That Was The Week That Was

Am I the only one here old enough to remember that TV show? (Even I remember it only from reruns on late night TV; it originally aired on the BBC way back in the early 60's. I seem to remember seeing it as late night filler on a Boston UHF station in the 70's.) In any case, it supplied a catchy title so the memory space it occupies in my mind is not totally wasted. For the insanely curious, go read the Wikipedia synopsis at That Was The Week That Was.

Last week I mentioned that I would write about the beautiful printer/scanner I won from the wonderful ladies of Aiming Low and HP. Late last week I finally got it unpacked and set up. (My delay was making it dangerously close to losing my tech geek card - true geeks must drop everything to play with any new piece of equipment!) Setup was trivial since it has built in wireless connectivity. And the photo prints are spectacular! Thank you Aiming Low and HP! Oh, it also looks pretty nifty as well:

Nothing like all black with a neat little touch screen to appeal to the tech geek in me.

L was home this weekend and we had the big thirtieth birthday party for my friend the writer to attend. A group of friends, great BBQ, two kinds of cake, and pie - the ideal way to say happy birthday. It doesn't seem possible that he is that old. I have known him since he was in high school and it just doesn't seem to be that long ago. (I suspect that is a symptom of aging - everything seems to have happened just a moment ago. When you are young, it seems like everything is yet to happen in the far distant future. The older you get, the faster things seem to happen.) In any case, Happy Birthday Bryson!

Time for Molly and I to head out for our walk. I think Molly will trust me by now. This morning it was time for her annual veterinary checkup and vaccinations.  She and I hopped in the truck went to the bank where the drive up clerk gave her a doggy biscuit. Molly thought that was pretty neat. Then we drove out to the clinic and Molly could smell all the dogs and cats and other critters in the gravel parking lot. That really excited her. She led me in the doors and sat with me in the waiting room. But when it came time to sit on the scale and she really didn't want to be still. But we got through it and into the exam room.

That was when all those things that she blames me for happened. The cold stethoscope to the chest, the thermometer up the rear, and of course the three shots. All while I am holding her against my chest and beginning to look like I sprouted a white fur coat from her shedding on me. We came home and she carefully spent most of the day sleeping across the room from me in my office, raising her head to be sure I wasn't up to another sneaky trick whenever I moved. By this evening she was willing to let by-gones be by-gones and was rubbing furballs all over my legs. So I think it is time for us to go. {*grin*}

Five Things That Leave Me Going Huh?

Five Things That Leave Me Going Huh?

People who watch reality TV.

People who fail to consider of the different abilities of others.

Molly, who wags her tail in time to only some of the music I have on.

My neighbor who mows his lawn twice a week, even now when it has barely started to grow.

The crow trying to nest in the evergreen bush outside my bedroom window. The raucous battle between the crow and the robins nesting in the pine trees makes morning a noisy affair.

(World's Largest Crow - Belgrade, Minnesota - Photo by Oxley)

Manic Monday

A dreary day today, especially as L departed back to the mountains this morning. Not only is Molly dog laying around looking like the world has ended, it was drear and overcast until this afternoon when the sun peaked out. I love the oddity of the weather at this time of year. Saturday was warm (60's) and sunny, Sunday was overcast and cool (30's). Forecast is for Thursday to hit 70 followed by snow and cold on Friday. Must be March in Colorado.

Tomorrow is precinct caucus day here. That assures entertainment for the evening as I attend my local precinct caucus meeting. The caucii (which sounds better that caucuses even if wrong) don't have a huge impact on local office seekers like me. The caucuses feed into the county caucus which does little beyond determining ballot listing order for the primary ballot for local offices. So all the effort and dirty work and fund raising and ... come up in June and July. Looks to be fun.

(For those who don't remember, I threw my hat into the ring for the office of county commissioner a while back. It is my first foray into partisan politics. Non-partisan political offices like mayor just require the signature of 50 voters and then waiting for the election. It's a bit different once the donkey and elephant get involved.)


Back to preparing documents for a Thursday meeting related to construction of our new facility (for my day job as executive director of the humane society). I'll leave you with a quip I heard on during a conference call today:

Friendship is like peeing on yourself: everyone can see it, but only you get the warm feeling that it brings.

Can you tell I've been talking to construction contractors?

Variegated Topics

It seems that whenever I do haiku on this blog, I get more comments than any other time. Maybe I should become a total comment hog and specialize entirely in bad haiku?

In any case, many of you commented on the pictures with yesterday's haikus. To assuage your inner child as to whence they came, let me explain. I wrote the haikus first and then turned to Google Images to find pictures that illustrated what was in my mind's eye as I wrote. I took none of the pictures. To give credit where credit is due, here they are with the information I have on their origins.

First up, this beautiful picture

came from Mr McLellan's Sci and Bio page associated with the Nayland School in New Zealand. Photographer uncredited.

Next,

is a picture of Donner Pass, looking back towards Truckee Lake taken from Serene Musings, no photographer given.

Lastly,

is a photograph of a stream (near Death Valley, I believe) by Chris VenHaus.

Time to get some real work done. L is coming home from the mountains tomorrow early. Yippee! In honor of the even, yet another haiku:

L coming from on high

Joyous melding into one

Reunion is sweet

Short and sweet

Now that the Monday night double header of pro football is over, I can drop a few words off here.

Spent part of the afternoon mowing the lawn that I couldn't this weekend and then picking tomatoes from the garden. You can tell fall is fast arriving. Tomatoes, peppers, and squash are about all that is left in growing fettle. Picked the first of the winterish squash today and it was delicious. Maybe it will make up for the fact that our acorn squash crop looks like it might not make it before the freeze. Not only did we have a heck of a time getting the plants to grow at all this year, they have been really slow to fruit and mature. It has been an especially odd year for cantaloupes and watermelons, they are still not fully ripe and normally they are mostly harvested by this time. I suspect our lone surviving Honey Dew plant with a number of melons will not get them ready before the frost comes.We will see.

Time to get back to putting things together. I have a couple of machines in pieces strewn about the place and need to put them back together before I lose some parts. Not that I'm saying Molly might run off with them. {*grin*}

An Olio Of Items Both Good And Bad

This weekend was filled with yard work for the most part. I mowed the lawn and worked on the sprinkler system. Maybe you can explain to me why in-ground sprinkler systems always seem to need working on to make sure the water actually covers the lawn? My theory is that there are little lawn gnomes that hate water sprites and so go around with little hammers beating on the sprinklers. Have you got a better theory?

Saturday was nice as the temperature only hit the mid 80s. A nice break from the 100s of the day before. I didn't even break a sweat while mowing the lawn. I could live with summers that never got much warmer than that. The only places I have found that fit the bill are near ocean coasts, so unfortunately don't have the real seasons I like. Guess I'll just have to hang on through the heat.

Today as I was working on the sprinklers, the little itty bitty bloodsuckers were rampant. The little mosquitos rose in the hundreds as a walked in the lawn. I figure that is our punishment for all the rain we've had this summer. Even though we (the city) spray/fog once a week, the mist only kills those that are fresh in the hatch. Usually that does a pretty good job when there just isn't a place for the little beasts to breed. But with all the summer rains, breeding points abound and the mosquitos are thick and hungry. The worst part is that they are all little tiny beasts that easily fly through the window screens. And like most bad things in the universe, the welt is inversely proportional to the size of the biter. Likewise the degree of itch.

In very sad news, a high school classmate's son was killed this weekend. The classmate is a local MD and we visit from time to time. His son was a year or so older than the Son. I can't imagine how hard it has to be to go through the loss of your child just as they are blooming into full adulthood. Here's to the happy memories I have of golfing with his son and talking about his future, now sadly cut way too short. My condolences to the family and friends.

The Birds Have It and Other Wars

This morning I was awoken from a peaceful slumber by the sound a a raging bird war going on in the bush outside my bedroom window. A chickadee and some wrens were having a knock down dragout with stereo chirps and tweets and screetches. Once I figured out that:

a) I hadn't died and gotten a bad harp translator in heaven,
b) I hadn't somehow set the alarm to play really hideous music, and
c) it was turning light outside,

I was able to focus enough to read the alarm clock an spot that it was 5am. Given that I get up at 6am so I can walk down to the radio station on Wednesday mornings, I decided to bag the idea of geting back to sleep and instead get some reading done. I have paid for that decision all day now. It seems like I am tired but not quite sleepy. Oh well.

Last night was an interesting special meeting of the city council. A historic first meeting no less, with the city council, the county commissioners, and the rural fire district board all sitting in official session together to go over the proposed intergovernmental agreement (IGA) for the formation of the emergency services authority. Once the smoke cleared and the attorneys for all sides had thrown up their hnds in disgust, there was general agreement as to the form of the IGA. So the modified and corrected version will come before the city council for a first reading next Tuesday (and a second reading and public hearing a few weeks later if it passes the first reading) with similar time frames for approval by the other two entities. Thenthe ballot questions can be put on the ballot and see what the voters want.

The interesting part is that although the city and county have sat in joint session a couple of times during my tenure as mayor, this was the first tri-party meeting anyone can recall. It was also interesting since we filled the council chambers, which is rare. Pretty much, we had a standing room only size crowd. The last time we had that many people in attendance was when there was a proposed liquor license near the college which the churches opposed. I sure wish we could get that many interested citizens for the normal day-to-day business of running the city.

In other news, a good friend of L and I underwent spinal surgery today and I have received word that it went well and has relieved the pressure on his spine. So please think good thoughs for T during his healing and recovery.

Mopey Monday Miscellanei

Today is one of those mopey days. The sun is out and it is nice outside, but my motivation to get going is lacking. Seems like those kind of days happen sometmes. Maybe the solution is to add an extra day each week that can be used in any way one chooses. If this is a good day to mope around and do little else, you can use the extra day as a mope day. Of course, there is always the ongoing issue of using your "personal/mope" day too eary in the week and then discovering that it was really needed later in the week. {*grin*}

The discussion of mope days reminded me of a gentleman I haven't thought of in years. Paul was a work colleague long ago. He was very senior in the company at the time I knew him. He had worked essentially his whole life at the company, was one of the original 10 employees of what had become a Fortune 100 company, and with his seniority, he accumulated vacation time at a rate exceeding 1 day a week. The problem that Paul had was that he was not often in the mood to take time off. So he was always up against the corporate cap on accumulated vacation time. The entire time I knew him, he had to take one day a week off or lose the paid day off as he hit the corporate cap. Paul was one of those people who couldn't stand the idea of "donating" the day back to the company, so he spent some time programming a spreadsheet/database to automatically chose which days would be best for him to take off. He would then put in the paperwork for those days but still come to work as if it was a normal day. It pleased him not to "donate" the day to the company and yet not have to skip work for a day. He would have loved the similar problems associated with the personal/mope day idea.

Easter was good here. L was home and we had Easter dinner at Mom's. I suspect Mom was pretty tired after wheeling around preparing the meal in a wheel chair. Since she can't leave the house yet, she wanted to have Easter dinner at her place. So I did the shopping and then pulled some stuff out of the freezers Saturday night and came over early Sunday to help with the prep and setup. L and MIL both came over after church so we could follow the long standing family tradition of eating too much on Easter Sunday. MIL hurt her shoulder/arm in the blizzard#1 and blizzard#2 aftermath and so isn't able to use one arm right now. Hopefully that will get better when she starts theraapy later this week. Since Mom had the home care nurse coming by later in the day to change the surgical dressings, MIL was in discomfort with her arm, and L had to get ready to head back to the mountains, we were done and had it all cleaned up before 3pm. 

I took a spare CRT monitor over to the MIL's on Saturday to replace her dead LCD. She was undergoing computer withdrawal since it had failed last Tuesday. After getting it set up and verifying functionality, I brought her dead LCD back here. In keeping with my reputation as the computer whisperer, I have it back up and running. I'm going to keep it running on the bench system here for a few days just to make sure I really fixed the problem and then will journey back over to return it to MIL's computer desk. (I know she is having a hard time with the smaller screen and square pixels of the old CRT monitor she is stuck with right now versus the LCD with its 16:9 widescreen layout.)

It is amusing how dedicated both Mom and MIL are to their computers. Email, word procesing, and the web are an important part of their lives. Given that they both were drug, with at least some kicking and screaming, into the digital age decades ago, it is funny how important the computer is in their lives now. I often wonder what my grandfather would have thought of computers in day to day life if he had lived a bit longer. I still have a rudimentry computer game he built in the late '50s using relays and a vacuum tube for the computing power. I suspect he would have enjoyed the modern computer and its prescence in daily life immensely.

Well, time to get some meeting materials put together for tomorrow. Hope your Easter was good and this week is off to a good (not mopey) start.


I guess I'll go de-mope in the park with Molly. She's just about ready to rise from the "L left" mopes and check out the park for squirrels.

Oddball Tuesday

Today was pretty calm. In a mini-heat wave it got up to 9 or 15 degrees depending on which weather reporter you believed. So it is below 0 right now and will undoubtedly be cold as I meander down to the radio station in the morning. I hate it when the combination of cold and wind is enough that one has to wear a scarf to cover the face or get frostbitten. Guess I'll just have to wait for the weekend when it is supposed to get warmer.

I figured I'd answer/respond to a few of the comments from the last week.

First of all, I want to thank the people who read the story of L and I and thought it was sweet. As I read the other responses to Mama Kat's challenge , I found a number of other stories that I thought were pretty amazing as well. It's always fun to read the responses to the challenges. I really encourage everyone to journey over to Mama's Losin' It on Thursdays to follow mr. linky and read the results of the weekly writer's challenge.

And to CJ's mutual admiration of things cow, I'd add that there is a lawyer living out here with the custom plates MOOLAW. Maybe cows are the new cabbage patch kids? Who knows?

In the comments to Stupid (and Slow) Saturday , Kris Loves Chocolate from uptomyneckinchocolate said  the post gave her an idea for an upcoming post. I am waiting with baited breath to see what the combination of a nap and stupid criminals stories inspired. Somehow it seems an odd combo to inspire.

Blueviolet of A Nut In A Nutshell has my sympathies since she sometimes suffers loonies as well. All I have to say is that the maximum range of looniedom is coming to a close since I will be term limited out of office come November. Then it will be someone else's problem. {*grin*} (BTW, you should go read her post for today. It has a funny story that really seems to appeal to the female of the species.)

In Week Before Super Bowl Sunday , I talked about my un-crowning and filled out the meme from blueviolet's blog. I want to let Kelley of Magneto Bold know that dental cement is designed to be removed if need be, but artificial joints are epoxied in, so I don't think it is much of a concern. {*grin*} (And you really should read her post for the today if you have any sense of techie humor. The parody of an O'Reilly cover is stunningly funny.) And for blueviolet and Jenners who thought that my answer to #23 was stereotypically male and funny, all I can say is guilty as charged.

And last but not least, the answer to the question posed by blueviolet : why did I walk to the dentist? That is because I walk most places. No sense in driving if one can avoid it. It is only about 6 blocks to the dentist from my home office, so it isn't a tough journey.

I just heard "Green Eyed Lady" by Sugarloaf on the net radio. Boy does that bring back memories from high school. Sugarloaf was a band out of Denver that hit it big in my high school years. One local even filled in on drums for them right after they released "Green Eyed Lady" but before it became a national hit. That was how they became one of the few famous rock groups ever to play here in this small town. Hopefully this is a better tune to have stuck in your head than "In-A-Gadda-Da-Vidi."

Miscellaneous Monday

Q: What do you call someone who has been crowned twice in one month?

A1: Broke.
A2: A dual monarch.
A3: Relieved.

I'll let you chose the answer you like the best. {*grin*}

Today was a bit chill out here on the plains. It got up to somewhere between 5 and 10 degrees (it all depends on who you believe). Add to that a nice 15 mph breeze and it felt downright chilly. I walked over to the dentist's at about 2pm and it was breezy and snowing and cold. It never got any better after that. Now tonight it has cleared off and the temperatures are dropping fast, heading towards another subzero night. But the good news is that the forecast for the weekend is for days in the 50's.

Ran into a former intern of L's from her past business. The young lady was a Boettcher scholar and has finished her undergraduate degree now. Found out she is working near the university she attended for the nonce until medical school starts in the fall. It is always nice to see someone do well, especially someone who is a daughter of an acquaintance and went to high school here. She won my heart when she was working at the country club one summer at the remote stand. To fill the time between golfers, she had her calculus book and was boning up on definite integrals. Warmed the cockles of my scientist's heart. She was back in town for her sister's birthday and just happened to be in for her dental checkup when I was there. My dentist and I think she will be a good doctor. (She was also a classmate of one of my dentist's daughters.)

According to my dentist, I'm now good for another twenty years or more. I'm just happy that I can open my mouth again and let the air in without a blast of pain. Amazing how much difference in quality of life $10 worth of glue can make.

Time to put my notebook together for tomorrow's council meeting. We have a number of things to go over, including the approval interview of the new fire chief. Hopefully won't run too long.

Sunday Meanderings for the Terminally Insane

It must be Sunday - it seems that every Sunday the blogger interface drops the top menu bar and reverts to a font calculated to make me blinder than I already am. But I am fooling the gremlins of software! I can type blind just as badly as the next person.

Today was one of those days that the thermometer says one thing, but the body says another. The thermometer said 40, but the wind chill said 10. Needless to say, walking into the breeze during the stroll Molly, L, and I took in the park early in the afternoon was a biting experience. According to the friendly (but seldom correct) weather people, the next week is supposed to be cool to cold out here on the plains. In a rarity, it is supposed to be cooler out here that in the foothills and Denver. Sometimes we get all the luck. Still no snow or other moisture out here either.

After our walk, I played car repairman on L's vehicle. Her windshield washer had stopped spraying. Given that she is up in the mountains with all the snow up there, it is important that the washer work. Colorado uses magnesium chloride in place of salt as a deicer on the roads, which is ecologically friendly, but leaves a slush that is about like light crude oil in color and viscosity. Thus, whenever a truck runs by, you need to have working washers or be prepared to drive blind. Back to the topic at hand, taking the molding plastic off and un-kinking the hose fixed it all. Evidently it got kinked when they removed and replaced it to put in the new windshield this summer and it had finally closed off under the heat-cold cycle of winter. Routed it through the groves in the molding as designed and all should now work fine. I will undoubtedly hear about it if it doesn't.

Other than that, I have been battling a sinus headache all day. That alone makes me think that the aforementioned weather people might have it right. Big changes in air pressure and I can almost guarantee my sinuses are going to hurt. There must be somewhere where the air pressure is constant year round.

(I must have gotten to them with all my typos - the blogger interface just popped back to normal and the font is big enough for me to actually see. Just goes to show that even software programs can only take so much!)

I got a chance to test some of my home-brew software in the thrown together PVR today. You remember it was my current obsession as discussed here . So I used it to record the play-off games today with my automatic ad removal engine in running in real time. It only crashed and burned a couple of times, so it is getting closer to being usable. Still needs a lot of code cleaning and optimizing since it can pull a machine with dual 3GHz processors right down to it's knees, utilizing both CPU cores to 100% for periods. (Are you bored enough with this techno babble yet?) Here's a picture of the system in operation as I compose this post with the game playback marked in red.

L got headed off back to the mountains earlier in the evening, so Molly is lying in her bed moping. Molly will mope for about 16 hours, then return to her normal bouncy self. The only hope of early recovery is the sighting of a squirrel in the yard. It's amazing how dogs are observant enough to sense when one they love is getting ready to leave. Within an hour or so of L's planned departure, Molly starts laying on the floor at L's feet and watching L with sadness in her eyes. Then she gravitates to the garage door and watches as the people go back and forth. Then, when L leaves, she immediately heads to her bed and lays there, looking like the world has come to an end. So I leave you with this picture of Molly moping in her laundry room bed.

Disordered Thoughts

I've been thinking of adopting a theme for certain days in the posts here. I figure that might serve to keep me a bit more organized and to give you the readers a chance to build expectations for what you will be reading. The problem is what to choose for the themes. It is a safe bet that I'm not going to be following a theme like HNT (Half Nekkid Thursday) or TMI (Too Much Information Tuesday) . First off, because I'm shy, and more importantly, because I don't want my readers to run screaming from their computer screens clawing their eyes out. I'll probably make Wednesday be Writer's Wednesday since that would be a good time to put up the response to Mama Kat 's Writer's Challenges. (Did I get enough s's in there?) And I kind of like the idea of Stupid Saturday to recount the stupidest thing seen or read during the week. So what do you think?

Today was one of those days. You know the type, when the phone rings often but the calls are a wrong number or have no real purpose in being. And of course, no day is complete with the requisite call to complain about something. Most people who call the mayor to complain are just misinformed. Sometimes it is because they actually believe what was written in the local newspaper (which is often retracted/revised in the coming days) or because the coffee shop gossip circuit has got it wrong. Most times when you get to the root of the problem and explain what is really going on, they do an Emily Latella imitation and say "Never mind." The problem is that every so often, the caller has a real problem or a legitimate beef. So you listen through the Emily Latella 's of the world so that you can get and respond to the useful calls.

This evening when I called L and the son at the mountain abode, I got the answering machine. So I figured they must have fallen asleep in their chairs/couches. Sure enough, a bit later L calls to say she was sleeping in the chair and the son was asleep on the couch when I called. L has been under the weather for the last day or so, so I was calling to see if she was feeling better. She was, she's still tired but getting better. The son on the other hand has been burning the candle at both ends, getting in at 2am just to go back to work at 7am. So of course this evening when he got in early, he took L to send off some business papers, grabbed some food, and then fell asleep on the couch. I remember being able to sleep on any couch, no matter how short. I am old enough now that sleeping on a couch means waking up in pain and walking like a hunchback for several hours.  Oh to be young again!

It interesting just how different the weather in the mountains and here can be. Although here and there is only 300 miles or so apart and are at roughly the same latitude, they are at different altitudes. Here is at ~3900 feet, the mountain abode is at ~9200 feet. So today it is in the 40's and a little windy here, but n the mountains the wind is howling and it is snowing like mad. There they have something like a 7 foot layer of snow base already, but here there is no snow on the ground at all. The thing missing here is moisture in any form. I hope it rains or snows soon or the winter wheat won't be growing come spring and the dryland farmers will have a rough year. The climate out here on the plains is semi-arid bordering on arid, which is the technical term for "damn near desert." We average less than 12 inches of precipitation a year. The last couple of years have been closer to 6 inches. I always kind of picture that the Australian outback might have a very similar feel.

Well, I have to get some other things done yet tonight and have to be up early to mosey down to the radio station for the show in the morning. Don't do anything I wouldn't.

Miscellaneous Sunday

Only 11 more hours until I am crowned - and no I don't mean becoming a member of royalty.

Talked to L today and she went ice skating. I'm betting she'll be stiff tomorrow since she hasn't been ice skating in years. It was a Girl Scout event. She went since she is on the state board of the Girl Scouts. She got to talking to some of the girls and mothers and they just kept skating around the lake again and again and ... until they went in to warm up. When she went back out to skate some more she realized how tired her legs were. So when I talked to her this evening they were already beginning to stiffen up. Something tells me that tomorrow morning will be interesting.

Molly and I went walking today before it turned cold this evening. Not another soul in sight as we walked. The temperature was just low enough to scare people off from the outdoors (or else they were all busy watching the playoffs). In any case it never did turn all that sunny. That is the one thing I miss most in the winter. This area gets 330 or more days of sunshine each year. Probably 25 of the 35 overcast days come in the latter part of December, January, and early February. So not only is it cold at times, it can be gloomy.

I find it interesting that so many of the blogs I read bemoan the dearth of topics to write about at this time of year. I find that I have literally hundreds of topics to write about, with more arriving via alien rays into my tiny little head every day. The problem is finding time to do justice to the topic of the day. I have fallen into the bad habit of writing this blog shortly before heading off to bed. That means that if I have procrastinated long enough, there is not enough time to do anything other than blither and blather for a bit and then head off to bed. So that means either I need to get more on the ball (and maybe even write a few entries in advance), or reach acceptance of the random nature of my posting. I'll try to let you know once I come to some resolution of the problem.

As a help to those bloggers short of topics at this time of year, let me leave you with this thought:
    The trouble with reality is that there is no background music to clue you in on what is about to happen.

Seems like one could get several posts out of that thought alone, including tracing the evolution of movie soundtracks from the silence of early talkies to the complex musical foreshadowing of today. Have at it.

Monday, Monday, ....

Today seemed like a Monday all day long. Which is pretty much normal since it was indeed Monday last time I checked. I could be wrong, but I really don't think so.

Today was one of those funky days where it was unseasonably warm, but the continuous breeze still made it feel cool. But at least it *was* warm (and sunny at times). While we were walking in the park, Molly was very disappointed that she didn't spot a single squirrel to bark at or try to sneak up on. I figure they were all up in the top branches of the bare trees sunbathing. Either that or they all mysteriously disappeared overnight.

As we walked around the park, there were a number of other dogs and their people out walking as well. (Note that I have told it as it really is for dogs and their followers.) Some dogs were taking their owners for a run, some were just ambling around hoping to meet other dogs, and one was jogging her off-for-the-break college student mistress in circles. That was the best pair to watch because they would jog for a bit and then one or the other would spot something interesting and stop dead in their tracks. That of course yanked the partner on the other end of the leash around in short order. Then the jog would begin again. I suspect that both the dog and mistress are going to be sore tomorrow.

It seemed to be a day when everyone was out to get some sun before winter gets serious again. Contrast that with the other day when it was cold and dark and dreary and the the wind was blowing all day. The only other people L, Molly, and I saw during our walk that day were the kids that moms drove up to the playground and shoved out of the car. The moms then remained inside on their cell phones. It was funny since there were at least three cars with a chattering mom in each and a dozen kids out playing. The ironic thing is that as small as this town is and as many parks as we have, none of them live more than 10 blocks from a park. Why not walk to the park with the kids and kill several birds with one stone. You could even talk on the cell phone if that was your desire. Sometimes I just scratch my head over the behavior I see every day.

This period of the year is nirvana to college football fanatics like myself. One or more bowl games every day for a week a time. I don't know that it gets any better than this. Contrast that with the ugly performances by the pro football players on Sunday and you can understand why I like the college game better. College football is one part skill and nine parts emotion. It all depends on which team gets emotionally up for the game who will win. And it also means that one emotional play can turn the whole game around.

L heads back to the mountains in the morning and I'm already missing her before she has gone. It is amazing how much you come to miss being able to just walk down the hall and share a thought after 33+ years of marriage. Somehow phones and emails just aren't the same. I have a college buddy who is a traveling salesman. I don't think he has spent more than a week at a time at home for years. In fact, I'm not sure he has spent more than a month without being out of the country in that time period. I don't know how he and his spouse do it. Now that their daughter is in graduate school, I suspect they will travel together on at least some of his trips.

Well, time to get back to reality. Don't do anything I wouldn't do. (I know that doesn't leave out much, but like I keep telling the reporter for the local paper - if you find me nude in front of the bar at 2am, I've probably decided that I am done being mayor.)

Miscellany

• Got my dentist appointment scheduled.
• Spend an hour talking to an irate senior citizen about forthcoming rate increases for the mandated project mentioned here. Not the first and certainly not the last.
• The weather is turning cooler. Might even get snow and a hard freeze by Wednesday.
• The Broncos play tonight. Go Broncos.
• Mom's birthday is today. Happy Birthday Mom!

Another day, another ...

Yet another day passes and my todo list just gets longer.  Oh well.

I did get a chance to spend time in a park with the warm fall sun this afternoon.  The publisher and the editor of the local daily newspaper wanted to meet and talk, so I suggested we meet in the park.  We all thought the park was a great idea.  Killed an hour talking to them and then had to head back to real work.

Molly, our dog, and I got in our nightly 5 mile walk again tonight.  We try to do 5 miles in the morning or at night.  Gets a bit harder when the snow and ice of winter arrive.  Someday I'll have to tell about how Molly came to live with us and how she spent a month in the penitentiary being trained by a multiple murderer, but for now it's enough to add her smiling face.  Not one of her better pictures, but you get the idea.  At least it's not her mug shot!

I'm still waiting for the first freeze here.  The historical average here is for the first hard freeze to occur on or before October 10th.  I suspect it may be later this year.  Of course, this is Colorado, where the weather is unpredictable.  One year it went from 73 degrees in the morning to 20 below and 2 feet of snow by midnight.  I hated that year since it killed most of my apple trees.

BTW, for those who expressed concern for my lawnmower in my first post, there is good news I forgot to relay.  Three parts costing a total of $6.25 and an hour of my time and the lawnmower is as good as new.  All I have to do now is change the oil and drain the gas when the mowing season finally ends and it'll be set for the winter.