It has been a quiet week and I’m at a loss for words to make into an interesting post. Here is a rundown on the routine and mundane that makes up a large part of our lives.
This weekend saw the second major leaf clean-up for the fall. Taking care of two lots, ours and our snow-bird neighbors, takes some effort and time. Some of the leaves went into flower beds as mulch, the rest taken to the drop-off point provided by the town. There is one last push to do for the season but the bulk of the leaves are off the trees so the last push should be just a tidy-up job.
In kid news, our son Toby is starting a new job with a Native American casino opening in his home town of South Bend. The job (shipping and receiving) is full time with benefits, benefits Toby has not had since he moved to Indiana. We hope this works out OK for him.
Felicity is currently in the United Kingdom and will be there for the next few weeks. When she does return to the States she has a couple more house-sits arranged in the Portland, OR area and will not be back into her Vancouver, WA digs until mid-January. Felicity reports it feels comfortable being in England again and the town where she house sits has at least three good pubs including one that serves very good food. Sounds like she is enjoying herself.
My mother has reduced her in-home care down to days rather than 24 hour care. This saves her a lot of money without a great loss of coverage; she does wear one of those “emergency call” buttons to summon help if something does happen that she cannot handle. Mom would like to stay in her own home as long as possible. We’ll have to see how long that might be but for now she is doing OK.
Closer to home, most people who read this blog know Pam and I commute a long distance to work. The commute has been complicated recently by a bridge replacement project in Glenwood Springs (which is where both jobs are located.) Good news: The replacement bridge is scheduled to open for limited traffic this coming Tuesday, 10 days ahead of schedule. The opening should help reduce the commute time, both into and out of town, by at least 20 – 30 minutes in each direction. We had changed our schedules to try to make the best of the situation but are getting pretty tired of the seemingly endless delays the construction project has caused.
Opening the bridge will not be the end of it; the associated interchanges, roundabouts, signage, and even putting the lines on the roadways is on-going and will take another year to complete fully. The bridge will be surfaced with a new type of polyester concrete that requires warmer temperatures to install so we can look forward to periodic bridge closures running into next spring or early summer. Still, opening of the new structure will help ease the constraints imposed by the project.
City of Aspen folks are looking at the early bridge opening with hope as ski traffic into the resorts will use the new bridge through Glenwood Springs for access. There’s a lot of money on the line for the resorts and businesses that depend on easy access. Without traffic flow up valley the area ski industry will suffer.
Here’s an artist representation of what the bridge and intersections should look like when completed:
New bridge across Colorado River in Glenwood Springs. (Colorado Dept. of Transportation.)
Life moves ahead but — absent our trips into the high country — the weeks get pretty routine. Hopefully next week will have a bit more news to report!
That’s it for now. Thanks for looking in.
Pam’s Two Cents Worth:
My mail order tulip bulbs arrived last week. All 100 were carefully placed in “The Mary Lynn Garden,” a corner spot in memory of my best friend who succumbed to cancer in August. Extra soil blankets the bulbs, plus lots of leaf mulch. The corner should bloom spectacularly in the Spring.
Outside flower beds and yard look tidy but sad. Everything tucked away for the winter, brown leaves mulched into flowerbed cover, bare trees – unsaid but anticipated is the “s” word (s-n-o-w).
Happy Trails.