Sunday Yet Again

L has left on her return to the mountains and Molly has retired to her bed to mope. Pretty much a standard Sunday evening here.

Today was one of those days that it is good to be out on the plains. In Denver and environs they had 5 tornadoes this afternoon along with the severe thunderstorms that covered the whole eastern half of the state. Fortunately not too bad as far as problems, with plenty of warning. Mostly property damage in limited areas. This was different from most tornado occurrences since it was a result of cold air settling over Denver and then the normal afternoon thunderstorm build up accelerating as the cumulus clouds breached the top of the cold air layer and expanded rapidly, releasing a lot of stored energy. In fact, the national severe weather center had predicted *no* severe weather for today in Colorado. Just goes to show you can't trust those weather critters. {*grin*} Another interesting part was that the process generated a band of thunderstorms from Denver all the way out to the Nebraska border, about 170 miles, that dropped hail from 2 to 3 inches in size. That is hail larger than a baseball! Fortunately the storms went north and south of us here and all we got was some really loud thunderclaps and a brief flood of rain.

Today as I perused the Denver Post's Arts and Entertainment section heading for my beloved crossword puzzles, my eye was caught by small photo in the fashion layout. My first thought was "That looks like Summer of Le Musings of Moi!" So I sent her a copy so she could see that she was nearly famous. {*grin*} See if you don't think it looks like Summer in her fashion poses:

 

(From 6/7/09 Denver Post)

 

 (From Le Musings of Moi)

Other than that, a quiet day. What was your day like?

A Day In My Life

I got the lawn mowed with no interruptions today! Hooray!

This morning L got ready to head back out to the Annual Conference of the Business and Professional Women (being hosted here) where she was a speaker and a judge. So I headed out into the jungle that is the lawn and whacked it to a more reasonable length. After cleaning up the mower and trimming, it was time to get on to the task of repairing the garage door opener..

I had to journey to the hardware store for the bolts I needed to repair the garage door opener. I couldn't escape running into someone I knew there. Pat had just returned from a multi-month sojourn in Belgium on a consulting assignment, so we had to spend a few moments catching up. It is always interesting to see Pat. He was one of the early employees we recruited to our company close to 20 years ago. At that time he had been operating a liquor store in California. We recruited and trained him to do customer service and he hasn't looked back. Pat is one of those guys that will try anything - skydiving, bungee jumping, you name it. All with an impish Irish grin.

Came back and fixed the garage door opener. It only involved about thirty trips up and down the ladder. So tonight my feet ache from hanging off the rungs. No one designs ladders for people with size 16+ feet.

It was then time to head over to Mom's for some gardening. Some of the plants weren't ready, so did some checking on the squash, replanting what wasn't germinating. We've had huge (for us) amounts of rain in the last week, so the weeds are growing like wildfire. Makes me suspect it will soon be time to hoe my way to fame and fortune.

L got done with the conference and we headed to Taco Bell for supper. Colorado Taco Bell's offer 4 tacos for a buck the day after the Rockies score 7 or more runs. (You have to buy a drink as well.) It has become a family tradition for L and the Son in the mountains to have tacos when they can. So L and I parked and walked inside, placed our order and then had a chance to visit with the gentleman and his wife who farmed and eventually bought our farm. It is amusing because he was (unknown to me until after we had been in business for quite some time) the best man at the wedding of one of my aunts (before I was around). He has been a Rockies fanatic since the franchise started, so he never misses the Rockies Tacos events. He was overjoyed a few years ago that the Rockies made it to the world series at least once in his life time.

We gathered our tacos and came home to eat. Then we headed over to do another therapy session for XXX. Then it was time to fix the toilet at the MIL's and finally return home. That is where L and I suckered ourselves into re-watching one of the Home Alone movies. L sat in the recliner with the heating pad on her back since it has been out of whack all week and I sat in an arm chair fending off Molly the Dog who thought she should be petted for the entire movie. A nice time that is all too rare in our hectic lives.

Finally got showered and sat down to write this. Thus it is a wee bit later than normal.

Meeting A Lot Of Acquaintences

Today was one of those days when it seems like too many people know who you are and have something to tell you.

At noon, L and I went to the BBQ fund raiser for Relay for Life. One of the local accounting firms has been sponsoring the event for years, making it one of the more successful events. Probably 500-600 people eating a hot dog or hamburger and some sides, watching the dunk tank (which I was not in this year - thank heavens - two balls for a buck). From the time we arrived to the time we left it was one person after another saying high and talking. Since L is so seldom in town during the week, all of her acquaintances and friends were saying hi and likewise without the excuse of absence for me.

So after a visit to XXX to remove the nerve block canula and a therapy session, I headed to Wally World for groceries and to fill some prescriptions. I swear that there were people lurking in the aisles just waiting for my appearance.

I went first to the pharmacy to drop off the prescriptions and ran into Steve, who I haven't seen in close to a year. Steve is someone who went to high school with me and is not noted for being the crispest cracker in the box. A nice guy, just very dense between the ears. So a conversation with Steve oft times is like trying to talk a river into running uphill - the information is present but not ingested. The clerk is trying to explain to Steve about the pricing of his prescription and his insurance coverage and made the mistake of telling Steve to work out which way of filling his prescription is best. This left Steve trying to decide which was better between $119 for 60 days or $57 for 30 days twice. I left off my prescriptions after talking to Steve. He was still standing by the counter trying to do the mental arithmetic. He was still standing there more than an hour later when I finished grocery shopping. I took pity on Steve and told him he could save $5 if he accepted the clerks 30 day version. That made him happy.

Then as I am heading down another aisle, I ran into Terri who wants a full update on how the Son is doing and how L is doing and what I am doing. Then she wants to plan a get together of the old club that L was a part of. I finally escape as her ice cream begins to drip out of the box and onto the floor.

The story was repeated aisle after aisle as I shopped. Most of them were people I hadn't run into in months. I usually count on losing 40 minutes or so on any visit to the store as someone will want to talk about city business, But today it was at least an hour of just random "How are you?" conversations with people I haven't seen in a while. Pleasant, but it shots the heck out of scheduling.

The whole effort is complicated by the fact that our Super WalMart is being remodeled and so nothing is in the same location two days in a row. Add to that the fact that I have two grocery lists in hand since Mom is still not up to hitting the store yet. I dream of the day when I can organize the lists so I can just walk a straight path from item to item and be done. Only another 30 days or so according to rumor. Of course, rumor had it that the bakery part of the remodel would be done two weeks ago (OK, not a rumor, but a sign on the plywood construction barrier from Wally World themselves.). It's still not done.

Hopefully I can mow the lawn in peace tomorrow.

Can You Guess ...

Time once more for

 

Five Pictures That I Bet You Can't Guess The Purpose Of

 

  

  

 

Ready to give up yet? Figured out why Duckie and I are battling to the death on the grounds of city hall? Need a hint?

• Hint #1: Duckie is the mascot of the Blue Skies Therapeutic Riding Club. Blue Skies supplies therapeutic horse riding experiences for the differently abled and physically handicapped.
  

• Hint #2: These pictures are from several years ago.
  

• Hint #3: Blue Skies raises money each year by challenging a community group or leader to a ticket selling contest. Each side sells numbers on plastic ducks for a float race on the city spillway. Prizes are donated and the big winner also gets cash prizes.
  

• Hint #4: The city council and I were the challengees for this particular year.
  

• Hint #5: The challenge typically involves not only insane publicity, but a supremely embaressing moment for the loser.

Figured it out yet?

What you see above are some of the publicity photos used to hype the contest and generate ticket sales. Blue Skies seems to win most years, maybe because they have and avid and experienced sales staff (the volunteers from the group and the people they help). The year of these photos, it was a close race but we, the city council and myself, lost. Our embarrassing moment followed a few weeks after the duck float race: we had to enter the city council chambers at the start of an official meeting wearing cowboy hats and riding broom stick ponies while singing a certain western tune. Needless to say, the press was there with glee along with a pretty good size crew of Blue Skies supporters. 

 Now where are all of your embaressing photos?

Overrun Wednesday

Although this is normally the time for Mama Kat's Writers Challenge, today has been a bit too overloaded for me to do the prompts justice. So I encourage you to visit Mama Kat and read the responses, I really hated not to be able to do this weeks prompts since they appealed greatly to my sense of the interesting.

Today started with me getting up 4:30am. I had to pick up and take XXX to the hospital for surgery check-in at 5:45. I took her over walked her in until until the admission process was underway, then escaped down to the radio station for the weekly radio show, came back and got a little work done until 10:30am when recovery called and asked me to be there for the instructions from the physical therapist and to bring XXX home once she was fully aware.

XXX was having some shoulder and arm damage from a fall on the ice this winter surgically repaired. I am somewhat the family expert on shoulders and the associated therapy since I crushed my shoulder a few years ago. (You know it is not good when you go to the hospital and the X-ray tech calls everyone in radiology over to look at the pictures with words like "You have to see this, I've never seen one of these before!") After three surgeries and months of some of the most painful therapy I've ever done, I have at least 90% of the function back. So XXX has my full sympathy for what is coming.

In XXX's case the bone was not involved and so she should be able to avoid the locked shoulder and other problems that are attendant with immobilized shoulder joints. Given that I have experienced what happens if the manipulation exercises can't be or aren't done, I am probably the appropriate fanatic do the manipulations four times a day for the nonce. It will be interesting to see what develops. I don't think that XXX realized how much therapy was involved early in the recovery process.

In any case, the PT had a set of four external manipulation exercises to be performed in sets of 10 on the joint 4 times a day for the next four weeks and a start on on "official" (as in at the rehab center) next week. So I am currently the designated "fake" PT therapy person for XXX to do the four times a day exercises.  L got into town this afternoon and so I got a chance to get some stuff done this evening while L stayed with XXX. Right now it isn't too bad because XXX still has a continuous nerve block running. It will get a bit more interesting after Friday when I pull the nerve block canula and she begins the standard oxycontin and vicodan regimens for the pain.

In spite of all that, I was all ready to respond to the Writer's Challenge prompts when I got a phone call from L over at XXX's where she is spending the night with XXX. They couldn't figure out how to rehook the sling and pads, so I ran over and performed some velcro magic. Given it is now close to midnight, think of me playing PT as you read the Writer's Challenge responses. I'll be back for the next challenge.

Running on Empty

Beyond the fact that it is a classic song from Jackson Browne, "Running on Empty" often describes some of my feelings in very nice language. For those who weren't around for the No Nukes rallies of the late 70's, give this a listen:

It took me a while to forgive Mr. Browne for his uninformed support of the No Nuke movement. But I still find many of the lyrics in this resonate even now 30 years later.I always liked the line "people need some reason to believe" from the third verse. That has always struck me as one of the truisms of the song that carries real meaning.

In my brief foray into politics, I have definitely found that it is true. People do indeed need and want some reason to believe. It doesn't have to be a logical reason; it can be emotional or even imaginary. But once some reason has been presented and latched onto, people are willing to commit and believe and do great things. I am grateful for that, because it means that even a mediocre leader like me has a chance to get important things accomplished.

So I guess I'll keep on running on empty. What are you running on?

Odd Thoughts

This weekend as I was mowing the lawn, I pondered the question of what, if anything, plants think. It is a common theme in speculative and science fiction that plants have thoughts. Generally, plants like trees are pictured as having deep and ponderous thoughts while weeds are pictured along the lines of the flitting hummingbird with short and frivolous thoughts. My suspicion is that both ideas bear more than a trace of anthropomorphism. So my question to ponder was: "What do the flowers on a lilac bush think?"

This chain of illogic was brought on by the sight of the dried and sere remnants of the flowers on the lilac bush in the back yard. Like all lilac species, the blooms on my bush last only for a few short weeks in the spring. During that time they are present in profusion with a wonderful and powerful aroma. However, by this weekend, they were mostly brown shells with somewhat less than one out of a thousand little blooms still living. So the question that came unbidden to my mind was what the one still growing bloom in a bundle of flowers on the plant was thinking. Was it celebrating the life of its brothers and sisters now departed? Was it living in fear that it too would soon pass from this world? Or was it soaking up the last of the sun's rays as it ended its brief life?

What kind of thoughts would go through your mind if you had to watch all your brothers and sisters die in a short span, but you were still hanging on like that lonely flower? I could picture all kinds of mental reactions. The real problem I had is that it is truly hard to escape the prison of our own anthropomorphism and attribute really different thoughts to the plant. Or to put it in the converse, it is really hard to think of a possible thought for the flower that has not already been expressed by or about some human being.

So I'll ask you - what do you think was going through the mind of the poor surviving flower? You can assume that the flower had a mind. I'm willing to grant that as a given. Call me a throwback to all the funky Russian journals full of Kirlian photography from the 60's claiming to see plants thinking. Or just call it a topic to consider. And please don't tell me it was thinking of schemes like those that fill my spam folder. I figure only humans are that depraved and gullible. {*grin*}