Keeping me entertained

I have been a bad post-er and it is starting to show. Facebook has taken over my life. My addictions on the internet don't usually last too long because I end up getting bored or the medium doesn't live up to my standards, but Facebook is ever changing; sometimes for the better and occasionally for the worse. The downside is that I post here less often because my attention span has shrunk to the size of a status update.

I have made notes twice for a blog post, which I don't usually do. It must be my guilt over neglecting my blog. So here I am, getting to it.

The Boy and I went camping after his diabetes camp last week. We went to Sun Lakes and baked in the sun, played cards and explored a bit. It was beautiful, but hot and The Boy was being a teenager part of the time--just wanting to sit around, complain of being bored and listen to music. It was too hot to make him go hiking and he didn't want to swim, even when we found this great place called Steamboat Rock. The water was so beautiful!

We had a raccoon that would visit us at night. I didn't leave any food out, having had the experience of wildlife taking off with it in my early days of camping, but the raccoon seemed very intent on seeing what was in my green tub of supplies. I probably wouldn't have cared, since it was the middle of the night and there was nothing he could hurt, but my neighbor kept flashing his light into my tent and telling me about the bugger, so finally I got up and put the tub in the car. Maybe the noise was bothering my neighbor, but I think it was more concern that Mr. Raccoon was going to get something good out of his rummaging. Anywho...

The next night I had two new neighbors; a small family and a bunch of young kids, probably in college. I warned them both about the raccoon. The Boy and I were still up watching the fire when another group of girls joined the college bunch. They unpacked, then left somewhere. Soon The Boy and I could hear some rustling from their camping area--they had left several food items on their table. The raccoon made off with a bag of hotdog buns and was sitting fairly close to the camp, taking out each one with its little hands and munching on them. We trained the light on him and he didn't care, he just sat there and ate his dinner, then he went off. The girls came back and exclaimed over their loss and put the rest of their food away.

The next morning, the same girls came back from driving somewhere and when they got out of their car, one of them had a hookah. I did a double take and the girl said "oh, it's not a bong!" and laughed. I told her I knew it was a hookah, but in my mind it seemed really weird for an 18 year old girl to bee carrying one around. She and her friends spent the morning taking hits off of it and I could tell it was tobacco from the smell, not maryjane. They got some looks from other neighbors and I could tell they were curious as hell. The Boy and I left fairly early that day, so we didn't get to see any more of their antics. I think they could have had their own reality show ;)

I know what you did last weekend!

Jim's boat and the skidoo
Originally uploaded by Srcsmgrl

So this is what I did, along with camping (no sleep due to high winds at night), hanging with family, celebrating my step-dad's birthday and saving a woman from herself.

Pat turned a big 6-oh. To celebrate we all went to Sun Lakes outside of Ephrata and camped on a windswept plain, took the boat out on the lake and had a ton of fun. The Boy couldn't go--or actually could, but we found out too late :( Dr. T couldn't go 'cause he had to take some fancy schmancy test in Chicago. He actually got less sleep than I did.

On the day we spent on the lake, a woman and her daughter were jet skiing on new jet skis. They were making a name for themselves, driving pretty wildly. They were the talk of the jetty. Then the daughter lost control of her jetski and went barreling towards her mother, who jumped off her ride just in time to get run over by her daughter in the water. The lady starts screaming at the top of her lungs "I can't breath! I'm broken!" over and over. So we go pick her up in the boat and I hold her hands and try to get her to focus because she was freaking out--panic attack and the whole nine. I told her to look at me and breath. As soon as she had an audience at the dock though that was all out the window and she was yelling again. She didn't want to get out of the boat, but finally the paramedics pried her loose and we got on our way. I heard from her sister later that she was ok. That was our excitement for the weekend.

That, and the 40 mile an hour winds that made it sound like someone was banging on the side of my tent all night. Nobody got much sleep. Funny how it would only last from about 10pm till maybe 5am.

Oh, and the skidoo was a blast!

I'm Back!

I am back from camping and I had a really good time. I said I was going to Kalaloch, but in reality we went to Salt Creek, near Port Angeles. We made low tide two days in a row and I took an exhorborant (I cannot find the correct spelling of that word...after 5 minutes of looking) amount of pictures of landlocked sea creatures.








Yesterday I hosted a gaming tournament for a large number of teens and children. Once again, my teen volunteers came in not only handy, but let's just say that I couldn't have done it without them. My co-workers were there to talk me down when I was having a panic attack over scoring Mario Kart. It all worked out and we had our indisputable champions.



Here are a couple of pictures of the garden, before I put the fence up to keep those darned zucchini and pumpkins out of my tomatoes.




Anyone want some lettuce and zucchini?

Power Struggle

I am going camping this weekend with my family. We are going to my favorite spot, Kalaloch, WA. It is right on the Washington coast and the worst thing about it is that the drive takes about 4 hours. :P I will post pictures when I get back.

While you are waiting for that, you should check out this interactive article over at the Seattle Times, which has answered all of the questions that people wanted answered in their poll last week. It is concise and informative, both for riders and drivers. I was especially interested to see that you CAN get a ticket for not wearing a helmet anywhere in King County including inside the Seattle city limits. $81 fine if you are caught without it. Seems like we could make up that $50 mil deficit if they just ticketed everyone that didn't wear one.

Anyone living in the Seattle area might consider watching their power usage today. Business Week has an article with the details as they are known right now. One of the substations is only operating at 50% at the moment and with temperatures going into the 90's, the use of ac and many fans could lead to power outages this weekend. I only found out about it (and looked up some news to pass on) because we got an email request to turn off as many power using devices as possible at the library.

Biked 2 days this week, and even rode from work up to Lake City and 125th, which feels like a long way and very uphill. Riding is great though and the new bike takes the hills like a champ.

Branching Out and Updating

I got a Flickr account, since Yahoo Photo's has abandoned me. Actually I had been thinking about switching for a while and this made it easy. However, is it really switching when Yahoo owns Flickr? Hmmm.

Anyway, photos of the recent camping trip:


I feel ready to post more than just work stuff on here, and in reality I have been all along on my livejournal account. I have found that I have a period of adjustment with this job and my outlook has changed so much since I started, just 9 months or so ago. More about that at a later date.

Job hunt update: My job has been posted. I have sent my resume to my current manager to be looked over. I am writing my cover letter today and I hope to be ready to send everything to the new manager tomorrow. Friday if I need to work on it a bit more.

I haven't heard back on the other job and I am trying not to wait on it. I really like working for SPL, so I am not sure what outcome I hope for.

Another Teen Services Librarian is leaving, so technically his job should be open. However, his branch is closed for renovations and it looks like he didn't plan any summer reading programs, so it is likely that job won't be posted for several months. I will miss him. He had a very distinctive voice at our meetings and I always valued his input. He is moving closer to his son though and I wish him all the best.