quick update

Now that November is here, all of us can take a breath of fresh air and relax a little. No more turnovers in the middle of the week, leaping from fifth graders to high schoolers and realizing that I need to change my tone of voice from high pitched and helpful to normal and "cool teacher style" in the middle of a climbing wall session. We have a lot of project time that I'm using to work on our new artifact cabinet, which actually fulfills a fantasy of mine where I am the diorama creator for a natural history museum. It's not a full-fledged diorama with the fake, glassy water I've always been so enamored with, but it still involves posing dead things so I still consider it a similar task.

We took a class this past weekend (well, not this weekend but the weekend before this one) where we explored prairies, woods with forest ponies in them, sandstone quarries, and Blueberry Falls (arguably one of my favorite places in the world). I also saw a beaver! I took a ton of pictures, I'm excited to post them.

I stabbed myself with a dead goshawk beak today. It takes a certain amount of skill to do that.

I'm getting better at handling bird bates (where a bird launches itself off the glove due to fear/mischeviousness/nervous pervousness).

Salt Lake got 14 inches of snow a couple of days ago. Here it's just freezing (19 tonight), but no snow yet.

I bought The Daily Coyote off Amazon for 15 cents after deciding that I needed it in my life.

Speaking of buying things, we went to Duluth yesterday for both a Target run and a Fitger's outing (always required when one goes to Duluth), and I ended up buying not just the hairbrush I needed, but The Last Unicorn, a thermal shirt with birds on it, face wash, and a "Support Your Local Brewery" sticker. It was an impulsive night.

I fall more in love with wild rice everyday I live here (though only when it's in other stuff, still don't really like it plain).

I learned why tamaracks and alders grow from singular clumps

I'm intrigued by this project. It seems like a good idea to kick-off photo-journaling, which I want to start doing because I like physical items. I love things that remind me of other things, probably obvious due to my adoration of nostalgia. I have six packets of childhood photos I want to scan into digital form somehow, but now I also want to print out photos or use photos I have along with other items I obtain but don't know what to do with to make mini semi-scrapbooks. It might be one of those things where I'm really interested in it today or for this week and then it will wane, though. For instance, like when I was a child and would check out a book about a different type of pet from the school library each week and obsess over it. There was a very specific brand of books where each item the author stated was necessary for whatever pet they were endorsing was a primary color. It's a really vivid memory I have.

The other night while putting Dakota away after a program, I was forced to acclimate to the darkness in a way that I haven't before, since I usually always have a headlamp on me or someone to guide me. I had to rely completely on my feet and partially the hand that Dakota's leash was wrapped around to figure out where to go. I was able to take her swivel and leash off in a surprisingly graceful manner considering my usual clumsiness, and once I stepped outside I noticed the stars. I haven't taken the time to look at the stars since September, when it was warmer and we spent almost every night on the pontoon. They were breathtaking, especially when viewed through the empty limbs of trees. It was like the branches were gnarled with starlight.