Have you ever pretended to spy? Or have you ever spied as a kid? And this is the thing, this is the thing. So me and my brother, we would be upstairs in our rooms, and my parents will be downstairs doing something. We'd be going to bed, and we go on spy missions. That was our thing. They were called spy missions. We had multiple weird games that we play when we were younger, but that was one of the many. And so, the spy missions, we would -- it usually start with him annoying me and me trying to go to bed, but he would come my room, be like, come on, let's go on a spy mission. And I'm like, why? He's like, I can't go to bed. And I was like, okay, that's fine. So we'd go on a spy mission. My brother, I think he's three years older than me. So he -- I don't know why he did this. He's a very strange person. But we'd go on spy missions and be like go down the steps very quietly and he always walk first -- I mean, I always walk first because if I stepped on a creak and I got in trouble, then he wouldn't, cuz he'd run upstairs. But I just remember so many times racing upstairs to make sure that we didn't get caught. Even if we did get caught, we wouldn't have got in trouble. It would have just been like, oh, we're out of bed.

One thing that I have been grateful for in the last week, has been my family and the support that they provide. I just recently bought my first car and was able to buy it without a loan or without financing it and in full cash just because of my parents' support, but it's been particularly difficult because I had to learn how to buy a car, how to go to -- just like the process of going through dealerships, and working things out, and working the insurance out all on my own. My parents just helped me with the finances a little bit, but it was just a little scary doing the whole thing as a nineteen-year-old teenager, but yeah-- it was also exciting. And now I have a car and that's been -- I've been very grateful for that.

One of our team members found out that she gets into dentist chair in a goofy way. You can't say that without describing it. How does one get into a dentist chair in a goofy way? I can only imagine similar to how I used to get into the car as a child. Which is, would not put my leg in and then sit and put the other leg in. I would, basically crawl in with my knees crossed and then I'd have to uncross them underneath once I was in. And had to relearn how to get in a car once I was big enough that, that I didn't have enough space to uncross my legs. So, I would expect she crawls into the chair and then flips herself around.

Now this next one: the question is have I ever had a magical experience with nature. Yeah, so many. Almost just too many to share. I -- I can get emotional pretty quickly under the right set of circumstances in nature, and it's all sorts of different types of interactions with nature. I've become emotional by driving through nature, and I've certainly become emotional while in the midst of nature. The very first thing that came to my mind was my very first trip to the Rocky Mountains, and my introductions to the Rocky Mountains. I don't think I saw them until I was twenty-nine or thirty years old, was through Glacier National Park in Northern Montana, and I was very unfamiliar with Glacier, which is crazy to think about in hindsight.But I had heard of a road called the Going-to-the-Sun Road that was supposed to be this magnificent drive through the Rocky Mountains and so that was my -- that's what we did. We drove through the Going-to-the-Sun Road, our first time through, and I remember every single turn on the Going-to-the-Sun Road, which literally hugs these mountains, and as you climb in elevation. Every single turn I could feel, like, my throat catch. Like I'd lose my breath, just -- the shocking views before me, like I would -- I think I always thought "take my breath away" was just a saying that was not meant to be literal, but that day I found out, like yeah, it can hundred percent be literal, because every single blind turn I took, I'll reveal something that was even more magnificent than what I saw a moment earlier.And I remember I was wearing aviator sunglasses, and my girlfriend was with me and I was kind of self-conscious or embarrassed that I was tearing up just like every couple of turns I could feel my eyes welling up just as I was overwhelmed with the beauty that lay before me, it was magnificent.

Are there any particular animals in my neighborhood recently? I live in a watershed, so we see a lot of different animals on a regular basis. We have a lot of rabbits, and a lot of mallard ducks, some Canadian geese. Every once awhile, we'll get a heron, which is always really cool. We had a bear that got relocated a couple of weeks ago, he had been terrorizing our bird feeders for the last six months. But we were recently made aware of two new denizens in the neighborhood and it's a beaver couple. They have been building dams in the culvert, in the creek across the street. Unfortunately, it's been causing some flooding. So, the Department of Public Works had to come through and unjam the dams and of course undo all of their hard work. But it's been so interesting to see them. I see them almost every morning. I'll take my son to daycare around 7:30 in the morning and then when I come home from dropping off my son, I see them in the yard eating dandelions or hanging out with the ducks—they have a really close bond with the ducks, apparently. So it's honestly, it's, it's become really a source of kind of a morning routine—a morning ritual—to say good morning to the beaver couple who are just out having breakfast. It's a cool way to start the day.

What's a chore I've been putting off? We have to remove a wreath, on our front door, that a Robin made a nest in and safely brought into the world four babies. But we found out last night that one of the babies keeps coming home. At least we assume it's one of the babies, it's still pretty little. But they left a couple of weeks ago, like they've been out of our door and we kept forgetting to put the wreath in the trash because, as nice as that wreath is, they pooped all over it and our front door, which we have to clean the front door and the sidewalk in front of it, so it's kind of a chore. And then last night my fiancé went outside and scared the bird and then this morning I watched the bird fly out as I backed out of the driveway. So, one of the babies keeps coming back or mama came back and laid more eggs. I'm gonna have to check it out later. So, it might be a chore that just has to keep getting put off cuz I'm not gonna remove a nest with eggs. That's like my no no.