Mushroom Hunting

Last Sunday, Mark and I drove up to Panther Creek near Carson, Washington. With all of the trees turning color and the sun shining bright, it was the perfect day for a drive in the gorge. Even more beautiful was the trail we walked on once we arrived. The air was crisp, the leaves gorgeous, and the surroundings very peaceful and relaxing. We hiked for a little over an hour, taking it all in, before we found what we had come for: chanterelle mushrooms. I hadn't been mushroom hunting before, and didn't even know what chanterelles looked like, so I wasn't sure what to expect. It turned out to be really fun. Once we found the first couple of chantrelles and I got to know what we were looking for, the hunt was really on. Another 15 minutes and we arrived in a spot with lots of mushrooms, so many that we filled up two plastic grocery bags in about an hour. It was quite fun to search them out, and very exciting to spot one, usually hiding under a fern or other plant, or even under a fallen tree branch.

Taking a Class

So I've been thinking about going back to school for a long time now, but being unsure of what I want to do "when I grow up," I've had a hard time getting motivated to put in the required time and energy. Finally, I decided that I would take one class fall quarter, a class that was easy and of interest to me, in hopes of getting excited about going to school. With that in mind, I registered for an eLearning class, HTML Fundatmentals: Introduction to website development through the mastery of the fundamentals of HTML, XHTML, and CSS coding for web pages. Intended to give the student the basic skills required to hand-code web pages from scratch. A four-page website will be developed. Topics include: text editors, essential elements, images, links, lists, forms, tables, and CSS-based page layout.

So far the class has been pretty much what I've expected. It's easy, relevant to some of my duties at work, and completely online, so I can do the work when I want. Plus, it's a requirement for the Sofware Solutions Development Specialist program (you can get a certificate of proficiency or AAS degree) which is of interest to me. And, since the Foundation will reimburse me for the class and textbook, assuming I get at least a "B" out of the class, I figured I have nothing to lose. I just turned in my first assignment. 3 days and 3 hours early!

I'm still not sure where I'll go from here, but it's a start.