Things I learned on the night shift on a wildfire in California...

Things I learned after almost 2 weeks of working the night shift on the Ukonom Complex fires in Forks of Salmon, California:

-Scorpions sting and it hurt, but not as bad as I thought it would
-Getting stung on the neck, however, is psychologically disturbing
-I'm immune to poison oak; unfortunately, most other people are not.
-Poison oak can go systemic, meaning you get it in weird and often uncomfortable places
-Did I mention I'm immune to poison oak? ;)
-California has lots of weird bugs.
-People should be required to keep their boots outside of the mobile sleeping trailer
-The river by Orleans and Forks of Salmon is remarkably clear and refreshing
-Being told you can't go river makes people upset
-Being told you can't drink on the way home from the fire makes people upset
-Poor leadership makes people upset
-Even a "dark cloud" has a silver lining. You can see it better when you drink
-I do pretty well working the night shift. It's the vampire thing...
-When I wake up at 5 pm to work the night shift, I do NOT like it when people say "Good morning". It's 5 pm, I don't care that we are just waking up, it is the AFTERNOON
-Eating breakfast for dinner is better than eating dinner for breakfast
-It doesn't matter how old you really are, sneaking out of a hotel to the liquor store when you're told you're not allowed to still makes you feel like you're in high school...and not in a GOOD way
-Nate is a rageaholic. But not really.
-Even if you don't think you can drink a whole bottle of wine by yourself, once you open it, I'm sure you can find a way
-When you start counting down the number of days left on a fire roll by day 2, you know it's going to be a long one
-People that wake up too early and start singing and being annoying before everybody else wakes up at fire camp really pisses people off
-...Especially when you ask how they are doing, and they say, "I'm ALWAYS fine!" Don't ever EVER be that guy
-Yellowjackets will swarm and attack, even at midnight
-I'm glad I wasn't there for THAT...not that scratching your eye and not being able to see out of it for 24 hours is much better
-I wish I could have seen Andy freak out, apparently it was hilarious when he started getting stung
-You CAN get pneumonia during the summer in 110 degree weather
-Running a chainsaw for my job here at Rocky is WAYYY cooler than brushing out poison oak and manzanita on a fireline
-I need a new iPod
-Nate has the best taste of music of anybody besides maybe Tom back in Michigan
-It is possible to tend to a bonfire for 14 hours straight
-It is possiblyto sleep in the most uncomfortable positions ever, on really steep slopes, wearing a hard hat and a fire pack
-Don't try to sleep on top of a steel truck; it will NEVER warm up from lying on it
-Setting up tents of different styles, shapes and sizes in a straight line, no matter how perfect, will never look that good, so don't bother
-Getting injured, stung, or poked in the eye while doing some crappy task is the BEST thing you can do for yourself; I got to shoot the shit with Sheean and nap in a warm reclined truck seat while everybody was cold and miserable; it got Andy a hotel room; it got Ruth to go home!
-On that note, I recommend carrying a live scorpion around for when you're REALLY itchin' to get off the fireline
-I don't want to eat Skittles or drink Gatorade for a LONG time
-There's always a short, hyper, impressionable young man on every fire that will at some point drive you up a wall
-Having a big black dog come out of the night to keep us company on a cold spot fire really does make everybody smile.... I miss big drooling Jake!
-It's freakin' GREAT to be home... even though there were 5 huge spiders in my sink and my window fell out, and yes my windows fall out for no reason

I could go on and on. As I made it perfectly clear to those in charge, it was the worse roll I have ever been on. It has nothing to do with the work we did; brushing out contingency lines during the day in 110 degree weather was pretty grueling but it kept us busy. Poor leadership, miscommunication, and bad decisions all made for an unhappy group. Most of the crewhad never been on fire before, but those of us who had been "in the biz" for a while were pretty disappointed/frustrated/RAGING ANGRY. Yeah that was a joke. One of the nicer guys on the trip was threatened to be sent home for being a "bad influence" on our morale and he has "rage problems". I still can't get over it!

We were out for 21 days; 4 days in the beginning were travel days, as it was an all National Park Service Crew and 8 of us from Rocky had to meet the rest of the crew in Albuquerque, New Mexico. There were folks from other parks in New Mexico and Texas. From there we ended up first at the base camp in Orleans, CA. I ran a saw for a day and decided that cutting real trees down is much more fun than cutting brush up steep slopes on hot days. I'm just getting soft I guess, ha ha! We were soon moved to a spike camp that was actually nicer than the base camp in Forks of Salmon, and went from day shift to swing shift to night shift and all of us, our biological clocks were just jacked. At night we'd hold the line when they were burning out; which then turned into babysitting a COLD dead fire; which then turned into sleeping in a gravel pit all night, waking up for about 2-3 hours in the morning, then trying to go back to sleep in a mobile sleeper trailer (the "catacombs"). Blah. I'm done complaining about it, at least we all made it home safe and ALIVE. Two folks died while we were out there; one was burned over on the Panther fire, north of us; one was on the Olympic National Park fire crew and was killed by a falling tree. After we left, that helicopter went down and 9 more people died. It's been a bad year.

I'd love to go out again this year, just to make up for how unsatisfying this last roll was. Doubt it will happen until September or October, if at all, with the amount of work we have to do here at the park!

We are on hold with cutting trees down at the park while we do a site analysis for every front country area in the park. We should be done early this week; then I think we're just going to clear cut EVERY SITE. We're calling it a "buffer cut". It's the safest way to do things, given the high chance of trees falling over from the wind.

I have to move out of my crappy cabin by Sept 15th, thank goodness. My living situation will improve; however, there is a required class I need to take for grad school at Colorado State in Fort Collin every Friday. Surprise! I wasn't going to take any classes until January when I am off work so I can live in Estes and be around for school, and for pre-season work next spring. So now, once the road closes, every Thursday night I need to drive the long way around just for a 2 credit class on Friday. I want to get a place to live in Estes, but I can't pay double rent! I'll have to get creative...

Hopefully the east side crew leader gets that promotion they should be flying soon and I can put in for his job so I can get back over there and this won't be an issue, but we'll just have to wait and see!

Yesterday I finally went and got a new tattoo... actually, 4 baby sea turtles swimming across my back. One for myself and each of my siblings. Linda and I both wanted to get Galapagos Island-related tattoos since that's our goal to go there some day, which will probably be in like 20 years... 2 hrs 15 minutes and I think that's my max time I can sit under the needle. Very cute though! I'd like to add more water/bubbles/something to tie it together more and give it more "movement" but we'll see when I get the money/pain tolerance to hit it again. ;)

Other news is that I've been going through some very tough stuff lately; if you don't know what it is, then don't worry about it, I've got my mom doing enough of that as it is! ;)  But thank you everybody who has been supportive and kept my spirits up. Things aren't back to normal or "good" but I'll get through it...

From Ukonom Comple...

From Ukonom Comple...

This is how firefighters have fun in camp when they're supposed to be sleeping... shaving mohawks into people's heads

Learning in Leadville

Well whadda ya know?!

Free internet with my hotel room here in Leadville!

Yep, I was finally let off my short leash (attached to that dump truck!) and am down in Leadville for Forest Insect and Disease and Hazard Tree Training. I got here on Monday and will be going back to Grand Lake on Friday. It's like a vacation! I am off work by 5:30 instead of 7:30! And I like this kind of stuff. The mornings are in the classroom but all afternoon we are in the field, looking at "bugs and crud", driving around these sweet mountains down here. Found a few nice places to trail run yesterday by the Fish Hatchery (complete with big and little swimming fishies in the hatchery!) but wasn't so successful today... for future reference, the trails around Turquoise Lake are up, up, UP! And I didn't even bother today. :)

So along with this wireless internet I get CABLE. Ooooh. Ahhhh. Ehhh... there's a reason I haven't had it for years. I swear everything on TV is a reality show and very very much LAME. I did watch Dirty Jobs and Deadliest Catch though, so it's not all crap. Just most of it.

This weekend my friends Chris and Edie got married. Hooray! It was a nice modern small QUICK ceremony at the Wild Basin Lodge in Allenspark, it was absolutely beautiful and the food - salmon and buffalo - was fantastic! Tim left for the North Fork for 8 days on Monday morning, and I left for Leadville later that afternoon. Next time I see him, it will be our 2 year anniversary! Actually he gets out the 30th, and our anniversary is the 28th, but can't do much about it I guess!

From Chris and Edi...

The trails guys and their respective women; click the photo for more pictures from the wedding

Leadville is a great hub to hike 14ers and do offroading (where Tim and I went last fall) and other outdoors stuff, but the restaurants here pretty much stink. If you ever go out here, eat at the Tennessee Pass Cafe - especially if you dig Kona beer, goat cheese, spinach and avocado as much as I do - and maybe Doc Holliday's if you like meat and grilled cheese with hashbrowns.

Next week, we have a Stihl chainsaw rep coming up for an advanced chainsaw teardown class. It's my idea of a good time! I tried to set it up for just my crew... which has since gone from a small intense class to a big, possibly not as good class, but I tried. Then I get Thursday off (since Friday is my leu day and it's the 4th of July) so Tim and I are planning on relaxing or maybe a short trip somewhere. I'm soooo bummed I am missing my best friends Kevin and Beth's wedding in Michigan, but I just can't take the time or money or stress of leaving before I hit it hard at work again.

Oh speaking of dogs, did I mention I adopted Luna out to somebody who wants to put her to work as a real cattle dog on a ranch?? She has too much energy and brains to ever be happy with me, and I think she'd like the challenge! We'll see if it works out though, maybe she'll be back to haunt me. I miss my little girl! And I cried my eyes out. But you gotta do what you gotta do!

Besides that, hopefully I'll be done with the obscene amount of overtime in the next 2-3 weeks, but sounds like as of today that is a false hope. We are working with the power company on getting trees by the lines felled, and secondary lines dropped so that we (or somebody else AGAIN, grrr I just wanna cut trees and nobody will let me do my job!) can haul them away. I'm getting ready to throw a potato in the exhaust of that dump truck!! Will it ever end!

I'll find out in the next week or two if Tim gets to go to Alaska to blow up boulders for a trails project in the Kenai Fjords (I think that's where it is) for 2-4 weeks. If so, I can't wait to ask my boss for a month off of work. Will he let me? Doubt it. I'll have to figure something out so I can go...

There's a bunch of crazy fires going on, especially California and New Mexico. We'll see if they let me out this year; even though we're swamped and I'm the crew leader, we are on the fire crew so I think they'll send me out when the time comes.

I was looking up interesting news about Rocky Mountain National Park, and besides the two people that have died in the park so far this year (one heart attack, one fall... both at very popular areas) I found this article saying, VOLUNTEER FOR THE PARK! IT'S FUN! Or if you actually want to make money, here's how to get a job in the national parks. I also found this one talking about suicides in the parks - none lately in Rocky, but a couple in Colorado National Monument. Did you know there was such a word as "suicidology"??

Here's another one: I could get flooded out of Leadville right now as snowpack melts and all this water is backed up in the old mines around town. Sweet. Everywhere else is flooded, why not here?? :P

Here's my photos from visiting Michigan (mostly at the Wings game) and a few of a tele skiing day trip I took... and my last remaining photos of Luna before I adopted her out. Booo hooooooo!! :(

All work and no play makes Lisa cranky

Let me sum up why I haven't updated in forever, or called anybody, or seen anybody.

I moved to Grand Lake in a flurry. The cabin was not clean; I lived out of boxes up until last weekend, because I couldn't unpack them amidst the mess. I didn't have time to clean, because I have been working 60-80 hrs a week of hard manual labor. Luna needs more exercise and doesn't like being locked up for 12 hours so I've tried to deal with that but I am giving her to a friend who will try to train her to be a working cattle dog. (Good for my little girl! I'm so proud!) I'm sad to get rid of her, but between being allergic, and not having time, and she being such an energetic dog and my ridiculous and unreasonable schedule, it is the best thing for her. I'm still trying to unpack and finish cleaning, but it's nice coming home to a cabin where the frogs and crickets chirp, nobody has a porch light, and it is totally SILENT. Logan has been limping from a resurgence of his panostisis, so I've had to deal with him not eating from that, and being depressed because we just up and moved. I didn't even get to say bye to anybody, because I had so much crap to do and no time to do it! I finally fixed my motorcycle and got expensive fancy new tires. Did I mention I've been working 7 am to 7:30 pm every day? And on the weekends Tim and I take turns going back and forth but some days, the road has been closed which meant a 3 1/2 hr drive for me to Estes instead of just 1/2 hr. Did I mention I'm cranky and tired?

The work load on the west side has been insane, so as a response, fire decided to make it an "incident" and brought in a crew from Yellowstone, and a crew from Whiskeytown, California to help, as well as our local fire crews and the hot shot crew. Everybody finally went back home this weekend, so Ruth and I are in cahoots with the East side road crew, manually loading logs and slash into a loader, which is then loaded into a dump truck that is older than I am, and I drive that big yellow beast to the dump... 20, 30, who knows how many times a day. I am exhausted from the loading, and more exhausted from the monotonous drone of that damn truck! I haven't cut more than 1 tree down in a month, which hasn't help my mood any either. That's my stress relief! Instead, everybody else cut them down and we get to clean it up. Short end of that stick, eh!?

This weekend, Tim's parents, aunt and uncle are in town so I met them for the first time and we did the tourist thing. I found them moose, bighorn sheep, coyotes, etc... And I'm even more drained! I opted out of a tour of some of Tim's trail work, instead sleeping this afternoon and hopping on here to take care of business.

I have tons of photos to post but not the time to do it! If anybody wants to visit me... don't even plan on it until August. I don't think I can keep up this 12 hr days/5 days a week minimum for much longer. Thank goodness I'm going to training in Leadville for a week, will be a nice vacation!!

Miss everybody and sorry I have been so out of touch. I did finally switch from AT&T to Verizon, which is the only thing that works at my cabin in the park, but now I have to put all my phone numbers in the phone. Of course I don't know anybody's numbers by heart! Grand Lake is nice, if I only had the time to enjoy it!

PS: I'm so very very tired. I could just sit around and sleep and watch Scrubs for a week...

Gloating about the Wings, gearing up to move

Let's face it, not having an internet connection at home is just killing this journal!

This is what my days consist of lately: Wake up at 5:45 am, hit snooze once and then let the psycho mutts outside before 6 am. Get ready for work, try to play ball with the muttskis for about 15-20 minutes and walk to work. Sit in front of the computer and try to make a respectable, official program out of our newly formed hazard tree crew; this means researching OSHA regulations, coming up with a training schedule, researching other training besides boring OSHA crap, teaching people how to fell trees, working on the tree spraying logistics, helping hire my other term for the west side, and just up to my nose in paperwork. Throw in the wildland fire refresher, pack test, physical, CPR, and in-house meetings and training. I did manage to get out and drop 19 trees one day out of the past 3 weeks I have been working. :) Get off work at 5:30, arrive at home and promptly let the dogs out; walk them or take them to the dog park, since they're all wound up from being inside all day. After they're exercized, it's my turn, and off to the gym with Tim for 40-60 minutes. Get back home and shower, look at mail, eat dinner. At this point, it's usually past 8:30 pm and I still haven't sat down and relaxed since 6 am. Repeat this Mon-Thursday. All other days of the week, the dogs consistently start rough-housing in my bedroom (sometimes ON my bed) around 6 am, so I let them out and try to sleep in; however, they like to get tangled up and start whining that they're strangling themselves. I let them back in, and there's just no rest for the weary. Loud and rambunctious! Plus they're shedding EVERYWHERE no matter how much I brush them, so everything I own is covered in dog hair. I've had something going on pretty much EVERY DAY and getting online has not been a high priority lately.

Yesterday, I dropped Tim off at the airport; he flew out to California for a week long Trails Management training. I went to REI and used up the rest of my dividend on backpacking and kayaking gear. Today, I dropped the dogs off at the kennel because I am going to Grand Lake tomorrow (Monday) through Wednesday to mark pines to be sprayed; set up our new cache/workshop; drop some trees; yadda yadda. So today is the perfect day to start packing up my cottage over here in Estes, clean the house, clean the truck, read a book, maybe go for a hike in the park without feeling guilty about not being able to take the dogs!

Those are the boring stupid details only my mother could probably appreciate, and explain to her why I haven't been good at calling her lately!

My highlight was going to the Red Wings-Avalanche game 4 in Denver last Thursday! WOOOO!!!!! Tim and I endulged and got club level seats, I'm so glad he loves hockey as much as I do... and is a Wings fan despite being from Philly! Our friends were apparently all at the bar watching the game, half expecting to see Tim and me kicked out of the game or dragged away by the cops for fighting with Avs fans... to our surprise though, nearly 1/4 of the people at the Pepsi center were sporting Wings jerseys! We were surrounded by Detroit fans in our section also. We wanted to bring brooms with us, knowing Detroit would sweep Colorado, but we both realized that neither of us own brooms... and bringing a dust-buster or a Swiffer Wet-Jet really didnt' seem as convenient. ;)  Tim and I both screamed and cheered enough that my throat was still a little hoarse two days afterwards. I absolutely love being a Wings fan out here, and lately I've been quite the jack-ass and take every opportunity to shove it in my Avs friends' faces. LOSERS!! Ha ha ha!

The Park did end up coming through for me with regards to housing in Grand Lake. They weren't going to provide anything except possibly a bed in a shared bedroom in a shared house; and I wouldn't be able to have my dogs. Which isn't even an option in my book! So they came up this: I move into the "weight room" house for about a week with my co-worker Ruth. May 23rd, our cabins at Green Mountain are supposed to be ready; however, it sounds like the snow is still pretty deep and they won't be able to turn the water on by then. Which is fine, because I have to be back in Estes the following week for the S-212 Wildland Fire Power Saws chainsaw class, and I'll stay in my place one last time in Estes. Then back over to Grand Lake, and hopefully my cabin will be ready. However, they turn the water off in September, so I'll have to move into the main housing area for the winter, and move back out to the cabin in the spring.

Yeah, that sounds GREAT. (sarcasm)

In the meantime, I'm getting a storage unit in Estes and just stashing all my crap there, since the cabin is furnished. At least having a place in the park will give me time to find something affordable that I can live in year-round. It's more expensive in Grand Lake than it is in Estes, yet we get paid less per hour (the locality rate is different and, frankly, so NOT RIGHT it's not even funny). Maybe I mentioned this before, but I'm contemplating buying some land and building a YURT. Pretty easy to build and a neat idea that my friend Tara gave me... and pretty much the only thing I can afford!

So I'm down to my last two official weeks in Estes, but there's a lot of back and forth over the next two months for various reasons. Still waiting for the trails supervisor in Grand Lake to sell his house so Tim will at least have a chance to apply and possibly live over there. We shall see...!!

Oh, and I have a turkey hunting tag, and the season goes until the end of May, so my friend Tate took me out one evening to show me how to call them, and where to look. His gun was wayyyyy to big for me so I'm borrowing my friend Mark's gun next time, but will try to go out possibly on Friday morning. The toms are all call-shy and probably run onto private land by now, but it's always fun running around in the woods. I even bought my own camo this time, and I look like a little kid dressed in big clothing. I even wore camo-green eyeshadow. ;) 

That's the boring update. Lunatic Coyote (Luna) is still spastic and drives me up a wall. Raising a traumatized rescue puppy is much harder than training Logan ever was. She is a "nervous pee-er" and well, everything makes her nervous. She's probably up to 30 lbs but is still pretty tiny but with big teeth. I'm still dreadfully allergic to her. I just don't have enough time in the day or energy to ever wear the little bugger out. Some days I think I should find a new home for her, other days she's a sweet little angel. She looks like a coyote, maybe I can just let her loose and free?? Just kidding, but I'm happy to have a mini-vacation from sneezing. Thank goodness I have health insurancenow! Allergy shots! Never thought I'd be so psyched to get poked by needles.

GO WINGS!!

Lead Chainsaw Kitten!

From The New Puppy...

Guess what?!

Not only am I a term, year round with benefits and retirement CHAINSAW KITTEN, I'm the CREWLEADER!!!

Yes, that's right. I just found out yesterday. I get my very own crew of chainsaws, minions, trucks... and a million trees to cut down! Even better, I still get 3 months or so off every winter. SWEETNESS!

What's the catch? Well... I have to move to Grand Lake in a month.

Hmmmm.....

Grand Lake is on the West side of the park, I had lived there for about 2 months in 2006 when I was still cutting trees down. It's a nice quiet little town surrounded by thousands of red dead beetle kill trees, all just waiting for the wildfire of the century to burn them all down. The downside is that there isn't really much of a night life, all my friends are in Estes (even most of them that used to live in Grand Lake), and I have to move. Don't even ask what this could mean between Tim and I; that's a whole nother story within itself!

The good news is that my friend Dan is moving over there too, and I think Travis is going back over there. Since my boss will still be in Estes, supervising both sides, it's pretty much my show over in Grand Lake. I can't wait to start working! I get to help hire and train folks, and bend them to my will! Bwa ha ha ha! Just kidding. But it will feel good to run a saw again.

No, I don't know where I'll live. Housing is hard pressed so we'll see if I bid and win anything in park housing.

I do still start in Estes on April 14th to do prep work and get things ready for our insane season coming up. I'm hoping for tons of overtime and maybe going out on a fire or two. Looks like I'll be skiing Winter Park from now on, eh? I'll have to get a snowmobile becuase that's pretty much all anybody does in the winter - drink, snowmobile, ski, and drink. Oh, and Wednesday night Trivia at the Lariat. :)

In other news, instead of driving back to Michigan like I had planned, I booked a last minute trip to Fort Myers, Florida over Easter weekend. My dad and stepmom were down there on vacation, and I had tried to get my friends to go somewhere cheap and warm but alas, none of them could go when I could. I said screw it, talked my sister Linda into flying out, and was there for 4 days. I was "cold" to all the natives and my dad - mid 70s - but it was plenty hot for me. One day we went to Lover's Key State Park and hiked around, found gopher tortoises and birds and stuff but no alligators or manatees; the next day we drove that 2 lane bridge to Sanibel Island and Captiva. We drove through Ding Darling National Wildlife Refuge and saw tons of birds. I was convinced it was too "cold" to see any alligators, but we just so happened to pull off at this little gator viewing area that everybody else except some people on bicycles was passing up; there were two little gators just lounging around. Didn't find momma, but these little 2 foot guys still looked like they'd do some damage. I really had wanted to do some kayaking, but it was very very windy and 73 degrees; it felt much cooler on the ocean too. Regardless, we drove to the cute (insanely priced houses; even the grocery store advertised $50 an HOUR parking because there is NO parking around there) Captiva and talked to a Kayak rental place. I was fine but Linda felt cold; the wind would have made it tough to kayak against it. We decided to grab lunch at some place named something Otter and see if it got any warmer after noon. I happened to stumble upon a lost cell phone and must have aquired some good karma from hunting down the owner... We ate lunch and to my delight and utter surprise, they even had Bell's Oberon beer on TAP!! Karma karma! Then it gets even better. We go back to the kayak place down the street (where we were able to park for $5 for the day!) and here comes that good ol' karma... the wind died down and the temp went up... perfect kayaking weather! And since it had been not so great earlier, we were going to be the only people out on the water in almost ANY kind of boat. We got set up in a 2 person sea kayak, complete with rudder. Linda and I always work well together so we quickly got our paddle strokes syncronized. As soon as we pushed off shore, directly to our left in the little bay was a momma manatee and two babies (of which we only saw their noses of course)... and right next to that, two dolphins playing around! I didn't get photos because I didn't want my camera to fall into the water if they knocked the boat. What a perfect day! We ended up going out for a 4 hour jaunt around Buck Key, an undeveloped island that is a part of the wildlife refuge; we stopped at the bridge between Sanibel and Captiva and layed out on the beach for a half an hour to get some sun. Then we paddled back, a nice peaceful trip around the mangroves.

It also just so happened to be spring break, and these impossibly dark, scantily clad kids that didn't even look 18 were causing a ruckus on Fort Myers Beach (we didn't stay on the beach, so we had to endure the aweful traffic on the only bridge on and off the island). Lani Kai, a hotel and rooftop restaurant and beach-front bar, was apparently THE place to be. We ate on the roof and watched this pretty ridiculous, how-slutty-can-you-be "bootie shaking" contest and just laughed at how bad these girls "danced" or whatever you'd call it. They also had a water balloon throwing contest (in bikinis of course... "Oh WOOPS it broke ALL OVER ME! TEE HEE!") and a limbo contest (bikinis once again). Then the stupid scuzzy boys around there were just loving the meat market atmosphere... one guy tried to sneak a cell phone picture of well, a certain part of my person, and he was too stupid to turn off the shutter sound and look surprised when I gave him a nasty look. What can you do but roll your eyes I guess?? It was probably 75 degrees outside and the water was 72-74 degrees; NOBODY was swimming because it was "cold". Well, living here in the Rockies and becoming accustomed to ice cold arctic lake dips must have toughened me up, or maybe the general population is just a bunch of WUSSES because 70s is WARM, but I jumped out in the ocean and made Linda go with me. Even she was shivering and could barely make herself get in the water! In the meantime I was frolicking like a dolphin in the waves. When we got out everybody looked at us like we were nuts. Kids these days (rolling my eyes). Spoiled rotten! :)

We ate out at pretty good places every night and I made a point to get local seafood. I tried raw conch sushi and snapper our first day; the shrimp was fantastic but I was shocked at how expensive a fish fillet was, considering they caught the fish RIGHT THERE. So, no fillets for us. Crab cakes, and seared tuna... At Lani Kai, their big thing was clams and oysters. I've always been mortified by anything squishy and especially mussels and would never even think of trying one, but what the heck. The waitress brought me one raw oyster. BIG oyster. She coached me through the whole process too, ha ha! She said first, try half of it on a cracker with lemon and cocktail sauce. Ok. Ate that... Weird. Like chewing a lugee. A lot softer than the conch, which was firmer than I thought it would be. Then she said, now just put lemon on the other half and swallow it. Which was fine, because you don't taste anything except lemon! Some people chew it... I don't know if I could do that. Just like a big snot ball ha ha! Ok, not really that bad... maybe I'll try it again.

It was good to see my Dad, Pam, Linda, and Missy (Pam's dog). Linda got sick and a migrane for one morning which I felt bad for her, but it all turned out ok. One night on Fort Myers Beach, Linda and I went beach combing at night. We ended up trying to "save" all these ocean creatures from this band of 7 year old kids that kept taking things and killing them! Little hoodlems. But one of the kids didn't want to kill them, and he had the shovel, so he'd throw things back in the ocean with us. :) Our best discoveries: two very large (bigger than a dinner plate), 9 legged starfish, still alive. One was growing back two legs (or are they arms? hmmm), they were pretty neat. To touch them felt like touching a dead cold finger. Not that I've ever touched one, but I can imagine! The other one was quite a shocker and pretty cool. I went to pick up a pop can that I thought was just trash on the beach. I swore I saw something crawl inside it when I grabbed it, but it was dark and I couldn't quite tell. I shook the can out and what plopped wetly into the sand?? A TINY LITTLE OCTOPUS! I mean, complete with two little eyes, a bulbous head, and lots of long gangly arms that were twisting and stretched out sooo far. This thing, in a ball, was smaller than the palmof my hand, but those ARMS just splayed out so far into the sand... CREEPY!!! We just barely saved that cute little guy from those kids because their one friend tossed it into the ocean before they could grab it. I thought it was way cool, but I'm still pretty dorky for my age. ;)  Further down the beach, I came across another can... this one had the most bizarre, squiggly trail leading away from it... straight to another tiny octopus! I didn't want to touch them (trust me, I couldn't keep my hands off anything else except these little buggers, too creepy) so this guy I just put the can in front of him in case he wanted to hide in it again. We also found a bunch of cool things one morning at Bunche Beach, which was just down the road from the La Quinta (very nice) that we stayed at. Some of our more favorite findings were a crab that wanted to fight me and my camera lens; a tiny baby horseshoe crab who's body was barely bigger than my toe nail; and a huge freaky looking blob that ended up being a sea slug! We have plenty of pictures of our sea treasures.

I came back to Colorado and was greeted with a little snow storm. So, in the same week, I went from sea kayaking and bikinis to skiing and snowballs. I met my friend Lindsay and her friends Lindsay and Mark at Breckenridge and hit the slopes, still trying to get the hang of this telemark skiing thing. I did bring the dogs, so afterwards we all went back to their condo in Frisco and they made shishkabobs and hung out in the hot tub. A few too many Jameson and Cokes later, I just crashed on their couch. Then I find out that that night (Sunday) they were getting 20 inches of snow! Alas, I just had to get myself and the dogs home. We got hit pretty good in Estes, and the snow caused like a 60 car accident or something on I-70 on Monday. Good thing I hadn't stayed out there, or I may have been one of those cars!

Been a busy last few weeks of unemployment but definitely can't wait to get back into the swing of things at work. I'm sure I won't start packing for at least 3 more weeks; I start in Grand Lake around May 20th.

Here's some photos of, you know, stuff. :)