Busy Bees

I have been busy. Ain't it great?!! And starting tomorrow, I'm going to get paid for being busy!
I have officially been hired as a Park Aide, at an unknown salary, for two months beginning tomorrow, May 1st. When the park ranger was going over paperwork with me yesterday, he realized that no one had told him what my hourly rate will be. Ha! It doesn't matter really. It's probably minimum wage - whatever that is in this state.
My days off will be Thursday and Friday. That's cool too, except that it will interfere with family get-togethers for a couple of months, but I will be free to come and go as I please again after June 30th.
Being an employee will actually reduce my hours at work. I have been going to the park at least 6 (sometimes 7) days each week as a volunteer. Now I can only be there 5.
The main reason that the state allowed the ranger to hire me is because on May 15th we start planting thousands of annuals in all the flower beds. There are just too many flowers for the current staff of four people to get planted alone. We have been preparing the beds - weeding and spreading manure - since I started volunteering on March 19th. Next, the beds need to be tilled and edged before the plants arrive. That's probably what we will be doing this week and next regardless of the weather.
When the sun is shining, this little park is one of the most beautiful places on Earth. Every so often I just have to stop what I'm doing and soak it all in: The flowers, the trees, the grass, the bay, the sailboats, the eagles, the seagulls, and the Peace Arch of course.
Wifey starts her new job with Homeland Security today! Work takes on a whole new perspective when you know that you're going to work because you enjoy it, as opposed to because you need it. If it stops being enjoyable, you can walk away!

Don Imus

I've been mulling over the Don Imus controversy because something didn't sit right with me about the whole thing. This morning, I ran across an article which set the record straight. Here is the whole truth of the matter: http://www.lewrockwell.com/orig7/lelong4.html

This paragraph says it all: "Don Imus' brand of humor, with its adolescent coarseness and rudeness is a creation of the arbiters of modern taste and culture. The same establishment intelligentsia that is so vexed over Imus’s use of "nappy-headed ho's" has, since the 1960's told us to "express ourselves," to "lighten up." They have striven with boundless energy to "push the envelope"; to shed ourselves of "Victorian inhibitions" like social graces, manners, decency, mores, decorum, formality, polite speech, concern for the feelings of others. Why are the establishment upset that we have mastered and are practicing the only acceptable codes of etiquette that they have taught us for 40 years?"

Supervolcano

Here are a few more excerpts from Bill Bryson's book that will make your day. These are about Yellowstone Park.
In the 1960's, while studying the volcanic history of Yellowstone Park, Bob Christianson became puzzled. He couldn't find the caldera.
By coincidence just at this time, NASA decided to test some new high-altitude cameras by taking photographs of Yellowstone, copies of which were passed on to park authorities. As soon as Christianson saw the photos he realized why he had failed to find the caldera: virtually the whole park - 2.2 million acres - was caldera. At some time in the past Yellowstone must have blown up with a violence far beyond the scale of anything known to humans.
Yellowstone is a supervolcano. It sits on top of an enormous hot spot that rises from 125 miles down in the Earth. Beneath the surface is a magma chamber about 45 miles across and about 8 miles thick. The pressure that such a pool of magma exerts on the crust above has lifted Yellowstone and about 300 miles of surrounding territory about 1,700 feet higher than it would be. If it blew, the cataclysm is pretty well beyond imagining.
Since its first known eruption 16.5 million years ago, Yellowstone has blown up about a hundred times, but the most recent three eruptions are the ones that get written about. The last eruption was a thousand times greater than that of Mt. St. Helens; the one before that was 280 times bigger, and the one before was so big that nobody knows exactly how big it was.
The Yellowstone eruption of 2 million years ago put out enough ash to bury California to a depth of 20 feet. Ash, it is worth remembering, is not like a big snowfall that will melt in the spring. It took thousands of workers eight months to clear 1.8 billion tons of debris from the 16 acres of the World Trade Center site in New York. Imagine what it would take to clear Kansas.
In 1973, water in Yellowstone Lake began to run over the banks at the lake's southern end, while at the other end of the lake the water mysteriously flowed away. Geologists did a hasty survey and discovered that a large area of the park had developed an ominous bulge. This was lifting up one end of the lake and causing water to run out at the other. By 1984, the whole central region region of the park was more than 3 feet higher than it had been in 1924, when the park was last formally surveyed. Then in 1985, the whole central part of the park subsided by 8 inches. It now seems to be swelling again.
The geologists realized that only one thing could cause this -a restless magma chamber. Yellowstone wasn't the site of an ancient supervolcano; it was the site of an active one. It was also at this time that they were able to work out that the cycle of Yellowstone's eruptions averaged one massive blow every 600,000 years. The last one, interestingly enough, was 630,000 years ago. Yellowstone, it appears, is due.

Updates

Gosh! It's been a while since I posted anything!
I have been sneezing, blowing and coughing a lot since last Thursday evening. I still can't tell if I'm in the early stages of a head cold or if my allergies are going bonkers. Last Thursday I spent most of the day on my hands and knees weeding and cleaning flower beds at the park. I'm pretty sure I must have snorted a whole year's worth of pollen and dust in that one day. When I got home Thursday evening, I took a long shower, followed by a bowl of Ramen chicken noodle soup and a Benadryl tablet.
I stayed home on Friday and watched movies that I hadn't seen in a long time. First, I watched North By Northwest. It was as excellent, nostalgic, funny, exciting and fresh as ever. Then, I noticed that the Special Features segment of the DVD had a program titled:"Making of North By Northwest". Hmmm. I didn't notice that before! So I watched it. I was surprised and a bit confused by part of the program. I clearly remember when the film crew came to Rapid City in the fall of 1958 to film the Mount Rushmore portions of the movie. It was a big deal. I know people who went up Mount Rushmore to be extras. When the movie was released, it was obvious that the scenes "on the mountain" were fake, the forest scene where Cary and Eva meet after she shot him with blanks was really fake, and James Mason's house was a fake but I always believed that the cafeteria interior and parking lot scenes were actually filmed at Mount Rushmore. THEY WEREN'T! The "Making of.." program clearly shows that the cafeteria interior was shot on a sound stage in Hollywood! It looked exactly like the real place!! I'm not sure about the 10-second parking lot scene, where Cary is loaded into the back of a Forest Service station wagon. That may be the only scene actually shot on location. According to Eva Marie Saint, who narrated the program, when the local press learned that the script included scenes of people being killed on Mount Rushmore, they drummed up so much controversy that the Park Service refused to allow any filming anywhere! All these years I thought I was seeing the real interior of the Rushmore Cafeteria filled with "extras" I may have known from Rapid City. What a let down! It was all fake. That's show biz, I guess.
I also watched "Man's Favorite Sport?" with Rock Hudson and Paula Prentiss. I still smile at several scenes in that one too.
Saturday, I felt a little better so I went over to the park. I decided to stay clear of the flower beds, however. I swept and tidied up the long island that divides the parking lot. There is a row of Japanese plum trees and bushes of some kind down the middle of the island.
I cleaned that up, then offered to change the oil and filter in one of the golf cart-type vehicles that park personnel drive around. What was I thinking? I am horrible at anything mechanic! I told the ranger I was a mechanical klutz on the first day I showed up to volunteer! So why did I think I could change the oil and filter on the cart? Well, it's too late now to change what happened.
Everything went smoothly at first: I put a pan under the cart and loosened the drain plug. Just as the plug came out and the oil started flowing, a washer fell off the plug and landed in the pan. I didn't want to forget to fish it out before it was time to reinstall the plug. After the oil was drained, I removed the oil filter and let it drain in the pan. When I tried to put on the new filter however, I couldn't get the filter wrench around the filter! There wasn't room to maneuver the wrench! The ranger came over and tightened the filter by hand. He said that it would be fine. Okay! Then, we took the old filter out of the drain pan and threw it away. So far, so good.
Next, I needed to figure out how much oil I would need to pour out of the second quart of new oil to total 38 ounces total in the cart. I started pouring the first quart of fresh oil into the fill tube while I was subtracting 6 from 32...that leaves 26 but the side of tha can only shows 24 and 28 so I'll have to remember... As I was about finished emptying the first quart, I remembered that washer that was in the drain pan, so, I casually mentioned to the ranger that we needed to remember to get the washer out of the pan before putting the plug back in. He immediately pulled the pan out from under the cart, and started fishing around for the washer. THEN IT HIT ME!!! I HAD JUST POURED IN A QUART OF OIL WITH NO PLUG IN THE DRAIN HOLE!!!!!!!!!!! AND NOW, THE PAN WASN'T UNDER THE CART TO CATCH THE FRESH OIL I JUST POURED IN!!! I yelled, "QUICK! PUT THE PAN BACK UNDER THE CART!"
I couldn't believe what I was seeing and what I had done! I was totally embarrassed.
The ranger was cool about it. He said, not to worry. Only a little bit got on the driveway.
Fortunately, only about a cup of oil landed on the driveway before he got the pan back under the cart. We let the remainder of the fresh quart of oil drain into the pan. I felt like a total idiot.
We only had two quarts of fresh oil to begin with, so I raced over to the NAPA store and bought a second quart. By the time I got back, the ranger had replaced the plug and washer and piled a small mountain of absorbent on top of the oil spill. I filled the cart with 38 ounces of oil and pushed it back into the garage.
About two hours later, I swept up part of the absorbent to see how well it had cleaned the mess. Wow! It did a great job! I swept up all the absorbent and threw it away. Now there is little evidence of my stupidity left on the driveway, but this dunce cap makes my ears stick out.

Tentatively Upbeat

Oh, what a lovely day!
The neighbor is moving away!
Before the first of May!

Exclamation points all around, bartender! Our "good" neighbor told me yesterday that Mrs. Nutjob and Nutjob Junior are moving out at the end of this month. Can it be true?!! I certainly hope so. Nonetheless, I'm trying to contain my enthusiasm until I actually see them loading a U-Haul.
Mrs. Nutjob may have already left. I haven't seen her lately and Nutjob Junior has been driving her car. She routinely leaves the porch lights on all night. They haven't been on for several days. The "good" neighbor said that Mrs. Nutjob is going back to Canada to live with her wealthy sister for awhile. Junior is supposedly going to enroll in a tech school and live with his dad in another city. Please make it happen! Please. Please. Pretty please with cream and sugar on it!
When I got up at 5:30 this morning, I noticed that the blinds on their windows above the garage were open and light from the TV was flickering. I'm guessing Junior just got home from another "all-nighter" and was unwinding in front of the TV. What a creep.
But it's the 2nd of April already! Only 28 days to go before they go!
Oh, what a lovely day! Tra la la la...
What's this? It's SNOWING OUTSIDE!!! Oh well, who cares? Tra la la la la...