Geekdom is a force to be reckoned with locally. On the way home from work, I noticed that the "do not pass" sign placed beside the road where two lanes merge into one had been modified to say, "you shall not pass!" Visions of Gandalf flickered through my head.

It has been a pretty good work week. We found a Dobson Fly larva in the creek, which tried to take a bite out of my finger but missed. The small Stonefly larva in shared the little bug container with wasn't so lucky. Later on, we found some spotted Banana slugs, which are much less common than the yellow ones. Maybe we should just call them Rotten Banana slugs, since this is what they resemble.
Wednesday night marked the first time I did the astronomy powerpoint presentation by myself, and the first time I presided over the planet walk (which I had never even seen before). These two things are usually handled by our lead teacher (sort of like a vice principal, but friendlier since he's not in charge of discipline) who was a major force in creating astronomy night. He's in San Diego this week though, so we were on our own. There are two field staff members working each night program (with the exception of the night hike, when everybody is present) and my coworker for the evening had never seen, much less helped run, the astronomy program before, so it was pretty much up to me to make sure things went well. There was a moment of panic after I plugged in the laptop and attached the projector to it when all I could it to project was a grim pair of words that said, "no signal." A quick phone call to our other site produced a solution: the projector had to be turned on before the computer. By this time all of the kids were sitting, patiently waiting for things to start. As I fiddled around with the electronics, I explained to them what the word "luddite" meant.
After this, things went smoothly. The classroom teachers ended up being pretty impressed, which is a big compliment since both of us were doing our respective jobs for the first time.

Sophie is standing next to me trying to get me to let her play video games. I'm resisting. Now she's saying she's not my friend because I won't help her. There is just no middle ground with small children.