As usual, I'm ridiculously behind on posting.  So I'm catching up.  Last month, we went sledding.  It was an interesting adventure.  Let's have a look into the past, shall we?

We decided to use inner tubes to sled with.  So we went to the store and looked for some.  But all they had were ones for water.  But we thought, 'what the heck!' and got them anyway.  This will be important later in the story.

After we finished blowing up the inner tubes and getting all our snow gear, we (finally) headed off to the mountains.  It had snowed a crap-ton up there and it was cold, really really cold.  Like 15 degrees (F not C -- which are both bogus units of measure by the way, but that is neither here nor there). 

We found a good parking spot and hiked a little way in to find a good little section of an awesome hill for sledding.  Matt went down first, and he went down FAST.  I started to get a little bit nervous.  Especially since some jerkface was sitting at the bottom of the hill with his dogs, and would not move.  But I decided to face my fear, and started down the hill.

That's one of us at the top of the hill (probably Matt)

Everything was going decently well... that is, until I got to the bottom and my inner tube scraped over a rock we hadn't noticed before.  And immediately deflated.  True story.  This is the problem with floaty inner tubes.  Not exactly the best ever for sledding down rocky mountain slopes.

At least I got a good workout walking back up the hill

We had to take turns after that.  The idiot was still there with his dogs.  So when I went down I screamed the whole way to get the dumbass to move, but he never did. That F-er.  My third attempt was the best one, and amazingly enough, that's the one when we got video.


After that, I was like "oh yeah, I am totally awesome at this!"  and went down again.  Only to freak out right at the end and plant my feet, resulting in me flipping over, flying in the air, and face planting right in the snow.  It hurt.  And it was cold.

And since 2011 was the year of technical difficulties, I should mention that my camera didn't like the cold either.  Ever since, the digital screen has decided to stop working.  I can still take pictures through the little view finder window thingy, but it may be time to consider a newer model.  I mean, my phone camera takes better pictures than my actual camera.  But it can still take some pretty good ones.

I'm pretty sure this is where I last left off in my field adventure tales.  I had finished up the rowdy party week with the firefighters and then spent the next week camping in a random spot (closer to my mapping area) with my boss. 

Okay, this might have not actually happened during this particular week, but I remember it happened on a Monday, and I'm pretty sure I haven't mentioned it yet.  I saw a strange animal in the woods.  It sort of looked like a badger, or maybe a wolverine.  It had light brown fur with a narrow dark stripe on its forehead.  Four short-ish legs and a kind of round body.  I tried to take a picture of it but I was afraid it would attack me with its ferocious sharp teeth (which it may or may not have had) and didn't get too close.  This is all I could get.

There it is, right there, inside of the red circle

The more I think about this, the more I'm pretty sure this didn't happen during that week, but whatever.  On Tuesday, I worked by myself.  My boss decided we would get stuff done faster if we split up and worked in separate areas.  Ok, sure, that's fine.  So I went off to my little area for the day. 

On my drive over to where I wanted to work, I had to go up and down three hills that I called the "evil, hell hills."  The worst part about them was the way that they were positioned made it hard to tell where the road went after the hill.  On one of them, I had to turn around a sharp corner, go down into a ditch and then back up a steep slope.  This particular day, I happened to arrive at just the right time for the sun to be positioned right above the hill in such a way that I could not see a darn thing.  I had no idea where the road went, and if I went too far off the path, I would either end up in a  deep rut or off the side on a steep, tree filled slope.  I ended up having to stop and get out twice just to see where I was going.  It was super stressful.  I spent the rest of the drive shaking because I was so upset about it.

I had to stop about 1.5 km away from where I wanted to go, and walk in the rest of the way.  I have a hard time navigating.  Have I mentioned that before?  Probably.  So, most of the time, I use the GPS to help me.  But the GPS was being bad that day.  It led me all over the place and I never seemed to get closer.  I was getting so angry that I started yelling at everything.  I yelled at my backpack for not zipping when I put my sweater in.  I might have yelled the f-word into the sky when I found out I forgot to take a waypoint for the truck, even though J reminded me I should always take a truck waypoint.  "Always, always, always, " he said.  Nevertheless, I was very grumpy.  Arrrrrggghh.

I finally found two spots I wanted to dig holes, and then called it a day.  I figured out my way back by following a drainage to the road and then walking up the road back to the truck.  It wasn't really that hard but I like knowing where I'm going a little bit more than I did that day.  Perhaps I need to improve my navigational skills. 

The next day, my boss and I worked together.  I was still grumpy plus I had cramps so I was definitely not in a mood for a lot of hiking and digging, but what can you do?  I had to dig with the heavy Montana sharpshooter instead of my wimpy girly wooden sharpshooter that was shortened specifically for me (or so I heard).  It was no fun. 

The camp site itself was pretty decent, as campsites go.  It was really cold that week, so nighttime was not super awesome, but it could have been worse, I suppose.  That was the week my tent zipper started ripping open and my headlamp started not working.  But it was the week before my sleeping bag zipper started being a jerkface.  So, not everything was bad.  Yay! 

As of today, I have spent a total of three weeks working alone in the field.  The first week... well, it sucked.  I hated working alone with a vengeance after that.  Since then, I still don't love it, but it did get a little better.  And I'll tell you why.  But let's start from the beginning, shall we?

Here is a picture I took of a fuzzy caterpillar that week.  It doesn't have much to do with anything but I will keep it here for symbolic purposes.

My first week by myself started on a Tuesday, the day after Labor Day.  First of all, I hate starting field weeks on Tuesday because that means I have to stay until Friday, which is a huge bummer.  My boss decided to take leave and stay in the office that week (lazy!) so he wouldn't be even close to where I was, which he normally would be if he were working on his own mapping.  Therefore, I would be alone, and naturally, thought I would probably get attacked by a bear and die.

When I got to Negrito, the gate was locked and no one was there.  I had been warned this might happen, and remembered to bring my forest key with me to unlock the gate.  However, my forest key was not actually my forest key, as I would later find out.  But I didn't know that at the time, so I was like, WTF?  And ended up having to camp on some stupid hill outside of the base.  I put my tent up in the trees so it would be harder for random hunters to see me from the road but I had to park far away, where it was flat and not rocky so every time I was in my tent and needed something from the truck (or vice-versa) it was a trek to get there.  That was annoying thing number 1.

I couldn't drive into Negrito but I could walk into it, so the first thing I tried was getting into the kitchen/mess hall.  But it was locked and my "forest key" didn't work on that either.  Sadly.  But no matter, I had my camp stove and could cook dinner on that.  Wellll....no.  For some reason, I could not get that thing to work.  I filled it up with gas and pumped it a bunch of times but it was no use.  The pump handle thing kept locking and therefore gas was not releasing from the container into the stove and it would not light.  I had chips and salsa for dinner that night.  That was annoying thing number 2.

Later that evening, while I was in my tent, I came up with a brilliant idea.  Tomorrow, I would build a fire using the Negrito fire pit and cook my dinner on there.  Yes!  I was a genius!  The next night, after work, I gathered all my cooking materials and hiked up to the base to begin making my fire.  At this point, it was still raining pretty regularly during the day so all my potential fuel was wet.  It took a while, but I was persistent, and eventually burned enough pine needles to get the firewood dried out enough to create fire.

Ta-da!  Small, but fire nonetheless

The second dilemma was finding a method with which to cook my dinner over the fire.  Lucky for me, the Hotshots left a grill sitting outside on the ground.  I propped it up with two rocks on either side of the fire and was able to cook my sausages.  Hooray!


The nights were strange that week.  It was weird being alone and I had lots of odd dreams.  One night I dreamed that there was a coyote outside my tent and I was trying to get up and move so I could defend myself, but I couldn't.  Then I dreamed that a snake was crawling underneath my tent, and I could feel it moving.  Another night I dreamed about contra dancing.

Since I'm done with Pitchfork Canyon, I'm now working on the quad next door, and it's a farther drive.  It takes about an hour just to get from one end to the other.  By Wednesday or Thursday, I realized that the gas in the truck was getting really low and I started to get nervous.  I really really did not want to run out of gas out there.  I'd already had enough vehicle issues this summer and didn't want to have to call for help again.  That was annoying thing number 3.

Finally, Friday came and I could go home.  I was sooo happy.  Usually, we're supposed to do a little work on our last morning and then go home.  So I was a good little employee and dug one hole in a drainage full of Apache Plumes.  Then I began the drive back to Albuquerque.  I knew it would be a while before I made it to a town and a gas station so I didn't turn on the air conditioning, didn't listen to the radio and prayed that my gas wouldn't run out before I got there.  It got really low, the truck dinged at me, but I made it.  I was relieved.  But as soon as I got on the paved road, the truck started making a weird noise.  It sounded like creaking plastic coming from somewhere underneath the gas and brake pedals.  Weird, right?  I had no idea what it was and couldn't really do much about it at the time except keep going and hope nothing bad happened.  Lucky for me, the noise seemed to stop for a while until I was almost back to the office and then I knew I would be okay.  For that day, anyway.

But I didn't care.  I would figure it out later.  I was home.

I am happy to say I am finished mapping Pitchfork Canyon!  After working with J, I spent two weeks working with Egghead and one working with my boss to finally finish it up and I am done done done done DONE!  So... now I get to start on a new quad.  Woo-hoo.  Hopefully it won't take me another nine weeks to finish.

Time is starting to run together so I'll try to recount what happened the best that I can, but it will most likely end up being just some random stories and pictures.  The two weeks I worked with Egghead went okay.  The first day of the first week he was getting on my nerves like none other.  I woke up in a horrible mood and then he took forever to get ready and was burping and farting super loud all morning.  I could hear it all the way across the camp site.  Gross.  Oh, and one day he didn't shut the bathroom door all the way and I accidentally walked in on him with his shirt off.  I'm just glad he didn't have anything else off, or I may have been traumatized for life.

But I got some good pictures of Elk Mountain.  Better than the ones from from before, because I had a better view.  I honestly can't remember if these were from the first week or the second, but no matter.  It's all the same.

I also took some pictures from the top.  I have no idea what the mountain in the distance is, though.  Something in Collins Park quad, maybe.


And there were some sweet cliffs up there as well.


After that we got hailed on for about an hour and it was a huge bummer.  My butt was cold and our soil pit filled up with water, so I decided to be done for the day.


Since it had rained, the roads were all suuuper muddy, and sometimes trucks do not like muddy roads.  So I learned how to use the winch that day.  I will never call it a stupid winch again.  It's saved me two times already this field season.  Yay winch!

I also got to see Egghead's new apartment, because he doesn't have a car and he can't take all his gear on his bike, so on the way back to the office, we would take a little detour to his place.  The first week, there were about 8 cop cars at a house across the street, and a whole bunch of police all around.  All the neighbors were outside watching so I did too.  Five officers then went into the house with their guns pointed.  The one in the front had a really big gun, that Egghead told me the name of, but I forget now.  And the other ones just had small handgun type things.  I couldn't really see what was going on after that, but I heard someone say that one person was arrested and one ran away.  Then all the cops left and we did, too.

The next week, there was no more police activity, thankfully.  I decided to be nosy and look inside Egghead's apartment.  The whole place is linoleum tile.  Like a classroom or a hospital.  Earlier, he had asked me if I had lain my own carpet in my apartment.  I said no, that I had never heard of an apartment where you had to put in your own carpet.  He called me a spoiled bitch, and I told him he lived in the ghetto.  Because... ummm.... he does.

This past week with my boss was ok, but honestly, I think I'd rather work by myself.  Working with him makes me nervous because I'm constantly thinking I'm going to say or do the wrong thing.  He kept disagreeing with every call that I made, and double checking all my work.  It was annoying, because I don't think he does that with the other employees.   I don't know, though.  I haven't seen any of them in forever.

So, remember a couple posts back when I said I took a trip to this mountain?

No?  That's okay.  I've been somewhat absent from blogland lately.  Not so much by choice as it was being forced to work by my most lovely and wonderful job that helps pay my rent and such.  But I have a long weekend now (yay!) and Matt's off at his friend's house or something so I may blog to my heart's content.

Anyway, if you haven't guessed by now, I went camping on Mount Taylor for the second time.  It's been over a year since we've been there, so we figured it was time (even though I go camping pretty much every week, but fun camping is generally better than work camping).  It's been a while so I don't remember all the details, except that we got there at night and it was really dark and cold so I was grumpy.  But the next morning (or maybe afternoon?) we took a walk to the edge of the mountain and saw this.


Pretty spiffariffic, yes?  I thought so.  At this point, I was busy drinking some beer.  I got this new ginger grapefruit kind and it is amaaaaazing.  We like to say that whenever beer spills, it's Jim Morrison coming to take a sip.  Well, Jimmy (as Egghead would call him), must have been thirsty that day.  He spilled my beer and then he threw my toilet paper roll over a cliff.  It was definitely not me being clumsy.  I am never clumsy.


It was actually a good thing that the T.P. fell down there, because otherwise we would not have found a really cool lava bomb rock.  It was all round and smooth and lava bomb-ish.  I didn't take a picture of it because I have the real thing.... somewhere.

Then I took a bunch of really bad pictures.  I couldn't tell that they were bad at the time because the sun was being weird in my camera and I couldn't see what they looked like.  But now, looking at them, they're bad.  I'll try to find a couple decent ones for you.




There ya go.  Those aren't so bad.  After the view, we went back to camp and made a fire.  Okay, I didn't make the fire, but I took a video of it, because ... why not?

And that is how I will end this post.

I can't believe it's already been three weeks since this happened.  Maybe time is going by faster than I thought it would.  Honestly, I thought that after I stopped working with my most awesome field buddy, that the rest of the season would drag and drag.  It seems like a long time, though, since last November, when I ended the 2010 season and couldn't even stand the thought of going back out again.  I thought it was going to be terrible.  And well, the first week was pretty darn crappy, but then J started coming out with me and I thought, "Wow, this totally doesn't suck."  But alas, he has to go back to school and get married and all that crap, so no more good field season for me, I guess.  But it was good while it lasted.  The past two weeks I worked with Egghead, and it was not so bad.  I had someone to dig holes for me and someone to talk incessantly to when I was feeling bored.  Next week, I'll be working alone.  But camping with my boss.  So we'll see how that goes...

But anyway, catching up, here's what went on in the field those few weeks ago.

Like I said before, we didn't camp at Negrito.  Instead, we went off on a random road somewhere and found a spot to set up camp.  J put up the tarp and set up our little area underneath, with the table and stove and everything.  It was a pretty nice setup. 


One reason we got this spot was because of this cool flat(ish) rock, which J liked to sit on until he said it hurt his back.  Should've gotten the camp chair.  Anyway, it was still cool looking.  And we were finally allowed to have fire, so we did.

The mountain in the background is Elk Mountain and we spent a fair amount of time traversing around on there throughout the week.


Here's a view from up there, kinda sorta near the top.


And since we were up there trundling, I got a picture of another different view the next day.


That was our last full day in the field and we got 5 holes described that day.  One of them, I even dug myself.  I don't really expect to get that many next week.  I made a goal of six for the whole week, since I'll have to do everything myself, and things will go a lot slower.  But if I can get those done, that will be the end of that quad, and I'll only have one more to go before I'm done with field work!  Hooray!

Now that we're finally getting some rain, the Sandias were open last weekend so we decided to take full advantage of some hiking in the mountains.  We ended up going on an easy trail because I'm lazy from always hiking during the week.  It's really pretty, though.  It's a nature walk type thing in Cienega Canyon.  Cienega means "wet meadow," or so the sign said.

I like this picture because it's pretty and you can't tell how bad I look because I'm all shadowy

Can you see him?

The next day, I headed down to the field with my two travel companions (the boss needed some time alone, apparently, so I got two helpers : )  We had to do a transect this week, which is just ten holes in a row across the same polygon, or similar area, so I got to go ahead of the boys and flag out the spots where they would dig.  While I was off by myself, I kept hearing strange noises.  Rustling, some high pitched squeaks, stuff like that.  At first I thought it was the guys whistling for me but they weren't that close by.  I just happened to look up at the exact time that .... you guessed it... another bear was standing in the woods looking back at me.  I yelled at him, and he just kept staring, so I decided to blow my "rape whistle," as J calls it, and that scared him off.

After that, I didn't want to stay by myself any longer so I went quickly back to the place where I left the guys and told them about the bear.  They said I probably saw him because I was alone and not making too much noise.  I said it would be crazy if I saw another bear the next day.  That would be impossible, right?

Actually, no, not so impossible.

The next day, I was alone again because I had to finish flagging and describing the opposite end of the transect.  The guys took the GPS so I was on my own trying to remember where I put the flags.  I found the first few pretty easily but the one on the end was over on the other side of a little hill and I couldn't find it.  I was looking all over the place and getting really frustrated when I heard a noise.  I looked up and saw yet another bear (or maybe the same one?) running down the hill toward me.  This time, I was startled and afraid.  More so than I had been the day before.  But when the bear saw me, he stopped, and I yelled at him and he ran away.  At that point, I gave up on looking for the last hole and decided to head back to the truck.

The guys showed up a little bit after I did and I said "I saw another bear."  They thought I was joking, but I was totally 100% serious, of course.  They were both really tired from digging but it was only 4:30 so I wanted to describe another hole.  At first, they were pretty cranky about it, which made me feel bad, because I thought they were mad at me.  So I was pouting a little bit and J told me to cheer up, so maybe they weren't that mad.

For the rest of the week, we pretty much just stuck together so that none of us would have trouble finding the rest of the holes.  And we didn't see any more bears.

The only other thing that happened this week, was Egghead and I ran into a rancher and somehow he got started on the topic of wolves.  There's a program within my organization that tries to keep the wolves from going extinct, and ranchers HATE it. "It's a terrrrible program, just terrible" he said to us.  Egghead asked him what, specifically, he didn't like about the program, and the rancher said, "They sneak in, and they eat yer cattle."  No joke, dude.  But the program doesn't do that.  The wolves do.  But when I'm out there, I try not to get into any arguments.  Not worth it.  So we went home, and I was glad for it.  It was a long week.

Last week, J and I left our dear friend Egghead behind and headed to the field without him.  It was a super good week and I enjoyed myself quite a lot.  It's so nice working with someone I actually get along with.  I do hope the feeling is mutual.  At times, I feel like the annoying little sister, or like that 12 year old girl riding around with John Milner in "American Graffiti."  But I try to keep my annoying-ness to a minimum.

We saw some different animals this week, including a couple coyotes, wild turkeys and a horny toad.  One day, we were pretending that we were on a safari and kind of got distracted/lost.  Oops.

Horny toad waaa (that's what Matt and I call a baby : )

pink soil (made from weathered rhyolite)

Cute little drainage basin and awesome background scenery

Back in the office on Friday, I talked to my boss about my work, and he didn't really have much nice to say about it.  I'm trying not to let it get to me, though.  I know the work I did, and the effort I put into it.  I just have to realize that that's the way he is and I'll most likely never hear a compliment from him.  It's hard, though.  Next week, I'll do it all over again, and hopefully the negative comments will at least diminish.

Flying Taco's less fortunate cousin.

I've said that several times already this week.  As I mentioned previously, this was my first week in the field, and well... it bombed.  Badly.  I've had three mini-lectures already and I'm sure there's more to come.  I feel like the guy in Office Space who has waaay too many bosses and all my TPS reports got accidentally flushed down the toilet and dragged out again in a wet, soggy heap.  But the thing is, it wasn't me who flushed them.  It was the stupid intern, even after I told him not to.  This is all metaphorical, by the way.  In case you didn't figure that out already.  Anyway, like I said, it's a long story.  One that I may have to dust off the old fail blog to write.  We shall see.  But to make the long story short, suffice it to say I will be back in civilization for at least the next two weeks.  That should give me some time to tell you everything.

My field season officially starts next week.  ummm... yay.  So much stuff has been going on lately and I feel very scatterbrained and disorganized and completely not ready to be out in the woods for all of eternity (aka this summer).

So, what's been going on?

First of all, if you haven't heard already, there are some massive fires going on in Arizona right now and the smoke is blowing all the way to Iowa.  It's been smoky here, particularly at night, for oh... about a week and a half, I suppose.  My line of work is directly involved with fighting forest fires, keeping them under control, and monitoring afterward.  This is not my job, in particular, most likely because my boss thinks I would die if I even got near a fire.  Probably right.  Anyway, the fire has been growing but the smoke seems to be dying down for the moment.  So maybe it's getting better.  I really should know more about this than I do.  But I've been distracted.

Before I can go out to the field, I have to finish entering a crapload of data, and I'm not done yet.  That's why I'm getting out so late this year.  I don't exactly understand the reasoning behind needing it done now, but whatever.  But next week, my boss and the rest of my crew are going out on fire duty.  So I have to take the student intern to the field so he has something to do.  That means I have to be ready with my maps.  Oh and on top of that we're getting new carpet in our office so I have to take everything out of my cubicle and put it in boxes.  Soo exciting.  Plus I have to order a new tent pole and buy some other camping supplies.  Today I was measuring the tent pole, and a lady came by and was like "what the heck" and I said "I'm measuring this tent pole to see how long it is." Duh. 

So that's what's happening at work.  But it isn't all that's happening.  Last week, someone in stupid Detroit stole my credit card number and was using it to buy McDonalds and 7-11, and other crap like that.  So I had to dispute it and get a new card.  I was cleared of all charges and got my new card today. 

But that still isn't all.  Just when I thought things might be getting better, some idiots decided it would be a good idea to fight while driving down the highway and smack into my car.  Yeah, not the best idea, especially if you're a felon with no insurance and no driver's license.  Geniuses, I tell you.  Albuquerque is frickin full of them.  Anyway, I didn't file a police report because he would just run, go to jail, etc., which wouldn't really help me.  And I'm not sure what kind of insurance claim I can make against an uninsured motorist.  So now I'm stuck with a scraped up car (it looks a lot better than I thought it would based on how hard it felt when it hit) and a criminal's "promise" to pay me back.  Lucky me. 

So... that's why I'm not excited to go to the field.

Last Thursday morning, I drove to work, as usual.  When I arrived at the entrance to the parking lot at 7:30, I discovered I couldn't get in because it was being completely blocked by three cop cars.

Hmmmm.... I thought to myself.  What is up with that?  And how the heck do I get into the parking lot?

I had no choice but to continue past our parking lot and go around the block.  Fortunately, one of the security guards was standing outside at the corner telling people where to go.  He said if I went around and took the (creepy) back alley way, I could get into the lot.  So, I went around the block, but being my usual self, I completely missed my turn to and had to go back around again.  Awesome.

I'm not sure how I feel about that back alley.  It's right by a furniture warehouse and what I assume to be a parole or probation office.  Something like that.  There are always shady people walking back there, coming out from doing who knows what behind the dumpster.  And there are always shoes.  Before I moved to Albuquerque, I watched an episode of Extreme Home Makeover that was based here, and they said shoes were an indication of where and what type of drugs were being sold.  Nice.  One day, I saw a pair of black dress shoes hanging from a wire and three more pairs of black shoes lined up in a row on the ground underneath it.  I didn't stick around to see if any drugs would be dealt.

Anyway, off that tangent and back to my story...  Fifteen minutes after I first arrived, I finally made it to the parking lot gates, where I was told to sit in my car and wait for the all clear.  However, no one else was sitting in their cars, so I went to the closest group of people standing around to find out what was up. 

They told me that a "mysterious package" had been left outside the building and the bomb squad was bringing dogs and whatever else a bomb squad brings.  We waited outside for an hour for them to show up and x-ray the "package," which I later found out was a briefcase someone had left somewhere outside on the south end of the building. 

Finally, I got sick of waiting and went to get some coffee.  This turned out to be a bad idea, because I had coffee jitters for the rest of the day.  This is why I don't normally drink the stuff.  Or at least not that much of it. 

During the time I was gone, the bomb squad had given the all clear and everyone had been allowed back  into the building. 

The next day, I went to happy hour with some coworkers at a very cool but unfortunately pricey rooftop bar where I was informed that the briefcase had been empty.  I have no idea why someone would have left an empty briefcase.  Perhaps it was left there on purpose to freak people out.  Or maybe someone just got a new briefcase, emptied out their old one and forgot about it?  Who knows.  Maybe no one ever will.

GUESS WHAT.  This is my 99th post!  Wow.  It took me over a year to write 99 posts.  Oh well.  Anyway, I was thinking, for my 100th post, it would be cool to do a Q&A type thing.  So, would you be the most awesome comment-ers ever and send me some questions?  They don't have to be about me or this blog. (although I suppose that would be the obvious choice?)  They can be about science or something else, if you want.  Nothing bad, though, or I will delete it, and I'm pretty reasonable on the idea of what "bad" is, so...  And if I don't know the answer, I will look it up.  I will totally Wikipedia that shit.  Kidding.  I have way better sources than Wikipedia. 

In other news, I was supposed to go rappelling at Battleship Rock today, but due to unforeseen circumstances, I was not able to do that.  And I am kinda bummed about it.  I also remembered I still haven't posted about Buckman Cave yet, so I will do that soon.  Maybe in the post after next.  Or if I don't get any questions, I will just brush this under the rug and pretend it never happened.  And we will go to Buckman Cave a little early. 

That's it.  The weekend's over.  Back to your regularly scheduled programming...

It is Friday and my mind feels blank.  Work took away all my brain cells.  Haha.  Do you ever come home from work and think, what the heck did I accomplish today?  I do.  Is that bad?  Anyway, since I'm blank I thought maybe I'd fill in some blanks.  Since it's fill in the blank Friday and all. 

I've been trying this new thing lately, called making dinner at home.  It's a good idea!  I can't believe I used to hate going out to eat.  I seriously thought I would die.  That was a weird phase in my life.  Now I'm making up for it, I suppose.  But perhaps a bit too much.  Hence the making food at home.  Matt does some cooking too.  Here's what he made the other night.

Looks good, huh?  The sweet potatoes were awesome.  It's just chopped up potatoes (I think they're technically yams, actually) and onions with chili powder and olive oil baked for about an hour and 10 minutes.  So yummy.

Last night I was invited over to his parents' house for dinner and tonight we were lazy and had frozen pizza (because I had class and got home super late) but we didn't go out and the pizza was on sale for $4, so that's pretty good.  I spiffed it up with pico de gallo and spinach. 

Tomorrow I have caving class, which also goes late, so I'm trying to figure out how that will work.  My plan was wild rice stuffed pork chops and asparagus, so I'm hoping I can convince my chef to make it for me.  Tee hee!

I really want to make healthy dinners at home every night and work out on a regular basis.  I just have so much stuff going on all the time and it's hard.  Like tonight, after work, school and groceries, I was home for the night by about 8:30.  That's pretty typical.  Maybe I'm trying to do too much?

It's my favorite time of month!  I always look forward to it with such anticipation.  (Actually, I kind of do.  You know... just to be sure.)  I always know when it's coming because my left knee hurts and I feel uncomfortable in my own skin for a couple days before hand. 

All I wanted today was to get through my speech without feeling like I was going to die a slow, horrible death by cramps.  Oh, did I not tell you?  I joined Toastmasters at work.  It's actually kind of nice.  I get to not work for an hour every week, and get paid for it.  And I made my first speech today.  It went really well, and no, I did not have cramps.  Yet.  Those came later.  So I'm pretty happy about it.  Oddly enough, I'm a pretty decent public speaker, despite everything else.  Perhaps the public speaking part of the brain is different from the small talk/trying to make conversation part?

I started feeling grumpy this afternoon.  On the way home from work, there's a left turn that absolutely needs the green arrow.  I don't even know why they have just the plain green light because a steady stream of cars comes from the other direction at all hours of the day.  So the light turned green and I totally couldn't go but some jackhammer decided to start honking his horn at me anyway.  But it's either that or try to get through the street that goes from 3 lanes to one in about 50 yards, where absolutely no one will let you in.  Oh, and there's usually some bum with a sign asking for money there, too.

I'm at Matt's house now.  I was starting to get pissed because he didn't answer the door soon enough.  Ha, it's that bad.  I feel ok physically right now.  Not awesome, but not as bad I have been in the past.  I feel as though I am oversharing quite a bit today.  But it seems like a lot of people are.  Maybe it's something in the air.

One thing I know is I'm craving cheese.  Like, I really want some, bad.  I also want a milkshake.

I decided to make some new picture links.  There's one for my "About Me" type profile and there's another one called "The Soil Adventure Mobile" which links to all my outdoorsy posts.  I liked the links at the top, but the pictures are fun.  Maybe I'll put them in both places.  Would that be redundant?  It was pretty easy to do.  Getting my layout to be 3 columns instead of two... well, that is another story.  HTML is tricky!

Weekends go by too fast.

Why is the bandwidth exceeded? It's written all across the top of my page. Does that show up for everyone or just me?  I would check it on my computer at work, but I gave up all blog-related things at work for Lent.  I mean, they can check my work computer and find out what I do all day if they really wanted to, so I probably shouldn't be on it anyway.  So here's some incentive, right?  When I was in college, I gave up internet computer games, like text twist and bejeweled and some other weird games, for Lent, and I haven't played one since then.  I just didn't find it interesting after I had given it up.  I think I will still find blogging interesting when I'm done (obviously I will still be blogging), but I'm training myself to not want to look at it at work.  I don't need to get in trouble for something dumb like that.

Anyway, what was I talking about?  Oh, the bandwidth.  It's probably my new layout.  And I really like this one, too.  Darn.

Oh guess what, I found my aerial photos, if anyone cares.  My boss accidentally put them with his stuff and forgot about them. I snooped around in is cubicle and found them.  Heeheee.

Is it just me, or did this week go by really fast?  I'm not complaining but it just seems like Monday was not that long ago, when I was watching all those Bachelor bizzos talking about their drama, and Matt kept changing the channel so he could watch Scarface.  I watched the end where he has a huge pile of coke and goes crazy shooting everyone and then some dude shoots him in the back and he falls in the pool in a pile of blood.  Good times.

It seems like forever since I've written anything in here.  I'm having a hard time focusing.  Since I came back to town and started up work again in January, this year has been the most stressful year in a long time, possibly ever.  I don't know.  Everything keeps going wrong.  The past few weeks I've felt like I was drowning.  I think it might calm down soon but who knows?  All I know is I'm not ready for field work.  I'm actually kind of not looking forward to it.  I went to dinner with some coworkers tonight.  A bunch of them are in town for a computer training that we're having this week.  Matt is home with bad allergies, and I am sad for him.  I hope he feels better soon.  His birthday is coming up.