All posts by djones

meeting, water

A Contentious Evening

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Tonight I was a speaker at a voter information meeting about the city water treatment plan and then the proposed county wide EMS Authority. The meeting was contentious and full of hot air from all sides. What really gets my goat is that we have been holding public meetings and talking to the press about the water issues for the last three years and yet none of the armchair idiots concerned citizens was willing to even attend a single engineering meeting, council meeting, meeting with the EPA, heck, even a meeting with me. Now that it is clear what the whole issue will do to water rates (raise them to a level similar to other communities in the area for a start), the people are up in arms.

What really bothers me is that they don’t seem to grasp that this is a no win situation where trying to deny the issue just makes it worse and more costly. Some points are conceded by all sides:

1) The EPA standard is capricious and has no scientific basis.
2) Treating to handle 1) will obviate the need for home water softeners and reverse osmosis units.

After that, it is a toxic mix of coffee shop rumor and non-thinking knee jerk reactions. The plain facts are:

1) We are under EPA edict to do this. It is not an “if you want to”, it is a “it will be done on this timeline” situation.
2) If we don’t start construction by the end of the year, we can be declared non-conformant by the EPA.
3) If we are declared so, then a whole bunch of bad things happen and we still have to do it, but with no help and no time. That basically means a $29 million dollar effort will become an estimated $110 million dollar court ordered action with no ability to control costs.

So all the aforementioned armchair idiots concerned citizens get up and rant about how we should show those government people who we are and how we should get Obama $$$ to do this, etc. The last city who tried to show those EPA and government critters is 150 miles from here. It looks like people would have at least followed the news as that city’s $18 million dollar water treatment plan became a $72 million dollar court supervised disaster that had to be built in 6 months (by court decree) which doubled the cost yet again. All because the voters were going to show those government people. Seems to me the government showed them – and left them paying for it for a long, long time.

The real stick (there is no carrot) in all this is not the fines ($2000 to $20,000 per day) if we don’t get voter approval to do this. It is not that we are the only city in Colorado with a charter provision requiring us to get voter approval for revenue bonds (bonds issued against water plant revenues – in any other city it is already a done deal and construction has already started which reduces the costs appreciably to meet the EPA deadline). It is not even the fact that the mayor may be jailed for being in contempt of federal court for being the nominal leader of the non-compliance rebellion. (After all, I am term limited out in November, it won’t be me! {*grin*}) No, the real issue is that if a town like ours is declared non-conformant, we become ineligible for *all* federal funds (like fire and security and 911 systems and …) and FHA and Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac financing of real estate sales is prohibited. And property cannot be sold without going through a lot of hoops even if no bank financing is needed. And that in turn kills business financing since they can’t use their property as collateral. So during the months while everything sorts itself out in court and the treatment plant is built under court supervision and time line, the town goes through throes that might kill it and the very livelihoods of those same people who are going to tell the government to take a hike.

All I have to say is that I sure hope the sane voters who understand what the consequences are come out to vote. Actually, I hope they put marker to paper in timely manner since the county wide vote this year is by mail-in ballot only.

In any case, another 3 hours of my life wasted and I get to do it again tomorrow afternoon. And all for $500/month whether I like it or not. Just declare me insane now and send out the men with the big butterfly nets! I’ll be waiting.

misc

Short and sweet

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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*}

beauregard, dog, Molly, Sam

Meloncholy Fall and Dogs Of Our History

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A definite tang of fall was in the air today. The cold front came in and the temperature never got much above 60 for most of the day. To top it off, it drizzled for major portions of the day. So much for my plan to mow the lawn today! As I buried my ears in the joy of listening to a couple of football games and occupied my hands sorting out junk valuable stuff for our upcoming garage sale, fall was in my mind.

One of the more interesting pictures I came across as I sorted was of our first dog, Sam (short for Samantha). That set me to thinking of all three dogs we have had over the 30+ years we have been married.

Our first dog was Sam:

 

We got Sam from the Los Angeles dog pound as a puppy. She was a mixed breed pit bull who was extremely loyal, like most of her breed. We choose her because she looked like she needed us the most – turned out that she was sick and the vet had to give her a few shots to bring her roaring back to full on friskiness.

The first night we had her, we put her in the kitchen with a plywood barrier to keep her in the kitchen since the rest of the place was carpeted. When we got up in the morning and came downstairs, who was out of the kitchen but Sam. She had considerately jumped over the barrier so she could poop on the carpet rather than dirty the kitchen. {*grin*}

We thought we’d lose Sam when she went through teething. She ate an entire wooden doghouse and didn’t leave a scrap. We spend days anxiously waiting for her to die from an internal splinter. Sam was with us for years, until a bit after the the birth of the Son. Arthritis finally cut her spine and we had to put her to sleep.

Next came Beau (King Beauregard III):

The story of how Beau came to be with us was told here. Beau was with us from the time he was about three until his death of old age. He went from normal to deathly ill in just a couple of days. Beau lived a very long life for his breed and when he went down, it was fast. This was the dog that the Son was most deeply attached to.

Finally, we come to the current dog, Molly:

We got her from the local humane society. She is a border collie mix and quite a change from the sight indifference of Beau. If she can see it, she thinks she should be able to herd it. So not only is she the first sight hound we’ve had, she is also the first long hair. The long hair I could live without, but even short hairs of the breed shed a lot. I guess you just have to live with all the hair to have one of the most intelligent dog breeds. Sort of like people – you might have to live with a few warts to get the other good things.

Time to get back to the junk valuable stuff sorting. {*grin*}

friday high five, words

Five Odd Words …

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It’s Friday and thus time for

Five Odd Words In Common Usage
  • Doodad
  • Thingamajig
  • Doohickey
  • Whatchamacallit
  • Widget

Just so you understand how odd these words are, let’s look at some of the definitions of doodad:

  1. An un-nameable gadget of some sort, possibly highly technical.
  2. Another meaning for father or dad.
  3. A father of Indian descent.
  4. For when you use thingamajig too much: used to refer to an object you can’t remember name for.
  5. “Doodad” can be used as a noun, a verb, or an adjective. Adjective: You add “-ish” to the end of this word to state an opinion if you’re not sure if you like this or not and don’t want to insult someone. Noun: You can use it for it’s common, bland meaning as a nameless object, but you can also call someone a doodad to describe them as call or as uncool. Verb: You can use doodad as a verb to describe that you are doing something nameless and/or that you don’t want to explain.

So I could emit any of the following three sentences and make perfect sense:

Adjective: “Eh, I suppose it’s doodaddish.”

Noun: “Oh my God, he was being SUCH a doodad!”

Verb: “Nothing much, just doodadding.”

Your task, should you accept it, is to think of other odd words that have grown into similar catchall status.

mama kat, writer's challenge

I Dream The Imaginary Dream

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Some more fun topics for Mama Kat’s Writer’s Challenge this week!

1.) What does marriage mean to you? (inspired by Jon Gosselin) 🙂

This is a timely topic for me since we celebrated our 34th wedding anniversary on Sunday. So even though I may not be able to supply the perfect definition of marriage, I at least get to enjoy experiencing one!

Marriage is many things. It is a partnership through life, not just the good times but the bad times too. It is having a friend that knows you and your deepest darkest secrets and still wants to spend time with you and the converse. It is having someone you are still attracted to long after the bloom of youth has started to fade, and the attraction is not simply physical or purely mental.

It was once explained to me that (and I believe it to be a good explanation) there are a finite but not necessarily small number of people you can love and who can love you on the journey through life. The one you marry is the one you *are* in love with when you get the urge to be married. But, and it is a big but, from that point on it is part of each partner’s duty to the marriage to stay in love and grow closer together. I think the crucial point is that both people have joined in a partnership and are dedicated to working together to advance that partnership.

Does that mean that marriage never has its travails? Of course not!

I can remember a time nearly thirty years ago when L and I sought out a marriage counselor since we did not seem to be able to grow closer together. The major problem was the clashing world views of a rationalist and a humanist. Add to that the job related stresses and living half a continent away from each other for a period of time and you can see that some work was timely in order. Going to counseling helped us to be able to see the world from the other’s point of view, and thus allowed us to continue growing as a couple without the festering of perceived slights. Heck, we still remind ourselves of the lessons we learned then even today

2.) Scaredy Cat!!! (inspired by Brandi from Not Your Average Soccer Mom)

There are few things that can still provoke the all out fear reflex in me. I suspect part of that is reaching an age where the boogie men can catch me if they really want to and there is little I can do about it if they are big and strong enough.  That said …

I have reached the age where I don’t quite have tinnitus yet, but I hear things. When I go to bed at night and it is very quiet, my mind and ears seem to amplify every ambient noise and creak to the point that i am convinced someone is in the room with me or is creeping down the hallway.

Now add to that an overactive mind that creates patterns even when there is no pattern to be discerned and you have some interesting nights. Especially in the winter when the rushing sound of the furnace pushing air through the heating vents acts like a white noise mask and I hear voices. Objectively I know there is no voice talking, but my mind and ears reconstruct it as a voice talking just below the level of audibility. I’ve been known to get up several times in a night “just to be sure” that there is no one talking down the hallway. For a while I seriously considered the idea that the furnace duct work was picking up a local talk radio station. Add to this the fact that for a number of years I was on 24 hour call and trained myself so I could answer the phone, solve the problem, and not wake up, and you get some really strange moments.

I suspect that is why God inflicted men with enlarging prostates as they age so that they have to arise every few hours in the night. That keeps them from going insane hearing things that aren’t there. {*grin*}

3.) List the pieces of you that have come from those around you? (inspired via Tweet by Angela from My So-Called Chaos)

Where should I start?

I have the small round sunken eyes of one of my maternal grandfathers side of the family, otherwise know as the Pyle pig eyes. I have the Dumbo sized ears of both sides of the family. And from my father’s side of the family I got that classic Jones build: a beer barrel perched on short stilts with gorilla arms and a neckless bowling ball head. Thus I can blame my huge paws and head on that side of the family.

Now there are some pieces that I have no clue about too. Where did my giant clod-hoppers come from? No one else wears size 16’s. No one knows.

And, of course, one would be remiss not to mention the diabetes from dad’s side of the family. Dad had 5 brothers and sisters; all of them that didn’t die young were/are diabetics. Likewise his mother. What more could one ask for in a family tree?

But I also got a keen curiosity about the world and very high IQ from both sides of the family. My grandfather was an inveterate inventor who taught himself electronics via correspondence school and my dad was amazing at math (which is all the more amazing considering that dad never graduated from high school). My mom was the first in her family to graduate from a community college and I was the first to get a graduate degree. So one gets the good along with the bad. Something to keep in mind the next time you carp about your inheritance!

4.) The first day of… (inspired by Mama Kat. again.)

The first day of snow is not far in the future. The nights are getting cooler and the days shorter. All clues that whisper to me that one of these days it is going to freeze. I keep hoping that it will delay until mid October, but mom and others are betting on a much sooner date. And anytime after that first freezing day, it might snow. Some years the first day of snow comes before the trees have shed their leaves and other years it delays until December or January.

I love that first day of snow. The joy of shoveling, that feeling of comfortable exertion and warmth. The pleased feeling of being able to set aside a few hours and curl up with a good book and a cup of soup. The unbridled joy of all the bugs dying off – no more insecticide needed to work in the underbrush. The smell of wood smoke in the air. The way that falling snow dampens all the sounds of the world, making it so serene and peaceful to be out walking. When I was in college, I used to go to a tower by the observatory and sit in the open top and watch the snow plows miles and miles away down in the valley as they battled to keep roads clear. There is nothing like a late night hike in the snow when the wind is howling and the temperature is dropping – especially when you know that you can get warm and curl up with a good book when you get back home.

Here is one of my favorite winter scenes from many years ago when the Son was but a tyke. It was taken on our driveway during the kind of snow storm of my dreams.

5.) Transcribe a recent entertaining conversation you recently had with someone. (inspired by Mama Kat…I’m so inspirational for myself.)

Me: Dan speaking.
Caller: Is there?
Me: This is Dan.
Caller: Is there?
Me: Yes, this is he. (with at least a little hint of disgust)
Caller: No, I’m looking for . Is he there?
Me: This is he!
Caller: Are you sure?
Me: Yes!!!
Caller: Never mind. (Hangup and dialtone)

I’m pretty sure that the Caller believed I wasn’t me because I don’t mispronounce my own name like he did. Oh well, I figure he was a trade rag magazine solicitor – probably from Puerto Rico given the accent and traceback number.