A month left

Well, it's now September and I have employment for one more month.

It's still fairly fun, too. I mean, I work a ton of hours but there's no commute or errands to run after work, so it's basically just work and then vacation.

This week, I've ridden twice. I'd hoped to increase to about three times a week, so that's where I am now. I'm not sure it will be possible to do more, though.

This week's rides have been fun, though. I went out on Jello Monday and we saw -- actually surprised -- two deer at the river, then we turned the corner and saw Momma Moose and her baby. They ambled off as we rode by.

From there, the weather turned bad and we donned slickers and fought off hail, but still just wandered around. Brose, who's one of the ranglers in this life and a politician in another, was a wild leader. Although we were on property the whole time, we had trouble finding a safe spot to cross the river. He got bogged down several times and we had some spooky horses.

Tuesday was a fun ride, and I rode Newt, who's the one pictured. (Jello is a Palomino.) He's got a really funky gait and I never got used to it. He'd canter for about 12 paces, then trot for three and then canter for six before going into a trot. He had a fast trot -- faster than a lot of canters -- but man, it was tough to switch.

We saw a coyote and some sand cranes on that ride. I probably won't ride again until Saturday because the Wednesday-Friday routines are big in the kitchen.

Our menu is the same weekly, and tonight I am cooking my second turkey. I also did Mexican for lunch. Tomorrow is the pork loin again, and it's also the day the truck comes to unload, hence the full day.

We actually had a long conversation about the workload this morning. The two women are willing to work a ton of hours to get it done, and the guy is a lot more lax. He does what's on the schedule, but anything above and beyond -- like "we're out of crutons and need to make some" -- just bypasses him totally.

Today was his "half day" and apparently there's some confusion as to what that is. The two women assumed it's working 4-5 hours, as our normal schedules are 9-10 hours. But he appeared and then disappeared and then somehow managed to go on another ride.

So there was a discussion about what to do, and we're unsure of the outcome. The thing is, it's the three of us on a team without an on-site boss. There's no chef to run the kitchen and the boss, at this point during the season, is primarily off-site.

My opinion is so long as he's not on the clock, I don't care. I'd just as soon get the hours, and if we're all working a 40-hour base, I don't see how it matters if, say 20 total overtime hours are split 10-10 or 3-17. We're on the same pay scale, so I don't understand how it's a factor.

But we'll see how it plays out. Neither Vivian or myself are particularly confrontational, and, since we're not the guy's boss, we don't really want to be the one to say, "hey bub, we're working our butts off and you're just sitting there stirring soup."

We'll see how it plays out. We've already decided we're making him take the trash out for the rest of the week. The two Dumpsters are full (nauseatingly so, thanks to a dead duck and a spoiled shipment of chicken) -- and apparently the next step, as it's not emptied until Tuesday -- is to don boots and jump up and down on the bags.

Not it.

Critters -- not horses -- on the ranch

One of these guys is Midnight. I forget the other's name. I've only met them once.

No roosters, thankfully! Although I don't exactly sleep in. I wake up at 5:45.
If you can believe it, we had another duck who drowned.

The big goat is handicapped. He has a deformed back foot, but he gets around just fine. They eat a ton of scraps from the kitchen.

We have three goats total, and none are in danger of winding up in the tagine. One escapes quite a bit. I've chased her down several times and locked her back up.

Here's the homestead

Life's good on the ranch! I'm getting the hang of the kitchen. This week I've mostly been on main dishes. I made a mean Mexican yesterday, along with a great turkey. Today I mastered a pork loin and topped it off with bread pudding as dessert. One of the guests told me it was the best she'd ever eaten. (The bread pudding, that is.)Here's the outside of my cabin. If you look at the Web site www.lrrranch.com, it's the third one and the largest. That's because it's a duplex; there is another side of it, which I presume to have the same two bunk beds, a twin, two shelves, a kitchen table and four chests of drawers that I have.

It occurred to me yesterday that there are only four weeks left in the season, though. I'm staying another week to close the place down, but we're about close to the end.

The guests are a lot of fun. Most of them are, anyway. There are, of course, annoying things like people who decide at the last minute -- like as you're sending out food -- that they don't want the meal for the day, could you prepare an alternate? And there are really annoying ones who treat the place like a restaurant. Some guy yesterday wanted an omlette. Pardon, me, wealthy visitor, but that's not on the menu.

My bunk bed. Since Eran left, I'm in the bottom bunk. And now that Cesily left, I have it all to myself.

And there's a family right now who literally walks in at 8:29, one minute before we shut the kitchen down and clean up from breakfast and start lunch. Seriously, how many people do that in restaurants, even? And then of course, they order the stuff that takes the longest to prepare.

I had to hold back the other day, when, after waiting and waiting on that family, then finally serving them, we sat down with them to eat breakfast. The three of us can't eat until the kitchen is "clear," meaning all guest are fed and done with ordering. It's normally around 8, but this family has been coming in to eat about 8:15, and it puts us really back.

So we sat with them and chatted a bit, because it's one of the rare times we get to associate the faces with the names on their orders. And the woman tried to make small talk but had no idea of how silly she came across. She actually, in the course of chatting, asked us "what do you plan to do for the rest of the day?"

The other two cooks and I looked at each other, doing a nonvisual eye roll, and I finally said, "Well, we were going to go back and work on lunch now." And the woman was honestly surprised. She said, "Oh! Don't you get a lot of time to hang out?" It's like, uh, m'am, not when your family is so late all the time. We can't resume work until you're done, and when it takes you an extra 45 minutes to come in, order and eat, we're that far behind. And they do it EVERY meal.

See? I live in a log cabin! At least for four more weeks.

When I do get outside the kitchen, the ranch is great. I have only been riding three times, but it's great fun. I can't really go much, but I will on Saturday, my day off.

Last ride, I had Jello, who is a big, round horse and hadnt been ridden in awhile. During the ride, he missed his girlfriends back at the ranch and kept whinnying. Previously, I rode Levi, C.J. and Mr. T.

The Internet is fairly reliable, but has been more off than on the last couple of days. I've been online an hour now trying to post these two pictures of my cabin, which is about to be my cabin alone. My remaining roommate leaves tomorrow morning and I'll have it alone until a week or so to go in the season.

The ranch is pretty much booked until the end, except it's not at capacity booked, just every room is in use. Some people coming are singles.

most everyone working here is great. We have the particular fly in the ointment, and unfortunately I work in close quarters with him, but I am trying to deal. Vivian, who is the other cook, is absolutely awesome. We work well together and today, when the fly was off doing the lunch ride, we jammed at cleaning. I don't think it's been cleaned before.

After I post this, I am off to bake a pile of cookies. We have cookies -- at least three kinds -- available at all times. I am making chocolate chip by the four-dozen batch. And I made some really awesome butterscotch cookies yesterday.

Mmmm...

A week's gone by

Hey all!

I have now been working for a week. I'm not quite an old hand at it yet, though. The way the kitchen works is everyone kind of jumps in on the different tasks, so I don't (thankfully) do everything on any given day. But as a result of that and working ahead, it could be weeks before I do everything in the kitchen.

For example, yesterday Vivian baked the breakfast special as I was cleaning up after the picnic. She made enough for three weeks, so no one has to bake it again for the next two. It'd be nice to just do it all in bulk and get it all done, but there's really no way to do all that. Some stuff, like the BlackBottomBanana cream pie I made, don't keep for more than a few days.

Fridays and Sundays are clean-out-the-fridge days. Friday there's a picnic, which I worked this week. God, it was insane. You cook chicken the day before (boil), and then the day of, you lug it (32 pieces in this case), side dishes, plates, coolers and everything else to this really nice picnic site and then cook it again, this time BBQing it over a hot as heck stove.

It really was hot, too. I drank lemonade the whole time but didn't think about the sugar effect. After getting a headache there, I returned, did the dishes and drank tons of water but still ended up tossing my BBQ chicken and Rice Krispies into the crew toilet. Not good.

Anyway, on that day, the other cook cleans out the fridge and gives the few crew members who aren't on the ride (about six) leftovers. We do that again on Sunday, after the guests leave. Every other day there is a fairly stable menu, and it's really good good. Salmon last night, steak tonight and ribs tomorrow. Lunches are also fairly nice, although I noticed a lot of the staff opts out of the BLT day. We have an alternative meal and there are always chicken strips for the Nic and Zac types.

This week has been hectic. My day off will be Saturday so since I started on Saturday, I worked seven straight days and am really whipped. I haven't counted my hours, but I really would pour them on if I could. I hope to be allowed to do so, especially since the other prep cooks have been here longer and are understandably ready for some time off.

I rode twice this week, plus did a riding test. Three horses total, each with his own quirks. I hope when it settles in to ride more times weekly, but who knows how it will pan out. With Saturday off I could feasibly go all day, but there will be times I want to go into town, too. I already have a Wal-Mart list going. I rode this morning but declined this afternoon so I could write more KSAs for jobs. Joy.

We've had two families here this week and they are so nice. Both have kids and I've enjoyed playing with them. Being in the kitchen is fun to do, but you miss out on seeing the guests. You really have to make time to do it, and I am trying. Last night we had a guy come in and sing songs and I sat with some of the guests to listen. It was cool.

There's a little library here with books previous guests have brought and left. Someone after my own heart has about four of the Stephanie Plum books by Janet Evanovich, so I have been catching up on my summer reading. There are some real books, too, and perhaps I'll make time for them.

But in the meantime, it's KSAs for me.

Cattle drive: view from the front porch

Today at the ranch, the neighbors mooved* their cattle from their pasture to one of ours, and the drive went right by our front porch.

So we knocked off, grabbed a cup of cocoa and had a front-porch view of a couple hundred cattle as they meandered by.

These photos are more or less in reverse order. It's late and I am tired of fighting Blogspot trying to get them straight.

If you look closely, you can see the mountain ranges in the background. It's really a beautiful place and I love to look at the different cloud formations. Today it rained in the afternoon and prior to it, the gray clouds almost looked like volcanic ash coming out of the mountain.

*Honest to God, that was a typo but I liked it so I left it in.

Here's where I live and work

Scenes from my summer...

Here's the Lodge dining room, where we eat and also square dance. (I haven't done that yet!)

This is Carmel, the ranch dog. She is sweet but I miss Kocur.

This is the porch-ish area off the Lodge. It also has a little deck.

Here's my car parked in front of the crew cabins. I live in the third one. You can't see it, but I'll have more pictures later. It's a little dirty now.

And speaking of, it reminds me very much of the "Dirty Dancing" resort people's cabins. There are two bunk beds in each of four cabins and then there's the "Sin Den," which is the crew breakhouse. We have wifi.

Here's where I expect to spend about nine hours a day until the end of September. I have all day Saturday and Sunday mornings off, but other than that, this is where I'll be.

Three days in and it's just peachy

Yup, I made it. Sorry the news took forever. I should have Pony Express'd it.

I stopped there -- one of the PE stations somewhere along I-80 in Nebraska. My only touristy stop. I had driven for what seemed like a millenium and the nice lady in the place, upon hearing my destination, said, "Well, you're halfway through Nebraska now; you should be there by nightfall."

I thought, at that point, I had about three hours left, total. Instead I had that much more in Nebraska!

Anyway, I arrived safely around 6 p.m., predictably lost cell phone service and gained employment.

So far, it's really nice. The hours are long, but nothing like the Y and nowhere near as bad. (What could be? Seriously!)

There are four people in my position in the kitchen, and there's no chef so it's us and a recipe book. So far I am mostly assisting and washing dishes. Soon -- Thursday, I think -- the one guy who *reall* knows his stuff is leaving and it will be the rest of us. Of those, one guy started last week and the woman has been there all summer. She's had a rough time.

But so far, so good for me. I have made peanut butter cookies and chocolate chip cookies, which I can do, and then today made two desserts: A "fruit pizza"," which is a HUGE sugar cookie slathered with a yogurt-cream cheese-sugar concoction and then decorated with strawberries, blueberries, grapes and raspberries (but not many of them because so many were moldy!) and a peach cobbler.

That one scared me. First of all, I am not even sure what a "cobbler" is. I thought it had something to do with shoes. Second, the recipe is all marked up with scribbles to "try this" and "don't do that." I don't know if I am supposed to follow it or not.

But I winged it, adding some oatmeal in place of flour because it was a suggestion someone penciled in. However, about five minutes before dinner, it was NOT looking good. Very dry and powdery. I figured even with ice cream on top if it, that's not right.

It didn't make me feel any better that more than one person said never mind it, no one had made a decent one yet and it wouldn't be the first flop.

Well. I tried. I did the Southern thing -- melted a ton of butter and dumped it all over it.

And you know what? It worked. It was quite a hit.

I'm not in Kansas anymore

I made it to Kearney, Nebraska. Hamdullah. Dorothy can have Kansas back. I'm done with it.

I've been to all 50 states, but cheated on three -- Idaho, Wyoming and Kansas, just crossing the border to each of those. So on this trip, I decided to drive through Kansas just to spend some time there. I'll be seeing enough of Wyoming, but poor Idaho will have to wait.

Although it wasn't too bad, Dorothy can keep it. There's lots of room for Toto to run but not a lot else.

The prairie was nice but I didn't see amber waves of grain. Whatever was growing was green and when the wind blew -- which was often, hence the windmills -- it was sort of mesmerizing, which is not what you want to do when speeding by at 80 mph.

I saw Topeka from the interstate and a really bad crash in Kansas City, the city I saw twice because I got turned around in a detour.

So far, I've put over 1200 miles on the car -- I counted around 5 p.m. but kept driving until 9 p.m. -- and have about five hours left, if Google maps can be trusted.

Oddly, just after I decided I imagined the whole pioneer museum thing and was trying to find a hotel room, I happened on the thing hovering across the interstate.

I didn't go and likely won't because I am ready to end this road trip, but it is cool from the outside. Right now I am in a Ramada, sipping my free drink -- tea -- and am just dead on my feet.

But really, the drive hasn't been that bad. Perhaps if no other jobs pan out I can become a long-haul driver.

There's always hope.

On the road

Florida. Check.
Georgia. Check.
Alabama. Check.
Mississippi. Check.
Tennessee. Check.
Arkansas. In progress.

I'm refueling at Mickey D's right now, sipping super sweet tea and filching WiFi, on the first leg of my little journey.

So far, so good.

Besides the entire state of Alabama being under road construction, it's been fairly nice. And my little car is getting about 40 mpg, so I've only stopped for gas once.

I'll be doing that again shortly, though, as this tea will be running through me.

It's 7 p.m. Tally time now, and I guess that means I've been on the road 10 hours. I got a late start because I forgot to change my oil and Daddy did that this morning, as I printed out last-minute maps.

I will drive a bit more this evening, probably stopping in Jonesboro. Arkansas is not a lovely place, but the McD's has filled up with nice people since I arrived about 10 minutes ago (two tea glasses' worth).

I guess I'll be in Nebraska this time tomorrow. Yikes. I was thinking of checking out the little prairie thing that was in "About Schmidt."

I'd hope, since it allegedly spans across the interstate, that I could find it, but with me you never know. I did accidentally take 40 instead of 55 It's been my only false move, at least if you don't count almost getting on Interstate Something east instead of west after the fill-up.

Go West, young woman

The ironic twist in the whole YMCA camp thing is that now I am qualified as a prep cook. And that little fact turned out to be handy when I checked the CoolWorks web site on a whim.

That's the site I stumbled upon to discover the whole world of seasonal employment, which led me to the Y. You'd think I'd learn, but it didn't take. I tried again and found the Laramie River Ranch, which is in Colorado but essentially Wyoming -- it's five miles shy of the border.

And they needed a prep cook! I read the description for the job, which runs until September 30, and it was exactly the same position as I did at Camp Indian Springs, only in decent conditions. Like they have wifi in cabins and only 25 guests at a time.

So, still on the whim, I emailed them and asked if the position was still open. After all, I really didn't know if it had been posted for long or what. And within a day, they replied. I didn't get the reply immediately, as I was in Orlando picking up Nic and Zac, and by the time I returned, I not only had the original reply but also a nice "hey, did you get my reply" note, so I knew it was open.

And I applied. Not two hours after I hit "send," I had a response. After some very nice conversations, we decided that I'm a good fit for what sounds like a fun motley crew and come next week I'll hit the road.

I'll be driving quite a bit. Besides the two- or three-day drive to Colorado, I'm also heading to Gainesville tomorrow to return the nephews and then to Atlanta on Monday.

There might be something to this seasonal stuff.