I can’t believe summer is already over!
Summers have always gone by way too fast… but now that I’ve got fire seasons eating up a huge chuck of the warm weather months, they manage to go by even faster.
Regardless, here’s a little recap of everything I’ve been up to lately.
Well. This summer was the summer of paddle boarding was the summer of swimsuits.
I live in Arizona. There’s no water here. Swimsuits are an anomaly.
Does it take anyone else, like, three-to-five business days to unpack from a trip?
I FINALLY finished unpacking from last week’s work conference, five days after getting back. In my defense: Last Sunday, I basically went straight from my camping trip at the Grand Canyon to Albuquerque (I paused to switch from my Jeep to an agency vehicle), so I was unpacking two cars from both a camping trip AND a business trip.
(And I get to re-pack everything in two more days for another work trip this weekend. Why even bother unpacking!)
But, it was totally worth it. My conference in Albuquerque was really intense, but also really interesting.
Camping at the North Rim of the Grand Canyon is an annual thing now, and I love it!
Last year, I went on the first of (hopefully) many camping trips along the North Rim of Grand Canyon National Park. I’ve written a little bit about this before, but the northern Arizona Returned Peace Corps Volunteers adopted a section of the Grand Canyon Highway, which leads to the North Rim, and are now obligated to perform trash pick-ups along a two-mile stretch twice a year.
Which means, the northern Arizona Returned Peace Corps Volunteers are also obligated to go camping up on the North Rim twice a year as well. Those are the rules.
My reading habits are… a little unpredictable.
I’ve always loved reading, but the older I get, the more and more my Kindle has to fight for my attention. Between wildfires at my day job, preparing yoga playlists and sequences for my night job, taking care of Yukon, gardening, knitting, recreating outdoors (camping? Great for reading! Paddle boarding? Not so much!), etc…
…reading always just seems to land at the bottom of my priority list.
However, I knew I wanted to prioritize reading just a little more this year. I started 2022 living alone in a remote Sierra Nevada cabin for a long-term work assignment, and given my seclusion, I had a LOT more time to dedicate to reading.
I naturally took a break once I got back to Flagstaff and work picked up during wildfire season, but once August started and monsoons became more frequent, I was back to draining my Kindle’s battery as fast as possible.
It’s only August, and I’ve already reached my reading goal for the year — thanks in part to the five books I devoured this month.
My style and tastes have definitely changed over the years (for better or worse, that remains to be seen), but my obsession for coffee mugs remains.
(After clicking that link, I’m gonna go ahead and say it’s changed for the better.)
I’m buying fewer and fewer ceramic mugs these days though because, well…
…I have more of a need for enamel coffee mugs.
I had a pretty FUN-gi weekend here in northern Arizona.
Hehehe… puns.
My friend Megan, who recently joined the Arizona Mushroom Society, asked if I wanted to be her plus-one to a Sunday morning mushroom foray in the Kachina Peaks Wilderness here on the Coconino.
Why the heck not?
I’ve been wanting to write this post for a while.
Given the current state of… *gestures wildly,* I’ve been making it a point over the past year to upgrade a LOT of my household staples to more eco-friendly versions.
I mean, given that the Supreme Court just decided that the Environmental Protection Agency doesn’t actually have the legal authority with which to protect the environment…
AGH.
Deep breaths.
Anyway. I’ve spent the past year investing in a few reusable upgrades to common kitchen and household supplies. I know I’m one person and any changes I make are pretty much futile given the current state of affairs, but still. It feels good to reduce the number of single-use plastics that end up in local landfills!
I can’t believe how close we are to August!
With that said. It’s been a few weeks since I posted about my first ever high-altitude gardening attempt, and so I figured I’d do a little check-in now that it’s been six or so weeks since that post.
Hahhahaha. So. Remember my last post about the Pipeline/Haywire/Double fires? And how excited I was that monsoonal rains had hit Flagstaff because it meant that fire season was over?
JOKE IS ON ME!
I spent alllll of last week working on the Committee Fire, a relatively small (acreage-wise) fire that was highly visible from Sedona.
