Saturday, August 1, 2026 started off the 5th month in our volunteer position in White, GA.
Saturday we were moderately busy at the ramp. That slowdown was probably helped by a rain storm that came through around 11am. We had a nice video call with our friends Kirk and Laura. It’s always good catching up with them. And they are very patient to put up with our intermittent Starlink service which creates dead spots and video freezes during our conversations.
After dinner that night we watched the latest episode of Silo.
Sunday was the last weekend day before school starts back in this county and it showed in how crowded the place was with pleasure boaters and families getting out on the water. Still, we never filled up completely, which was surprising.
After dinner Cindy watched one of her shows on her iPad and I started watching the second season of Batman: Caped Crusader on mine, getting through the first 4 episodes. This animated show with 30-minute episodes places Batman in the late 1930’s (when he was first created) and is a film noir treatment of the Dark Knight. The first season, which aired last year, was very good and this second season looks to continue the tradition.
Monday, August 3, 2026 I spent the first couple of hours of my day completing volunteer paperwork then scanning and emailing it to a ranger for another park in another state for a position as camp host starting next April. We’ve been told we’ll know sometime this October or November if we have secured the position.
The rest of the day was spent relaxing and resting. That evening I finished the remaining 6 episodes of Batman: Caped Crusader. This second season was another fun and exciting one to watch.
With Great Power…
We drove over to Canton on Wednesday, August 5th to the AMC theater to see Spider-Man: Brand New Day. I had an AMC gift card from an oil change for Voyager a while back and Cindy had some reward points, so those helped defray the cost. We ended up paying $1.87 for $37 in ticket and concession costs. Yay for cheap entertainment!
This was probably THE best Spider-Man movie to date, and I’ve liked all of them. There was a good main plot, great performances, especially by Tom Holland, and several beautiful shots that captured iconic scenes in the comic books as a hat tip to old fans (why did spellcheck change “fans” to “farts”?) like myself. Cindy and I both enjoyed it tremendously.
I ALWAYS check online beforehand to see if there will be mid-credits or post-credits scenes (as there usually are for most Marvel and Sony superhero movies), so when some people (and there are ALWAYS some) get up as the credits start to roll I fight the urge to stand up and shout, “Don’t leave! There is a post-credits scene coming!!”
But I never do.
Anyway, it was a nice “date” for us except…
Not-so-fun fact: I picked the theater in Canton rather the one closer to us specifically because they advertised nicer, plusher seats (at a higher cost per ticket, of course) thinking the better seats would be good for Cindy’s sciatica when having to sit for 2 1/2 hours. But the seats were SO high off the ground that her feet could not reach the floor, so it ended up hurting her even more than the normal seats. My intentions were good, but I still felt like I failed her.
That night Cindy decided to try watching Spider-Noir, even though she is not a fan of Nic Cage. I had already seen the black & white version and loved it, so we chose the color version. We got about 1/3 of the way through the first episode and she knew she didn’t like it. Turns out I didn’t like the color version either. So we didn’t finish the episode and I won’t finish re-watching the series’ color version. The black & white version was a much better atmosphere for this series.
Thursday was our normal grocery shopping day, but we also stopped at 3 different drug stores looking for a splint to hold Cindy’s middle finger on her left hand as she’s been experiencing triggerfinger for the past several days and it’s been pretty painful for her. (I told her she needs to stop shooting me “the bird” so much, lol) We finally found one and hopefully it will help.
That night we watched the third episode of Star Trek: Strange New Worlds and while it was a bit silly, it DID advance the storyline of two sets of characters, so that part of it worked well.
Death From The Sky
Saturday, August 8th was fairly busy at the ramp.
The bird feeders we put up back when we first arrived have been attracting cardinals, finches, chickadees and doves. One dove, in particular, has been a bully and chasing off other doves so it can have all the seeds that fall on the ground. No idea if it is a male or female, but its behavior prompted Cindy to nickname it “Donald” for reasons that are obvious, given its behavior.
We were sitting in the screen room monitoring the boat ramp parking lot when suddenly there was a flash of movement; a flurry of feathers erupted right in front of us and then, just as suddenly, we saw the tail of a hawk ascending into the sky. It happened SO fast we were stunned for a few seconds. We never saw or heard the hawk dive to the ground and only just barely caught a glimpse of it lift off from the ground and then watched it soar to nearby tree tops.
The hawk was SO fast we couldn’t even see if it carried anything away in its talons.
Cindy stepped outside the screen room to look at the multitude of feathers lying in the grass. Thankfully, I guess, there was no body so the hawk got the feathered-fellow-fowl as the meal it wanted. Cindy could not tell from the feathers what kind of bird it might have grabbed. I’m not an ornithologist, but I posited that since we never heard even a startled cry when it was grabbed and that doves merely coo while other birds chirp, that it might have been a dove. I would expect a bird that chirps would at least emit a sound when it was being grabbed, unless it died immediately (maybe from fright because WE almost did, lol).
It took a couple of hours for ANY birds to approach the feeders after that deadly display, but when they did return I watched the doves carefully. I saw three on the ground. None of them bothered the others. Later I saw seven on the ground. None of them bothered the others. Throughout the rest of the day, none of the doves bothered any of the others.
I’d like to think that the hawk, exercising some kind of selective targeting and elimination protocol, had seen to it that Donald and his bullying behavior had been handled with extreme prejudice.
Karma can be a bitch, baby.
And on a sad note, it was also the birthday of Cindy’s mom, who would have been 89.
We found out on Sunday that maybe the hawk didn’t get Donald after all. Around mid-morning we saw it back and still behaving in a bullying manner to other doves. So it seems like it was simply a brief break from the horror; just like real-life, except we didn’t even get a 4 year space in between this time.
Or maybe this is just another bullying dove. Because it does seem there’s always another asshole waiting in the wings.
Good News
In news that makes you feel good; when we accepted this position we were told it was from April 1st to September 30th and so we planned reservations going forward accordingly. Today, our supervising ranger said he talked to his supervisor and they wanted to extend to us the offer to remain longer if we would like to do so. I told him we appreciated the offer (and I really did because I understood that to mean we were doing a good job for them) but that we had plans to see family and reservations at parks. He said he understood.
Later another volunteer couple drove through and we were talking about things. I mentioned what the ranger said and was told, “…that speaks volumes about the job you’re doing for them because they wouldn’t make the offer if they didn’t think highly of you and Cindy.” It was also mentioned that, if we didn’t want to come back to the boat ramp, we could probably take another volunteer position for this group.
But it was nice to know they feel we have done a good job for them.
We spent Monday, August 10th relaxing as we usually do after the weekend. After dinner we watched John Oliver’s Last Week Tonight with a good show about how different the DOJ has become under the current administration, which is both sad and frightening.
Rub A Dub Dub
Tuesday I spent two hours in the morning, before it got too hot, washing Nomad. Let me tell you, it left me wasted the rest of the day, lol. But she needed a bath, desperately. My knees held up pretty well, as far as the arthritis was concerned, and the worst pain was from the torn meniscus in my left knee. Of course, my arms, shoulders and back were screaming just because they’re not used to so much effort in such an extended amount of time. And the heat, even in the morning (85 degrees between 9 and 11), did not help.
But now she looks ALMOST new. And clean.
After a shower I spent the rest of the day just vegetating in the recliner.
Wednesday we watched the first three episodes of the new season of Reacher. Alan Ritchson is SO perfect for this role.
Thursday we heard positive news from the ranger at a park in another part of the country (see above) about a position there, much earlier than we anticipated. Nothing is final yet, but the questions asked lead us to think we might have a good chance.
Also, that afternoon, Smith’s mom stopped by to give us a diamond dot sun-catcher she made for us as a reminder of Bella. We were very touched and it also made us miss Smith too.
After dinner that night we watched the fourth episode of this seasons’ Star Trek: Strange New Worlds. It was a black & white “noir” tribute to Casablanca with Klingons standing in for Nazis. I liked it; Cindy was “Meh”, and we’re both looking forward to next week’s show.
On Friday we watched the latest episode of Silo after dinner. Things are getting back to what I recall from reading the book 4 years ago.
Saturday, August 15th it was moderately busy at the boat ramp, but the 93 degree temperatures were killer. It was hot in the screen room, but even worse when I made rounds in the parking lot under the blistering sun. By the end of the day, I was drained from the heat and humidity.
After dinner we watched the latest episode of Stuart Fails To Save The Universe. I’m not sure how long they can sustain this format of jumping from reality to reality each week. I guess we’ll find out.
We also decided to watch an old series (2008-2013) called Fringe. We remembered a little of it, but weren’t sure why we stopped watching it back then, unless it was because I started traveling around the country for work. So Saturday night we started with the pilot episode and it kept us engaged. We enjoyed it enough that we’ll continue watching it.
And that takes us up to the middle of our 5th month of our 6 month volunteer position.
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