turtles and garage catastrophes
So while mountain biking on Friday night I saw a desert tortoise. It was a good 14 inches by 6 inches. I've seen plenty of wildlife in South Mountain Park (rabbits, squirrels, javelina, coyotes, quail, lizards, snakes), but never a turtle and nothing in such detail. If you know Desert Classic, I was heading South/West, and the opposite side of the wash immediately after the tanks is where it was. It was only about a foot off the trail. I took some pictures with my camera phone, and then tried to push him off the trail. He had absolutely no interest in going anywhere. I was thoroughly convinced he was going to get run over so I moved him about 6 feet off the trail into a greenish bit of brush. I hope he ended up being alright. It was pretty cool. I've never felt a turtle that large's shell before, it was pretty odd feeling.
Last night Lori and I made dinner. Well, more accurately, I grilled, and she made dinner. It was the first time she made dinner, and it was really good. We had a marinated salmon, with some asparagus, cous-cous and a bottle of shiraz. It was quite the treat. It was also the first time I've ever grilled salmon. It was pretty easy, heat the charcoal, lay down tin foil, spray it with pam, cook it on each side for about 7 minutes, and it's perfect.
On to today, where I had a really good day at work. Showing up early gives a good feeling of accomplishment when things are actually done prior to lunch. I got quite a few things done at work and coordinated some of the extra work load I've taken on with some of the other people in engineering. I actually worked a really long day and enjoyed it for the first time in a while. Maybe I thrive on a challenge? Interesting.
Then the day went south. When I got home I pulled in to the garage, collected my stuff out of the car, walked around the back of my car and noticed the top panel of my garage door had pulled off the track. I have absolutely no clue how the hell this happened. I'm just glad I caught it before I tried to close the garage door. That could have really broken stuff.. including my car if the errant wheel had caught on the track and it had yanked off the track entirely. So, since I didn't trust closing it, I had to fix it right then (no more people stealing things from my open garage!). I took the wheel off entirely, then closed the door by hand, slid the wheel from the top, re-attached it and checked every last bolt on that garage door. There were a few bolts that were frighteningly loose considering I had a maintenance guy here less than a year ago to fix the broken coil. What shoddy work, serves me right for trusting repair guys.