They’re everywhere!

It’s that time of year again, the Season of Horrifyingly Huge Spiders. So far I’ve seen none in my apartment, thank God. But outside, it’s a different story. I took Besa for a short hike in the Gorge yesterday. The first mile of trail is well-traveled and wide and I was walking merrily along without a care in the world. Until I got to the next portion of trail, beyond the popular waterfall where most people stop and turn back. This section was not so well-traveled, and I soon found myself running into spider webs. Lots of them. Across the trail and amongst the bushes alongside the trail. I found a long stick and started knocking them down as I went so I wouldn’t walk into them. Yet I still had webs brushing my face and arms. [Shudder]

After half a mile, I couldn’t take in anymore and we turned back. On the way back, I saw more webs that I had missed before, and even on the well-traveled trail I noticed all the webs that I hadn’t before. I was in full spider-alert mode, and now I spotted them everywhere. And we’re not talking little ones. We’re talking big bodies, long legs. Geez, it gives me the willies even writing about it! I was so creeped out by the time we got back to the car. I had the heebie jeebies big time.

This is one of the huge downsides of fall for me. Those bastards are everywhere!

It’s cold in the mountains

I’ve got another insane series of work shifts coming up, so I wanted to get out hiking today, despite the chilly cloudy weather. I took my roommate’s dog and we went up to a place called Shellrock Lake, about 1.5 or 2 hours southeast of here (depending how fast you drive!). It’s up in the mountains above the Clackamas River, and high enough that it was quite cold on this overcast day. We didn’t go very far. The vegetation brushing up against me was wet from an overnight shower, the dark gray skies were just too gloomy, and the air was rather chilly, probably in the low 50s. We probably spent as much time in the car as we did on the trail. But it was still nice to get out there. The fall color was pretty great, all the exposed vine maple turning brilliant shades of red and orange. That gorgeous color will be working its way down into the valley very soon. It’s the one upside of fall, all the beautiful color. Now if Mother Nature could just give us some September weather instead of October weather, we’d be set.

Change in seasons

Fall is definitely in the air. The mornings and evenings are chillier. A co-worker and I were talking about how you can see your breath in the morning. The days are rapidly getting shorter; when I leave work at 8:00, it’s pitch dark out. I’m seeing more and more fall color every day.

It makes me sad. I really love summer, the sunshine and warmth and long days. I’m in a good mood more often than not. Must be all that seratonin. Fall is lovely in its own way, but because it represents the beginning of our long, dark, gray winters, it is bittersweet for me.

Sicko

A friend and I went and saw Michael Moore’s Sicko this evening. It was well-done and totally disturbing. It makes me want to pack up and move back to Canada. Not that they have a perfect health care system, but at least they don’t have such moronic leaders as George Bush. The movie just revealed so many things that are wrong with this country. How we can we be the biggest and most powerful country in the world and yet be so messed up in so many ways? It was summed up nicely at the end of the movie: unlike so many other countries, the U.S. has a culture of “me”, not “we”.

Library card

September is Library Card Sign-Up Month. Many of my libraries have programs to encourage more people to get a card this month. In light of that, I thought I’d share this with all of you. This is my very first library card that I got when I was six years old. The signature has faded significantly over the last 22 years, but I made some adjustments in Photoshop so you can see it a little better. I still remember the children’s area in the basement of the old Carnegie library in Oregon City where I got this card and where my mother took us regularly during the summers. Who knew then that I’d be working for that very same library 20 years later?

80 degrees at 8:00

It is 8:00 p.m. and my patio thermometer says it’s 80 degrees outside. Not so strange when you know that it got up to 95 today. It’s really pleasant out there right now. It’s nearly dark already, and starting to cool off. The crickets are singing (or maybe they’re frogs; I can never tell the difference). There’s no one splashing and screaming in the pool. It’s just me, my mojito, the dog, and the cat. I raised my glass in toast to this lovely evening. We won’t have many more like it this year, I imagine, and it’ll be a long seven or eight months before we have such warm pleasant evenings again.

I’ll miss you, summer!!!

They stole my sticker!

I cannot believe I am just now noticing this. I used to have a sticker in my car window that said “Oregon Native Since 1979.” Today I realized that I haven’t seen that sticker in awhile. Since March, to be exact. When my car was stolen. Those bastards stole my Oregon Native sticker! It may seem strange to you that this pisses me off. It’s just a sticker, after all, and easily replaced. And it did take me five months to notice its absense. But I am pissed off, because it’s…..well, it’s dumb! Why would you steal someone’s bumper sticker??

This is killing me

Check out the weather forecast for the next five days! Unfortunately, I don’t have any of those days off. I nearly cried when I saw how nice it was going to be next week. I don’t have another day off until next Sunday (the 16th), after a 12-days-in-a-row stint of working. [Sigh] Where was this weather a month ago?

Friday nights

Friday night and I’m too tired to make plans. Not a good sign that I’m tired already. I’m only four days into a 13-day-in-a-row work “week.” So I’m sitting here in front of the TV again, feeling grumpy and slightly sorry for myself. Time for Bridget Jones’s Diary and a spur-of-the-moment box-mix coffee cake. That’s more like it. 98 minutes of Hugh Grant and the oh-so-divine Colin Firth, and some indulging in half a coffee cake and half a bottle of wine. God, I could look at Colin Firth all day.

Five libraries!

As of today, I am now working at five libraries again. There was a brief period of time, late last year, when I was working at five. But the one library, where I only worked as an aide, didn’t need me anymore, and I haven’t been there for nine months. They need on-call librarians, though, so I’m back there again and my employment tally is now back up to five again. Whew! Fortunately, this library is in a county in which I already work, so I know the system and everything. Not to mention that I already worked there as an aide so I know the library too. Very little training required.

When people find out how many libraries I work at, their eyes always get big. The first question they always have is, “How do you keep it all straight?” Sometimes I wonder that myself!!