PixlBit

It was a busy, busy week for me at the park last week, both in terms of getting the park ready for the holiday weekend and dealing with the huge number of people enjoying the park on the weekend. More on that in the Ranger Stuff section. In other news, I bought a new-to-me car yesterday. I am the happy owner of a 2007 Subaru Forester in a lovely sage green, it's the LL Bean package, so it's loaded with all kinds of goodies. But not the weather radio, which I will miss. Told the salesman at the dealership that it would be happy going to live in Freeport, which is where LL Bean is headquartered. Most of us in the area have worked there at least once in our lives.

Playing: Being as I am spending time in the booth at work, I picked up Fantasy Life (3DS) again. I'm having way more fun doing all the quests, both for the various occupations and also for the NPCs than finishing the actual story. At home, I'm still playing Tales of Symphonia: Dawn of the New World. It's grown on me, it's not even close to being on my top five favorite Tales entries, but I'm having fun with it for what it is. Collecting monsters and synthesizing stuff is fun, and I really want to know where the story is going.

Listening: not much other than Thistle and Shamrock on NPR on Saturday nights. This will soon change, as the new(er) car has a six-CD changer. If people thought my musical taste was random before now they'll really be confused if I put it on "random". I'm picturing something classical immediately followed by something by the Dropkick Murphys, followed by Chris LeDeux, followed by a sea chantey. 

Reading: This month's Smithsonian. Still need new glasses.

Watching: The first couple of Lethal Weapon movies, Burn Notice, Hill Street Blues,and Hotel Hell have been the ones I can remember for the past week.

Ranger Stuff: Helped the maintenance mechanics work on our water system on Monday. We all knew it was the well pump, but it's best to exhaust all other options before pulling 115' of water line and a pump out of a well. Not to mention not knowing what was down there for a pump, so couldn't go buy one until it was pulled.  My part was mostly standing at the breaker box shutting off power to the well and turning it back on as needed so no one got electrocuted. The pump got replaced the next day, on my day off. I was kinda bummed, because I like learning how to do that stuff.

Luckily, it rained a lot on my days off, so I got to game guilt-free all day both days. And the added bonus of the rain getting rid of the caterpillar hairs. Thursday and Friday, we spent in a mad frenzy of mowing and weedwhacking to make the park look good for the holiday. We hadn't been able to weedwhack for six weeks and the place was looking pretty scruffy. I also scraped, sanded, and repainted our rusting water fountain while we were waiting for the water to settle in the well.

The weekend was awesome - lots of happy park visitors, I got to show off the two osprey chicks in the nest, and we had a porcupine hanging out in a tree by one of the busiest trails in the park that was fun to point out to people and talk about what a fascinating animal the porcupine is. Also got to talk to a family about some of the neat stuff in the tide pools. And I get paid to do this stuff!!!

Happy mid-week Pixlbit Nation! I'm off to pick Jason up and take a road trip in my new car!