Author: carmenyount

Studenting · Thoughts about Stuff · Volunteering

Happy Easter (?)

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I did not realize that today was Easter until… last Thursday. The Thursday before Good Friday. Somehow the ubiquitous Easter Bunnies did not break through.

Oy.

But hey, I put pepper in my oatmeal this morning, so it’s safe to say that I’m generally turned around at the moment.

Photo by Monika Grabkowska on Unsplash

The primary reason: I’m knee-deep in a management course.

It’s one of six courses that everyone in this program (SJSU MLIS) has to take, and one of four we have to complete in the first third of the program. This one has been a challenge, because if you’ve ever met me, you’ll know that I’m both deeply distrustful of the idea of management as a discipline, and disinterested in engaging with it on any level (to put it mildly). I’m not opposed to capitalism as an economic system, though without guardrails it seems to become more about getting as much as you can before things go sideways than about investing for long-term (more modest) gain and stability. Management, as I’ve experienced it as an employee, is less about creating anything than it is about cutting costs and exploiting employees. The managers I’ve worked with who actually have MBAs… smart, smart people, with less interest in learning from observation than applying theory they studied in school.

Also, not a fan of group work. I think the people in my groups are great, and I have have deeply appreciated their feedback, but it is a lot of meetings, and between my two groups (for this one class) it means having to coordinate the schedules of eight people. If we worked in the same organization at the same time, it might be easier, but we’re students in a program designed for working adults, so…

Sorry Easter (and oatmeal), you’ll have to pardon my distraction, as I work through subjects like strategic planning, trendwatching, and budgeting. Planning — necessarily imperfect, but good! Responding to trends — unavoidable at the macro level, unsustainable at the micro level, particularly for orgs that aren’t “agile.” Budgeting… sigh. (Look, I actually think accounting exercises are kind of fun, like puzzles, but budgeting for staff cuts is awful on a few levels.)

And then there’s the investor pitch deck (first of two major projects). I enjoy research — the research part of this semester-long assignment has been a blast. Library lighting, and food-and-drink policy (my pieces of the puzzle for this group project) are actually interesting topics, when you delve into them — they both involve some engineering, sociology, and architecture (and trends!)… that’s all good. Spokane Central Library finished a $33-million renovation a couple of years ago, so I even have some recent, local, ideas to draw from. This week I’m finishing the scripts for my presentations, and next week, I’ll be recording my portions (x3: lighting, food and drink, space planning), to hand off to our group’s editors so we can finish this project a week earlier than the due date (or have time to deal with last-minute crises).

The last major project, which isn’t even on my radar until mid-April, is a research paper. I’ll get to it when the two papers that are due next week, and the presentation, are done.

Other shenanigans, at the Outdoor Learning Center:

  • Taking in a temporary, emergency placement Western Screech Owl (his person had some fire damage to her facilities, so we’re taking care of him until those are resolved). I got to learn to use pocket holes to prep his enclosure!
  • Replacing platforms that were starting to become unusable.
  • Working with first graders for the first time this year! (First time for me, not the OLC — I usually work with grades 3 – 5 in the spring.)

And one more, not at the OLC: dragging out the mini-chainsaw/tree pruner to take down limbs from a neighbor’s tree that are overhanging our roof. I’ll be using the rope chainsaw next week for the taller ones!

I need a nap, and the day has barely begun.

Studenting

Graduate School Group Work

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I like most people. I’m not shy. I have anxiety, but when it comes to being around people, it’s more likely to be triggered by having to get to wherever I’m supposed to go than it is by the event itself.

And yet, as the most introverted person I know, I strongly prefer to work on my own. Collaborating is great, but when it comes to producing I’d rather work it out on my own. That’s not a knock on anyone I’ve ever worked with; it’s a personal preference.

Me, working from home, probably. Photo by Major Tom Agency on Unsplash

I’m taking a (required) class right now that’s about 2/3 group work. My colleagues are all super smart, observant, and engaged, and I’m learning a lot from their perspectives. For one of the projects, each conversation we have deepens my understanding of the project in important ways. So it’s going pretty well, so far. I’m lucky to get to work with these folks. I have no complaints.

I still hate group work. It’s a lot of meetings. When you’re working with two different groups of people, you’re having to figure out a lot of different schedules. We’re making it work, but I suspect it’s not easy for any of us.

In addition to all of the group work, this class is focused on library management. Budgets, planning, communication, management issues, case studies. Gross. It makes my head swim. Ugh.

That’s not to say that I think these topics aren’t important, or aren’t worthy of study. Management is an underrated skill that (I believe) most organizations really suck at. I’ve worked for a couple of stellar managers, but they’re rare. I’ve also had managers (and managers of managers) that have been really bad at it (they’re usually the ones that have been elevated beyond their skills — I got the sense that with some of them, they were elevated because senior management didn’t know what else to do with them). Really great managers possess talent and skill that is specific to that task. Subject matter expertise might be valuable, but management skills exist apart from it. Most of us not only lack the training to be good managers, we lack the talent. I suspect you can be a reasonable manager with training -or- talent, but not if you lack both. Being a good manager also requires a strong sense of self-awareness, and amazing communication skills. Skill, talent, emotional intelligence and communication skills… that’s a lot, and not many of us have that combination of traits… sad, but true.

The other bit of squidgy-ness I get from the topic is that I feel like the study of management attracts a certain personality, one that is really good at case studies. Problem is, case studies are not real life. Hypotheticals are so much easier to manage than reality. Newsflash: being good at working through case studies is not an indicator of your skill as a manager.

So yeah, sure, management issues are worthy of study, but it would probably be just as beneficial if we all went to therapy and figured out how to effectively communicate our situations, and then learned how to work together to figure out solutions that, while they are acceptable to everyone, may make very few people happy.

And also, learned to read a balance sheet, got a reasonable handle on employment law, and learned to treat our colleagues and subordinates as, you know, people.

So that’s that, for now. I’m looking forward to putting this class (the content, not the people) in the rear view mirror.

Otherwise, still doing bird things. Still working on figuring out where illustration and nature journaling fit into my existence. Learning ASL. Doing some yoga, cooking… you know, the usual.

Thoughts about Stuff

2023: The Year that Was… A Lot

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I sat too much in 2023.

I mean, there were reasons. I was in school, or drawing. It was icy here for the first six weeks of the year. I didn’t feel great for a bunch of it (and then had some, ahem, procedures, to find and — hopefully — fix the issue(s)). Fabulous and talented husband caught Covid right in the middle of the Thanksgiving/end of semester/surgical procedure mayhem, which was… not great. (Thankfully, he recovered fully, but he tested positive for almost three weeks.)

The outdoor learning center where I volunteer lost an owl. Hopefully he’s fine (like NYC’s Flaco), but he’s no longer with us. We also gained an owl (different kind of owl, much smaller, lives in an indoor enclosure)… he’s cute.

We welcomed a new dog, Lucy, into our home, and she is a trip. She’s a big lab mix, full of joie de vivre and sass. I love her with my whole heart.

I’m writing this while walking on a (walking) treadmill. (I got the treadmill at the beginning of 2023, but then Lucy came home, and it was all hands on deck for a few months to get her on the right track.) My Christmas gift to myself was a standing desk. It was inexpensive, and it’s not very robust, so if I like using it, I might upgrade.

Do I have resolutions?

No.

I have continuations of things I started last year. I’ve had some success, but it’s been hit or miss, so rather than try anything new, I want to keep working on the “old”… like:

  1. 20 minutes of yoga, 6 days a week, with added emphasis on strength and balance. I’d like to work up to include a couple of 45-60-minute practices a week, but for now, twenty minutes is sustainable. In January, I’m doing a 31-day challenge (some of those days might be TEN minutes, heavy on meditation), so we’ll see how that goes.
  2. More walking. Now that I can do some walking while listening to lectures, that should be a little bit easier. Am I going to be ready for the NYC marathon with my neighborhood walks and “working walks”? No. But I think it beats sitting so much.
  3. Continue with school (MLIS, SJSU). I’m moving in the direction of archiving/preservation and technology, with a small emphasis on controlled vocabularies and metadata. I’m a librarian, but not the kind of librarian most people interact with.
  4. Also “leaning in” to my illustration and design experience. I don’t want to do it professionally, but I miss the work and would like to engage more with it.
  5. A bunch of house projects (painting, decluttering, replacing the AC), some of which I won’t be involved in, but will call people for help.
  6. More work with the outdoor learning center birds… I’ve been volunteering there for almost 12 years (!), and I love it. I may be able to disengage from some of the day-to-day this year and “float.” I’ll deep clean the mew of the red-tail (still doing my part!) and work on special projects (replacing platforms, fixing perches), but I may “lose” my regular day to new volunteers.

Healthcare · In the Kitchen · Lucy the Pup · Thoughts about Stuff · Volunteering

Spitballing before Bed

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Not sure I’ll publish this, or that any of it actually needs to be said, but it’s 9:22p (and, now that I’m old, nearly my bedtime), and I’m thinking about the holidays, expectations, and how to deal…

My fabulous and talented husband is just not into the holidays. Like me, he grew up with a single parent, and for their family, there were more pressing priorities most years.

My family was very into the holidays, but mostly as a performance art. There was church, a tree, a big meal, presents, the whole nine yards. There was also an enormous amount of stress, particularly for my mother, because the expectations, particularly for a single mom raising two children while working full time (and going to school, for a while), were unrealistically high. None of us were much help, so it was hard for her. (Time has dramatically changed the composition of our family — and as grown people, my brother and I contribute a lot more — the holidays are much smaller, and in many ways simpler.)

I actually like Christmas. I like evergreens and lights, red bows, giving presents, making a nice meal and sharing it with whomever. Over the Covid years, I put up lights and trees before Thanksgiving.

If your jackalope isn’t wearing fairy lights, do you even *have* a jackalope?

This year, not so much. 2023 has been a long haul — mostly it was good, but kind of intense. I wasn’t feeling great for a big part of it — not sick, thankfully, but in some pain and generally feeling meh. Add a couple of big-ish procedures and a round of icky medicine, and I’m ready to not see my doctors for a while.

And then, in what seemed like an omen, there was this:

The ornament thing just makes me laugh, because right now, it’s so on brand for this pup. She’s all joyful chaos, and in a way, the ornament is much more reflective of who she is after she “modified” it.

All this to say that Christmas 2023 is going to be mostly a non-event in this household. A tree would be too stressful with Lucy (aka the menace like Dennis), I don’t have the brain space to do a bunch of decorating, and fabulous and talented husband doesn’t seem to notice. Maybe everyone will be more excited about things next year, and maybe Lucy will mellow a little bit? Stay tuned!

The day itself is going to be really busy anyway. My volunteer shift falls on Christmas this year (like the Covid years!). I get to feed the classroom critters along with the raptors, and my fabulous and talented husband is helping me cope beaks and trim talons (and replace some cuffs that didn’t last as long as they should have), so it will be a significant investment of time. Then we’re having supper with some friends who suffered a terrible loss a couple of months ago. We’ll support our friends, and contribute to the Christmas meal with dairy free green bean casserole (if you sub cashew cream for heavy cream, you’re good to go) and a root vegetable tian (also dairy free, subbing the parmesan with a little bit of nutritional yeast).

Then maybe there will be time for some rest…

Speaking of which, it really is my bedtime now, so off I go.

Lucy the Pup · Studenting · Thoughts about Stuff

The To-do List that Never Ends

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My mom texted me last night, “are you enjoying the break from school?”

Too busy.

Finished school (research paper + infographic + blog post)… I did not procrastinate this semester (unusual), and it still walloped me, because everything ended up coming due over the course of five days.

Fabulous and talented husband caught Covid. He travelled across the country twice this year, to spend time at big sporting events… nothing. Went to the gym after we got back from Portland after Thanksgiving… bam! Poor guy. It’s day 15 and he’s still in a mask at home. (We were both boosted in early October, so his course has been reasonably mild, if long lasting.)

Surgical procedure for me (after consulting with my doctor’s office about Covid exposure), involving stirrups and sedation… unpleasant, but done with (and no cancer!), so that’s good.

Taking care of the household and animals, and cooking and shopping, because somehow I have managed to avoid the Covid (for now, knock wood). Trying to keep up with this in the days after surgery was… challenging… because I don’t know if you know this, but anesthesia makes you kind of loopy, and the stress and anxiety leading up to it did not help.

Volunteering (independently, because for the first time in a while I’m not actively training someone), and a volunteer meeting (Zoom), and a subsequent follow up set of documents about handling new (to you) birds. A dentist appointment (after consulting with the office about Covid exposure). A haircut (in a mask). Christmas planning and shopping. Shipping Christmas gifts to family… catching up from having to ditch last week. My face-to-face appointments are done for a while (thank goodness), and I have one more meeting this morning (via Zoom), and then, maybe I can enjoy time off from school.

Or take a nap, and then enjoy time off from school.

Maybe kick the ball(s) around with this bundle of energy:

Photo of Lucy, a one-year-old lab mix, sitting on the stairs. Her bum is on the top step and her front legs are on the next step.
Lucy hanging out on the steps… just waiting to find a squirrel being out of line.
Healthcare · Volunteering

What a year this week has been…

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Actually, two weeks, but that’s splitting hairs.

The OLC had a bird escape, for the first time in 25 years. I wasn’t there when it happened, so I don’t really know how it went down, but based on conversations with the handler, it sounds like there was a cascade of events. Any of the distinct scenarios, on its own, would not have been a problem. But put them together and it became a bad situation. The end result: a flighted owl flew away, and hasn’t been found. Hopefully, he’s figured out how to survive on his own and is living his best life (see Flaco, the Central Park Zoo’s escaped Eurasian eagle owl), because the other end of that spectrum is a catastrophe.

Any handler, with any level of experience, could experience this. The more experienced the handler, the less likely this particular result, but it needs to be understood that the chances of an escaped bird never go to zero. Wild, captive animals are still wild, still have wild instincts. No matter how well they’re trained or habituated, unexpected things happen. This particular bird had been in human care for about a year, was reasonably well habituated to his handlers, and was just starting to gain experience working on the glove for education.

That was two weekends ago, and over the first few days, the staff and a few volunteers went on a lot of wild goose chases at all hours of the day (and night).

Photo of welding gloves and a towel on the lap of a person hoping to find an escaped owl.
Tools of the trade when hoping to find a wayward great-horned owl: welding gloves and a towel.

I went from that situation to an “urgent” endoscopy (urgent because the clinic had been sitting on it for six weeks, and my doctor had called them), which was a delight, mostly because I wasn’t there (Propofol, FTW), but which left me with heartburn, a sore throat, and some tenderness around my jaw. (Did I mention that I am so glad I wasn’t there.)

And then, to add insult to injury, an endometrial biopsy the next day. That procedure is deeply unpleasant, even when performed by a good doctor doing all the right things (like my doctor). Y’all, the medical establishment has got to figure out how to do women’t health. This procedure involves threading sticks into your insides and scraping the lining of the uterus… without sedation or anesthesia. It doesn’t take that long, thankfully — less than ten minutes. (But word: the actual endoscopy procedure took 15 minutes.) I wouldn’t describe it as painful, per se (I’ve had abdominal cramps that were stop-you-in-your-tracks painful, and this was not that), but it was incredibly uncomfortable. There should be a better way to do this kind of thing, I think. I could live the rest of my life without repeating that procedure, and be happy. (Alas, that does not appear to be in the cards, but I don’t have to do it again for a while, at least…)

Do they biopsy men’s urethras without any kind of numbing? (That’s not a snarky question. I asked my husband for his thoughts, and he shut down the conversation because it was too awful for him to contemplate.)

So yeah, alien probes from both ends, after losing an owl. Thankfully I finished a big school assignment at the beginning of the year, I mean week, and so I had a bit of a breather before diving into the next big assignment, because the stress of alien probes is exhausting, not to mention the unpleasant physical impacts.

At least the results of both were pretty good: no cancer… at least not yet. There are things to work out, but the big, awful stuff has been ruled out, for the moment.

The year, I mean week, continued when fabulous-and-talented husband (technically not an OLC volunteer, but an incredibly good sport) and I picked up a substitute cleaning shift on Saturday, including coping beaks and talons on the hawks, changed out a set of cuffs and jesses for one of the hawks — she was not pleased with any of it, and installed jesses on a saw-whet owl, who, as you might imagine, was also not pleased. (We did this operation in a classroom, so if the bird had gotten away from us, we would have had to make sure he didn’t end up in a turtle tank.)

Photo of saw-whet owl with new leather jesses. His eyes are big and judgemental.
This tiny owl is BIG mad…

And this week, after doing some additional chores in the raptor sanctuary, including prepping for winter (closing the windows, turning on the supplemental heat for some of the birds, winding the hose onto a reel so it can live inside for the next several months), and some maintenance work (a project for our barn owl, and weighing three of the birds), I started training a new volunteer. She’s amazingly smart, and interested in all the animals (including the reptiles!), but it’s going to take her a minute to get used to working with food. That’s not too unusual; if you had told me, fifteen years ago, that I would be butchering small animals for other animals to eat, I would have laughed in your face. (Most of us don’t work with our food in that way, so everyone can be forgiven for needing some time to get used to the idea.)

I’m whipped. Lots of stress and sadness, and no small amount of physical work (with little creative or intellectual engagement), has me on my heels. I’m looking forward to being able to work on a school project (literature review: serious leisure, library programming and falconry) and some work in my sketchbook over the next few days…

… unless someone happens to see a wayward owl. (I have a new cardboard box in my car, welding gloves, and a towel. I’m ready.)

AI · Raptors · Studenting

Being a “Mature” Student

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I am what they call a “mature” student. I’ve been around the block a few times. I’ve done a lot of formal education-related activities. I’ve got a bachelor’s degree, a post-baccalaureate certificate and a graduate certificate… and I was something like six units away from an associate’s degree in the middle of all of that (I had to abandon it for a cross-country move).

And now I’m at the point where, as a graduate student, I still want to learn, but I’m not a fan of the trappings of school. I’m working on a project at the moment that I’m kind of excited about… and while I’m paying close attention to all of the rubrics, readings, and feedback, I don’t really care what my professor thinks about it. That’s not to say that I won’t make changes to it in accordance with feedback. I will, for sure, especially if that feedback helps to move the project in a direction I want to go. But I’m intrigued enough by the subject matter that I don’t feel the need to alter the trajectory of it, if that makes sense.

I guess what I’m saying is that I’m not really looking for my instructor’s approval. I’m interested in their opinions about how I can sharpen my argument, or strengthen my sourcing, but I’m not all that concerned about whether they think it’s an amazing piece of work. I think the subject is very, very cool, and that’s what matters to me in this moment, I think.

Hint: falconry, but not in the context of falconry. Falconry is what it’s about, sort of, but folded into an information science topic. (Image source: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hunting_with_eagles#/media/File:Kazakh-Mongolian_Eagle_Hunter.JPG)

This is kind of a new way of thinking for me, and likely comes from being exhausted from a lifetime of people-pleasing. The thing is, like most people, I generally perform better doing work I’m excited about, or at least interested in. Again, like most people, I *can* do things that don’t really interest me, but I generally don’t excel at them, and that’s fine.

So yeah, this week it was a 1700-word blog post, with photos, a video, and lots of references. Next week, a 1000-word essay about an information seeking-model that pertains to my topic. As I move forward, I’ll fill out my research with more peer-reviewed, academic work (newsflash: I’m currently working with 10-12 sources from the perspectives of archaeology, anthropology, ecology, and, of course, information science).

I’ve been thinking a lot about AI over the last several months, and I’ve concluded that there’s synthesis that happens when I’m researching and writing that AI can’t really help with. Maybe it’s because I’m a deliberate thinker (not all that quick on the uptake), and I need to puzzle ideas out for myself. Maybe it’s because I’m old(er), and I still like to read papers on paper, so I can make notes and mark them up. Also on the “mature,” front, I still draft longhand, occasionally, though I’ve been moving away from that (now I draft mostly in MS Word, so that I can save versions — once a graphic designer…). I’m sure at some point I’ll have to figure out how to work with AI, but at this point, I haven’t found a way for it to be useful for my process.

One thing I am not enjoying? Formatting references (resources… whatever). I’ve always been kind of bad at it, but now I’ve had to switch from MLA to APA, and it’s a little bit different, so… that’s going to take a minute.

But you know what? If I knew how to do any of this I wouldn’t need to be here. So I’m just going to continue to nerd out on my topic, and figure out the rest of it as I go along.

Thoughts about Stuff

Burnout

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I grew up in a family full of pathologically busy people. Probably some coping mechanism there, along with the internalized Puritanical admonishment against “idle hands.”

So I did school + after school activities (sports/theater/music), went to church twice a week, threw homework and flute practice into the mix, spent time with friends. I also took a bunch of dance classes (which was the thing I really loved).

When I got older (in college), I was in school. I worked. I volunteered with my church youth group.

I was not idle. But I was so tired.

By the time I graduated high school, I was exhausted. By the time I graduated college, I was struggling with suicidal ideation.

And then I spent more than a decade working for a company doing election work, which meant weird, exhausting schedules for months at a time, while working with a management team that, um, was not great. During that time I developed an autoimmune disease, and then I lost the ability to sleep more than three hours at a time… for several months.

I was not idle… but I was falling apart.

I left that job more than a decade ago, and thought I was done with that part of my existence… but apparently not. My mother came for short visit earlier this summer, and by the time she left, I could barely move.

It had nothing to do with my mom’s visit — it was a wonderful to see her and we did some really fun things. In other words, there was nothing about it that should have caused that kind of reaction.

I mentioned to my therapist that I was feeling completely burned out, and I couldn’t figure out why. When we took a peak through the last 18 months, though, things became clearer:

  • In January 2022, Lilo, our 16-year-old, little dog, got very sick. She had kidney disease and pancreatitis, and in addition to hospital stays, we were at the vet a couple of times a week for fluids for several months, until she passed in October.
  • When she passed, I was in the middle of a master naturalist course, and trying to get into graduate school.
  • After a fun trip to Las Vegas in December, we spent a couple of weeks being pretty sick (not Covid, but maybe RSV) over the holidays.
  • I took a kidlit course (amazing, but a lot more work than I anticipated) starting in early January.
  • I started graduate school in mid-January.
  • Lucy came home in late January. (Lucy is wonderful, but she threw a wrench into what was supposed to be a carefully managed schedule.)
  • After dropping one of my grad classes (to accommodate Lucy) in early Feb., I started a coding certificate course in April.
  • The Americorps person at the Outdoor Learning Center where I volunteer left in April, so a bunch of us had to pitch in a little bit more to get through the school year — I had originally planned to do one event, I ended up doing three events and holding down the fort for a construction project for 2 more days (in addition to my regularly scheduled volunteer shifts).
  • Took Lucy to puppy kindergarten (2 classes, each 4 weeks).
  • I was cooking five nights a week… composed meals. (Why?)
  • Finished grad school school term #1 in mid-May.
  • Finished the first coding class, mid-June.
  • Mom came to visit, end of June 2023.
Photo of sleeping Lucy, an 8-month-old Lab/Pit Bull mix. She has two speeds: 100mph and 0mph.
Lucy, July 2023. A rare moment of peace.

So, uh, yeah, I am burned out.

Again.

I’m proud of my ability to power through during emergencies. I seem to be unable to manage my schedule in such a way that leaves space for the unexpected, though, and that has become a problem. I think my body has probably never really been great at perpetual motion (see suicidal ideation, and inability to sleep), but as I get older it takes a lot longer to recover from the fatigue, and that recovery seems to be accompanied by some unpleasant physical symptoms (GI issues this time around… whee?).

How do people avoid this? I never learned this adulting skill, and I need to figure it out.

I read something helpful on Instagram(?) earlier this summer. The poster suggested that burnout is not managed by taking a break; it gets fixed when you create a more sustainable structure for your life. So let’s try that.

I’m heading into the fall still in recovery mode, with a reduced school schedule (one class instead of two), along with a coding class. Once I finish the coding certificate, I’ll start adding in another graduate class.

I’ll keep volunteering once or twice (but mostly once) a week with the birds, because I like that (and it helps me maintain my master naturalist certification).

And I’ll try to figure out how to eat without pain. (Working with my doctor on that!)

Non-calendared (is that even a word?) priorities include more training with Lucy (who is getting quite good at working with her tunnel, and the ball, and a platform). Her recall is improving, and she’s starting to get the hang of “stay” — at nine months old, she is just starting to get to the point where she can focus on us enough to take treats when she’s away from the house, so I think more leash training is high on the list of our priorities with her.

The other non-calendared priority: journaling and drawing.

And figuring out how to adult without burning out.

Outdoor Learning Center · Raptors · Volunteering

Responding vs. Reacting

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Or, learning how to manage when things don’t go according to plan…

This is Basalt.

Photo of unreleasable saw-whet owl named Basalt. Saw-whets tiny, about the size of a small human fist, with large yellow eyes. Very, very cute.
Basalt, an unreleasable saw-whet owl, in his enclosure. (Those tabs are 3M Command strips — they tack down his mat without damaging the finish of the house.)

Basalt suffered a shoulder injury last winter, from a window strike. He is incapable of sustained flight, and when he came to us, we were told that he wasn’t able to get any lift…

… which, apparently, is not exactly right.

Basalt, an unreleasable saw-whet owl, perched on the antler of a taxidermied elk.
Basalt, an unreleasable saw-whet owl, perched on the head of a taxidermied Mallard.
Basalt, an unreleasable saw-whet owl, perched on top of his enclosure.
Basalt, an unreleasable saw-whet owl, perched on the back of a taxidermied wild turkey.

While I was in his enclosure wiping down the floor (after removing his soiled mats), he quite literally flew the coop.

I was the only one at the Outdoor Learning Center at the time — it was an early, quiet morning. The doors to the room and bathroom were closed, so he couldn’t go anywhere outside of the room we were in. He didn’t end up in any of the turtle tanks (which would have required immediate action), so I finished washing his mats and cleaning his enclosure before I started to figure out what I needed to do.

Because it was not an urgent situation, and he didn’t appear to be in any danger, I decided to follow him for a few minutes. In part to assess the situation, but also, it was an opportunity for me to see how he moves (way better and more efficiently than I thought!).

Going up is a known behavior in wild birds, but I was surprised to see him moving around the room to tall perches because I thought he couldn’t. My guess? He had to molt some damaged wing feathers while in care with the vet, and that’s why he couldn’t generate lift. Now that he has those wing feathers, he can really get somewhere. (This wasn’t sustained flight, more like big arc-ing wing-assisted hops.)

I did not chase him. He moved and settled, and then I followed. I did not try to towel him while he was moving, or when he was out of reach. Had he ended up in a turtle tank or a tortoise enclosure, I would have been there immediately to help him before he had to interact with another animal.

(He yarked up a pellet while sitting on the Mallard’s head, so while I’m sure this wasn’t a relaxing situation for him, he wasn’t so stressed out that he couldn’t take care of his own needs.)

Eventually, after a round robin of the taxidermied mounts and window valances, he got tired and ended up on the floor. At that point, I was able to gently gather him in a towel and move him back to his enclosure.

So yeah, things were a little bit exciting today, in an unexpected way. I don’t want to encourage this behavior — I will have to alter my approach to make sure this doesn’t happen again. But I’m impressed by his ability, and I think it’s time to see about adding a couple of other, higher, perches in his enclosure…

Coding

1996 called…

carmenyountLeave a comment

I just finished an HTML/CSS class. It was fantastic, and challenging. HTML has come a long way since I was first introduced to it in the late 90s. So has CSS.

I mean, conceptually, a style sheet is a style sheet is a style sheet… if you’ve ever worked with QuarkXpress or InDesign, you know. And markup is markup is markup… again, you used to be able to style your Quark docs using markup of a kind, so …. the point is that these are not new things.

When I first learned about HTML, we were using tables to lay out web pages… which is not how HTML was intended to be used. But it seems to have gone back to its intended roots, in that it is much more semantic than it used to be. HTML describes things (articles! asides! figures!), separate from how they appear on screen. (In other words, a well-executed semantic HTML document gives strong “1996 called, and it wants its website back” vibes.)

But then you can lay out your site with CSS, and it. is. cool. (Flexboxes! Grids!)

I learned a lot in this course, including the beginnings of how to use git and github (also extremely useful). And accessibility, which is something I want to pay much more attention to, going forward.

So after ten lessons, and ~125 hours of work, do I know anything?

No. Not really. But I’ve been exposed to some cool things and have gotten to try things out.

It’s a start.

And it has laid the foundation for me to start what I’ve been wanting to do since early February when I encountered Caspio’s application interface and got so frustrated because…

I do not know Javascript. Nobody in my group knew javascript. We were stuck with a database interface that didn’t work the way we wanted it to… nuts. (The part that required javascript was not the point of the class — it wasn’t a tech class, and we ended up doing well on the assignment anyway — but that was when I decided that it was time to learn some front-end web development.)

I’m doing a 3-class self-paced front-end web development certificate, but they’re re-vamping the program, so it’s unknown if I’ll be able to continue on the track I started, or I’ll have to switch formats. Whatever happens, I can start on my own and see how far I can get. (It turns out that I like self-paced learning when it comes to coding. Coding is not something I have an innate sense for, so it requires a lot of floundering around to figure things out, but it’s kind of an adventure, and I seem to run into similar issues as other folks — there are lots of internet resources devoted to explaining some of the questions I have had…)

So it’s onward and upward to this:

Photo of book "Javascript & JQuery: interactive front-end web development," by Jon Duckett.

I’m excited… wish me luck.

[In other news, for no particular reason (cough, SCOTUS), I’m thinking of launching a design firm* that caters exclusively to LGBTQIA+, Black, Jewish, Indigenous clients, drag queens (& kings), disabled folks, and others who are disenfranchised by homophobia and/or white supremacy. My life and experience (as a white, cis, heterosexual woman) has been enriched by the experiences, expertise, and knowledge of Queer people, Black and Brown people, Indigenous people and Jewish people, and I have no desire to live in a society where those voices are suppressed because some idiot designer in Colorado is afraid that God will be mad at her(?) for making a gay wedding website. Cheesus crust on a cracker, we live in the stupidest timeline.

* just kidding (sort of). Everyone deserves better design than I can offer at the moment. But it’s in the back of my mind.]