Summer in February

After calling in sick last Monday, I managed to be healthy enough to go to work for the rest of the week, but just barely. The fever went away, but the achiness and congestion did not. It's a good thing that it was a relatively easy week, with very few problems of any kind. There was one kid with diabetes, which meant there was a need for extra vigilance, but he was responsible and charming. Even the weather was mild. By the weekend, it felt like Summer, with temperatures in the high seventies. I went to Almaden Quicksilver County Park with Willow, and the air smelled heavy and green, like Spring. The trails were bursting with joggers and hikers, and there were even some basking lizards.

Yesterday, Jeanine and I took Eva and her friends to San Francisco. I spent money at Amoeba, and then we killed time while the girls wandered around on Haight St. On the way back toward the freeway, we stopped at Corona Heights, near the Randall Museum, and climbed the hill overlooking the city. By then, the San Francisco microclimate had kicked in and a chilly wind blew fog across the landscape. Nice.

Eva had her new camera with her. I neglected to bring mine, so here are some phone pictures. It kind of bothers me that I've become the kind of person who takes pictures with his phone, but when that's all I have with me, that's what happens.

At home, we finally got somebody to come give us an estimate on replacing our fence. It's not cheap, especially since we've decided to replace the back fence too, since it's looking tired and beginning to lean in the middle. We still have to coordinate with the neighbors (and since they're renters, that means coordinating with their landlord) since, legally, they get to pay for half of the side fence replacement.

Good fences make good neighbors, or so it is said. Last night, around 1:30 or so, somebody outside was repeatedly shouting "you motherfucker!", and I sleepily figured it was some altercation between people residing in (or visiting) the house on the corner (because this is usually the case), but this morning, thanks to a Nextdoor Westside (which is a neighborhood community social network) post, I found out that the woman across the street had interrupted a couple of people breaking into her jeep. She motherfuckered them into submission, I guess. I probably would have done the same.

An Ill Wind

At some point last week, some germs jumped from one of the 32 sick kids we sent home and invaded me. I've got a cough and a fever now, plus intermittent headaches and chills. I called in sick to work earlier, and Papa Bear, who is usually the night host at our other site, is covering for me. That means, if I'm better tomorrow, I'll be working at the site Papa Bear usually supervises, and he'll continue working at the one I usually manage. Nothing like a bit of change to keep the pot of life stirred up.

There was a good storm this weekend. On Friday, we drove over the hill in the pouring rain to see Murder By Death play at the Catalyst in Santa Cruz. Saturday, it cleared up a bit, and I went on a walk that included visits to the post office, the book store, and a coffee shop. Sunday, I started feeling crappy, so I stayed home. At some point over the weekend, the wind blew down our fence, so the chickens have been cooped up (literally) for a couple of days now.

Jeanine set the wheels in motion to get an estimate on a new fence. I'm sure the chickens will be happy about that.

Plague Camp, Week Two

By 7:00 AM, three more kids had fevers. The first one came in around 4:00, while I was watching an un-subtitled version of Aleksei German's "Hard To Be A God" on YouTube (I'd love to see a subtitled version of this, since my Russian is nonexistent), and the other two made themselves around wake-up time. As of this morning, 11 or 12 kids had gone home, or were waiting to be picked up. I wonder what the total will have risen to by the time I get to work tonight.

It's grey, raw, and windy today. This is what daybreak looked like this morning:

Sickness, Wind, and More Eggs

A bunch of kids went home sick today, with the same symptoms that afflicted the sick kids last week: fevers, headaches, and vomiting. Tonight, the wind has picked up a bit. I can hear it howling around the eaves, masking the distant susurration of agitated trees. The vents are clattering and clanking, and I'm sure that cabin doors will bang open and closed in conjunction with the heavier gusts.

At home, Mrs. Charles has started laying again, so now we have two chickens providing us with breakfast.

Midnight approaches, meaning that I have to go wake up an incontinent camper. So far this week, he hasn't actually had to get up and use the bathroom. I can't be complacent though. If I skip a night, that will be when the floodgates open and I'll have to fire up the laundry machine.

Rain is still in the forecast for Friday. This is good.

My Keyboard, The Butt Warmer

This week, there are fewer kids at camp (by about 40), and so far, there has been less sickness. One kid with a fever was waiting to get picked up when I got there last night, and earlier, somebody had vomited in the amphitheater, but with the exception of competing Great Horned and Screech owls calling over a soundbed of frogs, the night was quiet.

The sunrise revealed a few clouds, pleasantly painted orange. Once again, the forecast calls for rain. Will it actually happen? We'll find out at the end of the week.

At home, Dexter took over the computer for awhile.

Nearby, the dragons, freshly cleaned, wished they could hang out on the keyboard too. After all, everybody knows that the keys are nice and warm.

Challenges, Both Real and Artificial

More than 15 kids have gone home sick this week. The symptoms have invariably been vomiting, headaches, and fevers. This morning, the paramedics had to be called because a girl had a 103 degree-plus fever and was acting kind of spacy. One kid went home tonight for starting an altercation during the dance. It has been a busy week. Nothing we couldn't handle though. I still have about six more hours on my shift before the week is officially over though.

This year, I plan to start each month with some sort of personal challenge. January's challenge was to not buy any new music, which seems like a silly and pointless thing to do, but I've been overdoing my music consumption for years, spending huge amounts of time and money amassing a large collection that, truthfully, I struggle to find the time to enjoy. I'm often too busy listening to new acquisitions to go back and re-listen to older ones. Sure, I enjoy each new purchase, but I also enjoy the cheaper option of going back and listening to records already in my collection. I was relatively successful with this challenge, if one discounts the two purchases I made on the first weekend of the month (Jeanine actually enabled me by saying it made more sense to start at the beginning of the work week, so with this justification in mind, I made a pair of purchases), and one pre-order made mid-month, justified by making a challenge within a challenge of walking 5 miles and doing something creative before making the purchase. I walked nearly 6 miles on that particular Saturday, and carved a nice little chicken rubber stamp.

I think my challenge for February will be to lose 10 pounds before the end of the month. If I write about it, maybe it will actually happen.

Currently listening to: Monolyth & Cobalt "Sub + Rosa"

Camp Chaos

The first night of camp this week was busier than the usual Monday, with campers visiting the hub regularly throughout the night. One boy complained of severe nausea, and we couldn't reach his parents by phone, so I ended up sending him back to bed. I think he was just homesick anyway. The cabin leaders who would be heading to our other site in the morning stayed up too late, which irritated me because they're supposed to be on the adult side of the equation, not acting like campers. Add to this the usual assortment of headaches, vomit, and nosebleeds, and we've got a full work night.

There is a girl with diabetes at camp this week, and she has this innovative wireless blood glucose monitoring system which sounds an alarm when levels aren't within a defined range. I was pretty excited to learn that such a thing exists, although after talking to her dad on the phone, I learned that it's new enough to not be FDA approved (if I remember what he said correctly), and that it still has some glitches. The issue for me was that the range was small enough that I actually had to stand inside the girl's cabin to get a reading. I had initially expected to be able to do this from the comfort of my chair in the other building. It's just as well though, because I had to wake her up so she could have some glucose tablets. It's good that this kind of technology exists, and I hope it enters into wide usage.

It was also windy enough to cause doors to bang open and lighter objects to skitter across the cement. One of those objects was the clock hanging on the wall outside.

In the morning, it almost rained. A few desultory water molecules drifted down, and then dry January shrugged its shoulders and continued its parched trek toward February. This month's rainfall totals won't be measured in inches, but in drops.

Unhappy Anniversary

Today is the fifth anniversary of my mom's death. Despite my desire for it to be otherwise, I can still remember that day quite clearly. Of course that is always the case with any event outside of normal routine, isn't it? The death of a loved one is especially deeply branded into the soft flesh of memory.

Last January, Jeanine and I hid a letterbox in the park around the corner from my mom's old house. Unlike the first letterbox I hid in my mom's honor, this one is still in place, or at least it was on January 5th, which is the last time it was found by a letterbox hunter. Check out the clue here.

Earlier that day, I had provided some snakes for a photoshoot up in Oakland. It wasn't until I'd driven home from Oakland that the phone rang and I got the bad news. Pictures from that day ended up on the cover (as well as an interior spread) of Decibel magazine. This issue, to be exact.

That was the worst of bad days. Today is much more routine. Laundry is being done as I type. In fact, I think it's time to go put it in the dryer. Then, maybe I'll read a bit more. I'm reading Robert Aickman's account of his time with the Inland Waterways Association, which was formed to help save England's abandoned and endangered canal system during the mid-twentieth century. Thanks goes out to my brother for giving it to me for Christmas. I think my mom would have liked it too. She was always surrounded by more books than she would ever have had time to read, even if she'd lived to see 100. I know the feeling. We never do fall far from the tree.

Busy Work Week

When I got to week on Tuesday night, there was a puddle of vomit on the floor of the hub, covered in the substance we use to help absorb wet messes, and awaiting clean-up. Several kids had already gone home sick, and the girl who had decorated the hub floor was waiting for her parents to get her. Before all of the kids were in bed, another kid puked on the basketball court. This wasn't an auspicious beginning to my work week.

The following night, a kid crapped himself, or at least partially crapped himself, meaning that some of it got to its intended destination and some of it got on his clothes. This is the second week in a row that I had to turn on the showers in the middle of the night and then do laundry. It has been chilly too.

Beyond that, I've been faced with the expected types of camper problems, like homesickness, broken glasses, chapped lips, headaches, and an earache. Next week, we'll have at least 50 kids more than this week. There is definitely some sort of illness making the rounds right now.

At home, Jeanine found a neat spider in one of the kitchen drawers. It looks like Zoropsis spinimana, a European invasive species. It now lives in the ferns out front.

Sunrise, As Photogenic As Ever

Here are a couple of sunrise photos, taken late last week.

Rain is back in the forecast for next week. I'm betting that the chance of rain will dwindle as we get closer to the date. Forecasters appear to engage in wishful thinking more often than not.

There is a robin in the bush out my window right now, and I can see seven doves perched on a power line, plus two in the yard. Other than Dash, the chickens still haven't started laying yet this year. Their rent is overdue.

After a night off, I'm heading back to work tonight. There are supposed to be around 150 kids at camp this week.

Happy Martin Luther King Day

I've got the night off work tonight in honor of Martin Luther King's birthday. We're celebrating by going to a balloon jam (that's an idea sharing session for balloon artists) tonight. These always happen at restaurants, and tonight we'll be at Harry's Hofbrau, which serves German food, meaning that 99% of the menu is meat. It's a good thing the vegetarian side dishes are so filling. Plus, there's pie. Mmmmmm... pie.

The weekend flashed by. I took Willow to see the latest Night At The Museum movie, which was mildly entertaining in a predictable, made-for-kids sort of way. I also walked around five miles, four of them by myself, and one of them with Willow. I also carved a final rubber stamp, belatedly reaching my goal of carving 12 stamps for 2014.

Here's the second to last stamp. I like the way this one turned out.

Finally, here's some advice from Werner Herzog. Listen to the man.

Oh, Poop

The sky is covered with a wet blanket of grey, but it's not likely to condense and fall. It has been cold though,at least by local standards, with temperatures plummeting into the thirties at night.

The work week is mostly over now. It hasn't been quite as smooth as last week though. Tuesday night, a boy showed up in the hub along with his cabin leader, complaining of a stomach ache. I asked the usual diagnostic questions and then concluded that the boy needed to go sit on the toilet for awhile. His response was, "but I don't have to go." Despite my gut feeling about his gut feeling, I got him a hot water bottle to help soothe his stomach, and sent him back to bed. Ten or fifteen minutes later, he was back, covered in his own poop. How he managed to get it on the front of his shorts and all over his sweatjacket, I'm not sure. A shower and some laundry-doing followed.

This type of scenario is familiar. A kid will come in with a complaint of some type and ask for help, and then will neglect to include some crucial bit of information that will help us diagnose the problem, or (as in this case), initially refuse to do what we advise. I don't buy for a minute that "I don't have to poop" becomes "oops, I just crapped myself" within a quarter of an hour.

This all happened about an hour and a half after another kid from the same cabin peed himself, making it a laundry-heavy night.

I've been setting up my trailcam each night too, although I haven't gotten a single photo this week. Maybe last week was a fluke. It doesn't hurt to keep trying though. I'd better go recharge the batteries so I can try again tonight.

Breakfast Is Back On the Menu

This is the first egg of the year, making it six days overdue compared to last year. I think Dash the chicken knew that Jeanine had just bought eggs. This works on the same principle as a rainy day happening right after you finally wash your car. Hopefully, the other chickens won't be too far behind. Store bought eggs just seem so flavorless once one has gotten used to fresh-laid ones.

So Far, So Good...

Every Monday is like the first day of school here at camp. A new batch of kids arrives each Monday morning, so they've been here for around 11 or 12 hours by the time I get to work in the evening. I have to let them know what the overnight routine is, and while doing so, I work in whatever else I think they need to hear. I'm a bit more no-nonsense with the rowdy groups, of course. We all do what we can to anticipate problems, and we're pretty good at it.

No problems yet this week. In fact, so far I've seen a couple of homesick kids, and that's it. It helps to once again have some tried and true cabin leaders, including one who was here last week and one who has got to be pushing 30 at this point.

The rain that was in the forecast seems to have mostly disappeared. I feel like we're being teased.

Here are a few photos taken during yesterday's walk:

A Night Heron:

An empty percolation pond. The water company occasionally allows them to drain so that they can scrape the muck off the bottom, which enables water to percolate more easily. It's like cleaning a coffee maker, I guess...

A small hummingbird, ignoring the paparazzi.

A turtle. In January. This is why people in other states hate us.

A cormorant.

A dog, attempting to play with Canada geese.

A slightly ruffled egret.

A feral cat.

And that canoe that somebody lost, revealed by receding water.

I Blinked, and It's Sunday Evening Again

Night has fallen on the weekend, and Monday lurks in the darkness. I did some cooking (enchiladas from the Soy Not Oi!2 cookbook) and stamp carving on Saturday, and today Jeanine and I went for a 5.5 mile walk along the creek trail. The birds and feral cats were out in force, and we even saw a turtle basking in the weak January sunshine. Haze made distances indistinct, and I have a feeling today was probably a Spare the Air Day. We're supposed to (maybe) get some rain by the end of the week, which will sluice all of the crap out of the air and add it to our water table. Joy.

Here are a couple of pictures from late in the week.

Early morning at camp:

Mrs. Charles presiding over one of our fallow garden beds:

Nocturnal Garden Activity

My work week continues to flow smoothly, untouched by any ripples of unrest. When I got to work last night, my friend/coworker Bat mentioned that there were piles of scat on the benches in the garden, near our compost area. The scat looked to me like bobcat, or possibly coyote. Some looked a bit like raccoon leavings. That said, the placement on benches looked to me like something a grey fox might do, although most of the scat looked too big to have come out of the back end of a fox.

So I set up my trailcam.

This handsome little fellow is a grey fox, which of course doesn't mean that he's responsible for the scat. In the last photo, you can see him (or her, I'm not sure) giving one of the stinky piles a good sniffing. In total, I got 54 photos, but given the nature of infrared motion sensor cameras, most of them weren't the best quality. I'm told that there is a coyote who has been hanging around lately, so I'll probably set up the camera again tonight.

Speaking of grey foxes, next month one of my old high school teachers (my creative writing teacher, to be precise), who is now a grey fox researcher, is coming up to our camp to give us a presentation on foxes. I'm looking forward to it. Check out his website here.

An Easy Start

My work week has been ridiculously easy so far, with only around 130 kids at camp. Not only is the number small, but the kids are well-behaved too. The weather has been clear and mild, but the just-past-full moon has interfered with my ability to see comet Lovejoy, which at the moment should be moving into the Taurus constellation.

While the kids are sleeping, I've been killing time watching season one of Orphan Black, and enjoying it immensely (thanks to my brother for lending two seasons to me). I'm also reading "The Sunrise Lands", by S.M. Stirling, which is the fourth book in his Emberverse series, which takes place in a United States where all modern technology has mysteriously ceased to function. It's just the sort of thing that appeals to me. Imagine medieval warfare taking place in modern Oregon, add in fun things like cannibals and tons of Lord of the Rings references, and you have a recipe for fun. Finally, I've been continuing my habit of walking 2 miles a night while listening to music. This week, it's the massive new Leonard Cohen triple "Live in Dublin" set. Leonard Cohen and walking in the dark go well together. Quality entertainment all around, I'd say.

The only incident of note so far was the mysterious beeping sound emanating from one of the cabins, which was brought to my attention by an irritated trio of boys who had been awakened by it two mornings in a row. On the first morning, it had stopped by the time I got to the cabin, so I didn't follow up on it other than to make sure the cabin leaders didn't have phones with them. On the second morning, the sound was revealed to be coming from an iPad mini, which is definitely not on the packing list given to campers. In fact, this kind of thing is on the "do not bring" list, so I confiscated it and handed it off to his teacher.

Suddenly, it's Wednesday evening, and almost time to head back to work.

Back To Work

In around an hour, I'm leaving for my first night of work this year. My two week break sure vanished quickly. Today, I went out and got a Blu-Ray player and groceries. I don't often buy electronic playthings, but I've been thinking of getting a Blu-Ray player for awhile now. Now that we're halfway through the second decade of the 21st century, I figured I'd take one more little step toward making it seem like I don't still live in the last century. Ha. I'm actually planning on doing some cooking with the groceries. I've always been an advocate of not buying packaged meals, but often find myself not living up to my own standards in this regard. I've got a couple of new cookbooks to play around with though (this one and this one), which will hopefully help cut down on lazy meals. The second one was created by some friends. I can't wait to try out some of the recipes.

Meanwhile, in the yard, urban wildlife is always in our peripheral vision.

Somebody just came by and picked up our old coop, since our chickens have a new one. We should be getting eggs again pretty soon. Mrs. Charles laid her very first egg on January 7th, last year. There are some types of chickens who produce eggs year round, but not ours. Ours take a break.

More Links

Here are two more interesting lists.

Top Ten Archeological Discoveries of 2014, and The Greatest Scientific Breakthroughs of 2014. Good stuff.

Another List

Here is an interesting "top 10" list. It's a list of the top 10 new species of 2014, although I'm not sure what the criteria for being in the top 10 might be. My favorite is probably the New York Frog, which definitely gets the reward for hiding in plain sight. It got away without being discovered by looking very similar to the Leopard Frog. I've told this story at camp a bunch of times already. I like telling kids that every hike is like a treasure hunt, except that the treasure only gets taken home in your memory.

2014 by the Numbers

I've always claimed to hate math, but I like statistics and lists. Go figure. Looking at 2014 by the numbers, I managed 138 separate posts here, which is exactly 100 more posts than I managed to squeeze out of my brain in 2013. I'm not sure why that is. I didn't make any resolutions or vows or anything like that. I guess I've just felt like writing more recently.

I uploaded 40 separate posts over at my music blog, which more or less means I went to 40 shows this year. This is exactly the same number of posts I managed to produce the previous year.

Overall, this means I wrote 178 blog entries this year, although the length and quality of all of these varies greatly. I'm not making any vows or promises to write more for 2015, but if I keep up my current momentum, it will happen naturally.

I've already seen two movies this year. On Thursday, we went to see "The Woman In Black: Angel of Death", and while I enjoyed it, I enjoyed the first one (not to mention the stage version, which I've seen twice now - once in London and once in Walnut Creek, of all places) better. It's good to see Hammer producing films again though. The sets were appropriately atmospheric and eerie, old-school style, and I loved the scenes where the ghost is in the frame in such a way that she isn't seen until she moves. This kind of trickery makes movies like this fun to watch, and I may even have to watch it again to see if I can catch the ghosts before they move.

This afternoon, I took Willow to see the third Hunger Games movie, and it was good too. This series is grim fare when once considers its intended audience is teenagers. I doubt either of these will rank amongst my favorites of the year, but 2015 is only days old. I'm not sure what my favorite film of 2014 was, but Jodorowsky's "Dance of Reality" is definitely a contender. "Under the Skin" was really good too.

Happy New Year

Where once we wrote "4" at the end of a short string of numbers, we will now write "5". Rather artificially, the cycle begins again. These days, I'm generally rather jaded and skeptical about the whole concept of making resolutions at the beginning of the year. Sure, it's good to want to improve oneself, but so many so-called resolutions a mere memories by the time February rears its chilly head above the temporal horizon.

That said, there is no time like the present for forging ahead and mending flaws. The hedonism of the holidays is behind us, and the time for going back to work is quickly approaching. The new calendar (I got one called "Serpentine", which features nice drawings of venomous snakes) is on the wall, showing that, as always, our days are numbered. Today is day number one. I'm going to try out a few minor changes in my habits, but stop short of making any sort of official announcement on the subject.

I spent part of the last day of the year at the mall with Jeanine. The night before, in the midst of the usual chaos that accompanies such things, at the Neurosis show at the Great American Music Hall, she showed how quick her reflexes were by ducking to avoid a stage diver. Unfortunately, this motion caused her glasses to leave her face and meet their untimely end somewhere amongst the feet of the people piling up in front of the stage. When I found them, they were bent and missing a lens. The nearest LensCrafters location happens to be in a mall, and despite my aversion to malls, I went with her to keep her company while she waited for her new glasses to be ready. We wandered through perfumy-smelling department stores (Jeanine had to return a gift that was too small), gawked at all of the silly people, ate mall food (okay, the jalapeno pretzel was pretty good, but the vegan place in the food place couldn't sell me a soda with kale and fresh ginger in it because it wasn't "ready" yet). In short, the experience confirmed and reinforced my stance on such places. As always, it was fun to spend time wandering with Jeanine. We wander well together.

Last night, I celebrated at midnight with Willow and Eva (Jeanine was already in bed) with store brand sparkling cider. Willow's first words of the new year were, "this tastes weird". It was nice to spend New Year's Eve at home. Predictably, people nearby were celebrating with fireworks, but it wasn't as obnoxious as it sometimes is.

Reflecting on the year, I'm happy to say that it was a good one. Willow turned 11 and Eva turned 13, we added three chickens to our little flock, and I got to do a little traveling (Baltimore, Yosemite for the first time, Lava Beds National Monument for the second time, and L.A. with Eva to see Black Sabbath), saw a lot of shows, read a lot of books (but unlike some years in the past,didn't manage to keep track of how many pages I read), saw a bunch of movies, and walked 484 miles. I now have 496 more miles to walk to complete the "Walk To Mordor" challenge on DailyMile. Maybe I'll go for a walk today.

Chilly and Sunny

By California standards, it has been chilly, causing us to do strange things like wear sweatjackets inside and go to bed with socks on. This week, the forecast calls for actual freezing temperatures, which means more socks and maybe another blanket on the bed.

Today, everything is bright and lush, with the yard still soaking in the afterglow of recent rain. We threw the new straw into the chicken coop, dumped the water out of the worm bin, and cleaned up the yard a bit. The chickens followed behind us and have already started to undo things. Chickens are like that. Chickens abhor neatness, and will do their best to scatter things like dirt and leaves. Maybe we should lacquer the yard. That'll teach them.

Wild birds flit around the periphery of the yard, waiting for the humans to disappear back inside.

We've got several plastic bins full of rainwater too, which we'll use to water things during dry spells. At the moment, the next chance of rain looks to be around 10 days away, right at the end of the extended forecast.

Currently listening to Stray Ghost "October Songs"

Holiday Sloth

On the 24th, shortly after my last post, it stormed ferociously for around five minutes, irritating the chickens and thoroughly soaking everything. I picked up Greg at the BART station, and then Willow at her mom's. We did the usual gift exchange/Christmas dinner thing, and I think everyone was happy.

For the first time since we moved here, we used an artificial tree instead of a real one. It worked just fine, and was much less work, both before (not having to go get one, put it up, and decorate it) and after (no needle mess).

Christmas morning, everyone slept in until at least 9:00. More presents were opened. I dropped Willow back at her mom's around noon, and then went up to my work to check on the animals in the nature lab. Since then, I've been enjoying not having to do anything in particular or be anywhere in particular. The only problem with this is that the days fly by (although, truth be told, they fly by regardless) and soon I will have to be doing things and being places again. For now though, holiday sloth is the order of the day.

That said, I did pay some bills and walk to the pet store to get crickets today. Speaking of animals, there was a cute possum in our avocado tree the other night. It vanished upward when we opened the back door to get a closer look.

Eve

The two expected packages showed up this morning, leaving only one to go. I expect it will be late. The holidays aren't about packages though. The religious right would have everybody believe that it's all about Christmas, celebrating a magical birth that supposedly happened over two thousand years ago, but memories are short and traditions are in a constant flux. Despite being raised in a family where Christmas was celebrated (albeit in a secular fashion), I've always approved of the idea of celebrating the winter solstice instead. being an atheist who appreciates paganism, I think both the pagans and the atheists can agree that celebrating the solstice makes more sense. Let the light return.

So, yeah, the holiday season provides an excuse to spend time with family and exchange gifts. Be careful out there though, because for many people, the season provides an excuse to drink ridiculous amounts of toxic substances and then try to operate heavy machinery. As for me, I'll stick with ridiculous amounts of chocolate.

The doorbell just rang, pushed in a way that made it simply go "dong!". Outside was a harried looking FedEx driver, too tired to make the door chime actually go "ding dong", with a huge, heavy bag. It turns out that the bale of straw that Jeanine ordered from Amazon has arrived in time for the holidays (yes, you can buy straw bales on Amazon - who knew?). We're doing our part to support the War On Christmas by wishing the chickens "happy holidays" with new bedding for the bottom floor of their coop, which is somewhat mucky due to recent rains. Maybe we should put a little chicken-centric nativity scene in there too.

That reminds me of this story. Apparently, Christmas is fighting back.

Holiday Preparations and Supernatural Visitations

The days are getting longer again, not so anybody would notice yet. I spent my infinitesimally longer day wrapping presents and doing a little last minute (and probably unnecessary) Christmas shopping. I also went and got a tofurkey, some ice cream, and other holiday essentials.

When I got home, Jeanine was still quietly freaking out about seeing a ghost in the garage. She said a man stepped into the garage from the kitchen, paused a moment, and then walked towards the closed garage door, where he vanished. This isn't the first time ghosts have been seen around the house. Jeanine's mom has seen them too. I'm sure Dexter the cat sees them all the time, since cats see all sorts of stuff that others don't. I haven't seen anything, and probably won't. Interesting though.

My coffee maker is broken, but I won't go so far as to blame our supernatural visitors. I think it just wore out. I've been pouring water from the tea kettle over the coffee, cowboy campfire style, and the result is strong, gritty coffee. It's kind of like Turkish coffee. Yum. Since I don't know how to fix the one I have, I suppose I should get a new coffee maker.

I'm still waiting for the arrival of three separate packages containing gifts. Two of them look like they're supposed to show up tomorrow, if the tracking information is accurate. The other one will show up when it shows up, I guess.

Currently listening to: Phil Legard "Angelystor" Beautiful.

The Final Stretch

I'm done with work for the year, and so begins the final approach to 2015. Please make sure your tray table is up and your seat is in the upright position. Thanks for flying air 2014.

Holiday shopping is nearly done, although the suspense of whether or not the gifts I've ordered online will arrive in time is still very much present. Over the weekend, I took Willow to see some bands play, saw my brother perform a holiday show at a house concert in San Francisco, and took Willow to see the final Hobbit film, which as expected was full of Peter Jackson's brand of over-the-topness. Good though. Jeanine mostly worked. Eva wandered around with friends.

I did some shopping too. While attempting to buy iTunes gift cards at Fry's, I was first told that they were limited to one per customer (??), and once the guy had figured out that this statement was as ridiculous as it sounded, the system went down and the clerk and his supervisor couldn't manage to activate two of the cards. I left with two of the four cards I'd attempted to buy, and for my trouble, a $10.00 gift card, and $25.00 credited back to my account. That means I made well over minimum wage just standing in line. In fact, I probably made more than I get paid at work. Not bad. I'll go buy the other gift cards somewhere with working machinery and competent clerks.

We had a bit of rain over the weekend, although it seemed to mostly lurk somewhere between San Jose and San Francisco, which is where I got rained on the most. Not much rain in the forecast right now, but there is a 25% chance it might rain a bit later in the week.

Exceptionally Extreme

It rained most of the night last night. On the news today, I saw that the recent rains have helped 23% of California move from "exceptional" drought to "extreme" drought. I'm sure there are a number of people out there in our massive state population who think that the minute it rains, the drought is over. It reminds me of the people who think that a cold spell or a snowstorm means that global warming is a hoax.

A Corpse Is A Corpse, Of Course Of Course

Heavy rain is falling in the darkness beyond our windows. I can hear it impacting on the skylights and the roof. This is shaping up to be a good, solid rainy season so far. Let's hope it continues.

Human remains were found in the woods near camp on Sunday. I had noticed a line of burnt out flares on my way to work last night, and hadn't remembered them until I saw this article. According to the report, the body had been there for around a year before being discovered. It's a good thing it was a little farther away from camp than we ever take hiking groups, because it would have been a bad thing to stumble across while hiking with a group of 5th or 6th graders.

The kids this week seem like a good group. I don't have to wake up anybody at night, and the kids seem relatively well behaved. I found out in the middle of the night that my friend and coworker, Scooby, who usually tells stories in the morning, wouldn't be coming in in the morning (due to pain from possible kidney stones), so I ended up telling stories instead, while worrying if the staff who live on the ocean side of the coast range would make it to work on time due to Highway 17 being closed in both directions because of a downed tree and power lines. Like most worries, this didn't end up being an issue. Several staff members made it in by 8:00, and I got to go home and sleep.

Vampires, Rain, and Chickens, Plus A Bonus Cat

After a relatively dry weekend, the rain is back. It started raining last night as we were driving home from seeing the Iranian vampire film, "A Girl Walks Home Alone At Night", and it hasn't really stopped since. The film is definitely worth seeing, filmed in stark black & white and given to long silences, meaningful looks, and industrial squalor. Just my kind of film, actually. This is a good year for art house vampire films, with Jim Jarmusch's "Only Lovers Left Alive" also being worthy of note. Both films have good soundtracks too.

Later, I'll go to work for the last week of camp for the year. We're supposed to have over 200 kids this week, meaning we'll be stuffed to the gills.

Out back, the chickens weather the storm as best they can.

Here's Henrietta:

Here's Mrs. Charles:

Here's all five of them. Note Dot's swollen feet. The vet couldn't figure out what the problem was, but they don't seem to slow Dot down at all. She can still perch with the best of them.

Dexter still wants to know why the birds get to play in the yard and he doesn't:

Outernet

AT&T is a corporation that apparently can't find its ass with both hands and Mapquest. Jeanine called to get a repair person to come and figure out why our internet connection was borderline nonexistent, and why we had no dial tone on the land line. She was told that somebody would come out between sunrise and sundown on Friday. We waited. And waited... Nobody showed.

Today, an AT&T guy showed up sometime in the early afternoon, poked around a bit, and said that the problem was waterlogged equipment. He pointed to something up one of the nearby poles, and said he couldn't fix it but would call someone who could. A couple of hours after he left another AT&T guy showed up. He had no idea that somebody had already been here, but took a quick look around and said he could fix the problem. He did confirm that the first guy's diagnosis was correct though, and wondered why the hell he hadn't been able to fix the problem.

The problem is now fixed. We have a dial tone. We have internet. That means Jeanine can get work done and I can go back to wasting time.

Storm

The rain came roaring in sometime during the wee hours, lashing sides of buildings and creating standing water in the low lying areas. Our power cut out a little after 7:30, but of course the generator kicked in seconds later. When the power cut out, my friend Scooby, who was telling a story to the kids at the time, clapped his hands and snapped his fingers, making it appear that he'd magically restored the power. The kids were in awe.

As I left, I only had to swerve around one substantial branch on my way down the hill, which relieved me. I wasn't looking forward to getting stuck at work again, especially since I had to go downtown and get a new copy of Willow's birth certificate. The powers that be are making all employees re-apply for health coverage, and like all bureaucracies, they require enough official documents to choke a clerk. I'm not sure which one of Willow's parents mislaid the original, but neither of us can find it at the moment. It's a moot point now, I suppose. Plus, the storm kept the casual document searchers away this morning, and I was in and out in less than ten minutes.

As usual, I slept through most of the day. The wind and rain never got vicious enough to wake me up, which is sort of disappointing. When I went to bed, the media hype machine was running on all cylinders. I wouldn't be surprised to hear a news report that the raindrops are laced with the Ebola virus and that good citizens have been found bleeding out in puddles across the state as the CIA tortures the survivors in a vain attempt to find shadowy culprits.

It also occurred to me that anybody who has gotten a driver's license in the last couple of years is driving in stormy weather for the first time today. Now, that is actually a little scary.

This Had Better Be Worth It

The wind is moaning and moist. The weather isn't supposed to get really wild until much later, but the storm is definitely on its way. At least one concerned parent has called camp to make sure everything is all right. Schools in the north and east bay will be shut down tomorrow, and the media keeps repeating variations of "be afraid - be very afraid".

I'm hoping that the coming storm lives up to its hype. I'm also hoping that no kids vomit tonight. Two kids lost their dinners last night - one of the floor of his cabin, and one in the doorway to the girls' bathroom. As far as I can tell, it was all because they were feeling anxious. Another girl complained of a stomach ache, which I quickly discovered was probably because she hadn't pooped since Sunday. Kids are weird.

The sunrises have been beautiful again this week.

Sailors take warning.

Incoming

There is storm on the horizon, expected to hit our area late Wednesday night with heavy rain and wind. At camp, there is talk of switching up the schedule so that the usual Thursday all-day hike doesn't coincide with the downpour. Not that this really affects me, since I get to stay dry in the hub at night anyway. I look forward to enjoying the storm though.

There is always the chance that a tree or a power line will make getting home problematic, but that's okay. I'm just excited that inclement weather is on the way. We actually seem to be getting a decent amount of rain this Autumn. I hope it continues for the rest of the season.

This week, we have around 190 kids, which is a bit more than the 115 I was expecting. I hadn't realized that a second school had been added to the schedule. I got to camp last night to find that there were more people in a couple of the cabins than there were beds, so I had to open the storage room to get extra mattresses. That was definitely some poor planning on the part of the daytime staff. If this kind of thing isn't addressed during the day, I'm left to scramble at bedtime. At that point, it's too late to do anything other than throw mattresses around. It made me grouchy.

I have to wake up two kids at night so they won't wet their beds, and this week, both of them are nearly impossible to wake up. Other than that, I had a good night, and the day arrived with another colorful sunrise. Jeanine said the light at home was a strange glow. The calm before the storm, perhaps.

Currently listening to: Nest - "At the Shelter, First Awakening" Beautiful solo Kantele music.

Orange Clouds, Unconcerned Birds

One of the good things about owning chickens is that We find ourselves in the backyard at sunset and sunrise, so we get to see sunsets like this:

And sunrises like this:

The chickens, having no appreciation for the finer things in life, don't care. They just march up their ramp at sunset, and down it again at sunrise. Right now, they're eating dried mealworms and the rice we didn't finish during dinner a few days ago. Easy to please, chickens.

Last night, the crows were in the persimmon tree again. They left as I photographed them. This one looks like it's hanging on a branch, like some strange corvid fruit.

Mysterious Stranger, Flea Markets, and Other Unimportant Anecdotes

Our modem is being grumpy again, but we're stuck with it until one of us gets fed up enough to call AT&T and wait on the line for most of the day. Having to make a phone call has always been a big deterrent for me.

Nobody puked on the last night of camp this week. I got there a little early so I could set up the trail cam near the deer carcass, only to find that the carcass was gone. I set up the cam anyway. I still don't know what happened to the deer, although it's a good bet that it was dragged off by the Mountain Lion to a more secure location.

The only picture the trailcam took was this:

I have no idea who this person is, or why he (it looks like a he to me) was running by our camp in the middle of the night. The time stamp on the camera isn't set properly, so I'm not sure what time of night this was taken.

The only other thing of note to occur was an alarm going off in the kitchen. It turned out to be the temperature alarm on the big walk-in refrigerator/freezer. I didn't even know that particular alarm existed, but it makes sense to have one. We wouldn't want to serve spoiled food to the campers. It turned out that some genius had left the door to the freezer ajar. Thanks, genius.

I stayed up all day on Friday, which is something I've started doing on the weekends that Willow is here. That way, I'm not sleeping all day while she sits around bored. It's just as well too, because we had to get up at 5:30 because her girl scout troop was selling stuff at the flea market to raise money for future trips (Disneyland, Europe, etc.).

When I dropped her off, somebody tried to buy the trombone in my trunk (which was open so I could get the things that Willow was selling). The trombone is not for sale, sir. When I went to get her later, I bought a lamp from the guy in the stall across from theirs, to replace the one the cat broke. I also noticed that many people who attend flea markets have no idea how to fit their cars between the lines of the parking spaces. I actually made one guy move by pulling in next to him after he'd done a sloppy parking job. His wife couldn't get out on her side of the car. Take that, guy. That kind of thing is high up on my list of irritations. It shows a serious lack of consideration and/or a complete unawareness of one's surroundings. After that, I saw several even more egregious examples of poor parking skills. I think I'm turning into a grumpy old man.

Speaking of broken, we've been having plumbing issues. Today, when I was washing dishes, water pooled up in the shower. That's weird, and probably expensive.

Outside, for once, the sky is not having plumbing issues. It has been raining off and on all week. The early morning drizzle has given way to partly cloudy skies, but more rain is in the forecast. Hurrah!

Around the Sun We Go, Where We'll Stop, Nobody Knows...

I turned 47 today, and spent most of the day sleeping, waking up in the evening to have cake and such.

My first action on the anniversary of my birth was to clean up puke. Somebody has managed to vomit in bed every night this week, and as I type, I'm wondering who will do it tonight. I had checked this particular girl at midnight because she's a diabetic, and found that her blood glucose levels were elevated. She has one of those neat little pumps that calculates what dosage of insulin to administer, so she did this and went back to sleep. Less than an hour later, as I was coming back from the lodge with my freshly microwaved meal, I found her waiting for me in the hub, covered in vomit. Lots of cleaning ensued, and she rechecked her blood glucose levels. Still high, but then again it hadn't been too long since she'd had the insulin, so I had her drink some water and go back to bed. Around 5:00, she puked again, and more cleaning had to happen. This time, I called her mom, who ended up having to drive up to camp to figure things out. To make a long story short, the catheter in her device was slightly bent (she'd changed it out herself earlier in the day), so she hadn't been getting the insulin she'd administered (which meant the hot chocolate she'd had right before bedtime was wreaking havoc). She ended up going home to catch up on lost sleep, and hasn't come back.

The other interesting thing that happened on my birthday eve was the partial deer that appeared at the bottom of our driveway right around the time the night hike started. Some of the kids got to see it before our hub host and our facilities manager dragged it off the road and hid it behind a boulder. The kids were impressed. I wanted to set up my trail cam, which takes infra red photos and has a motion sensor, but I didn't have the right SD card with me. Tonight, when I went down to set the camera up, the carcass was gone. I don't think the rangers would have moved it, so it was either our facilities manager (who worries about getting nervous calls from parents whenever Mountain Lions are mentioned), or the lion coming back and dragging it off. I set the camera up anyway, and will check it in the morning.

The other thing that happened was that a live wire came down on our access road, preventing me from heading home in the morning, and preventing the daytime staff from getting here. They ended up parking at the adjacent county park and hiking in, and I eventually drove down the road as far as I could and chatted with the rangers and our facilities manager until the PG&E guy had things cleared up. It's never a dull moment around here this week. Our facilities manager is going with the theory that the deer might have been hit and dragged by a vehicle, while the rangers are certain that it's a Mountain Lion kill. There is a mother lion with a couple of cubs in the area, so I'm siding with the rangers on this one. It was strange that it was found in the middle of the road though, but then again the lion night have been startled by nearby people, forcing her to temporarily abandon her kill.

It's always nice to get a mysterious story for my birthday.

A More Than Welcome Deluge, Plus Vomit

The rain hit sometime after midnight last night, and continued until past sunrise. The worms were out on the walkway, and I even found a small frog in the hub, covered in dust from spelunking under the desk. Figuring he'd be happier out in the rain, I ejected him.

The campers this week are 6th grade Catholic school students. Each night, I have to wake up two potential bed wetters and a girl with diabetes. Last night, a kid puked all over himself and his bed, adding to the smelly bag full of vomit-stained clothes already awaiting me outside the laundry room. One girl went home with a fever too. Plus, there were a few other people, including a cabin leader, with stomach aches. I think I had been getting spoiled by a series of relatively easy Monday nights, so one like this was bound to happen at some point. It wasn't too bad though. Plus, there are a couple of part time staff members, Fox and Weasel, filling in as cabin leaders, which means at least a couple of the cabins have good, solid leaders.

During the time I wasn't cleaning up vomit or taking temperatures, I continued reading S.M. Stirling's excellent "A Meeting In Corvallis" (part 3 in the initial trilogy of his post-apocalyptic "Change" novels), listening to the massive "Ballades" cassette box set by Motion Sickness of Time Travel, and watching old Sherlock Holmes episodes. I do keep myself entertained. I walked another two miles too, circling camp my customary sixteen times to do so.

I'll do it all again tonight, and the night after that, and so on... It's supposed to rain again later, and out the window I can see a bank of dark clouds to the north.