasting away. Some of the kids thought this was interesting...

It's hot.

We did end up going to the beach after all, but not before we stopped in at the new library so the boys could check out a stack of books and videos. The Dickens threw a minor, "you're a stupid poopoo and I hate you," fit when denied vending machine goodies, and Willow decided that all of the books in the children's section looked much better on the floor.

We left the 90 degree heat of the valley and headed over the hill to the beach, which was fogged in. A steady wind blew mist and sand across the beach while the girls shivered. I gave The Dickens my sweater to wear, and it was so big on her that she could tuck her feet inside it. I tied the sleeves around her to keep it in place. We met up with some friends there, who went and got a large pizza for us to share. The seagulls thought that this included them, so hovered above us waiting for an opportunity to make off with anything that looked unguarded.
We decided to pack it in and convene back at our friends' house for ice cream and a fire in their outdoor fireplace. I finally got to try garlic ice cream, which is much better than you might think. The banana ice cream was pretty good too. The kids (between the two families, there were 7) all had a great time. The whole scene brought to mind a tribe sitting around their campfire at night. We sang songs and told stories and relaxed (as much as you can relax when 7 small children are bouncing all over the place, anyway). Good times.

Tomorrow I start the final week of the summer camp season. It's a camp called Wild Wonders, and is kind of a general overview of subjects that naturalists study.

I was so wet after the last day of the Wet & Wild camp that it took me several hours to dry. Since it was warm, I didn't mind much. This came about because we played with water balloons, and because of an activity that is meant to show kids how we all take our water supply for granted - in other words, we hauled lots of water up a hill, pretending that we were villagers taking bathwater to a very smelly chief who lived up on top of the mountain. Of course, the kids discovered that there was a faucet at the top of the hill (an expansive lawn on a slope) and used it to keep refilling their cups so they could soak me. Definitely a good way to keep cool on a warm day.

Today, we're just kind of hanging around until we figure out what to do. The boys don't want to go to the beach for some reason. We might go to the library instead.

I'm listening to the new Eleni Karaindrou soundtrack for Theo Angelopoulos' The Weeping Meadow. This has the same lonely melancholy feel that her other scores have, with drifting sounds provided by violin, piano, accordion, harp, lyra, double bass, french horn, violincello, and the Hellenic Vocal Ensemble. Jen says that every time she hears Karaindrou, she pictures Harvey Keitel, due to his appearance in Angelopoulos' Ulysses' Gaze, also scored, of course, by Karaindrou. Beautiful music for gray, rainy days or, as the case is here, imagining gray, rainy days.

Two more pictures. I only have two more to draw after this, and then I'm done illustrating the 125 stories I have so far written for the OAC. Then I'll have to go back to thinking about what to draw next.

I caught a Gopher Snake today - a really beautiful one with some orange along the sides. One of the campers spotted it crawling onto the asphalt of the private road near our table, so I picked it up and showed it around before letting it go in the garden. One of the little boys nearby reached down after it, but it vibrated its tail and hissed at him, thus giving everybody a demonstration of how Gopher Snakes mimic Rattlesnakes.

I also handed over a couple of resumes in the hopes of getting a job or two. Fingers crossed.

I took the kids on a longer hike today. We went up past the campgrounds and on up the hill. The same two girls as yesterday were up in front most of the time. I caught a small scorpion that I found under a board near the apex of the hike. It ran up and down my arms with its little pinchers held out in front. They're so cute when they do that. Most of the kids thought it was really cool. A couple were a bit less sure.

We buried Lucky the rat in the backyard today. The kids are still really upset about her death. It's funny in a way. They think it's really cool when the Python or the Water Monitor are eating one, but if you name one and put it in cage of it's own, it quickly becomes a member of the family. R.I.P. Lucky.

Two more days of camp this week, and five days next week. Then it's over.

I'm listening to T.A.C. "Twilight Rituals" right now, softly so it doesn't keep the little ones up. I saw them in France around nine years ago, and can't believe it's been nearly a decade since I first went overseas. I remember the guitarist kept apologizing because he had recently broken his arm (or something) and felt that his playing wasn't up to snuff. It sounded fine to me, but what do I know?. The music on the cd I'm currently listening is kind of glitchy, but vaguely nocturnal sounding. Distant voices, mostly female, singing behind fractured melodies. Quite calming, actually. It sounds a bit like Coil in spots.

The Pacific Giant Salamander babies still populate the cold, mountain creek up at Sanborn Park. I took the campers on a hike today to visit them. Two of the campers are strong hikers. Most of the rest are not. They did think the salamanders were pretty cool, although at least one of the kids seemed to think that the Water Striders were cooler. Oh well. I try.

I got a couple of new tires today, and got the leak fixed. I also wrote a couple of cover letters, mailed the rent, and sent some money to a friend on the east coast (for spare tickets sold in Toronto in June), picked up the backyard, read some books to the boys... The boys needed some gentle book reading time because Lucky the rat finally succumbed to old age. At least I assume it was old age. The boys are pretty broken up about it. We'll bury her in the backyard tomorrow sometime.

Nate says my job makes me fart because I work for the Youth Science Insti-toot. The boy's a comedian.

The girls outnumber the boys 6 to 1 in this week's camp, so you'd think things would be a little calmer. Not so. The girls seem to delight in trying to climb me and the camp aide, or jumping on our shoulders when we least expect it. The boys seem a little dubious about being in a camp of mostly girls. Water is the main focus of the week, so we did the introductory stuff today, with detours to look at newts and millipedes and frogs - all which can be easily linked to the subject at hand. Then again, so can anything living.

The littlest girl kept belching really loudly, as if trying to make up for her lack of height with sheer volume.

I had a flat tire this morning which defeated my bicycle pump. Time to throw the pump away. It leaks worse than the tire does. That's what I get for using it to pump up car tires for the last decade or so. This is only as a last resort. If I have any of that "fix-a-flat" stuff, I use it. I would have thought that this particular tire was filled solid with the stuff by now. No such luck. Perhaps I'll actually go get it repaired tomorrow.

We stayed close to home today because, let's face it, the only time we can really get anything done is when the older kids are at their dad's house. We spent the whole day cleaning, typing, and running little errands. I feel more or less prepared for this week's camp, and more or less prepared to send my resume out into the hands of prospective employers. This month is going to be a little stressful, since I probably won't know towards the end of it whether or not I've gotten a new job. I feel sort of like I used to feel in college, with finals approaching. Hopefully, in a month or less, I'll be able to replace this feeling with the one that follows the end of finals - giddy relief.

The crickets are madly singing in the scorpion cage. Not all of the kids are asleep yet. Willow's teeth have been bugging her. I can hear her fussing in the other room. It's almost like everybody else is becoming nocturnal now that I'm finally on a diurnal schedule. Perhaps I should become strictly crepuscular. I like sunsets. It's the in between times that are the most interesting, because they lead to something new.