butterflies!

A coworker came by my cube today and asked me what I was doing tomorrow, because he had the opportunity of a lifetime.  Since my plan was to sit in my cube all day, I was listening...

So tomorrow I'm going to the Antioch Dunes National Wildlife Refuge to count butterflies for my 8 hours!  YAY!  So psyched.  I get paid to look for butterflies.  Not too bad. It's been a good summer for field work and getting outside. I think I'm starting to like this agency gig.

And I'm getting a new cubicle, away from...things I'd like to be away from.  Maybe I can not have my ipod on all the time now to drown out...things I'd like to drown out.

Additionally I climbed for the first time in 2 weeks or so.  Jake and Jared and Stacy were there.  It's fun to watch Jake and Jared talk about work - they're both electricians.  Jake is so animated he could tell me about the weather and I'd laugh. It's awesome. Tomorrow another cross training class, and then maybe on Wednesday or Thursday I'll head back to the east side to do some climbing on the hulk.  Who knows, things like that tend to have a high bail factor.   I'm definitely psyched though.

One thing I'm worried about is that the last few days I've been wondering if I'm beginning to have an MS flareup.  The top of my left foot feels weird, I'm feeling a little like foot drop might be coming on in my right leg...I don't want to think about it too much, but I don't want to ignore it either. I'll be so fucking pissed if I have to go sit in the infusion center and lose time in the mountains.  Shit sucks.  I'm sure I'm fine though. I mean what am I going to do? I'm not going to change my plans, unless I absolutely cannot walk. I wonder if I'm feeling weird because I had 2 weeks of traveling, and I forgot my auto-injector in the backcountry, so I was slack on the injections. When I got back on Friday night, I pretty much slept through until Saturday night. Is being that tired normal? I've also had a little bit of personal stress.  But my diet has been good and I've been getting good sleep, so who knows.

Lauren left for Kenya yesterday.  To say goodbye, we went with John to play croquet in a park. She got me excited about going to Africa again. Now that I've been spending more time at elevation hiking I'm a little more excited - I just need to keep it up. Tickets are 1500 bucks at the very very cheapest though, and it takes 2 days each way to get there. It's not a trivial thing to get there and back. Still thinking though. I try to take every opportunity like that that I can, just as a general policy.