Tennessee should be "the snake state"

ahhhh, the smell of coffee in the morning, small talk around the water cooler and checking your e-mail before the work load kicks in for the day. walking in and out of air conditioned and spotless rooms to pick up a fax or chit chat with a co-worker about who got kicked off of last night's "Next Top model." And always, every ones favorite part of the day is LEAVING work. i used to feel the biggest sigh of relief and joy when i was pulling out of the parking lot at work in Des Moines. It meant a night of freedom and screwing off with friends (sometimes until 3 AM) before i had to hop back into my car and go back to the same drab job. take allllllll of everything i just said (minus the coffee, which seems to be a staple in most peoples sanity every work morning no matter what job) and throw it all out your sun roof at 90 MPH on the interstate in a downpour. instead of a water cooler i meet up with my group of ten girls every first work day of my new week at a little place we lovingly refer to as "Chuckwagon." picture a small town hall, or a rustic log Elk's club dining hall. That's Chuckwagon. It's the place where we eat our 3 squares a day. Oh yeah, and there's no "driving" to work. i live about a 1/4 of a mile down the gravel road in the T.O. housing. That's just one of about 2397 acronyms we throw around camp routinely. Time off housing is what it stands for and that's where i live. i have 2 other people as my roomates and another 4-9 as in and out guests who want to hit up the Internet or cable T.V. on their day off. Anyway...i have to pack up my awesome Dueter backpack (thanks Marie and David!!) with my rain gear, clothing and everything else i will need for 5 days in the woods and kick my ass to work. The days are filled with routines routinely broken. we set up time goals, behavior goals, and education goals in the morning and during the day we often break all of them. goals have to be "reset" dozens of times throughout the day and arguing is commonplace for 99.9% of the campers. when i give corrections the girls have to either listen to the correction and change their behavior, or we all "huddle up" as a group and take responsibility for our actions and set up a solution or problem solve for the next time. Outside of the girls and our routines some of the really cool things i have seen lately are as follows: One skunk, dozens of frogs, deer, deer, rat snake (named Alfonzo), box turtle, and today....a copperhead. i get a little uneasy walking home alone at night through the wooded trails back to the T.O. house due to the fact that i could get eaten alive by a pack of rabid coyotes, OR be taken captive by a toothless suspender wearing mountain man. I'm not sure which one scares me more at this point, but regardless i have taken to carrying a large walking stick with me and humming a nice church camp song in my head when i do have to walk at night.
speaking of....I'm tired. i think i wanted to hit a little more on how completely random and out of the norm this job is, but i think you may get the point. yesterday we did canoe certification, and sometime next month we will go out on a 5 day backpacking trip somewhere in the smoky mountains.
oh yeah, and i have a new tick species to add to my list of "known ticks." it's called the seed tick and the little SOB is about the size of a pin head. stupid ticks.

I almost forgot....there's also a lot of dead snappin turtles on the side of the road. they are as commonplace around these parts as dead raccoons are in iowa. i find it odd and sorta sad since i was raised to love turtles...but what can ya do?

p.s. i flipped this guy over after this pic and although he looked liked he had been jumped by a escargoratoire of snails he managed to move around a bit before i drove off. (so i like to think he just walked it off and went on with his happy little turtle life.) .....