All posts by djones

friday high five

Ho! Ho! Ho!

4 Comments

Time once more for:

 
Five Smile Inducing Events This Week
  • Running into a pair of Santa Clauses and having them ask me to join them. They are part of a local group of professional Santas who have started a charity called “Santas Of Sterling” to raise money for kids at Christmas. They said my beard was white enough, but I’d have to let it grow longer to be fully acceptable. In their expert opinion, my belly already jiggles appropriately. (The Santas serve as far away as New Hampshire during Holiday season. Our town might very well have the highest percentage of professional Santas of any town short of the North Pole. It is always interesting come November to hear where they are going to be serving [some are local only, some travel the U.S.]).
  • Watching the young lady who was smaller than her dog exhibit perfect control of said dog. I’d guess she was no more than 7 or 8, but she had that Great Dane wrapped around her little finger. When she said sit, it sat. When she said heel, it heeled. And when it sat, she and the dog were eye to eye.
  • Sharing the radio studio with some of the Fair/Rodeo Royalty as they came in to help publicize the County Fair that runs for the next week or two. Seems impossible to me that I was ever that young. {*grin*} I still have no good  answer to my question: Why are there so many barrel racers in the Queen and her court each year?
  • Watching the price of gas continue to fall. A drop of 10 cents in the last week or so here. Everything goes better when gas stays well below the $2.50/gallon mark.
  • The fact that it rained and has been refreshingly cool since Tuesday. If I didn’t know better, I could believe that September was here already. I figure it will either be hot and miserable or rainy and cold next week when I have to man the EMS authority booth at the fair. Nothing like sitting out in the cold rain for 5 hours to make everything hurt.
mama kat, writer's challenge

Red Hot Summer Excitement

6 Comments

Time once again for Mama Kat’s Writer’s Challenge. This week the prompts are:

1.) Who made you red hot this week?

2.) A day in your life…recap.
(inspired by Jennifer from Toddler Tirade)

3.) What decision are you having a hard time making?
(inspired by Evansmom from Just Sayin’)

4.) How will you enjoy your last days of freedom (aka summer)?
(inspired by Heather from A Day In The Life)

5.)List your 7 most favorite summer items!
(inspired by Summer from Le Musings of Moi)

To which I respond:

#1 – No one. I tend not to get red hot. I always figure that it is not worth the wear and tear on me and my glucose control to get really mad. Besides, getting even is so much more rewarding. {*grin*} The few times in my life I have gotten really mad have resulted in people getting hurt, usually the ones I am mad at. So I am happy it happens so rarely that i do get mad.

#2 – I give you Tuesday:

5:45 – get up
6:00 – shave and shower and get ready
7:00 – do some e-mail
7:30 – grab a ride with the city manager and director of public works to Denver CDPHE (Colorado Department of Public Health and the Environment) office
9:30 – arrive at the CDPHE offices in Denver
9:35 – have a cup of coffee
10:00 – begin meeting
12:00 – end meeting
12:15 – go to eat at Chili’s with our water engineering firm (from meeting)
1:30 – start the drive back here
3:45 – arrive back here
4:00 – prepare notes for city council meeting tonight
4:45 – read paper and have supper
6:30 – head for city council meeting
7:00 – convene city council meeting
9:30 – adjourn city council meeting
9:35 – discuss misc. things in the parking lot
10:00 – call L in return of her call during the meeting (on the way home)
10:30 – get home and give the dog her chewie
11:00 – do some housework (like dishes, etc.)
11:30 – decide to wuss out on blog post for tonight
11:45 – make a few notes for the radio show in the morning
12:00 – go to bed
12:05 – realize I didn’t check the mailbox, get up and go get the mail
12:10 – go to bed for real
…
6:00 – start all over again

#3 – The answer could be any of several things. One of the more interesting is whether to enter partisan politics. I am term limited out of being mayor come November. One of the things I have enjoyed about being mayor is that it is a non-partisan office (no political parties involved). But I have been approached by several people about running as a party candidate for a partisan office next November. If I am going to do it, I need to answer in the next few months. I believe I could and would win, so the question in my mind is do I want to badly enough to put up with partisan politics and party lines. So I continue to wage the internal debate with myself.  (And am I deluding myself in the belief I could win?)

#4 – About the same way I have enjoyed most of the summer. (I’m really more of a spring/fall kind of guy.) So that will include mowing the lawn, pulling weeds, harvesting the garden, and walking in the bright sunshine. This year I haven’t been golfing at all for a combination of reasons. In a normal year I’d say I’d look forward to those hot days on the golf course where nothing hurts. Just not this year.

#5 – My favorite summer items are all versions of fresh grown produce. In no particular order, I give you

Melons – cantaloupe, honey dew, watermelon
Beans – fresh picked green  beans
Onions – fresh onions straight from the garden
Peppers – both red and green bell peppers
Cucumbers
Squash – zucchini, acorn, butternut, etc.
Tomatoes – fresh picked.

I’m not a big tomato fan in general since I react badly to the acid in them. But a bit of tomato in a salad or on a sandwich cannot be beat. I like to stir fry chopped peppers, onions, zucchini, and sometimes even beans and potatoes. The rest are self explanatory.

quickie

A Quicky

2 Comments

After a long day of meetings and travel, then a rather long city council meeting and a need to get some housework done, I don’t have much to say right now. Since I have to be up in six hours, I’m just heading off to bed and leaving the post up to your imagination.  Feel free to picture me winning the lottery and other good things.

phone calls

Oh What Fun!

2 Comments

Today was one of those days when I got good and bad phone calls.

I needed to go to the accountants office to pick a fax to forward on to L. So I planned on heading over about the time they opened so that it would be one less thing to remember through the day. Before I could mosey out the door, my phone rang and I got what I at first thought was a pornographic call. You know, the heavy breathing and a few grunts with no response to my repeated hellos. Finally a synthesized voice comes on and wants to talk to the mayor. I admit I am the mayor and inquire as to the reason for the call. The voice comes back with a ranting litany of ills due to the way Housing Authority is operated. I suspect that the person on the other end had fed a prepared rant into his synthesizer, because no matter how many times I interjected that has nothing to do with the operation of Housing Authority, the rant rolled on. Finally the rant ended and I once again pointed out that has nothing to do with the operation of Housing Authority. Got a curt “Well, uh, uh, you’ll be sorry!” followed by a hangup. If I were less of a nice guy, I’d call the gentleman up around midnight and rant at him for something he has nothing to do with. But I won’t ’cause I’m just not that into wasting time. {*grin*}

I proceeded to pick up the fax and then sent it off to L. No sooner had the fax machine beeped its last, then I got another phone call. This one was a fun phone call (to the right number even). The host of a Japanese exchange student wanted to arrange for the student to meet with me and give me a letter from the mayor of his home city in Japan along with a token gift. As his host pointed out, what he was really hoping for was to get his picture in the local paper presenting the letter and gift to me so that he could take copies of the paper home with him. So I set it up for him to present the letter and gift at tomorrow’s city council meeting. What the exchange student doesn’t know is that I then quickly drafted a letter to the mayor of his town and had a package of pins with the city seal put together that I will give to the student tomorrow. It will be interesting to watch his reaction. It would be even more fun to see the reaction of The Honorable Toshiaki Ohno, Mayor of Inazawa City when he gets the letter and pins (and the student’s picture in the local newpaper).  If I had a bit more time, I would have given it to the wife of our Police Chief to translate into Japanese. (She is Japanese, met the Chief while he was stationed in Japan in the military.)

Well, I need to head for bed since i have a meeting about our water treatment plans with the EPA and State Department of Health early in the morning. Unfortunately, the meeting is in Denver so we are going to have to leave early for the two hour drive to the meeting. We’ll probably get back here with just enough time to grab an apple before heading to the city council meeting tomorrow night. So don’t count on an early blog entry tomorrow.

death, misc

An Olio Of Items Both Good And Bad

3 Comments

This weekend was filled with yard work for the most part. I mowed the lawn and worked on the sprinkler system. Maybe you can explain to me why in-ground sprinkler systems always seem to need working on to make sure the water actually covers the lawn? My theory is that there are little lawn gnomes that hate water sprites and so go around with little hammers beating on the sprinklers. Have you got a better theory?

Saturday was nice as the temperature only hit the mid 80s. A nice break from the 100s of the day before. I didn’t even break a sweat while mowing the lawn. I could live with summers that never got much warmer than that. The only places I have found that fit the bill are near ocean coasts, so unfortunately don’t have the real seasons I like. Guess I’ll just have to hang on through the heat.

Today as I was working on the sprinklers, the little itty bitty bloodsuckers were rampant. The little mosquitos rose in the hundreds as a walked in the lawn. I figure that is our punishment for all the rain we’ve had this summer. Even though we (the city) spray/fog once a week, the mist only kills those that are fresh in the hatch. Usually that does a pretty good job when there just isn’t a place for the little beasts to breed. But with all the summer rains, breeding points abound and the mosquitos are thick and hungry. The worst part is that they are all little tiny beasts that easily fly through the window screens. And like most bad things in the universe, the welt is inversely proportional to the size of the biter. Likewise the degree of itch.

In very sad news, a high school classmate’s son was killed this weekend. The classmate is a local MD and we visit from time to time. His son was a year or so older than the Son. I can’t imagine how hard it has to be to go through the loss of your child just as they are blooming into full adulthood. Here’s to the happy memories I have of golfing with his son and talking about his future, now sadly cut way too short. My condolences to the family and friends.