A busy week

Last weekend we drove up to Portland, somehow managing to accomplish pretty much all our goals: we hung out with Eli, Fred & Melissa; attended the Organic Brewer's Festival & ate hotwings at Fire on the Mtn; had breakfast with Brandy & Evan at Petite Provence; met Mindy for lunch; went to Trader Joes & Costco as well as the brew store & Yarnia. We got to see Tina & Patrick; have brunch with my Mom & Aunt & 2 uncles; hang out with my Brother's whole family including holding the tiny new baby; and visit my Mom's new house. I also cast on for my new sweater on the ride up. It was very hot and very busy, but a good trip!

This Tuesday I had paperwork/orientation for my Park's job, which should be all naturalist work, thankfully, but is unfortunately only about 9 weeks long this year. Bummer. It's been good to get back to the park though, and I jumped in feet first with a tidepool tour and my first attempt at my Sea Otter presentation on Thursday. I have to come up with a good idea for a program, and I'd like to do one that doesn't involve powerpoint, so send any ideas my way-- what kind of Ranger program would interest you if you went camping on the Oregon Coast??

Anyway, it was a long week, and yesterday had both vastly disappointing (losing the top half of the octopus beak we had just spent 20 minutes removing from a carcass on the beach while stupidly trying to rinse it in the waves) and some very exciting events (seeing the first whales of the summer -breaching!!- and a pod of harbor porpoises), so I'm glad it's the weekend.

Today I took it easy, sleeping in (it's really nice to have a day off with R during the summer, typically I get random weekdays), working in the garden, knitting, making mint oreo ice cream & banana zucchini bread, talking to Victoria. Tomorrow Steph and I are playing tourist, we're going to take a road trip a bit south and stop at every roadside stand and cheesy gift shop from here to south of Bandon, it should be fun.