Month: December 2018

Fourteen degrees.That was the temperature in Fairplay (Saturday) as I took a trip to The Lot to check on the RV trailer and storage shed.

It had been a couple of months since I was at The Lot, shutting down for the winter season. I thought it was a good time to check to see if mice had made their way into The Box – they have not.

Even though the temperature was cold, it was a gorgeous winter day. The sky was clear and the sunshine bright off the fresh winter snow. Below are a few photos I took during the outing.

The Box, December 29, 2018

I was surprised to be able to make it up the driveway in the car, without four wheel drive. The heavy snow months in the mountains – January and February – are still to come.

Here is a view down the drive and looking out over South Park:

A winter day in South Park

Even the higher parts of The Lot, those facing south or southwest, didn’t have a heavy blanket of snow:

South Park view again, above Pavilion Point

And, to those who received one of our Solstice cards, this view of The Nook may be a bit familiar:

The Nook in bright winter sunlight

While the air was dead calm at The Lot, a breeze was blowing light snow across Elkhorn Ranch Road a few miles away:

Light snow was in the air

It was a good day to be in the mountains and I was relieved to find zero evidence that rodents had taken up residence in The Box. After walking around The Lot a bit, and distributing some odds and ends of bread products for the chipmunks and squirrels, I jumped back in the car and headed home.

I have a few days off for  New Year’s break. Tomorrow we’ll begin to take down outdoor decorations in advance of an approaching storm. This holiday season seemed to fly by very quickly!

Have a good New Year’s Day, everyone.

That’s it for now. Thanks for looking in!

Pam’s Penny:

My New Year’s Resolution is plain (but not-so-simple) — locate and purchase that retirement property in the Midwest.

Happy Trails.

Well. We had a bit of an “episode” that landed Pam in the ER for a few hours. She was having chest pains but attributed the discomfort to heartburn — until her right hand started to tingle. Time to get her heart checked out.

Pam’s vital signs

After a couple hours of tests and chest x-ray, the doctor determined the chance this was a cardio event was very low. Nothing in the blood tests indicated the heart was involved. However, the cause of the pain couldn’t be identified.

We returned home and, over the next few days, the pain subsided (although it is not completely gone as of this writing). Not the best way to spent the week before Christmas…

Adding to the troubles, I found the Honda needs about $1,500.00 in repairs. The radiator is seeping a bit of fluid and at least one ball joint (front suspension) is making noises and needs to be replaced. Additionally, we want to get the routine service done; the car turned over 100,000 miles a few weeks back. Repairs have been scheduled for January 3rd. The car is drivable until then.

Work was not immune; an installation job that should have taken less than a day stretched into four days, as the vendor had shipped the wrong hardware. The upgrade is still not over. The servers are back on-line but I am short four network ports that are used for redundancy and I am not happy about it. The situation will not be fully rectified until after the first of the year, due to vacations and the holidays.

On the bright side, my jaw is healing from the tooth extraction. Absence of pain is a good thing.

I worked on my galleries and have finished converting them. Should you find a gallery or link that does not work, please let me know so I can get it fixed. This project took many hours but I am no longer at the mercy of the old hosting service (and their new business model).

In other family news, daughter Felicity is in a new studio apartment and is settling in — for now. She would like to visit Australia and New Zealand next year and is looking for a house-sit in that part of the world.

Toby is settling into his new home; this will be his first year as a homeowner and he seems to be satisfied with that.

My mother is going into a care facility for some rehab after she had liquid removed from around her lungs and heart. An estate guardian has been appointed to help run the day-to-day operation of her affairs. Mom is upset that she will not be home this Christmas but she needs a level of care that can’t be arranged in a home setting.

Christmas is only a few days away and it looks like we won’t have snow this year. Long-range forecast has dry conditions, with a high on Christmas Day of 41 degrees. (Snow and colder temperatures are in the forecast for the 26th and following days.)  I don’t mind it as these conditions make commuting much easier, but my Midwest upbringing finds it a bit odd.

We hope everyone enjoyed the Solstice and has a Merry Christmas!

That’s it for now. Thanks for looking in.

Pam’s Two Cents  Worth:

I probably wouldn’t have brought in the medical personnel if I hadn’t gone online to check out my symptoms on MedDoc.  According to online information, heart episodes can be mimicked by heartburn or flu symptoms in post-menopausal women (me). Day 1 no big deal, Day 2 somewhat concerned, Day 3 the whole “tight band of pain” thing was getting old. Since I had been running [slightly] high blood pressure in the last five years while working at the stressful (and sedentary) community college job — well, better safe than sorry, right?

Now I have a lovely photo of my lungs and more information about my heart chemicals than I care to know.  They asked to see my Medicare card at check-in, first time for that.  Altogether a surreal (and expensive) experience. And still no definitive answer on what caused it all. I’m not going to be a very good “old person,” I can see that already. First time wearing a hospital identification band in 32 years.

The Solstice on the 21st was partly cloudy here, but I did catch a glimpse of the full moon.  The Solstice and full moon will not occur together again in my lifetime.

Happy Trails.

Pam has been busy this last week decorating the Christmas tree. The ornaments are a combination of hand-made and commercial and the tree looks great. Here are a few photos taken during the decorating process:

Coming out of storage

(Greenwood HS) Cheerleader

Mountain Man

Ballerina

Queen E. I

Santa Bike

Fat Cat (Looks like our Antonio!)

Santa ornament

Golden globe

Decorated tree

Even the Spirit of De Beque received a decoration:

Spirit of De Beque

We hope everyone is getting into the holiday mood.

That’s it for now. Thanks for looking in!

Pam’s Two Cents:

All the holiday stuff is pretty much done – cards, decorating, tree.  (I don’t bake much in light of Fields’ diabetes.) Highlighted above are just a few of our collected ornaments — hand-made or purchased.  The stout branches on this year’s pine allowed me to pull out heavier ornaments that aren’t well supported by lighter-weight evergreens.  There is always at least one ornament on the floor every morning.

I started working on a new project. While in the Midwest on the two trips in May and October, I noticed “quilting squares” on the sides of barns in the countryside drives we took.  I’m working on my own version of a quilting square for our garage, to go up when the holiday lights come down.  Looking at my quilting square will bolster my spirits during the coming days of Winter.

Barn with painted quilt square (Shutterstock image)

Where are your holiday cards, people?! Support the USPS…

Happy Trails.

For the past few years our daughter Felicity has sent us a table-top Christmas tree from Oregon. This year we decided to locate a full-size tree in Colorado.

Pam found a tree farm near Montrose that looked like a good candidate, the Covered Bridge Tree Farm:

Covered Bridge Tree Farm, Montrose, Colorado

We drove about an hour and fifteen minutes to get to the farm, then hopped on their tractor-pulled wagon, and headed out to find a tree. (Well, some of us hopped, some of us climbed slowly and carefully into the wagon…)

On wagon. (Photo by another passenger.)

I located a suitable tree — the first one we looked at and near the road — but Pam needed to look around a bit before I cut it.

Jerry with cut tree

So far the tree has lights but no other decorations. Pam will take care of finishing the task this coming week.

Beginning – lights on, more to follow

You may have noticed Maxwell Moose (in his Christmas hat) looking in from the top-left corner of the above photo:

Maxwell Moose in holiday garb

We are very pleased with this Scotch Pine tree; the size, shape, and scent are all excellent. It’s been a while since we had a taller tree and it will be interesting to see some of our less-used ornaments on display again. The tree is, of course, fastened to the wall to prevent the cats from toppling it.  (We hope.)

There is an update on a topic mentioned last time; my dental appointment came and went. The tooth that was bothering me – with a “leaking” crown – was too far gone to salvage and had to be extracted. My jaw is very sore and I am popping Tylenol every 6 hours or so. This kind of sucks but things should improve by the end of next week.

Another update – the defective furnace relay has been replaced and the furnace is now working without having to be whacked to shut down the boost fan. Sometimes it’s the small things that matter!

Our Solstice cards have all been mailed to those of you lucky enough to be on our card list this year. The tree is up. Less than two weeks until Winter Solstice!

That’s it for now. Thanks for looking in!

Pam’s Two Cents Worth:

When we first moved to Colorado in the 1970s, we often purchased a national forest tree cutting permit and ventured into the wilds for our Christmas tree.  (Once we topped a tree that was physically longer than the car we were driving.)  Later on, in Wisconsin, tree farm day was a family event when the kiddos were young; we used to cut our tree every year.

This year — the first year of my retirement — I found myself thinking about the tree farm experience again.  The Covered Bridge Tree Farm did not disappoint.  The operation functioned like a well-oiled machine. Trees available to be cut on the acreage were marked with information as to name of conifer, height, and price. I must admit I enjoyed visiting the various animal pens (and saying “hi” to the goats) while Fields supervised the shaking/netting/stashing the tree in the RAV.  (I must observe, though, Christmas trees were much less expensive back in the day.)

What a gift to have time for decorating the tree at leisure.  When I was working, it was all I could do to find time to throw a few ornaments on a tree each December.  This year, I have started going through all the containers of decorations and ornaments; I do believe we will be seeing some items on the tree that have not seen the light of day for decades. Assuming, of course, these items are pet proof.

ChristmasCat (Shutterstock image)

Happy Trails.

Well, not much of significance happened this past week, but here are a few things that occupied our time.

First, Pam is working steadily on our Solstice (as opposed to Christmas) cards this year. We drove to Grand Junction to a hobby store and picked up card supplies last month. Pam’s in full production mode now:

Solstice cards in production

Most cards have already been mailed. This is probably the earliest we’ve mailed cards; Pam’s retirement has its advantages!

Speaking of retirement, Pam received her first retirement pension deposit on Friday. This is a new milestone for her, and will help determine the household budget going forward.

With cold weather here, our furnace started to act up (Murphy’s Law). There’s a relay sticking, causing a small motor to run continuously. (The motor creates a draft when the furnace burner first lights up.) I have a new relay on order; I could not find one locally. Part should be in tomorrow and it will be about a 10 minute job to install it. For now we have to smack the side of the furnace to un-stick the relay to shut off the motor. Ah, well…….

Light snow fell this past week but not enough to cover the roads. High temp yesterday was in the 40s, so sidewalks and drives are clear, but some snow remains in the shadows and on grassy areas. I took the mower deck and bagger off the John Deere tractor and installed the snow blade, wheel weights, and cable chains so the tractor is ready for the snow season. Forecast is for about an inch of snow tonight  and colder temperatures – highs in the low 30s – for the upcoming week. Normal high temps are in the low 40s this time of year.

John Deere set for winter snow plowing

Last Tuesday I had to make an emergency trip to the dentist; the tooth that will need a new crown (and a root canal) was giving me pain. The dentist prescribed some antibiotics and sent me off to see a specialist. The latter will be doing the root canal (if needed) and he determined an older root canal in a nearby tooth would have to be re-done as well. The antibiotics helped reduce the discomfort although I cannot chew on that side of my mouth. I go in this next Thursday, first to the specialist, followed by the dentist, to do the crown prep work. Thursday is not going to be a good day.

(Internet artwork)

In my last post I mentioned my ‘gallery conversion’ project; this is going well with 27 galleries converted so far. I consolidated a few (had 3 Lead King Basins, for example) into single collections so the total number of converted collections will be less than I originally had. There are 17 more galleries to go, enough to keep me busy for the next few weeks.

The rest of today will be quiet; snow is supposed to be coming in later and there are always Solstice card notes to complete. (And whacking the side of the furnace from time to time…)

That’s it for now. Thanks for looking in!

Pam’s Penny:

Always a plus when one’s first electronic pension deposit actually arrives in the account, as scheduled.  Saves having to hassle a clerk somewhere.

Happy Trails.