fall, lawn, tooth

Still OK

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Just to let those who are concerned know, the tooth still doesn’t hurt. (Hooray!)
Last night I had a training class for the tools involved in teaching an eCollege course. I can remember when the online education tools were primitive and the course content less than appealing. Now the online and in seat experiences are getting closer and closer.  I suspect that with time the differences may be entirely in the feedback mechanisms between student and teacher and the preferred learning method of the student. It will be interesting!
Today was what I hope was the last lawn mowing of the season. There may yet be one more mowing to go through. It hasn’t yet frozen really hard and the parts of the lawn that haven’t frozen are still exhibiting some growth. The leaves are turning and falling, the nights are crisp. It is the glorious season of fall. Time to go enjoy the sunset.
dentist, fear of pain, tooth

Fear and Loathing

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I broke a tooth this morning and am now in that state of fear and loathing when you just know it is going start to hurt. (So far it hasn’t!) Logically, you know that if it hasn’t hurt so far, it probably isn’t going to hurt for a while. Whats logic got to do with it????
Since there is no pain, I can’t justify calling the emergency number for my dentist (his office hours are Monday thru Thursday). That means I get to spend the weekend in that slightly edgy state where you are sure that at some point major pain is going to arrive. Logically you know that you are not thinking straight, but emotionally you are certain that pain is a possibility. Oh well.
This is the second time in my life I have broken a tooth. The first was many years ago. I was one of those people *blessed* with two sets of wisdom teeth that erupted in full glory in in my early twenties. When they grew in, I could no longer close my jaw fully. Thus they were scheduled for removal at a convenient time in the near future. But that was several weeks away and I had to journey to Iowa to give a symposium at Iowa State. It was winter and the weather was turning bad as the plane left Chicago for Ames. About midway through the flight, one of the wisdom teeth broke.  Once again no pain, but deep fear and loathing. As we landed in Ames, they closed the airport because of the blizzard now going on around us. We can’t even see the terminal out the plane windows as we parked because there was so much blowing snow. Now if you haven’t been to the Ames Iowa airport, it is important to note that it is many miles from town. And as we enter the terminal, they announce that the only road exiting the airport is closed. We are trapped in the airport until further notice.  Now my fear really kicked up a notch. Nothing like being stranded in an airport terminal, nothing to do but worry,  no possibility of relief, to make you appreciate the fun if it does start to hurt.
To make a long story short, I was really happy to return home and visit my dentist all those years ago.  I suspect that by Monday I will have similar feelings now. At least here I know where my dentist lives and can go knock on his door. Another great thing about living in a small town.
council, election, politics, radio

And now …

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The city council meeting last night was not too bad.  It ran a little long, but it didn’t turn into a 6 hour marathon like they sometimes were before I became mayor. Thank heavens for small miracles!

Today was a Wednesday, and like every other Wednesday, I have a show on one of the local radio stations early in the morning. I am a brave soul and take all callers on an open mike (live, no less) about issues or complaints in the city.  Generally tends to be pretty quiet since things got under control a few years ago, so now I mostly use it to keep the community appraised of what happened in the council meeting and the issues of interest to the area. I am not noted as being one to call a spade a “portable entrenching tool” and my approach seems to work well with the people here.
The League of Women Voters gave a program on the ballot issues this year at a local church this evening. I was there to address the charter amendments for the city on the ballot this year. This is one of the longest ballots in local history with initiatives and proposals covering 46-59 and L-O on the state part of the ballot and a similar number of items related to the city charter on the municipal side. Add in the presidential, congressional, and county commisioner races and the ballot is beyond hefty.
One major concern is that people may not be able to complete their ballot in the statutorily allotted 15 minutes. We are all encouraging people to take their crib notes with them to the polls, utilize early voting, and use mail in ballots. Because of the presidential race, local congressional races, and all of the above, voter participation may be very high (some predictions in the >90% of all registered voters range.) This should be interesting. I’m certainly glad I’m not a county clerk who has to make sure all this runs smoothly and certify the results rather shortly after the vote.
I’m off to make my crib sheet for the election before I forget all the good information from the League analysis. {*grin*}
budget, council, mandate, project

Busy Season

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This is the busy season for town councils in Colorado and ours is no exception. That is because there are statutory time frames for approval of the town budget here and the time is is now. So we all get really busy for a bit here.
The process at the council end is straight forward, if lengthy.  The budget is officially presented (in our case tonight) and then a public hearing is scheduled for 2 weeks hence. That is when the public gets their chance for direct input and to lobby for their favorite programs. Then the council must haggle it’s way come to agreement and approve the budget for the coming year.  We are required to have the public hearing no more than two weeks after presentation and are also required to make the presentation essentially in this time frame. A lot of the hassling and adjusting have already been done through the discussion of preliminary and unofficial trial budgets before today. But tonight’s council meeting may be lengthy as each council member tries to make the case to change the official presentation to their preferences.
Needless to say, it is an interesting time for financial affairs in general and the city in particular. It is complicated in our case this year by the requirement to undertake an upcoming project that will likely be in the $14-20 million range. Since the annual budget of the town is less than $20 million, we will have to bond the project. We have to start the project planning this year before the bond can be brought forth to the voters next year, so we have to find $480,000 in the budget to pay for the engineering studies that need to commence this year. This is a federally mandated project, but guess how much money they are supplying? 
computers, DOH, geek

DOH! Moments

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I am sitting here, installing a new  operating system on one of the computer systems here. It is late and I am just happy that I finally figured out how to do what I wanted to do. I have done similar things for the other computers here with no problem, but this particular one has really odd hardware. The worst part is that once the light bulb turned on, it was trivial. And it is painful that this should have been done months ago if I wasn’t stuck awaiting the DOH moment. All I can plead is that I am getting old and senile and having months long DOH moments. I suppose I could also plead to being a geek. 

It seems that the older I get, the more often DOH moments turn into DOH weeks, sometimes even DOH months. DOH moments are those times when you know that you just know you can do some task, but just can’t quite figure out one critical step. And then the light turns on and it is obvious and you go around smacking your head because it is so simple. DOH! 
At least there is a happy geek ending here. {Remember, you are not officially a geek unless you have a network of at least three different CPU architectures in your office.} 

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