Morning everyone! A very brief and quick update (Please excuse me of Ds are missing. The key seems to be dying!).

Not too much to report, aside from more mandalas have been done by both myself an Milo. He insisted! Apparently the others have been observing my own Mandala coloring an have gotten rather jealous of such fun, haha! So Ren an I decided to allow each of them to take a pick of a few of the pages. Abby, Mathias and Milo all chose a few pages as their own an marked them so that none other would color them first. It was interesting to pause, switch, let them place a signing, and switch once more. I do believe that it has drained me of all available energy, despite the fact that we have been awake all night since getting off work rather early (Shift changes to help a coworker with training off campus).

Photos are as followed:

Cover page:

On another note, during a rather unforgiving storm yestereve, the roads we drove on throughout working our shift was plagued with such a horrid layer of black ice. It was everywhere! Hardly avoidable. We somehow managed to survive the night with only a few minor fishtailing of the vehicle, and I credit it greatly to Ren's experience with winter driving. With about twenty minutes left to our shift, on our way back to campus from checking an off-campus dorm; we came up to a stopsign through a veil of snow and barely glimpsed ahead to see brake lights where we knew there was no road.

Immediatly putting on our caution lights, we parked next to the stop sign to warn others of the thick black ice there at four in the morning, an got out of the vehicle. The man was pacing his vehicle, a small Dodge Neon, surged up over the top of an icy snowback opposite of the stop sign. We promptly asked if he were alright, and he was, but he was stuck so drastically that his rear passenger tire did not even touch the ground. Luckily a lady in a small voltswagon also stopped when she saw what we were walking for, and we assessed the situation. The man said he could not call police or a tow due to no insurance, and we understood immediatly. They asked if we could use the suburban (work vehicle) to pull him out but declined, sure to not have a very happy boss if we did that and broke something! The lady who stopped to help was very well prepared though!

She promptly took out a bucket of sand, bag of kitty litter, two shovels; a tow cable and a pair of mittens for the gentleman; and we got to work. I were on the clock anyway with nothing left to do, might as well lend a hand! With passing cars warned by my caution lights ahead of our activities, we were easily avoided as we worked. The lady hitched his car to her own an while she pulled with the power of her Voltswagon, I opted to using good old elbow grease at the front. It took several tries and a lot of tire squeeling (and my prosuation to a Town Crew that we did NOT need a wrecker, not revealing that the car was uninsured) the car crunched up over the snowbank and back onto the roadway.

Light cracked damage to the front bumper and what looked like a plastic shield off the bottom came loose, but otherwise the car was in very good condition. The three of us shook hands and were quickly on our way, the gentleman and lady off to work and me to clock out. I had presently been in a bitter mood throughout the night for a rather complicated reason of grief, but the three of us strangers rolling up our sleeves to help eachother out really touched me. It made me smile knowing that humanity might, afterall, not be hopeless. He never asked for our help, and we did not feel inclined to ask. Human nature to help the pack took over and we did what needed to be done to help one another, without expectation or request of reward.

The only sad part was that the lady voiced her hopes of a "Big, strong guy to stop with a plow truck and give us a hand!" to which Ren laughed, mentioning a comment of "Yeah, that'd be nice. I'm just a little guy!" and the woman immediatly stared at him as if to say "Dont you mean girl?". That was rather saddening, but I encouraged him to not overthink it and to just get back to pushing because my toes were cold! Regardless, it was not a bad experience. And I mentioned it to our boss and she agreed. Had we used the truck like he'd asked, we probably would have lost our jobs. Yikes! 

Anyhow, I am far overdue for some sleep. I had planned to go to sleep at a ripe time of 5;30am or perhaps 6:00am at the latest. Presently...it is 8:35am. Far overdue! Perhaps we'll save the bank and postal visits for tomorrow...

Have a warm and comfortable Eve,

Xan