Eight Down, One To Go

the sun is setting on the eighth week of Summer Camp as I type. I have a good view of the west from our bedroom window, which is nice change from my apartment, where the window offered a view of my messy patio and a few dying treetops. The sunset pictured above is from last night, as I prepared to drive home from camp. Its sublime orangeness was appreciated by many.

This week, Alex was my counselor and he did a fine job, anticipating problems and jumping in to help where needed during the week. He's coming up next week with Nathan. All four of the kids where on hand Thursday evening for the BBQ/campfire program, and Willow finally won the raffle, becoming the proud owner of an R2D2 collector case and a Jar Jar Binks poster. At least she didn't get the life-sized George Bush (Senior) cardboard standup. Ha. These prizes, by the way, come about due to our camp director's dedication to the flea market. He finds the most amazing garbage.

Jeanine is out working right now, and I'm home resting after finishing a day of work. Of course "resting" means writing, at least for the moment. There are other things that need doing, of course, and they are gradually getting done. We haven't whipped the house into shape as quickly as I had expected us to, but it is slowly getting done in a more organic fashion, with little improvements happening on an almost daily basis. I have a couple of weeks off soon, and I plan on using them productively, because my summer camp schedule doesn't allow a lot of time (or when there is time, extra energy) to accomplish major tasks.

This week was a hot one, although I shouldn't complain because I recently saw an article noting that this is the hottest summer in the U.S. since people started paying attention to such things. The Bay Area has been more or less spared from this, with temperatures ping ponging around in the mid-eighties for the most part. Today it was in the mid-nineties.

Currently listening to: Murder By Death "10 Years" box set

Of Moons and Scorpions

Week 7 of Summer Camp is winding down. Willow has been at camp this week, climbing, creating, and playing. In the air, there is a palpable fog of disbelief that August has arrived. Many kids are due back in school well before the end of the month. We old folks have been reminiscing about the days when school didn't restart until after Labor Day.

The week flew by without any real distinguishing marks. Nobody got attacked by Yellow Jackets, although I did note a few new locations. More accurately, what I did was confirm a couple of nest locations I'd heard about, and a camper spotted another one. Last night, there was a glorious moonrise, which happened in conjunction with the start of the night hike. This morning, when I opened my eyes, it was to the sight of the moon softly sinking beyond the hilltops to the West. All this and a paycheck too.

The most interesting critter find of the week was a freshly-molted Forest Scorpion under a rock, which is something I hadn't seen before. Uncomfortable in its vulnerable state, it whipped its stinger around in a miniature frenzy, so after taking a few photos, we left it alone.

Currently listening to: Monolyth & Cobalt "E.Co - Boxset Vol. 1-4"

10 Years

Ten years ago today, I sat down in front of an old desktop computer and typed out my first short post for this blog.

Now, I'm typing on a laptop, two residences removed from the one I lived in a decade ago, and searching for something profound to say about it all. Much has changed around me. When I started this blog, I was childless and preparing to get married. Now, I have a 9 year old daughter and I'm preparing to get married a second time (we're looking at November).

Sometimes months will go by without an entry here, but I always come back. It's almost like a responsibility - something I've started and must continue. Not many people read this, but I feel like I can't abandon what I've begun, if only for myself and my own reasons. I actually get a kick out of going back and reading the older posts - they're like a message from the past.

How long this will continue is anybody's guess.

Currently listening to: Monolyth & Cobalt "Eilean"

Caves and Graves, Trees and Wasps

Like last year, this year we ended up spending our summer vacation week visiting an amusement park and a succession of caves. In fact, it was the same amusement park as last summer, mainly because it was on the way to the caves.

The caves were closer to home than last year, and unfortunately all of them were the guided tour type of excursion, rather than like the Lava Beds caves we visited last year, where one is allowed to wander at will. That aside, the caves were fantastic. We went to Black Chasm, California Caverns, Mercer Caverns, and Moaning Cavern, even finding the time to do a night of car camping and Sequoia-ogling at Calaveras Big Trees State Park. I got to do a tandem zip line ride with Willow at Moaning Cavern, zipping down the 1500 foot cable over the dry scrub below. We also checked out nearby Natural Bridge, which featured a creek that had worn a tunnel through the limestone.

While in town of Volcano, which is where Black Chasm is, we wandered through the old Catholic cemetery there, finding a letterbox as we did so. We soaked up a lot of history at every stop, seeing a Cave Bear skeleton at California Caverns, and piles of bones on display at Moaning Cavern (not to mention some still in place on the cavern floor, left behind by people and animals who took the quick way down). There was one skull said to be from a Chinese girl who fell the 165 feet to the bottom of the cavern around 12,000 years ago. In Angels Camp, we checked out the museum, which was full of artifacts from the Gold Rush days, not to mention plenty of history related to the famous frog jumping contest, instigated by the Mark Twain story. The girls generally seemed to like the places we visited, although I think they both enjoyed the amusement park part the best. Ha.

Oh yeah, we also went to the Jelly Belly factory and went on the free tour. Needless to say, we bought some jelly bellies before hitting the road again.

The trip was well documented, of course.

We've been back a week now. At camp this week, Sophie came along and had a fun time. She got to be in my group too, which was nice. The Hognose snake wasn't in his cage on Monday (somebody needs a lesson on how to properly secure the top), but when I was getting food for the other animals on Wednesday, I discovered him crawling across the floor in the Nature Lab. I put him back in his cage, and the first thing he did was get a drink. It has been a parched summer.

Speaking of dryness, I think this is a contributing factor to our Yellow Jacket problems this year. There are so many more of them around than I've ever seen before. One group of kids got attacked on Wednesday as they navigated the narrow trail that follows the creek. I knew where that nest was, because a group I was leading stumbled over it several weeks previously. Then, on Friday, while on a "critter hunt" (an activity that I love to lead), we were looking under some old sections of brick wall that pepper the chaparral area. I had already looked under a few, finding a pretty little baby Rattlesnake under one, when one of the kids pointed to another and said, "I have a weird feeling about that one." It was set in the ground pretty well, so I really had to yank to free it from the dry dirt, and of course when I did, the Yellow Jackets were already boiling out of the ground. 10 people got stung, including a boy that got stung 5 times. Once I got all of the kids to safety and swatted the wasps off of them, I had to go back and get the plastic cage I'd dropped a few feet from the nest. By that time, the wasps had stopped boiling over, and were settling back down. I managed to grab the cage without getting stung again (I had initially gotten stung twice). It took awhile to calm down the boy who'd gotten stung the most, but for the other kids, it proved to be no big deal. One small girl, who couldn't have been more than 7 or 8, was particularly inspiring, shaking the whole experience off with a smile. Some kids are cool that way.

I'll add the location to our ever-growing list of areas to avoid, and the next time a kid says he has a "weird" feeling about something, I'll ask if he means good-weird or bad-weird. I guess he must have meant bad-weird, which is interesting because, as far as I know, none of us actually saw any Yellow Jackets flying around until I pulled off their roof. The kid had a bona fide psychic moment.

Currently listening to: Various "PM50"

Cautionary Tale For Naturalists

Week 4 of summer camp is over and done with. It was a hot one, with temperatures nearing the 100 degree mark (or perhaps surpassing it, depending on which thermometer I choose to believe).

Last night, a kid got stung by a Forest Scorpion while on the night hike. He wasn't with my group, but with the only other group leader who uses a UV light to look for scorpions and millipedes. The kids in my group were a bit older, and our scorpion and millipede viewing went off without a hitch. Apparently though, younger kids are a bit like magpies, grasping anything shiny within reach. Scorpions look pretty shiny when reflecting UV light, so the kid, who I believe is eight years old, reached for the shiny object and got a rude surprise. Fortunately, the local scorpions don't pack much of a punch, and the site of the sting didn't even swell. It hurt though.

When she was informed, the boy's sister (who was hiking with me) sighed and said that she wasn't surprised at all. Later, she told me that he had thought it was a shiny nut.

The lesson is, when hiking with younger kids, be aware of this tendency.

Go figure.

Currently listening to: Common Eider, King Eider "Worn"

Summer Love

Later, I told some kids that I put the frog back in the pond. One kid opined that it would have been funny if it had turned into a prince before I dropped it into the water. It's true. That would have been funny, in a "dignified people getting messed with" kind of way.

Currently listening to: Evan Caminiti "Night Dust" LP

Take Everything and Put It In A Smaller Container

This weekend, I've been pawing through boxes of National Geographic Magazines accumulated by my parents over a decades-spanning period starting before I was born and ending sometime in the nineties. My goal was to set aside issues that had articles I might actually read, and jettison the rest. The bulk of the collection is now on the front step, just waiting for whatever Freecycler responds first. I've decided to keep somewhere between 20 and 30 issues, plus most of the maps and other foldouts. I couldn't convince Willow to hang up any of the maps in her room, so I might have to hang some of them myself. I might also use some at work, either as geography contest prizes or as teaching tools during the school year.

It actually pains me to get rid of so many magazines. The photos are exquisite, and there is so much interesting information in those thousands of pages. It occurred to me that much of the contents of those magazines probably isn't available anywhere else. Not on the internet, in other words. I remember sometime back reading or realizing that every time there is a big technological change (I think I read an article about a lot of movies on VHS not making the jump to DVD), a lot gets left in the dustbins of history. Of course, where National Geographics are concerned, a lot just gets left in closets and garages. Hopefully someone will be able to take the magazines put them to good use, perhaps in a classroom or some other similar place, because realistically, I'm never going to read decades worth of old magazines. Information overload.

Currently listening to: Pentangle "Cruel Sister"

One Third Gone

I realized sometime last night that the 2012 summer camp season is already one third over. Today marks the end of week three of summer camp, with six more to follow.

This week, like the two previous ones, went relatively smoothly. I caught the same Gopher snake three times, which is unusual for a Gopher snake. They're usually not as sedentary as the local rattlesnakes have proved to be. One co-worker landed a dream job at a school over the hill, tons of kids became separated from their belongings, adding to Lost & Found Mountain, ex-campers appeared on the scene as counselors, including Alex, who worked with the Wild Things kids (that's the 5 and 6 year olds) and contributed to the Thursday evening festivities with a song (Heart of Gold by Neil Young) while ex-camper and fellow counselor Sausages accompanied him on harmonica. It's amazing seeing these kids grow up. They all have so much to offer. This is still one of the main reasons I love my job.

Willow just peeked in and said it's time for ice cream, so I'll end this post here. Ice cream is calling.

Currently listening to: Neil Young & Crazy Horse "Rust Never Sleeps"

Strange Wildlife and Cool Kids

Week two of summer camp is behind me now. For two weeks, the kids in my group were mostly ten years old, and next week I'll continue this trend. Some of my favorite summer campers attended camp this week. One of them has gotten so good at spotting animals on critter hunts that he occasionally spots them before I do. A couple of kids spotted a Mountain Kingsnake in the lower field parking lot on Thursday night too, so despite drier than usual conditions we have been seeing some wildlife. The rattlesnakes continue to be everywhere, but we did find a very unusual one on Thursday, with the usual blotches of darker coloration replaced by bars, making it look a bit like a Ball Python. This is the first time I've seen one like this.

Currently listening to O'death "Daytrotter Session 6/28/2012"

Summer

This is the first day this week I didn't get stung by wasps. That's something, at least.

Actually, agitated insects aside, it has been a good week. The second week of Summer Camp has been relatively cool so far, much more so than last week, when temperatures ascended into the uncomfortable nineties for a day or two. At one point, around a week ago, the readout on top of a local Bank of the West branch declared that it was 97 degrees.

Last week went very smoothly when one considers that none of us had run a week of Summer Camp since last August. No big snafus occurred, except for Friday morning when the sprinklers came on at 6:00 and watered a bunch of sleeping campers and counselors. I don't think that's an effective way to get kids to grow faster.

I've hiked to the reservoir both weeks so far. The water level is as low as I've seen it, and everything else is dry too. Today, we found a pile of dead bullfrogs with missing hind legs. Somebody has been expanding their culinary horizons at the expense of our local (although invasive) frog population. Some of the kids were a bit creeped out. We also saw a Rattlesnake in about the same place I saw the same snake slightly over 2 years ago. I've seen him a couple of times over the past month or two, but tonight I compared photos, and it looks like the same snake. Rattlesnakes are much more sedentary than the other local species, but I think this is the first time I've seen a snake in the same location after 2 years.

I got some great pictures in 2010 by taking them upside down over the lip of the rock the snake was under, but today's shots were poor. Here, you can see the rattle as the snake disappears into the darkness.

I wonder if he has lived there all his life, a mere 2 or 3 feet from the main path around the reservoir. He looks old, like he would be in a rocker on a porch if he had the anatomy to fit in one properly.

Currently listening to: Forrest Fang "Seeds of Memory" EP

The Breath Before the Summer Plunge

Summer Camp starts on Monday. I think we're ready. I only worked three days of the set-up week, reserving the last couple of days for a quick trip to Sacramento so Jeanine could see her friend Kim, who was in town from Hawaii. Kim and her husband Dave (who both went to the same high school that Jeanine and I did) were clearing out Kim's mom's house. That was deja vu for us, since we cleared out my dad's apartment in nearby Citrus Heights less than a year ago. I remembered Dave from high school, but didn't really remember Kim. It was fun hanging out with them on the front porch. It was a pleasant way to pass a warm afternoon, with cats underfoot and wasps in the air, disturbed from their nest inside one of the gate posts. There were some impressive Black Widows in the backyard shed too. The next morning, we had an hour to kill before converging on a restaurant to meet with some of Jeanine's other Sacramento-based friends for a balloon jam (no, it's not something one puts on toast, but rather an idea sharing session for balloon artists). As for the hour, we drove aimlessly until I spotted a record store, necessitating a sudden u-turn. We entered and purchased stuff. Eva even bought a couple of records - AC/DC and Edgar Winter, the latter because Eva thinks albinos are cool. She showed her "child of the digital age" ignorance of vinyl when I asked her what AC/DC album she had purchased by responding, "I don't remember, but it has two sides". I like that having two sides is a novelty now. For the record (pun intended), it was "Let There Be Rock".





As for set-up week, the most useful thing I did all week was save a snake's life. While returning a shovel to the garden shed after shoveling out the campfire pit, I spotted a large Gopher snake in the corner, sprawled across the floor like a corpse. Its front end was well entangled in a roll of plastic garden netting, so tightly that sections of it bulged outwards. I was so certain that it was dead that I was surprised that it hissed when I touched it. I found some scissors and took about 15 minutes to cut it out of the roll, and when I finally finished, the front of the snake was still hairy with jutting bits of plastic, making it look like some sort of laboratory experiment gone awry. With the help of a coworker and a pair of fingernail clippers, we finally managed to free the snake from the remaining plastic. After smearing some antibiotic on it, we kept it overnight for observation, and after ensuring that all of the garden netting was safely put out of reach (this is an ongoing issue, but when so many people use things, it's sometimes hard to ensure that everything is consistently put away), we released the snake in the garden. It eventually disappeared down a gopher hole. I'm going to enlarge and laminate a copy of the the photo I took and put it on the wall of the shed as a reminder.

Currently listing to: "Victrola Favorites" 2CD

Transition

The 2011/2012 Outdoor School Year ended on Friday with the usual lines of kids disappearing into the yellow mouths of waiting school buses. I worked in the field the final week, and did the usual sorts of things. There are turkeys everywhere these days, something that has gone from being a rarity to a common sighting over the last year or so. In fact, I don't think I saw any turkeys at all during the first 6 or 7 years of employment at camp. This week, I often found myself being interrupted by insistent gobbling from nearby bushes. One turkey brazenly gobbled his way right past us while I was trying to set up an ecosystem comparison lesson.

Summer camp set-up begins in earnest tomorrow, and summer camp begins the week after.

Our bed arrived, and I only got one blister putting it together. The mattress is perched on top of a 14 drawer dresser, which is kind of neat. The house is still in a state of some disarray, although every day sees a new element click into place. Today, the framed pictures that had been leaning against the wall in the living room found places on the walls. I mowed the lawn with the push mower too, feeling like a stereotypical suburbanite as I did so, sweating under the warm June sun. The push mower is picky. It only cuts grass, leaving all of the weeds standing proud and tall in its wake, giving the freshly mowed lawn a mangy look. Oh, well. We'll have to do some weeding.

Last night, one of my favorite co-workers (actually two of them, come to think of it) got married up at camp. We had a van load, with Willow and Eva being joined by Sophie, Nathan, and Alex. It was one of the rare times that still owning a mini-van came in handy. The wedding was beautiful, and it was nice to see a number of people I hadn't seen in awhile. Happy future to Scooby and Moonlight.

Also, taking the advice of a woman at the local pet store, I tried feeding baby food to the turtle, and she actually ate it! It's strange to have a pet that only eats worms and baby food. Next, I'm trying tofu.

Currently listening to: Agalloch "Whitedivisiongrey"

A New Place For Our Stuff...

When sitting in a rocking chair on a hardwood floor, one must make faces. It is the law.

My apartment is virtually empty of my stuff now. Still remaining is a small pile of dirty laundry, some cleaning supplies, and a few miscellaneous items destined for the dumpster or recycling bin. We're still working on emptying Jeanine's place, but hopefully that will be accomplished by the end of the day. The end of the month is upon us.

At the house, things are magically settling into place while the girls, unconcerned with the piles of boxes, play video games.

Dexter the cat arrived howling, and spent the better part of a day with his tail all poofed up. He's better now, and is making the house his own.

More to follow...

Flux

Boxes pile up both here and there, and at the moment we're waiting for the tent to come down. The fumigators put it up on Wednesday, and apparently neither Jeanine nor I are trusting, because we both drove by at different times to check to make sure that the job had actually been done. It had, but they didn't give us one of those colorfully striped clown tents. Instead, we got a black one. If you're going to tent a house, you should try to make it look like a clown house. I'm not sure why. It just seems like the right thing to do. The world needs more clowns or, at the very least, places that look like they could be clown residences.

Yesterday, since we couldn't move anything, we went for a walk at Hidden Villa. It's Horned Lizard season, but we didn't see any. We saw fewer Whiptails than last year too, although we did see a few, like the one pictured above. Early in the hike, Jeanine spotted a Jerusalem Cricket scuttling across the trail. That's a strange thing to see in the middle of the day. I wonder what disturbed it enough to inspire this atypical diurnal activity. There were fewer ticks along the trail than last time, although we did find a few of them patiently waiting on some trail-side plants. Later, I found one attached to my chest near one of my nipples. Sneaky little bastard. Its meal was cut short.

Currently listening to: The Iditarod "the Ghost, the Elf, the Cat and the Angel"

And So It Begins In Earnest

For me, the act of moving is like going on vacation. It doesn't seem to have any weight or reality until the hour is nigh and the routine of living is shuttled off onto a new track, or to put it another way, until the suitcase (in my case, usually a hastily stuffed backpack) or first box is full of my stuff. It's a sad commentary on my tendency to hoard that some of my belongings only get handled when I'm moving them from one residence to another, but that's a whole other subject. I'm working on it. Really.

I stripped a bookcase of its stories today, and filled a number of boxes with books. I came across one book (Swine Lake, by James Marshall) illustrated by Maurice Sendak, and I plan on sitting down later today and reading it in memory of his passing, the news of which greeted me when I woke up this morning. Lets all hold a wild rumpus in his honor.

The new house is scheduled to be tented tomorrow, ensuring that the dry wood termites discontinue their gnawing. I'm not a big fan of using poison gas on insects, but I think I'd be even less a fan of having the house collapse on top of us at some indeterminate point in the future.

Still to be scheduled is the chimney work, and some plumbing repairs. Right now, if there was an earthquake, the chimney would probably fall on the neighbor's house.

Currently listening to: Accept "I'm A Rebel"

First Photos

The empty house awaits our clutter. Hopefully it will wear the extra pounds well. Jeanine is better at getting rid of things than I am, but I've chucked a few things myself. We're going to have to start a list of things that we need to buy though, so the next month will see a frenzy of jettisoning and acquiring. We're especially lacking in the yard maintenance equipment department, since the postage stamp-sized patios attached to our current residences can't be graced with the word "yard". A new bed will also have to be purchased.

Here then are a couple of photos. Over that last couple of months spent viewing hundreds of online photos of houses for sale, I've been amused to see the various tricks of the trade - photos stretched to make the house look more expansive, low angled shots to make the house look more mansion-like, and other similar bits of trickery. I can't now recall what the "advertisement" photos of our house looked like. I learned to more or less ignore those photos anyway.

Currently listening to: Bowline "s/t"

More Than A Month Has Passed...

My last post was on April Fool's Day, and this one falls on the day after Cinco De Mayo, which was also the evening of the so-called "Supermoon", a moon which my 2012 moon guide (courtesy of the wonderful Nebula Girl, who mails them out for free at the beginning of each year) calls Big Leaf Moon. It was noticeably closer than the average full moon, even though I missed the moment when it first peeked above the East Bay hills.

In addition to all of the home buying activity, this period of silence has been full of activity. Perhaps most importantly, my brother Greg, Willow, and I finally got off of our isolationist butts and visited relatives. This meant traveling to Cape Cod to see my mom's sister and her son, Peter, and then on to Minnesota to see my dad's sister and her family. I had reconnected with my mom's sister, Marilyn, and my cousin Peter, when Jeanine and I were in Boston for a balloon convention in February, but Greg and I hadn't seen our relatives on our dad's side of the family in decades. Willow had never met any of them. I'll not recount the entire week here, because it won't be that interesting to the casual reader, but the trip was definitely a success. Our Aunt Marilyn even got us into the Edward Gorey house before it was open for the season, and while we were on Cape Cod, we visited our friends Matthias and Carla, who live in a pleasingly rustic house right near the beach (although everywhere on Cape Cod is right near the beach). The trip was well documented.

After coming back, I hopped in the car with Jeanine and we headed for Big Sur, where we took in a Godspeed You! Black Emperor show and camped under the redwoods. That week, Sophie's class was at camp, and since the kids' school always attends our second site, I switched sites and worked days. We wrapped up the week with a second Godspeed show, and the next morning, Greg and I flew to Seattle to see the newest Bela Tarr film, The Turin Horse. Perhaps this is how my second childhood has chosen to manifest itself - plane flights to see films. This also meant that we were in Seattle on Record Store Day, so we bought lots of music while we were there. I came back with quite a variety of sounds, from bird songs and a double CD/book collection of old 78 recordings, to Ennio Morricone doing bossa nova and neoclassical sounds that used a previous Bela Tarr film as inspiration. As for the film we had gone to see, it was everything we expected it to be, although at least one audience member must have been expecting something different, because she walked out and didn't come back.

I've started another walking challenge as well. Somebody who is even nerdier than me has figured out that Frodo and Sam had to walk 1779 miles to walk to Mordor. Since I started the challenge, I've walked a mere 11 miles. Only 1768 more to go.

I did a reptile/bug party yesterday, and in preparation for the party, Jeanine and I went on a short bug hunt Friday, which netted me a little California Forest Scorpion and a Jerusalem Cricket, not to mention a Garter Snake (I found two under a board, but only caught one). In addition to the two Garter Snakes, we saw eight Rattlesnakes. After the party, when I went to release the Garter Snake, I discovered that the board under which I found it still had two Garter Snakes under it. Nature hates imbalance, I guess.

Here's Rattlesnake number eight. He was still there the next day.

As for the house, after lots of last-minute craziness involving the lenders, yesterday we finally got the keys. I went over in the afternoon, and when I arrived, our realtor was sweeping the floors (talk about a full-service realtor!), and the sellers were bundling the last of their possessions (and their cats) into the car. They were leaving for Oregon. They left behind a few things for us, including the patio furniture and some yard tools. Later, Jeanine and I converged on the house and thoughtfully wandered through it. Jeanine brought out her tape measure and did a few calculations, and I hauled a few things in from my van. We're having the house tented for termites on Wednesday, so we won't be moving a lot of things over there until after that's done. We have the whole month to be out of our current residences, so there isn't too much of a rush.

So now we're homeowners. I guess I'm a grown-up now. I've lived in my studio apartment for nearly three and a half years now, and while there are some things I like about my apartment, I'm ready to step into a larger space again. I'm ready for our new yard, with its towering avocado tree, garden, citrus trees, artichoke plants, and expansive lawn. There is a compost area and a worm bin too.

Currently listening to: Natural Snow Buildings "Shadow Kingdom"

Another Long Silence...

My last post was on February 22nd, a handful of days before Willow turned 9. A lot has happened since then. The times when I am most prolific with my blog writing always seem to coincide with long stretches of routine, when very little news of excitement or importance occurs.

Jeanine and I, sometimes with Willow and/or Eva in tow, have spent the last month or so looking at open houses. A realtor that we met at the first one we went to has been showing us around. The houses have ranged from dumpy and forlorn to interesting and appealing. Our first actual bid was rejected, mostly because we wanted the owners to take care of a rather sizable termite problem. Our second bid wasn't even in the top 3, despite the fact that we bid $15,000.00 over the asking price. It seems that the low interest rates have encouraged a vast number of people to buy homes. For the third house we bid on, we bid $15,000.00 under the asking price, and the sellers didn't respond by the time the bid expired. The fourth time was the charm. We bid the asking price, and it was accepted. The fourth house is the only one of the four where we actually met the owner, and I think the fact that we're planning to occupy it with our children instead of using it as an investment worked in our favor. The house has been in the seller's family for half a century, so its fate seems important to her. More on the house in future posts.

Needless to say, all of this searching and bidding has taken up a lot of time. Not to mention the fact that I've been working days for the last couple of weeks while Willow's mom has been in the hospital for a planned surgery. While working as the night supervisor at camp, I tend to take for granted my daytime freedom, so now that I'm working days, I'm surprised at how little time I have. I have two more weeks of hiking with kids before returning to my nocturnal schedule - one because my boss asked me to, and one because Sophie's class is coming to camp. Sandwiched between those is a week off which coincides with Willow's Spring Break. Tax day looms as well. In short, much is happening in a short period of time.

We've finally seen a bit of rain too. March had a few rainy days, including yesterday when I led a "reptile safari" along some of the trails near camp. This was for the son of a woman who hired me through Jeanine's website, and despite the rain, the party was a success. Most kids don't mind mud and rain, as long as they don't have to stay out in it too long. The parents were good sports too. The reptiles we found were sluggish due to the chilly temperature, so the kids caught some lizards and I caught a couple of Rattlesnakes. Fun was had, cake was eaten, and I even got a $40.00 tip.

A lot of my childhood literary interests have factored into recent weeks as well. Willow has finally started being interested in the works of J.R.R. Tolkien, thanks to the Retro Dome, which has showed the entire Lord of the Rings trilogy on its screens recently. She is currently reading The Hobbit. We saw the Tintin movie too (which was very good), and Willow has started reading the Tintin books. I was so excited by this that I dropped $120.00 for a box set of the entire Tintin series (I reread mine until they were shedding pages). We also saw the John Carter movie (based on the Edgar Rice Burroughs Martian novels, which I happily read and reread as a child) and I quite liked it.

Welcome Spring. This is definitely a Spring during which many things are happening. I feel more or less caught up now.

Currently listening to: Dead Can Dance "A Passage In Time", and looking forward to seeing them play in August.

Overheard

As I was walking yesterday, I overheard two conversations. The first was one half of a phone conversation, overheard as a loud guy was walking towards me on the sidewalk. It went something like this: "THE DOCTOR DON'T KNOW NOTHING ABOUT CHILD SUPPORT! DON'T YOU EVER CALL ME IGNORANT, BITCH! FUCK YOU, BITCH!". The man, if you can even call such a character a man, angrily ended the call and huffed on past me. I feel sorry for his kid, who is stuck with a deadbeat asshole for a father, and for the woman who was such a poor judge of character to let things get so far with this guy. That is, assuming I read the exchange correctly. It's amazing to me that some people seem to exist with such a complete lack of dignity, as evidenced by their angry public tirades. Mobile phones sure have dragged a great number of private conversations onto the street, and a lot of people seem to be too dumb to notice the difference. It's sort of like people who pick their noses while in their cars, as if the fact that they're in an enclosed space makes them invisible. Being on the phone does not soundproof your conversation, especially if you're yelling like an enraged hyena.

The second overhead conversation took place inside a store, between a little girl and her dad. The girl, who couldn't have been more than two or three years old, gleefully proclaimed, "I are a dummy!", as she toddled along the aisles. Her dad kept trying to correct her: "don't call yourself that! You're silly, not a dummy". The girl kept insisting though, "no! I are a dummy!"

I couldn't help but think that the person who should have been saying this was the first guy, but he was too self-righteous and full of himself to ever admit such a thing. In fact, he got angry when he was called on it, responding with trite insults delivered at excessive volume, as if he subconsciously wanted to broadcast his ignorance as far and wide as possible.

Currently listening to: Espers "III"

Winter?

This is the bluest, driest February I can remember. There was a bit of rain last weekend, just enough to entice some green from the parched soil up in the hills, but now the sky is boring and blue again.

At the beginning of the month, Jeanine and I went to Arizona for the 2012 Twist & Shout convention - several days in a Sheraton, playing with balloons, eating pizza, and in general, having a fun time. Arizona felt like Spring, with blue skies and temperatures in the seventies.

Other than that brief vacation, I've been working. There have been more homesick kids at camp than usual, and nocturnal incontinence has been an issue with more than a few campers. This week, in a failed attempt at egg theft, a camper filled his water bottle with pond water and newt eggs, but dropped it in the evening, during the astronomy program. A cabin leader, feeling thirsty, retrieved the bottle and took a swig. Unsurprisingly, he was unhappy to discover that he'd ingested pond water. I'm glad that he didn't swallow any newt eggs. California Newts contain a poison called tetrodotoxin, which can kill humans if ingested in sufficient quantities. I did some quick research on newt eggs anyway, but still don't know if, or how much, poison is contained in the eggs. I'll add this to the growing number of cautionary tales in my repertoire. Look before you drink.

The most significant thing that happened this month is that I finally asked Jeanine to marry me, and she said yes. I asked her while we walked the trails at Rancho San Antonio, where around 2 and a half years ago, we went on our first date. I'm excited at the prospect of looking for a home together. Both of our daughters seem happy about this too. This should be an interesting and exciting year.

Currently listening to: Greg Weeks "The Hive"