ZOMG flash flood!

It begins:  Our program coordinator had just left for the week and our director was out on a firewood run. A new school group had arrived that day and we were scheduled to go on a night hike in like, 45 minutes.  At this point we were discussing how lame it was going to be to hike in the rain.

Please note the weird turquoise clouds and the sheet of rain speeding this way. 

Bah! Stay in your cabins kids! This is 30 minutes later after we had progressed through dime sized hail and pounding rain and gone from 'whoa this is some cool storm' to 'should we maybe be concerned about the kids?' to 'OMG TURN OFF THE ELECTRICITY ALL THE BUILDINGS ARE FLOODING!'

This river used to be our firepit and the path between the dining hall and the gathering area

Here is the rushing river pouring right through the lapidary merging with the rushing river coming down from the boys cabins, and Daniel running around herding children. 

Clean-Up!  This is one hour in, while we are still feeling accomplished and stoked on floods and flood cleanup.  by 10 o'clock when we were still shoveling trenches by the light of our headlamps, we were maybe not as cheery...

*all pictures are courtesy of Ali and not me. I wasn't ready with my camera.

Starting to train up to take over the birdies when Meaghan leaves!  This is Mariah, the crazy old owl.  She has just spit amoxicillin in a pink rain all over my face.   Meaghan tried to feed her her antibiotic with a syringe, she's getting smarter and now won't fight the syringe but instead holds it in her beak for a few seconds before shaking her head like a dog and spraying it everywhere.

A cougar print! bwaaaaaaaaa!  not really. it's a dog print from one of the teachers who brought his 'service' dog onto the monument (so forbidden) during the last school group. 

Day of the bus driver practical exam.  We thought it would be so funny to take the bus through a drive-through espresso stand, and it was.  We definitely did NOT clip the edge of the counter on our way out right after Daniel told the Dutch Bros girls that we were on  our way to take our drivers tests....

Here we are at the Big Timbers in Fossil celebrating the end of lifeguarding training and the bus driver test tomorrow (aaaa!)  This is Mitch, a Fossil cowboy who really, really really wanted to play beer pong with us.  Someday Mitch, someday.

Also this picture is terrible but I felt there had to be some documentation of the attempt at the saltine challenge.  A failed attempt, obviously.

At the Madras DMV for busdriver testing.  Thank goodness the DMV people speak my language. 

These are our lifeguarding 'sausages' ready to be put on the bus for the hour long drive to the pool in Madras. It's dark because we got on the bus at 6:30 am every morning.  It was also dark when we returned, at seven o'clock every night. worst week eveeeeeerrrr.  Our second day of lifeguarding/bus driver training required that we, among other things, pretend to be active drowning victims who try to drown our rescuers while attempting to hold our head above water.  So basically what happened was I tried to tackle and drown my coworkers, boss, and boss's boss, right before they tried to tackle and drown me.

When I came back from my Portland delicious restaurant orgy, I was faced with my most terrifying week of the season during which I had to learn to drive a bus AND learn to be a lifeguard.  Gah!  this picture is intended to express my dominant emotions upon facing the school bus on the first day of driving.  Why do they make them so large???

March 27th

Portland looked and smelled like spring all over the place, which I insisted on discussing with every person I met.  I have about a thousand more pictures like this on my camera...

March 26th

Tried out the hip new ice-cream shop on Alberta to finish my week-long food tour of Portland.  This is my free sample of black cherry and bone marrow ice cream...

which while it did not taste as much like blood as I expected, I passed on in favor of strawberry/balsamic/black pepper and some kind of chocolatey toffey flavor

photos following our discussion of how it's impossible not to look like a goober while eating an ice cream cone...

March 24th

hat! finished! 

March 23rd

 yummmm.  This is how my mornings used to start: 

Just like my tea-garden stampcard, this punch card is getting punched highly infrequently.  It's going to take me all year+ to make it around that horseshoe

March 22nd

I feel like all that I do when I come home is eat lots of food, which is kind of tragic but I don't even care because this ish was delicious.

March 21st

ZOMG it snowed while I was in Portland!!!1! school was canceled! roads were a tiny bit hard to navigate on the taller hills! it was pandemonium!   This was pretty strange for me as this snow was not preceeded by breaking local news reports about how there might be snow and what lots of Portland citizens thought about how there might be snow and what might happen if there was actually snow

I realize this is a terrible snow picture but I wasn't prepared, because of the lack of local news build-up

Arboretum Andy Goldsworthy style snow art

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March 20th

Night two of my home-cation, Laurelthirst Jackstraw night.  Check out that banjo player, who is also a neurosurgeon or some related jaw-dropping career.

And if bluegrass music wasn't enough, it was Bingo tuesdays next door!  I didn't win anything but I am now a bingo convert.  It takes so little skill!  The pot was won by the Bingo caller's mother which was too adorable to be shady.  (are you supposed to write bingo 'BINGO'? that feels aggressive...)

March 19th

I have the week before spring break off, and I get to spend the whole thing in Portland. It'll probably be my last visit for a while, mostly because I keep saying big 'see you in who knows how long' goodbyes and then showing up again a week or two later.   Starting the vacation week off right with a welcome home from Dove Vivi and Mimi!  delicious frying pan pizza, yay!

And then a return to old habits with wine and cookies (from zoops of course. I will never escape it's clutches) and chatting on the couch

March 18th

First ever backwoods bang trim, courtesy of me! not a total disaster...

A snowstorm rolls in just in time for my trip back to Portland.  Thanks Clarno Basin weather patterns. 

March 17th

Happy St. Patrick's Day!  Spring is coming!

Even though the hills still look all burned and bleak from far away...

Up close the plants are coming back!

There's even some teeny flowers!

Some of the plants I recognize (this one has roots that will numb your tongue)

lomatium!

And some are a mystery to me!

could this be a calochortus? fingers crossed!

March 16th

This is the setup for mouse gutting so we can feed the birds! Our usual bird person was out of town this weekend so I got to give it a try.  I discovered that my rodent gutting skills have waned over the last six years and it took me like, 15 minutes to get through two mice.  But I got sassy Mariah the great horned owl to eat from the red tongs, after lots of hissing and clacking, and K2 the red-tailed hawk ate his whole mouse in front of me (which is good). The birds are pretty sweet, I'm kinda into them. 

March 14th

Happy Pi day!  This week's kids are slightly more challenging than last week.  One of the kiddos picked up this rock on a hike, and immediately after I told him to put it down because it was bigger than his head the kid just behind him picked it up, lifted it above his head, carried it 4 steps, and upon being snarked at by me launched it backwards towards the kid behind him. 

March 13th

Sagebrush and a very rare water feature sighting on Pine Creek preserve

March 12th

New group of kids this week, but I have Monday and Tuesday off, muahaha.  I spent all day making notecards for the classes that the instructors are teaching this week so that I can teach them when my time comes.  The kids this week are doing Survival, Geology/Paleontology, and Ecology for their big studies, Rocks/Minerals, Climbing Wall, Fossil Study, Skulls/Skins/Bones, and Sustainable Energy for their short interest groups, and Astronomy, Reptiles/Amphibians, Birds of Prey, and Environmental Forum (which I will lead). whew! lots of stuff!


(intense notecard making photo to come)

March 11th

poking around the homestead on a weekend solo ramble, relics of life on the homestead

March 10th

 Happy Birthday Dan!  trying to make birthday balloon animals out of the balloons I bought at the Fossil Merc, which it turns out are NOT intended for balloon animals.

March 9th

Celebrating making it through the first week of teaching with delicious curry! yum!