myretroperspective

Yep, this morning was my time to help with the feeding of the captive red wolves.  I was hoping to get some spectacular pictures of the wolves as we made our way down several gravel roads and two locked gates deep in the forest of the refuge.  It’s a good thing I was hoping for rather than counting on great photos because that just didn’t happen. A total of eight wolves are housed in several different pens.  The pens are quite roomy and include a den and lots of typical foliage.  Red wolves were declared biologically extinct in the wild in 1980.  Restoration efforts began in 1987 with the experimental release of red wolves at Alligator River NWR.  Hard to tell, but this is the young red wolf intern, Ashlyn, decked out in her stylish bug jacket.  You can bet that I had on one of these jackets also.  The mosquitoes back in the forest around the pens were ridiculous!  With barely any skin showing, I still managed to get bit about 15 times.  Ugh! As we approached each pen, the

This is part 2 of a 3 part post on our journey to join the foreign service.  If you want to read part 1 please go back and read it here . About 3 weeks after taking the foreign service officer exam we were encouraged to discover that R passed.  Not with flying colors or anything, but he passed.  At this point, neither of us thought much of it.  We knew there were so many more hoops to jump through & we wanted to keep our expectations low. R scheduled a mandarin phone exam (which I don't think they do at that point in the process anymore) and passed it pretty easily.  He submitted his personal narrative questionnaire in late July.  This is 5 or so short (1300 characters) essays connecting his experiences and strengths to the foreign service.  They value brevity, clarity in written communication and showing what you've done & what you've learned in the process.  R used examples both from his experiences at NCR and from our time in East Asia.  Along with the narrative

Dear Typhoon Bolaven, I'm sorry to say but I was a bit disappointed. You were supposed to be the worst typhoon in ten years. You had people (myself included) rushing to the grocery store to stock up on food and candles, duck taping their windows and schools canceling (no complaints on that one). You threatened with images like this but in reality, it looked like this outside. Dear Boss, saying that "the weather will be nice" in the middle of a typhoon is a little extreme. I think we need to clarify what you qualify as 'good weather'. Dear Hubs, I love it when you randomly bust out Chicago musical show tunes. Sexiest.thing.ever. Ok, maybe not  ever  but it's pretty cute.  Dear kindi student,  you were being all cute and wanting to hold my hand during class. You became exponentially less cute when you decided to try and stick my whole hand in your mouth.  Dear kids,  it's great that you want to be around me all the time but following me to the bathroom an

I had a split day of work today to make things a little more interesting.  I was scheduled to work the Gateway VC for the morning. The first order of business was driving the five miles to the maintenance area to drop off my car and pick up a refuge vehicle.  The radio tower next to the parking area was just covered with purple martins.  It’s a sure sign of fall approaching when all the martins and swallows begin to flock up.  It won’t be long before they all leave on their migration south for the winter. Shortly after noon, I finished up at Gateway and headed for Pea Island.  This afternoon would be the last Sound Side Presentation of the season.  Just about all of the programs and tours finished up this week since kids will be heading back to school if they haven’t already. I got to the Pea Island VC a little early so I decided to try climbing up and over the sand dunes to get to the beach.  This is the first I’ve felt able to tackle the dunes since I got here.  You can bet

Little did I know that last night’s post about health issues on the road would garner such a response.  Between the comments posted and several emails, I have even more things to think about.  Of course, finding a medical facility and doctor that I’m comfortable with is number one, and I thank those of you who reminded me of that fact.  Guess who I saw on my way to the dumpster this morning.  (I was going to the dumpster, not the bears)  The whole family was in the same spot where I watched the two cubs playing the other night.  Some of you may be getting tired of seeing bear photos, but as long as I’m seeing them I’ll be taking pictures of them and posting what I capture.  Which may mean six more weeks of bear photos.  One commenter mentioned that he thought the CARE program required people to have a live-in care taker with them.  I tried to check that out today, but the Escapees website appears to be down for a couple of days.  That little requirement would certainly put a monk

This is the first post in a 3 part series describing our journey to join the foreign service.  It's such a relief to be able to share what we've been waiting on for months! I hesitated to specifically put details of our foreign service journey on my blog before now mostly because the process is so long before it actually materializes into a reality.  But when the reality hits, boy does it hit! Some background for friends we haven't been able to catch up to speed yet: In 2005 when R studied Mandarin in Beijing, he met up with a Foreign Service Officer who had served for years and while some of the difficulties of the lifestyle (moving from post to post every two years) didn't sound great, it has always loomed in the background for R as something he'd like to look into. Other interests carried us both to Asia in 2007 to work for a non-profit while enrolled as language students which is where, as most of you know, we met & fell in love, not only with one another, b

{you can tell we're related by our identical large noses} My brother hated the nickname Joshy washy but as his younger sister, it was my duty to torment him with it. As we got older, my brother and I were, for all intensive purposes, clones of one another with the same taste in music, art and hobbies. I think it was because of this bond that he became my biggest cheerleader. He not only had hopes higher than I could dream but he also had all the confidence that I could do anything. Everything a girl needs in a big brother. He was also a thrill seeker extradonaire. Which I am not by any means, but I loved to watch. His favorite hobby was windsurfing and one of my favorite memories was when he started as a young boy and I would join him and ride along on the front of the board. As the years passed, he went from amateur to teaching windsurfing at his university. Seven years ago, while away at grad school, he was killed in a windsurfing accident the day before he was supposed to come h

One of the challenges of fulltime RVing is handling health issues when they arise.  Many of us have a place that we return to periodically to visit our Primary Care Doctor.  My family doctor is at the Mayo Clinic in Rochester, MN, and I return there every two years for a checkup, needed tests like a mammogram, and to get prescriptions for my meds written.  Having that connection with someone who knows your medical history is great, and it works out fine as long as you’re in reasonably good health. (Tonight’s photos are scenes from a drive around the refuge this afternoon after picking up my new glasses in Nags Head.) What happens, though, if you get sick while you’re on the road and many many miles from that doctor?  I’ve had a few instances in the last year or so, where I’ve needed medical attention.  If you are a couple, your spouse/significant other can get you to a medical facility.  If you are traveling solo, you have to get there by driving yourself.  I have had to drive my

When I went to the doctor two weeks ago to get some relief from my painful hip, the doctor told me that a hip replacement was probably in my future.  He prescribed some meds to see if that would buy me a little more time.  I had the option of taking one or two of the pills once a day.  I started with one pill a day.  The first day there was a miraculous difference in the lessening of the amount of pain, but along with that came some nausea.  I worked through the nausea and it subsided after a couple of days.  However, after two weeks the effects of the pill also lessened.  All day yesterday and last night were very painful.  Since I didn’t have to work today, I decided to up the dosage to the two pills.  I didn’t want to do that on a day I had to work just in case the nausea returned. In addition, I also went to CVS and purchased a cane.  I hated to make that concession, but what a difference those two decisions have made for me today.  By using the cane, it takes a lot of pressure

Another drive in the rain this morning to get to work at the Gateway Visitors Center.  I sure wish I could send some of this precipitation to those states ridden by drought.  As expected for working this location, I didn’t have any visitors until 10:30.  Then there was a a steady trickle through the lunch hour. During one of the lulls, I stepped out on the back porch of the VC, and found this guy along the railing.  He was only about an inch long. Can’t remember if I’ve mentioned it before, but Saturday is switch out day on the Outer Banks.  That means all those folks that rented beach houses for the week along the coast head for home in the morning.  North and west bound roads are crammed with cars like a big city rush hour.  Then in the afternoon, the south and east bound roads are packed with the new group of renters coming in for the next week.  It’s quite a phenomena.  The morning is kind of like being at a campground on Sunday when all the working people make a great exod