What to do with complete autonomy and no guests: 2 days of projects

The "mud season" began yesterday morning, which is to say that the guest season ended and over half the staff left the ranch. Last mud season, also called "off season", I flew back to Indiana, so I didn't quite know what was expected of me.

So far so good! Without guests around to attend to and clean up after, and with some solid coworkers to work alongside, I've seen more accomplished in 2 work days than I would have ever imagined.




The former housekeeping department head and I (current housekeeping department head!) have been sorting through, throwing away, donating, reselling, and reorganizing probably five full years worth of clutter and useless linens that have ended up in our department. In about 2 more days, we will have found homes for almost every misplaced item, sorted out about 8 bags of old/ugly/useless-to-us-but-still-nice bedding and sheet sets to sell at a garage sale in May, and completely transformed the 8' by 24' of essentially worthless storage space that we started in on yesterday morning.






I wanted to move out a shelving unit of staff sheets and pillows out of the housekeeping room and move it to the staff laundry room. Not in our way anymore and much closer to the place where they are actually used.

The project was started and finished yesterday.





Met yesterday with the head of maintenance to talk about ideas for redoing the entire shelving and storage system. Our drinks are currently stored in 4 different places around the room. Queen and twin fitted sheets get mixed up ( = wasted time running back from cabins for the correct sheet) because there is no vertical divider between them with our current system. One of the cabinets is an old sink base. Which has a hole for the plumbing. Which mice like to run up through. Sanitary place to store mugs and silverware? Not so much.

He's switching them all out and we should have a completely new, more intuitive, better organized, and far more functional shelving system by the end of April.





Not to mention changing out the toilet seat in my new bathroom, finding a new box frame for my bed in old storage, locating caulk to redo the seal around my bathroom floor and shower, going to my first seasonal managers meeting, starting the process of finding and repairing broken vacuums from all over the ranch (7 found so far...), making a page long list of ideas for off season projects and ideas, and washing, folding, and storing all of the guest and staff laundry that was piled up in mountains from the end of the season (with the help of one of my coworkers from my crew last season.)




And it's just the second day. I'm getting the impression that I do well in work situations with high trust, high autonomy, and a good amount of unstructured time....

Viva la Mud Season.

"A geologic map is a textbook on one sheet of paper" - John McPhee

Two weeks ago, I set off for a 36 hour road trip to Utah with two coworkers, a man named Russell from town, and his dog Cortez (see picture below) to Dinosaur National Monument.



In addition to the over 1500 fossils at the Dinosaur Quarry inside the National Monument, Vernal, Utah has has a great natural history museum and more chicken-friend lunch specials than I've seen anywhere in my life.

We left Steamboat Springs in the evening, drove 3 or 4 hours across the Utah border, camped out, and had Fat Tire by the campfire.



The next morning, we changed out a car battery in Vernal after having to call up a park ranger to help us jump the car, visited the natural history museum (by the ranch maintenance man Bill's recommendation), had an "Eye Opener" at a local coffee shot (brewed coffee with a shot of espresso), touched fossils at the quarry, hiked up to see some pictographs and old homestead property as the sun was setting, and headed back to Colorado. On our way back to Steamboat Springs, we turned down an offer for a remarkably low-priced box of "loose sirloin steak" from a 35 or 40 year old man named Brian at the gas station claiming to be a Vietnam vet....

Grabbed some Mickey D's and headed back to the ranch as dreams of dinosaurs danced through our heads.





Perfect company. Perfect amount of time. Perfectly acceptable place to be openly and passionately excited about science, dinosaurs, and geology.

From Spring to Winter in 30 Seconds

Today I went out for a run with my coworker Lauren in shorts, a T-shirt, and a thin jacket after work in 55 degree weather on the recently dry driveway. After 3 miles, it started getting windy. At 3.5 miles, a blizzard started.

We ran back in our shorts and finished off our 6 mile goal indoors at the fitness center as the feeling came back into our legs and the snow melted off our backs. (I'm training for the Indianapolis Mini Marathon in May.)

As of today, I am officially a runner and officially a resident of Colorado.



Toma ya.

New Job Prospect

A few days ago the recruiting manager at a temp agency I work with from time to time in Indianapolis sent me the following e-mail (typos intentional as message has been copied and pasted):

Hi Kristen, are you available to do a truck show convention March 6-8 passing out ice crean as a hostess to truck show participants. You would need t wear ski apparel or fur like jacket with black leggings and winter boots. The 6tha and 7th are full days but the 8th is just 9-11;30 as f now. Please let me know as soon as possible.

Thanks

I must be doing something right in my life to get offers like this! Unfortunately (or fortunately), I'll be working at the ranch still, so I'll have to pass this time....

Herpetoculture: Reflections on the will to survive and a salamander named Neli

Just after Valentine's Day, I was ironing sheets by myself in the Housekeeping room when Miles, one of the ranch hands, came in with a shovel full of sludge. He had been cleaning out the 8 inches coffee grounds, mud, motor oil, and general filth that had accumulated in the drainage ditch in the wash bay, the garage area where we clean off ranch vehicles before picking up guests.

The sludge moved. I saw a tail...then a face...then ran to grab a jar.

Since she lost her sludgy home, I decided to adopt Neli the salamander as my pet. I was so impressed by her ability to live in car runoff, coffee grounds, and Lord-knows-what-else and will to make it through the -20 degree mornings of a Colorado winter alive that I was immediately drawn to her. (It is still unclear whether Neli is male or female but most people refer to her as "she") Despite warnings from other staff members that she wouldn't live more than 24 hours, she has been alive for nearly a month.

Note: Neli is pronounced "Nelly"

Here is a photo of her in her new home.



For her first few days, I just fed her dead flies since they're the most readily available food here during the Winter. Since then I've been experimenting with meal worms, night crawlers, and crickets. Somehow no one that I live with has complained yet about their presence in our kitchen and refrigerator...

With my latest library finds, I've been learning that I'm a part of a much larger community of domesticated amphibian caretakers.

The hobby of herpetology has evolved into one word, herpetoculture, which by definition means "the keeping and propagating of reptiles and amphibians in a domestic setting." In today's hobby there is a somewhat one-sided view of things--reptiles are much more popular than amphibians. Reliable statistics tell us snakes and lizards far outnumber frogs, toads, salamanders, and other amphibians in terms of what is being kept and bred. This is rather unfortunate. In this book you will be introduced to the wonderful world of amphibians and discover what fascinating creatures they are. After, you may find yourself thinking about keeping a poison frog or a Spotted Salamander rather than a garter snake or a Leopard Gecko.
- Introduction to Amphibians Look-and-Learn, p4

The New York Times recently published an article called "Bucket Brigade Gives a Lift So Salamanders Can Live to Mate" that begins with the sentence "Salamander people are special people." We are indeed.

http://www.nytimes.com/2012/02/22/us/volunteers-offer-salamanders-a-chance-to-mate.html

Neophily: Exuberence for Novelty predicts well being

Article From Deric Bownds' MindBlog at

http://mindblog.dericbownds.net/2012/03/neophily-exuberance-for-novelty.html?utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=feed&utm_campaign=Feed%3A+Mindblog+%28MindBlog%29
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I've been meaning to point to John Tierney's interesting piecein the NYTimes that emphasizes the work of Robert Cloninger, the psychiatrist who developed personality tests for measuring the trait of novelty seeking:

...a trait long associated with trouble.. problems like attention deficit disorder, compulsive spending and gambling, alcoholism, drug abuse and criminal behavior...After extensively tracking novelty-seekers, researchers are seeing the upside. In the right combination with other traits, it’s a crucial predictor of well-being. Winifred Gallagher's new book “New: Understanding Our Need for Novelty and Change” ...argues that neophilia has always been the quintessential human survival skill, whether adapting to climate change on the ancestral African savanna or coping with the latest digital toy from Silicon Valley....she classifies people as neophobes, neophiles and, at the most extreme, neophiliacs...

...adventurous neophiliacs are more likely to possess a “migration gene,” a DNA mutation that occurred about 50,000 years ago, as humans were dispersing from Africa around the world, according to Robert Moyzis, a biochemist at the University of California, Irvine. The mutations are more prevalent in the most far-flung populations, like Indian tribes in South America descended from the neophiliacs who crossed the Bering Strait.

...These genetic variations affect the brain’s regulation of dopamine, the neurotransmitter associated with the processing of rewards and new stimuli (and drugs like cocaine). The variations have been linked to faster reaction times, attention deficit hyperactivity disorder and a higher penchant for novelty-seeking and risk-taking.

Cloninger...has.. tracked people using a personality test he developed..looking for traits in people..who reported the best health, most friends, fewest emotional problems and greatest satisfaction with life...they scored high in novelty-seeking as well in persistence and self-transcendence (which he describes as the capacity to get lost in the moment doing what you love to do, to feel a connection to nature and humanity and the universe).

Advice from Gallagher and Cloninger:

..both advise neophiles to be selective in their targets. (Neophilia spurs us to adjust and explore and create technology and art, but at the extreme it can fuel a chronic restlessness and distraction.).. Don’t go wide and shallow into useless trivia...Use your neophilia to go deep into subjects that are important to you.

Library Card

I have one. In Steamboat Springs, Colorado.

It feels good. And it feels like a step toward semi-permanence.

I'm officially based out of the ranch until October now, so it was time.




My first set of books checked out with my new card yesterday:

A Basic Book of Amphibians Look-and-Learn by Mara
The Sustainability Revolution: Portrait of a Paradigm Shift by Andrew R. Edwards
Colorado's Dinosaurs by John T. Jenkins, Jr. and Jannice L. Jenkins
Rich Dad, Poor Dad by Robert T. Kiyosaki