Showtime tomorrow

It starts tomorrow.  My census job. 8 am.  I have to be ready as I am teaching the four day class.

I have an incentive to teach the class well as the students will be working for me for about the next month gathering census information from the households who did not return their census questionnaire.

My team is suppose to be 18 people but I am already down to 14.  Two people changed their minds and didn't want the job, one person because she is now homeless.  One person accepted but then had to drop out a couple days later because their vehicle broke down and they didn't have money to fix the transmission.  One person was from way out of my area and should have been assigned closer to their home.  I got him transferred but that was a challenge due to the census bureaucracy.

But I'll get the job done in my large district even with only 14 people.

My one concern tomorrow is fingerprinting.  Everyone working for the census must be fingerprinted by two different people on the first day else they cannot work for the census.  I was trained on how to take a person's fingerprints but I don't think I am very good at it.  I wish I could have been able to practice on more people.  Who I need is my uncle Larry but he lives in a different state.  He is a retired police detective and I bet he is an expert at fingerprinting.

In addition to preparing to teach the class I have been still trapping pocket gophers and gophers.  Today I got the last pocket gopher I know of in my neighbor's property.  I must have trapped 45 or more pocket gophers from his land.  I imagine there are still just as many over there.

And today I finally caught the regular gopher in my middle pasture. I am positive this is the guy I have trying to trap since last Summer.  Once he opened up all those holes mid week when it got to 80 degrees, I have been trying to get him.  He had been avoiding the traps for the most part thought I did find two sprung traps and nothing in them a few days ago.  He would dig new holes to avoid the traps.  But he slipped up and I caught him.  Hopefully this is the last one, but I doubt I could be so lucky.

That makes 69 pocket gophers and 1 regular gopher so far this year.