Time is an illusion…

Last night I found a baby skunk on my road.  He couldn’t walk, but he wasn’t bleeding and he was still very much alive.  I wasn’t sure what to do, since it was midnight and I couldn’t call anyone.  So I googled “injured skunk”.

The internet told me to check and see if the skunk was really orphaned or injured (check), then put on gloves and pick it up, holding the tail end away from me (check), and contact a wildife rehabilitation organization.  So I put him in a laundry basket and this morning, I was able to connect with Sierra Wildlife Rescue.  I left a message, and a nice lady called me back.  She asked if I could meet her in Coloma, since she lives in Georgetown… so I put the little baby in the back of the Subaru, and I met her in Coloma. She took the little baby skunk and gave him some painkillers and fluids, and put him in a little carrier with a warming blanket so she could take him back to her house.

Apparently, she’s a volunteer, and she takes injured baby skunks and keeps them, feeds them, rehabilitates them, and then releases them back into the wild.  I hope my little skunk is okay.  I feel like I have a new family member. She told me she would email me with pictures, if “the outcome is good”. So I’m crossing my fingers…

I think I’ll call him Oscar.

I think I’ve found my soulmate.  Her name is Tiffany/Amber/Megan/Nicole. Yeah, I’m pretty sure we’re soulmates, except that (A) I don’t believe in soulmates, because I follow the prophet, and (B) I’m not gay (see above).

How do I know we’re soulmates?

“I love diet coke. But more than that, I love to talk (and blog) about how I know it’s a WAY bad habit and I’m trying to cut back so I pretend that I only have one can a day. For some unknown reason, I love pretending a sugar-free soda is meth.”

See?

Everybody has a list of pet peeves.  I am officially adding something to mine.

When there are five or six bathroom stalls in your workplace, and someone is in one of the stalls, DON’T go into the stall right next to them.  I mean, come on.  It’s the corner stall.  There’s only one stall next to it, and a bunch of other stalls.  It’s the only place at work where, for five minutes, no one is watching you.  No expectations.  And maybe it seems like a stupid thing - but I DON’T WANT TO BE SEEN IN THE BATHROOM.  NOT EVEN MY FEET.  Which I KNOW you can see in that stall next to me, because I CAN SEE YOUR FEET TOO.

Slow FTP and repeated disconnections made that one long, unnecessarily nasty wordpress upgrade. Probably why I’ve been putting it off for so long… but it’s always nice to fix a security hole, right? RIGHT?

(Come on. I know you all were just dying to hack my blog comments. A couple of you would have actually done it too. Don’t try to deny it.)

I’ve done a couple of great day hikes in the past few weekends.  Mount Diablo near Walnut Creek, and Bassi Falls up off Highway 50 past Pollock Pines.

Round One:  Mount Diablo.  Connor did so well on the hike.  We hiked about two miles, roundtrip, with a nearly 1000-foot vertical gain.  It was a beautiful day - blue sky and breezy.  Lots of people driving around in their convertibles.  At the trailhead, we saw this little guy getting a drink out of the faucet.  Didn’t even flinch when we walked up to take a picture.  Animals that aren’t scared of people = slightly creepy.  (Still cute though.)

When we got to the top, we could see the whole valley. A little hazy - but still pretty cool.

Round Two: Bassi Falls. WHAT a FUN trip. Oh wow - we had a great time. We went with some friends, and Connor got to hike with the boys. He LOVED it.

It’s an amazing place. The water comes crashing out of the mountain, onto some enormous boulders, then filters down in streams and rivulets over a wide swath of flat granite and trees.

Origin of the falls:

View from the other direction:

Connor brought his Pokemon toys - and played in the little streams while the bigger kids climbed up to the top. Then the boys made little boats out of duct tape and pulled them along with strings in the water. It was great - almost like we borrowed some older brothers for him. Sometimes I feel like he’s missing out, not having siblings… but not this weekend. Nope. This weekend, he wasn’t missing anything at all.

Before…

After.

MUCH better.

I went to Jack-in-the-Box today.  (No, that’s not the “every girl’s dream” part.)  I got an Acapulco salad with grilled chicken.  I squeezed one wedge of lime onto my salad, and another wedge into my diet Coke.  I listened to some other people’s conversations, and ate my salad, and listened some more, sent a text message.

Then I looked up, and a well-dressed, tall man was standing next to my table.

“Hi!  What’s your name?”

“Shauna.  And yours?”

“I’m John.”

“Nice to meet you, John.”

“You’re beautiful.  Let’s get married.”

“Thank you!  No.”

“We’d have some beautiful-[redacted] babies, I’m telling you.  Can I have your number.”

“No, sorry.”

“No?!  Why not?”

“Um, I have a boyfriend.”

“Honey, he might not be the right one for you, you know what I’m sayin’?  Come on, please?”

“Thank you, I’m flattered!   No.  Bye!”

Little did I know that if I would just go into the restaurant instead of going through the drive-thru all the time, my lunch breaks would be a lot more interesting…

“It’s so… black!” said Ford Prefect.  “You can hardly make out its shape… light just seems to fall into it”

Zaphod said nothing.  He had simply fallen in love.

Meet my new computer.  I think I’m in love too.

Last night I took W to This American Life, the live broadcast.  We had a less-than-fabulous-but-not-terrible burrito at Costa Vida, (where I got a caffeine-free diet Coke - W says they’re a company based in Utah).  I got the tickets last week, and I was going to surprise him, except Monday he somehow managed to figure it out, while he was in southern California.

Even though it didn’t end up being a surprise, the show was wonderful.  Funny, real, interesting (just like the radio show)… and we both agree that Ira Glass is cute.  I got too little sleep last night, and I shouldn’t even be writing this right now (I need to get Connor off to school and get myself to work)…  except that I’ve had all these ideas for blog posts, and I have written precisely zero of them in the past few weeks.  This bugs me.   So I write.

Last weekend, we managed to get out of town for a few days. I wanted to take Connor to the Monterey Bay Aquarium. We did, eventually, get there - although it took a really, really long time. We decided to stop in San Jose and see my sister, stay overnight, and drive the next day to the aquarium. No problem right?

Except. Highway 17 had a big traffic jam. We thought it might be nice to take the windy, out-of-the-way Highway 9, and it was nice… until it was blocked 45 minutes later. We wound down a bunch of random roads and ended up (eventually) on the 101. It only took 4 hours to get from San Jose to Monterey. Yeesh.

We stayed in some very nice hotels, ate some very good food, and saw some very cool fish, but what with all the weird traffic, we only got to stay in the aquarium for a few hours - so I think we’ll have to go back again. (Oh darn.)