Andrew is awesome, particularly at Chemistry.

The whole class was given the chance to retake the test and turn it in the next time they met because of this.

A slightly bizarre proposal

Saturday afternoon, after two full girl scout camps, I helped with a proposal!

A guy contacted me about two months ago to see if we could have an owl fly in with a ring for his proposal to his girlfriend (who is a big owl fan, apparently). Unfortunately, because our birds can only be used for educational purposes, we couldn't offer this to him. Instead we decided on a tour through Owl Forest and a private meeting with Barney, the Great Horned Owl, culminating in his finding a ring in a fake owl pellet and proposing to his love. All of this had to seem like it was just happenstance, though.

(The owl pellet idea came from a goofy conversation between Helen and I and was more of a joke than anything, but the guy really liked the idea. I felt a little nervous about it, since it would technically be almost entirely my fault if she said no because she thought the proposal was disgusting. He was positive that she would like it, though, so we went along with it).

I met them at the entrance of Owl Forest after my last camp, pretending like I had never met the guy before and certainly wasn't there to talk to THEM specifically. I was speaking with another group (carefully corralled into talking to me so the whole thing would seem more natural) and when they came up I casually offered to walk them through the forest since I was at the end of my shift for the day. They agreed, she was none the wiser and we went through the exhibits until we 'stumbled' upon Barney and Helen waiting at the end of the forest.

The soon-to-be fiancee was enthralled and launched into asking questions about Barney, who was being really territorial and hooting up a storm. Helen subtly introduced the topic of owl pellets by discussing how to find owls in their territories in the wild, but struggled to really describe an owl pellet...Jenn to the rescue! I pulled out the tupperware container holding the fake owl pellet and offered it to the guy to pull apart, so that they could see the bones inside.

Only there wasn't a bone inside, there was a diamond engagement ring. He went on one knee, she started to cry and she said yes.

Here is a real owl pellet:











Here is my fake rendition, made of dryer lint, stuffed animal fur, diluted Elmer's glue and some dirt on the outside:

Something new every day, folks! Something new every day.

Beautiful fall

The weather has dipped it's head just below 80 degrees during the day time now. Absolutely perfect! I've been biking to work most of the summer and right now I am REALLY enjoying it.

Andrew and I are working really hard to not just eat at home, but eat respectable foods. yesterday we made a sort of improvised chicken-garam masala and rice dish. the four days before that were the pasta marathon. I made spaghetti, linguini and ravioli (which rocks!). Tonight is panko breaded yogurt chicken and haricote verts.

hurrah for fall!

Uh oh, what's this?

Yesterday's kitchen:

And the day before:

But wait, what is this?

Increments, ladies and gentlemen, increments.

Ok ok ok, this is the last post for tonight. I've just been so derelict in posting things that I can hardly hold myself back when I find what I want to post and have the time to do it.

The week before our 1-year anniversary Andrew and I got some photos taken, because Anginet was in town and we're sort of ridiculous like that. These were the 10 we chose that were included in the photo shoot and there are 10 more we would like that we'll buy soon.

Enjoy:

It's transforming!

I asked Andrew to help me with my maniacal laughter earlier this evening but unfortunately it's gone nowhere. I won't be denied this skill, however. The more I seem incapable of a villain's laugh, the more steely my resolve becomes to develop one.

In the mean time, our office/dining room/current junk room is transforming!

Sadly, the kitchen is getting worse, except that we've hung up a shelf and our pot rack!

I feel like we're really cooking with gas when we start to hang things up on the walls all on our own. Also, Andrew and I each cut down a tree today*, so we are practically basking in our adult accomplishment.

*If I'm being totally honest, they were very small trees.

Ready for take-off!

I just cleaned off the SD card from my camera and lookie what I found! Christmas pictures!

And there're also pictures from the wedding open house last year!

I am at the tail end of what will likely be a 50 hour week, which is sort of my treat after last week...which I have been fondly calling the 'week of hell' in the back of my mind. My interns are gone, my seasonal finishes on Monday and tomorrow is International Vulture Awareness Day, which has been a huge event to plan and is FINALLY here.  But I don't have a lot of interesting things to say about work or this week that isn't just boring coordination, so I'm going to give you a photo tour of the main floor of our new place. Bask in the glory of the astronomical mess we are slowly untangling and the adorable living space hidden somewhere beneath.

The front of the house. Ours is on the right.

"Oh, hello!" The dogs looking out the front door. The entrance to our place is on the right.

Our incredibly messy living room. Admire the fantastic paint job!

Looking from the living room through the doorway into the kitchen. MESSY.

Through the doorway to the right. We have a WORKING DISHWASHER.

From the stairs into the bathroom.

Into the back room. Once more, admire that bluish green! This room is the disaster zone. Slowly, I will rend it to pieces and reassemble it into glorious order.

The window in the disaster room. Can you find the secret visitor?

The door at the back of the disaster room leads into this! A mud room!

Just outside of the mudroom door we had a secret wasp nest that Andrew and I sneak attacked last night. They are all dead!

This is the patio. The stairs leading down lead into the mudroom.

This is the backyard! I'm watering it! I have a goal to save the lawn from the weeds that have overtaken it.

This is my inherited garden!

These are my tomatoes!

These are the neighbor chickens that Lucy loves to watch. She doesn't bark at them and doesn't act aggressive toward them, I think she's just fascinated by them.

Next time: The top floor!

What a week

Well, this has been a week of highs and lows. I know I won't have time to give any kind of an update once I'm home, so a real quick review:

+ Sue and Will came to visit last Saturday and we hammered out painting the new apartment. It looks amazing! 7 hours of painting and the living room, kitchen, bathroom and back bedroom look absolutely smashing. It's going to be SO great to move into, especially now that it has 'our' colors. We also had a great morning at Finn's for breakfast, Gateway for a trip to the Apple Store (and Anthropologie, where I found an AMAZING dress... thank you Sue!!) and then Ekami Thai and the Farmer's Market for lunch. At the market we got this incredibly dense loaf of wheat bread that has been turned into some pretty choice sandwiches, let me tell you. It was a really fantastic day.

+ Our apartment already has new tenants to move in. We showed the place on Sunday and an adorable pair of Mormon boys fresh off their mission decided to take the place. Now we don't need to worry about leaving our landlords high and dry, and our apartment was nice and clean for...

+ Josh Rottman and his girlfriend Tori came to visit on Tuesday! That's right, they stayed in our teeny, tiny little apartment (though they did say that by east coast standards, it was spacious). They came in late Tuesday afternoon and we had a great dinner at Mazza and then chatted late into the night. Unfortunately they had to leave the next morning, but it was a really great little trip and it was WONDERFUL meeting Josh (finally) and Tori.

+ We watched the entire Sherlock mini series (as you suggested, Will!) and it was AMAZING! I want more!

+ This one is really old, but the stove is fixed. I was SO CLOSE to being able to fix it myself! I knew there were two screws that I needed to take out, but the stupid things were incredibly well camouflaged. We ended up having to get a repair guy to fix it. I was totally smacking myself in the head when Andrew told me how he did it (the screws weren't directly underneath the lip of the stove, they were on the side panels) but we have been enjoying the luxury of heating elements that aren't sitting on the counter top plugged into the wall and that's all that really matters, ultimately.

+ I also replaced the blinds that Linus ate when we went on our honeymoon (measured, ordered AND installed, what what!) and sanded, puttied and repainted the baseboard that he decided to masticate in what I can only imagine was a total emotional meltdown. It's like it never happened. I'm about .01% on my way to being a contractor now.

And on a less enthusiastic note...

- Suzy, my car, was in an accident on Monday. Andrew was coming back from class, taking a left out of the University Stadium parking lot, and a huge marquee was blocking the view of oncoming cars. So we are currently down a car and experiencing our first round ever of having to try to solve insurance issues after an accident. I unfortunately can't say this is the least stressful thing that I've ever done, but I am incredibly grateful that Andrew is ok. Somehow he managed to turn the car at the last second so the oncoming car that hit him struck the front passenger side and not the driver's side, so no one was hurt. Quite the ninja move, really.

- Of course when it rains, it pours. Our vacuum has sustained a potentially fatal injury but the thing is, I'm not sure HOW. I'm becoming a bit of a MacGyver with fixing things right now (as you can see with the baseboard, blinds and... almost the stove) but I feel a bit like we might have a poltergeist living in our apartment, making things just a little more difficult right when things are already stressful. I feel like we can fix the vacuum (maybe? I hope I can find the busted part) though it won't be in time for our move out, so I need to find another solution for extracting animal hair from a carpet and quickly.

-Work is a tad stressful at the moment. I'm learning more and more that some people are better built to more easily let go of social stress throbbing around them, but sadly I don't think I am one of those people. There are some interpersonal issues between my department and another department that feels like a huge cleaver hanging over my head. Just when things were really starting to improve, these problems really started to come to a head. It's just helping to cement my decision to do whatever I can to get into grad school next fall, though, so I suppose that isn't a bad thing.
Overall, though, the positives definitely outweigh the negatives. It's been really great being able to see so many people that we care about in the past week and the move is really exciting and going to be a really good thing for us. I've even been watering the garden out back (look, I'm helping!). If we can just pull ourselves out of this week in one piece, next week is hopefully going to look and feel a lot brighter.

In which we have already roller bladed, cleaned the apartment, had breakfast and played music before 2pm

It's been a busy past couple of weeks!

Chemistry is taking up most of Andrew's brain at the moment. The best part about that (apart from, of course, the more important, inherent value and joy that Andrew is getting out of it) is my learning tidbits of chemistry along the way, which are admittedly very small tidbits, because I never took chemistry (ecology all the way!). This leads to many conversations that involve a lot of "Well, that makes NO sense" from me and "But you have to consider (words that I don't totally understand)" from Andrew. He understands it, though, so that makes one of us :) It's fun seeing Andrew explore an entirely different field than the humanities and he's really enjoying it (except for the hoard of issues the online component of the class has caused...the professor must spend more time fixing technological problems than he would grading everything hard copy).

I add all of that in the beginning because we BOTH know that Andrew will not be writing in this blog (haha ;) ) and I can't really call this "curlewandgudolph" if there isn't a Gudolph, naturally. Thus, he has been dutifully inserted against his will.

The past two weeks have been inundated with summer camps for me. Our first week of camps had very low enrollment but we ran them anyway, to build up our camper base after it was decimated by camp cancellations last summer. That's our theory, anyway, and we're running with it. Last week was K-1 camps and I learned something from them: I actually really enjoy working with that age group. Four is too young for me (one of our campers was enrolled as a 5-year-old but confessed mid-week that he was only 4...parents, your kids will tell me, their camp counselor, everything. Don't count on them to keep secrets!) but 5 and 6-year-olds are surprisingly delightful. Who knew?

Speaking of secrets, my 4-year-old camper--Z, we shall call him--let me in on another secret: He is actually a SUPER HERO. But shhhh, he said, pulling me closer and away from the other campers, I can't tell anybody, because no one knows aside from him and his mom. He was a pro at the conspiratorial whisper. I made the mistake of ALMOST exposing his alter-ego to the other campers, because I honestly didn't take his gag order seriously at first, but he was quick to distract me and then let me know that I really cannot tell anyone or I will blow his cover.

Being four must be completely awesome.

This past week was a partner camp with another organization and involved 18 kids in the morning and 7 in the afternoon. One of my interns and myself took the larger group and my seasonal educator and my other intern took the smaller group. 18 2nd and 3rd graders at a summer camp, released from the stringent bonds of classroom months, are like cats on rollerblades... cats on roller blades who have ingested a lot of crack and are feeling very emotionally needy. Needless to say, they are difficult to herd. It ended up being a great week, though, and I hope I sleep 12 extra hours this weekend.

The quote of the week from that group was:

"My dad has orange diarrhea!" (said very proudly and loudly on a bus during lunch time)

On the last day, I dressed up in our pelican mascot costume and suddenly have an immense appreciation for those poor individuals who dress up in them. It was one of the scariest experiences I've had in a long time. I would have been mobbed by my own campers were it not for Erin (other educator) saving me at the last minute, and those masks are simply the best way to trigger latent claustrophobia. Still, I had a great time.

So things have been good! I was also informed that I am getting a raise at work. It's smaller than I'd requested by quite a bit, but hey, a raise is a raise! Plus, I know a lot of people didn't get raises this year, so I feel fortunate to be one of the few who did. Also, Andrew and I have been riding our bikes to and from school/work, respectively, and despite the fact that it's been AT LEAST 90 degrees most days in the past few weeks, I think it's been really great. I enjoy being a bicycle commuter. Special thanks to Will and Sue for my bike panniers, which have made commuting possible! :)

Here is our miscellany!:

Our stove shattered! Hurrah. Huge glass vase:1. Stove top: Negative points for being a wuss. (The vase is just fine, in case you were concerned for its well being).

Shame shame shame, no posts since FEBRUARY! We're (I'm) awful. Let's remedy it.

Sue and Will are in town this weekend! This morning was Breakfast with the Birds at the Aviary and naturally I was working but Andrew, Sue, Will, Lois, Mel, Deloris and two of our nephews, Jake and D, came. Having the opportunity to share my work with my family was a really wonderful experience, almost surprisingly so. I talk about work all the time, but to actually be able to SHOW them where I spend my time and moreover show them what I do was a really tender, great kind of moment for me.

Sue, Will, Lois, Andrew and I all did lunch at Whole Foods while my side of the family returned home for Griffin's first birthday party, which I sadly couldn't attend because work was CRAZY. I pulled a great 12 hour shift (I guess 11 hours, subtracting the hour lunch I too), from 7:45-8:00pm. After lunch I went to the Venture Outdoors Festival and did a presentation with my exec. director, which ended up being hectic but fun (and I felt rather like a motivational speaker for most of the presentation...but I was motivating people to look at birds? I guess that's a good goal), came back and had a meeting with my manager and then did an eagle court program.

As expected, I'm bushed. In the bushiest way possible. Lots of tiny, pokey branches and little leaves and berries.

Generally, life is great--Andrew is at the U doing his bio stuff and he's rocking chemistry's socks (bet you didn't know it had socks, huh?). It's exciting seeing him get so excited about a field that he hasn't really studied before, but that's so well suited for him. Lucy is calming down and maturing a little bit. Linus isn't barking at every stranger he sees and Roman is playing with the dogs. Somehow we're all maturing and moving into life being a little easier, it seems.

Here's to the rest of summer! I'll work on more than one post a season ;)

Weather in Salt Lake has been really cold. It got down to (I think) well below -6 with the wind chill factored in last week and even though today felt like a warm day it was still a two-sweater-long-johns-under-pants-wear-gloves kind of day. I have this tiny little space heater in my office that I inherited and without it I think I'd just freeze at my desk! I sort of imagine it's a tiny little dragon-type monster breathing warm air on my feet. When it short circuits the incredibly old wiring of my plug and causes my computer to turn off, I then imagine that it's grumpy and tired. Oh the things we do to cope with both cold and obsolete electrical wiring.

Andrew is continuing to volunteer and is ramping up to start Biology classes at one of the local colleges this summer. He's learning a lot of neat things and one day he may or may not post about it (hmmmmm). I enjoy it when he tells me the back stories of the dogs he's working with at No Homeless Pets and how they are improving with time. Working for a non-profit organization myself, I'm well aware of how incredibly valuable volunteer time is and I can only imagine the kinds of impacts he's making for these animals.

The changes that have been happening at work may work out for the best. Today I was finally able to have a nice, long conversation with my new manager and I think I may be in love. You know, that kind of "All of the stress I have been experiencing for virtually no reason is dissipating because you are supportive of an emotionally healthy workplace in which I don't need to be afraid of losing my job at any moment" love that you so very rarely find.

There were a couple of other things I wanted to post about, but I'm suddenly terribly tired, so perhaps I will remember them tomorrow.

More recent stuff

I'm terrible at blog promises, apparently. I still haven't posted wedding or Paris photos. Someday this will happen! I'll add to that list a handful of Thanksgiving photos and a small array of Christmas photos.

Until then, life continues on. This past Monday Linus gave us a terrible scare. Andrew made a delicious batch of rich, gooey dark chocolate brownies and we left them to cool while we dropped off a birthday present to a friend. Less than 20 minutes later, we returned to the apartment to find Linus nose deep in an upturned pan of brownies, half of them already in his stomach. Cue panic.

We've had incidents with chocolate before, but the amount of baking cocoa and dark chocolate in these brownies was astronomical by comparison. Poor Linus had to endure an attempt at making him throw up and when that didn't work, he was tossed into the car and rushed to the only 24-hour animal hospital we know about. I actually wasn't too worried about him because we've had chocolate scares before, but when the vets came out from the back room to give us a status update, his heart rate was at 280 (normal dog heart rates are 90-130 bpm) and we started to freak out a bit. In a most controlled manner.

Needless to say, he stayed overnight at the animal hospital. We ended up calling every hour and a half, much to the amusement of the very kind and supportive staff. By the next morning he was feeling much better, and by Tuesday night we took him home. Whew! Close call!

Andrew and I have also started volunteering with the Northern Utah Wildlife Rehabilitation Clinic and Andrew is also volunteering with No More Homeless Pets Utah. Exciting!

Perhaps more to come later.

Twitter-er

My friend Kristine has gotten me into tweeting. I don't think that I use it entirely for the purpose it was intended...because I'm not entirely sure what that purpose is, but in any case, this is my Twitter account:
http://twitter.com/#!/parcheezycheezy

I mainly tweet about brief, inane things. I think I'm supposed to be sharing articles, items, events and things like that, but somehow I find it more interesting to post things that no one cares about? Sigh, I'll never be popular! ;)

Today, the red-tailed hawk

No turaco today, but I did handle our red-tailed hawk Storm.

I feel like Storm and I have had a brief but colorful relationship thus far. I see him but a tiny fraction of time in comparison to his trainers, so I am a short blip on his weekly radar. It's been nearly two months since I last handled him thanks to my hand surgery. When I radioed my training supervisor to ask if I could take him on a walk about the Aviary today, a small bubble of trepidation rose in my stomach-- he wouldn't most likely remember me, and there was a good chance that I might have forgotten some of my training.

This isn't a dangerous scenario. It's just, the second time I took him out of his mew I got footed and I feel (correctly, I believe) that it was because of my inexperience and because of a handling mistake. Footing is when raptors try to grab at something with a foot. That sounds so mild, so I'll clarify. Raptors hunt with their feet--their powerful, taloned feet--and when they attack something, they don't often attack with their beak because they have these overpowering death tools on the ends of their legs. Beaks are for eating, feet are for doing damage. I had been warned enough about footing that when it happened I reacted the way I should have and I wasn't at risk of real harm having been trained to handle it. It also wasn't a bad footing. But it was a shock and proved to me how well-practiced I need to be in my abilities.

My deeply-buried concern was that I would be footed today, justifiably, for being a dunderhead and forgetting the training I'd been working on during the several weeks prior to my hand injury. Because Kambo the turaco was being worked in the Mill, though, and I really needed to continue training with Storm, Storm it was.

Before I went into Storm's mew I practiced fiddling with the equiptment and forgot how to connect the jesses to the Ballerina (this is what I call the ball-bearing swivel I use to connect the jess extenders to the jesses, to subtly remind me to hang the smaller side down when I'm putting it on). I fumbled stupidly for five minutes until Kristine helped me review how to put it on. Outside the door of Storm's enclosure, I showed him both of my empty hands through the grate. See? Empty. He hunched low, surveying me with perfect vision. He flew at the grate and clung there for a moment, not aggressively but as if to get a closer look. No food. He flew back to his perch.

When I went into his mew with the Ballerina, jess extender and leather leash, my heart was pounding surprisingly against my ribs. I didn't expect to be physically nervous. Some tiny prey part of my mind was terrified of this beautiful bird, suppressed by the need of my higher consciousness to be calm and in control, hidden beneath a veneer of partially feigned confidence that I had no doubt he could see through. That's alright, it was more meant to convince myself.

It's not accurate to say that I was afraid. Fear is ineffective so I try not to bother with it. I was a bit jittery, though. Approaching Storm on his perch, I extended my glove to just under his fluffy breast and he placed one, then two feet on my glove. His talons flexed into the leather. Jess extender through the hole that is slightly too small to be easy in the jesses, fingers mildly aching as I massaged leather through leather, then the Ballerina through the extender and the leash through the Ballerina. Equiptment on.

Unsurprisingly, my hand was very weak today and shook slightly from the strain of pinching the jesses between my thumb and hand, middle finger and ring finger. Still, after not having handled him in months, I had a hawk on my glove and he looked very nearly comfortable.

I am going to be working with our red-crested turaco, Kambo, today. Kristine and I are planning on taking him and our red-billed toucan, Inca, into the South American Pavilion and doing some short flights, with any luck! Otherwise, I'll be practicing putting on the equiptment of our red-tailed hawk, Storm.

This is Kambo and I:

Green Aracari

This is one of our green aracaries, and he has been sitting on this branch looking philosopher-level pensive for about fifteen minutes.

New stuff

Good things! I get an extra day off work for the holidays, Andrew is done with his school semester, Lucy and Linus have learned to roll over and I got new glasses! I'm ridiculously excited to spend Christmas with both of our families. It's wonderful being able to spend time with Andrew without feeling like an awful distraction. Christmas time is good.

Now we need to get Andrew some new specs! Lucy discovered the joys of eating glasses. In a way, it was about time.

My little helpers

I've been sleeping all day, and woke up to see this directly in front of/on me, since I'm having to sleep upright. Andrew is hard at work on his second 15 page paper for finals. I believe his last one ended up being about 20 pages. Just a slow, quiet day in the Waterhouse apartment.

Survived!

I have a beautiful white mustache, no adenoids, an undeviated septum and clean sinuses. No more procedures for a long time. Yay!