Of Shrubberies, Capitol Reef, Boggle Wastage by Ho, and Alyssa the Super Spy

Okay, okay, I'm sorry for not having posted for a month and a half. I've been so busy with school these last several weeks that I've barely had an hour to devote to the fine art of bloggery. Yeah, I'm back in school. I thought after my last graduation (out of several, yes) that I was done forever. I would even spontaneously belt out snippets from Alice Cooper's "School's Out." (Yes, I'm serious.) That was before it truly dawned on me how much I don't want to be writing technical documentation for the rest of my working days. There are basically two kinds of people in this world: those with long attention spans and those who--Hey, look, a guy on a bike! Isn't that something! Actually, I'm still doing contract work for Pearson. When I will actually get paid for said work, nobody seems to have the faintest idea. The company overpaid me after I was laid off, so for the time being I'm working for FREE to make up the overpaidness. The problem is, nobody seems to know exactly how much I was overpaid. So I could be doing volunteer work for Pearson for the rest of my earthly days. Yippy skippy.

My classes are mostly on the uninteresting side except for Wildland Shrubs, which has been fairly entertaining. We learn about native Utah shrub and tree species by going on field trips and collecting plant specimens. Last night I came back from a three-day trip to Capitol Reef, which was pretty dang awesome. Aside from identifying plants, we went on a bumload of hikes, including one to the top of Cassidy Arch and another to a series of waterfalls (I think that last one was in the Escalante area, but I'm not positive). We also saw Fremont Indian pictographs up the wazoo. My classmates and I also got thoroughly wasted at Boggle by Ho, the manager at the field station in Capitol Reef where we stayed. My crust, I have never seen anybody write so fast in my entire life. I guess when you spend most of your time alone in an isolated field station, there must not be much to do except for play Boggle against yourself. That's my theory, anyway. At least I got second place, scoring on a few good words like ANTHER and POON (which is an evergreen tree native to India, I think). I'll try to post a few pictures from that trip later.

Alyssa is doing fine, aside from having had a pretty bad cough for the last few weeks. She's working at MediConnect doing something or other with medical records. (Isn't it weird how I never know the details of Alyssa's jobs? She's probably really some kind of super-spy.) She also just interviewed at HeadStart, so we hope something good happens there.