Days In A Daze

The frequency of my posts has dipped a bit due to my schedule upending itself this week. I'm now almost completely diurnal again, at least for the rest of this school year. My first week back in the field as an instructor was an easy one, with bright kids and even a little bit of rain! We had found a few salamanders early in the week, and they all looked kind of thin and dry. The kids even found an Ensatina sitting on top of a log. Perhaps it felt the pressure drop, or maybe it was doing a rain dance before we interrupted it. Whatever the reason might have been, this is the first time we've ever found one on top of a log instead of under it. Of course, the cynic in me whispers that perhaps one of the kids put it there and then lied about it (I tell them not to touch Ensatinas because they are lungless salamanders, and do their breathing through pores that can easily be clogged by contact with human skin). Up by the creek, the ladybugs are clustered in their thousands, wintering in weather that has more in common with Spring. Out of the 23 kids in my group, 22 lasted the week. One girl went home on Thursday morning due to illness, and I was sad to see her go. She was very excited to be at camp and was crushed that she would have to miss the last couple of days.

Due to nearly 100% cloud cover, we had to inflate our portable planetarium on Tuesday evening so I could teach about constellations and actually have a visual aid.

I managed to successfully complete my goal of walking 100 miles in January, but only just. No goal for February yet. I tried out my pedometer and it seems to be fairly accurate. I walked nine miles on Thursday alone.

Thursday night, Jeanine and I went to see Willow perform as the Scarecrow in her school's version of The Wizard of Oz. Most of the kids did an excellent job. I went back again on Saturday and saw it again, only missing the third and final performance due to snoozing on picking up a ticket in time. I was over by the dressing/make-up rooms though, and heard part of the third performance through the outside speakers. I also watched the hapless volunteers wrangling the offstage actors, and I can report that the kids playing the flying monkeys were very well cast. The Tin Man was pretty good at using his ax as a guitar too. Right now, Willow is at a girl scout meeting. Cookie sales are coming soon! She's having a busy weekend.

Greg had a performance on Friday evening, which I'll write about in my music blog. Willow's performances book-ended his, and during my second viewing, I realized that Willow was performing in a bigger venue (an elementary school "cafetorium") and in front of a bigger audience (parents and other relatives, mostly). She also rehearsed a lot more, since play rehearsals started in September. I guess this is a good little anecdote to share with people contemplating becoming performers of any type. That fifth grade role in the play may be the peak of your career, at least if you care about venue and audience size.

Here's a photo of an impression of the stamp I carved and hid last Sunday. So far, one person has found it.