2015 In Review

The year 2015 has passed; this is a recap of the year for Pam and myself. Rather than a month-by-month recital, here are various topics and projects that highlighted the year.

The Kids:

Felicity, currently in Belize, spend much of the year in England house-sitting and working at her new job with a South Carolina-based internet company. Her job is to help businesses use social media to best advantage. It is a job she enjoys and can perform anywhere she can get an internet connection. Felicity will be back in Portland, Oregon for a few months beginning the end of  January.

Toby is still enjoying Notre Dame football as he is living in South Bend, Indiana. He is working a couple of jobs including refereeing summer softball leagues. We don’t hear from him often but he seems to be satisfied with life so far, other than the lack of a steady girlfriend.

The Lot:

We continued cleaning up our recreational lot located in Colorado’s Park County, right in the middle of the state. It was determined, before the snow melted, we could not afford to put in a [very deep] well on this property, which means it will always be recreational land only. A late spring cost us some weekends; we didn’t get started on any real work until June. More gravel was added to the driveway, an off-driveway parking spot was cleared, many loads of scrap wood taken to the burn pit, and several loads of firewood were taken home, cut to length, and donated to our animal rescue friend Kathy Hall. (Kathy re-married this year and is now Kathy Powers.) I was finally able to mouse-proof the RV trailer, purchased a honey wagon kit so I did not have to pull the trailer to a dump station, and we cleaned up the area Pam has taken to calling The Nook. A pole saw, purchased at auction, allowed me to prune dead and low-hanging limbs from quite a few trees; that work will continue into the future.

First load of burn pit wood, 2015

Health:

Pam had bursitis in her hip; this slowed her down for several weeks  over the summer and she occasionally still feels a twinge from time to time. It’s not fun when your body doesn’t do what you want it to. I finished one year with my type-2 diabetes, diagnosed in December of 2014, and have adjusted to a diet much lower in sugars and salt than I had been accustomed to. I miss my ice-cream!

Passings:

Our good friend of almost 35 years, Elinor Tourtillott, passed away in 2015. She was in her 90s and had been in poor health for a while, but her spirit remained unbroken. She will be missed. My Aunt Gert and Uncle Emil (relatives on my mother’s side) also died in 2015. Our feline buddy, Soot, crossed over to the Rainbow Bridge just as 2015 ended.

Travels:

2015 was a quiet travel year. I took a trip to Michigan’s Upper Peninsula in mid-July to attend a motorcycle rally and used the return trip to stop and visit my mother for a few days. I managed to visit Pam’s brother Craig (who retired in 2015) and his wife Dianne at their new lake-front retirement home which was still getting a few finishing touches during my visit. I have an aunt and uncle that live in the same general area and was able to stop and see them for a few hours before heading back to Colorado. The trip was a good one for both family visits and seeing new country.

Brockway Mountain overlooks Copper Harbor and Lake Superior in Michigan’s UP

We continue to take day trips around Colorado checking out potential properties that would work for us in retirement. This has resulted in learning some local history and seeing parts of the state that are still new to us, something we both enjoy. The retirement home search continues into 2016.

ATV trips:

A few were made this year: North Twin Cone Peak, Hall Valley, Lead King Basin, and Handcart Gulch being the most notable. The Handcart Gulch trip include a run up Forest Road 290, a scenic and less-traveled trail complete with old mines and some equipment that survived the scrap steel drives of WWII.

Old mine at end of FR 290

Acquisitions:

In December we bought a 2004 Toyota RAV4 as a daily driver; the 2001 Honda Accord developed transmission problems at 384,000+ miles and is no longer reliable for daily use. A new home-built utility trailer joined the fleet and was used to haul firewood + my motorcycle, and will see future use as a cistern trailer. The John Deere LX176 garden tractor was updated for snow removal chores with the addition of extra weights and chains. I put my old reel-to-reel deck back in service as part of my garage stereo system. Pam began learning to play guitar, which was her 2014 Christmas present. A new stove replaced the home’s original stove; the new stove is quite an improvement. A generator, after repair, provided power at The Lot for the RV and power tools.

Generac 4000XL generator

Summary:

2015 was pretty typical for us. We worked on our lot and around the home, dealt  with a few medical episodes, did some traveling around the state, had some good times and shed a few tears. We are looking forward to 2016; after all, the numbers 2+0+1+6 add up to 9, one of Pam’s lucky numbers! (We didn’t win the PowerBall, though.)

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

Pam’s Two Cents Worth:

New Year Resolutions –

• broaden the retirement house search (including examination of outside-the-box ideas) while continuing to save money for the down payment,
• begin investigation of on-line employment sites (some require a monthly subscription fee) for potential part-time employment into retirement,
• start composing a draft of my own obituary (Fields says he hasn’t a clue what to include, I want to make sure the fact I ever lived in De Beque is definitely not in there).

Happy Trails.