1. I'm sure many of you remember a couple of years ago when I was bitten by one of our Bolivian pets. The little Bolivian squirrel monkey, Doce, did not like to be taken off of our shoulders. When he was, he would often bite our hands, drawing little bits of blood, thus making us get our Rabies vaccination down in the city. Well, I have been bitten by another animal from Bolivia. This time, a Husky. When we were in Bolivia, Brent bought a Husky named Quinoa and brought it back to the states. It is a friendly dog and well trained. Since living with Brent, I have spent quite a bit of time playing with Quinoa and hanging out with him when home. He most likely remembers me from when he was a puppy, because he was warm with me and listened to me the minute I saw him out in Denver.
After work one day, I came home, let Quinoa inside, and took a shower. When I got out, I saw him at the foot of Brent's bed, so I went in to pet him. The moment I put out my hand, he growled and gripped my hand so hard with his jaw that I fell to the floor, as he twisted my arm. I yelled his name, and seconds later, he had released my hand, and sat there next to me as I assessed the damage. 3 puncture wounds on the palm of my hand that were literally squirting blood, and multiple minor punctures on the backside of my hand. At the moment, I thought my hand was broken because most of the pain was coming from the bones in my hand, not the punctures. I decided to first take care of the deep punctures, so I went into my room, got the super glue, and threw a little bit of that into the cut (after cleaning it out of course). Interestingly enough, Quinoa followed me the whole time with his tale down. Once the super glue had been applied, I laid down on my couch for a while and made some phone calls. Quinoa followed me into my room, and laid down right next to me on his back and covered his eyes with his paws.Although it took a couple of days to get full mobility back into my hand, the punctures are still more than visible. I would take a picture of them now, but I do not have the chord to put my pictures from the camera to the computer. Lesson Learned: DO NOT TRY TO PET QUINOA WHILE HE IS AT THE FOOT OF BRENT'S BED. IT IS THE ONLY PLACE THAT HE IS TERRITORIAL, AND HE WILL DEFEND IT.
2. Last week, the week of Thanksgiving, I went out to Glendale Springs for 3 days. Our company had a job there, and they decided to send my crew, being I have the youngest crew and we are mostly without families. It was about a three hour drive into the mountains, and we stayed there over night on Monday and Tuesday. The crew I had was Antonio, Noe, and Geronimo. We had the task of putting about 55 blankets on slopes to stop the eriosion that was taking place. This involved grading the slopes, then trenching the upper end of the slope, seeding and raking the slopes (in hope that grass will grow there, using the roots to stop sliding), and then blanketing the slopes (a physical way of stopping erosion until grass grows. Each blanket is about 110 feet, and we had three days to put in all of them. Normally, 50 blankets in one day would not be that big of a deal, but the problem was the ground.
At night, the ground in the mountains freeze. I'de say here in Glenwood it would freeze 4-5 inches every night. I had my crew get up at 6 the on Tuesday morning to start working (monday we didn't show up in Glenwood till 11), but it turned out to be a lot more difficult than anticipated. Everything was frozen. There was no way to trench, and there was no way to rake the ground, let alone grade it. We attempted to trench and prepare as much as we could, but until 11 am (when the ground had almost thawed) it was really slow work. The only problem was, that the sun in the mountains falls behind the western slopes at about 4, and gets dark shortly thereafter. So we had to use the truck lights well into the night so that we could get the work done before the ground froze again. We got it all done by Wednesday afternoon, and then Noe hooked up the trailer wrong, and it came off before we left, and tore out the light cables to the trailer. We had to fix that, and then got home at about 9pm after a full 40 hours of work in 3 days. Lesson Learned: WORKING IN THE MOUNTAINS SUCKS.3 For those of you who remember my Hepatitis A problem of last year, it has started to come back more frequently than I anticipated. I'm not sure why. My best guess is the amount of physical work that I sometimes have to do has something to do with it. Everytime I run, play basketball, football, or anything of the physically exerting nature, I seem to get sick with stomach nausea and pain the following day. I thought that all of this would be over by now, but it isn't, and it is quite frustrating. I'm not sure whether to get another job, or just wait all of this out. Who knew the liver was so important anyways????
