The Kindness of Strangers.

Mo Fauvel-- third from the right-- is Nederland's local doctor, and also the head of NedREP, the Nederland Renewable Energy Project which I take minutes for (perpetuating my tendency to hang out with people older than me). He asked when I was headed back home and when I told him I was only in Nederland for another few weeks, he invited me over for ATVing and dirtbiking. We went up to Caribou, the old mining town up the mountain from Nederland. Only two half-buildings remain, some rough fieldstone walls. The other dozens of buildings are completely gone, leaving only a grassy valley behind.

When we got back he showed me the homemade wind turbine he's crafting. He took the generator from the wooden water wheel he built behind his office-- it wasn't working out thanks to friction loss from the series of belts, but he might revisit it with chains next season-- and then assembled a vertical-axis system with airfoils made from reshaped gutters. Amidst the work we shared life stories. He grew up French Catholic not so well off, and he stumbled into medical school after a few years in college and he and his wife paid off his loans by working at a clinic in Alaska for a while (I made a Northern Exposure joke). They settled down here to be near his wife's family and a few years ago started their own private practice. He's been doing medicine for 25 years now and says he's thinking about taking a sabbatical. "This stuff was always my true calling," he said while working on that turbine. He's thinking about taking that up as a new career, and he told me about excelling at those mechanical engineering things in high school and on aptitude tests, but back in his day nobody really did much with the results of those as far as directing students went, so it became a hobby rather than a career. I think it's kind of fascinating.

Just this weekend Mo, his wife, and his three daughters left for Paris. He's thrilled for the two-week vacation, the first he's had in years. He also told me that while he was gone, I could stay in his house whenever I wanted, and even take the ATV for a spin. I was pretty apprehensive, not wanting to infringe, but he offered many times over, and I decided it would be nice to have a day to myself away from my team. When I mentioned the possibility of Kat visiting, he even said she could stay there too while he was away-- but we just couldn't afford it, alas. I told him I'd like to make it up to him and asked if I could make his family dinner sometime. Instead he invited me over for barbecue. When I told him that I enjoyed cooking he said I could man the grill, haha.

So I'm taking Tuesday off and I'm going to go for a run, get some breakfast at the teahouse in Boulder, maybe buy a new book-- I've got my eye on Machiavelli-- do some writing, and take care of yet more college stuff. I'm considering getting a bottle of Bailey's Irish Cream and making some cookies or something too. I've no earthshattering plans, to be sure, but it's still going to be nice and relaxing.

Today I watched some soccer and found it far more exciting than most any other sport I've seen. I think I'm going to start watching more soccer. Football. Whatever.

Looking forward.

Wednesday during our daily briefing outside I asked Coby if I could run down to the bunkhouse to get the number for urgent care-- there's a humming in my ear that won't go away. He said yes, and I was there and back in less than a minute.

In that minute, the fifteen people sitting there left, leaving my backpack, which was promptly run over by a fire truck.

They say it's my fault. "Looks like somebody's got no situational awareness," they say with smirks. I've loathed this term since day one. Like "critical thinking," it's one of those words that unnecessarily vocabularizes a simple concept. In this case, "situational awareness" means "paying attention."

The next day while at the cutting and chipping site two hours away, right near the end of the day we moved on to yet another area. Everyone was tired and frustrated and I was picking up branches to put in the chipper. Someone put in a sizeable branch behind me when I wasn't looking, and when I turned around the branch rocked up and down in the feed wheel-- which they almost always do-- and hit me under the chin. It was the hardest anything's hit me in my life, and it just made this dense thunk sound in my head. I turned to Ned and asked him twice if my teeth were okay. He said yes both times. Then I spat up little bits of tooth. A chunk came out of the side of a back left molar. A bit flaked off the top of one of my lower left teeth, leaving a jagged edge. My top left canine got it the worst-- the entire point came off, the root nearly exposed. It hurt a bit to have cold air pass over it, to eat, to brush my teeth. (Oddly, I didn't spit it up but I didn't swallow it either. No idea where it went.) It didn't hurt, but the shattering of teeth was pretty emotionally jarring-- I sat in the truck and cried for a half-hour or so while the EMT-qualified firefighters took a look at me and asked me some neurological exam questions to make sure my head was on straight, ha.

The following day, Nate drove Sergio and I down into Boulder. My teeth got fixed up (though I might need a root canal in the future, which AmeriCorps wouldn't pay for if it's after I graduate, so I filled out a CA-1 Workman's Comp form and should be set for life). I bought the cheapest, junkiest cell phone AT&T had for $30. Sergio found out he has a sprained rotator cuff and can't lift more than 10 pounds for the next two months (even though he was playing basketball that morning). He's likely going to get transferred to another team, leaving me roommateless. So I guess these catastrophes were rectified acceptably.

Gathering no moss.

In one month I'm done working with the Forest Service. Then a week of debriefs and two weeks of responsibility-free outprocessing and saying goodbye to each other and Colorado. Yesterday our boss realized we were leaving soon and declared that he has to "bleed us for every minute of work I can, because we're paying $4.50 a day for you guys." He cancelled our going to the orientation he said we were going to go to tomorrow (complete with free pizza) in favor of us cutting and chipping yet another campground. It's getting monotonous, but I guess that's what a career is, huh? Shit.

Hit a small roadblock in my college applications-- had to apply for a term change for GWU and while both that and my application fee waiver were accepted, it seems to have bungled the online application system for me. What's worse, they sprung some kind of form on me that I have to have signed by the dean of students at my old school. Uh? That's going to prove difficult. University of Maryland is tougher to get a reply from; they didn't get my fee waiver but I think my application with them is otherwise done. I'll have to find the time to make more calls and ask for more help, which is always difficult given my lack of reception outside of a 100-square-foot block in Nederland. No word on the Department of State internship I applied for for Spring 2010, but I probably wouldn't hear about that until after July at least, since that's the application deadline.

A string of unrelateds:

• I have a cavity and no dental insurance. Thanks AmeriCorps.
• I went to the doctor for a humming in my left ear after someone used the grinder at work and they told me to use nasal spray to drain my sinuses; as it's failing, I'm now headed to an ear/nose/throat specialist who will hopefully be covered by my insurance.
• I'm tinkering with Rosetta Stone v3, which proves difficult to upgrade to the proper slightly-obsolete-yet-hackable middle version, 3.2.11, that I need. Oh wait I think I just got it. Arabic, Spanish, and Italian v2, here I come.
  
• Sergio is angry at me because three days ago I asked him if I could play video games when he was falling asleep on the couch at 3am after hours of television watching. (He said no, then started swearing when I pointed out why he was being unfair, and then after the swearing and voice-raising said that he was still being polite but wouldn't be for much longer.)
• The oft-unmentioned-by-me third firefighting team leader, Tristan, got kicked out for having alcohol in his fridge in his dorm on campus; he fell prey to random room inspection whilst away.
• On July 24 I return home to Michigan. Matthew and I are going to dress up and smoke cigars (or maybe I'll buy a pipe, I don't know) and drink whiskey. Or is it bourbon? Scotch? What's the difference, anyway? He says he got some pretty classy stuff for my return, and it might be the one thing I'm most looking forward to upon my return. He says he wants to play Risk when I get back, too, which seems somehow a fitting complement.
• My cousin and possibly GI-Kat and I may mount a road trip to New York or beyond shortly after. Kat wants a ride to some socialist convention (tch) on the 30th; I'd like to see New York and visit my unmet friends there.

I've no good way to end this post.