End of Summer Update

I guess it's not really the end of summer, but work's going to start getting really busy in a week or so, so play time is over :(

This has been a moderately fun moderately stressful summer. Things at work have been a little slow with school out, and due to my lowness on the totem pole at the time I got a mandatory 1 week vacation. I wasn't too worried, I have a hefty pile of bills but I was ahead on my payments and figured I could handle it and just pick up some extra hours next week. Plus that week Mr Bortamus was coming down to visit so I had the whole week of to play, bonus. More on that later. So anyway as the week was winding down I got an e-mail from work with my schedule for next week. I opened it up and I was only scheduled for one day. Yikes. Okay I was in the middle of a two week mandatory (unpaid) vacation. Now the little doubt gnomes were starting to creep in. Well long story short I'm just coming off the end of a three week long vacation. I applied at some other jobs down here but the job market sucks for schlubs like myself. I'm back working again and hopefully things will pick up fast, but I've been living by the good graces of my parents this month, gosh what awsome parents I have.

Work is starting to improve though, we hire a bunch of temps for the beginning of the school season and I'll more or less be supervising them while they're there. Yay for babysitting.

So ya, Brett flew down to visit at the end of July. We had a pretty fun time down here. On his first(second?) night here I took him out in the back yard scorpion hunting. We've just moved into a new house that has been vacant for a year, and we live in the middle of what used to be a huge citrus grove. So what does that spell? Scorpions! Yup good ol' Arizona is home to all sorts of creepy crawlies, and this new place has them in abundance. Well I handed Brett my flourescent flashlight, got the scorpion killing stick and we waged war on the little buggers. The common desert scorpion is slightly toxic, I've been stung three times, it's really painful followed by lots of numbness followed by lots of soreness, but they're rarely fatal. Luckily at night they usually aren't moving around too much, and God in his mercy made them glow brightly under a blacklight, so they're really easy to spot. So while Brett held the light I went about my dirty deed, and in about two hours we squashed around 40 of them. Hoorah! Unfortunately probably another twenty got away, but they'll get theirs in due time. It's like world war three in my back yard with these guys. Oh, and we caught two of them and named them roo and bort junior, cute little guys when they can't get at you, and it's fun watching them eat crickets!

Brett and I went camping up at the Rim above Payson. I hadn't been out of the city for 6 months so it was nice to get to some cooler climates. The area up there is gorgeous, it smelled lovely, and it rained on us for most of the trip, the I spent the night cold, wet, uncomfortable, and I loved every minute of it! After we had dinner, which was a fiasco of trying to keep the coals hot enough to cook the food while diving in my car every few minutes to keep out of the rain (for the record peach cobbler mixed with charcoal ashes and rainwater is not good), Brett took a nap in the tent so I decided to take a walk in the woods with my camera and shoot a few pictures. I didn't end up taking many as the rain picked back up and I wanted to keep my camera dry, but the woods looked amazing, maybe it comes from my farmboy upbringing but being alone out in the wilderness is always such a spiritual thing for me. When you're able to sit and just take in everything around you, the smell of the moist moss and leaves, the faint sound of the wind passing through the trees, the slight movements of the birds and squirrels and chimpunks doing their stuff, it just feels like all the trouble in the world just melts away. I always leave with such a feeling of peace and comfort after times like these.

Well Bort and I had a fun time camping, it was great having him down to visit for a week (plus he fixed the A/C in my car and it only cost 29 cents, woot!) I do so very much miss all my friends up North.

Well that's about all, I might have a part two to this in awhile, but I have to get up and go to work in 6 hours!

Cheers.

~roO