time keeps passing

The week has been. . . . interesting.  The job hunt continues-- I'm hoping to find something relevant to science, another teaching job or tutoring or working at CSU, maybe.  But if I don't hear back soon I'll be going to tower city to fill out applications for ::gasp:: RETAIL!!  That's not a beast I want to awaken, but a girl's got to survive!

I'm ready for the hikes to start.  Coming home muddy, drenched and exhausted and possibly with bug bites and poison ivy-- but life drenched in nature, life throughly integrated with life-- and the prospect of earning a degree while I'm doing it-- sends chills of excitement down my spine.  The anticipation is killing me.

My Minor Brush with the Law (Tuesday)

It was the end of an unbearably long day.  I had just spent the last hour toiling over minor points of technical writing in my review paper on parasitoid wasps and was ready to go home.  So I hopped on the bus to ride the six blocks to my apartment from the library.  Alas, I forgot my bus pass on my desk in my office . . . And the RTA cops caught me.  Blast.

Now, an RTA cop is a few notches above mall cops and rent-a-cops.  They can give tickets but can't take you to jail.  So I hop off the bus, apologize, explain that I left the ID in my office at school and will be heading back to retrieve it.  After they check out my license and ask where I live and why I have an office if I'm a student they let me go.  At least I didn't get a ticket.

Turns out my ID wasn't in the office at school, I had left it in the lab.  Which was locked.  So I walk home, past the RTA cops.  It was nice out, so I didn't mind too much.

Now, I fully appreciate the need for cops to enforce the rules of the RTA, but I realized when I was walking home that these guys had tasers, right next to their ticket books on their utility belts.  Given some of the horrifying things that can happen on a bus, this too is understandable.  But what happens when an RTA cop has a bad day?  Is he quick to use his taser?  Are RTA cops required to have a mental-health evaluation before they get their taser? Are they trained to use them?

The remainder of my week was typical, Thursday night after stream ecology I taught my environmental survey class.  This group is all women, and much more talkative than the previous groups.  I prefer an interactive, curious class than one with half of the students sleeping or texting or staring out the window.

This weekend I spent at the homestead, cooking and making music with my family and playing with the dogs (bullmastiffs.)   It's been long overdue, and I'm loving every second of it.

Off to bake a cake!