Eewww Gross but kinda cool

Decomposing bodies tied to trees or being dragged about by rodents is happening just down the road. I thought seeing inside a dead horse head was cool but when my boss first started working here she got to do some health and safety stuff at the infamous Body Farm! How freakin' cool is that??

I hope I have an opportunity to check it out during my tenure. Read all about it at Wikipedia.

Permaculture Design

I know I know...I'm going off the deep end ;) I started reading about Permaculture Design about a year and a half ago. I had hoped that one day I might be able to go to a Permaculture Design institute and take a course or two. Most of the centers I looked at are so far out West or way up North that it seemed unlikely visiting one would happen any time soon, considering my immediate commitments.

Well...I recently discovered The Farm. I am so excited to find one of these places in Tennessee. One of the benefits of my new job is more vacation time. Hopefully I will find some time either this year or next year to go out there and spend a few days learning something cool like how to grow my own shitaki mushrooms!

Little by little this place is growing on me...no pun intended.

Looking forward to Thursday

Luck would have it that I get a night off this week, even better that night off falls on Thursday. Can I get a great big "Hooray!" from the audience? Summertime in Knoxville means Sundown in the City has arrived. Weekly free concerts in Market Square, made even more enjoyable by cold beer and great food. Casey and I particulary enjoy a slice or two from our favorite local pizza joint, Tomato Head.

I am especially excited about this week's performance. Not only will I enjoy a slice of pizza we'll get treated to a slice of Texas too. Robert Earl Keen takes me back to my early college years, as well as to the last time I saw hime live. It was back in 2004. I was in downtown Austin volunteering for the Democrats getting people to sign up for their voter registration card. Lance Armstrong had just won his seventh Tour de France and Austin was throwing him a homecoming party. In addition to Keen, Mr. Armstrong's former flame, Sheryl Crow, also performed.

Fun times.

I hope everyone had a great holiday weekend. I scheduled the weekend off so Casey and I could go down to Alabama for some camping, rock climbing and water hole swimmin'. We enjoyed visiting with our ATL family and her friends. If my sunburnt shoulders and bug bits are any indication, it's safe to say the trip was a success... and I finally had a chance to catch up on some sleep.

Progress

Yesterday evening I was offered a full-time position with UT's Institute of Agriculture. As part of my new job requirements, I will enroll in school this fall and start the process of preparing myself to sit for the Chemical Hygiene Officer exam sometime next year. My new title is Safety Coordinator, I work directly under the UTIA Safety Officer. The best part is that school is now FREE. I can enroll in up to 8 hours per semester at no charge. Being that I will be working full time 8 hours is about as much as I can handle anyway so it all works out. The coursework I need to complete in order to sit for the CHO exam are also the prerequisites for each of the agriculture disciplines I have been exploring. I figure I'll keep my major as undecided for the next year or two while I figure out which discipline to choose.

Update

I got to see inside the head of a dead horse today and touch its brain. Pretty cool. Job situation is still in limbo but looking up. I should have some exciting news and be able to share the details by the end of this week, at the latest sometime next week. If it does not work out expect more of the same, 80+ hour work weeks and minimal blogging. I am hopeful and positive though. I just lack many hours of sleep. I am working very hard at not developing an addiction to caffeine so that when the time comes for me to try and go to sleep I actually can.

Also, I may be enrolled in school as early as this fall, which means bye bye Tom Robbins, Howard Zinn, Henry Miller, and Barbara Kingsolver and hello Biology and Chemistry. Yikes! Exciting and scary all at the same time.

Did you know the last time I took a Biology and Chemistry class was my sophomore and junior year in high school? Challenges and Triumph lay ahead.

While I have not been commenting as frequently as I used to, I am still visiting my favorite blogs about once or twice a week. I enjoy the brief reprieve from my daily doings. Glad to see everyone is doing well.