Category Archives: misc

death, misc

An Olio Of Items Both Good And Bad

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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.

birds, misc

The Birds Have It and Other Wars

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This morning I was awoken from a peaceful slumber by the sound a a raging bird war going on in the bush outside my bedroom window. A chickadee and some wrens were having a knock down dragout with stereo chirps and tweets and screetches. Once I figured out that:

a) I hadn’t died and gotten a bad harp translator in heaven,
b) I hadn’t somehow set the alarm to play really hideous music, and
c) it was turning light outside,

I was able to focus enough to read the alarm clock an spot that it was 5am. Given that I get up at 6am so I can walk down to the radio station on Wednesday mornings, I decided to bag the idea of geting back to sleep and instead get some reading done. I have paid for that decision all day now. It seems like I am tired but not quite sleepy. Oh well.

Last night was an interesting special meeting of the city council. A historic first meeting no less, with the city council, the county commissioners, and the rural fire district board all sitting in official session together to go over the proposed intergovernmental agreement (IGA) for the formation of the emergency services authority. Once the smoke cleared and the attorneys for all sides had thrown up their hnds in disgust, there was general agreement as to the form of the IGA. So the modified and corrected version will come before the city council for a first reading next Tuesday (and a second reading and public hearing a few weeks later if it passes the first reading) with similar time frames for approval by the other two entities. Thenthe ballot questions can be put on the ballot and see what the voters want.

The interesting part is that although the city and county have sat in joint session a couple of times during my tenure as mayor, this was the first tri-party meeting anyone can recall. It was also interesting since we filled the council chambers, which is rare. Pretty much, we had a standing room only size crowd. The last time we had that many people in attendance was when there was a proposed liquor license near the college which the churches opposed. I sure wish we could get that many interested citizens for the normal day-to-day business of running the city.

In other news, a good friend of L and I underwent spinal surgery today and I have received word that it went well and has relieved the pressure on his spine. So please think good thoughs for T during his healing and recovery.

misc, monday, mope

Mopey Monday Miscellanei

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Today is one of those mopey days. The sun is out and it is nice outside, but my motivation to get going is lacking. Seems like those kind of days happen sometmes. Maybe the solution is to add an extra day each week that can be used in any way one chooses. If this is a good day to mope around and do little else, you can use the extra day as a mope day. Of course, there is always the ongoing issue of using your “personal/mope” day too eary in the week and then discovering that it was really needed later in the week. {*grin*}

The discussion of mope days reminded me of a gentleman I haven’t thought of in years. Paul was a work colleague long ago. He was very senior in the company at the time I knew him. He had worked essentially his whole life at the company, was one of the original 10 employees of what had become a Fortune 100 company, and with his seniority, he accumulated vacation time at a rate exceeding 1 day a week. The problem that Paul had was that he was not often in the mood to take time off. So he was always up against the corporate cap on accumulated vacation time. The entire time I knew him, he had to take one day a week off or lose the paid day off as he hit the corporate cap. Paul was one of those people who couldn’t stand the idea of “donating” the day back to the company, so he spent some time programming a spreadsheet/database to automatically chose which days would be best for him to take off. He would then put in the paperwork for those days but still come to work as if it was a normal day. It pleased him not to “donate” the day to the company and yet not have to skip work for a day. He would have loved the similar problems associated with the personal/mope day idea.

Easter was good here. L was home and we had Easter dinner at Mom’s. I suspect Mom was pretty tired after wheeling around preparing the meal in a wheel chair. Since she can’t leave the house yet, she wanted to have Easter dinner at her place. So I did the shopping and then pulled some stuff out of the freezers Saturday night and came over early Sunday to help with the prep and setup. L and MIL both came over after church so we could follow the long standing family tradition of eating too much on Easter Sunday. MIL hurt her shoulder/arm in the blizzard#1 and blizzard#2 aftermath and so isn’t able to use one arm right now. Hopefully that will get better when she starts theraapy later this week. Since Mom had the home care nurse coming by later in the day to change the surgical dressings, MIL was in discomfort with her arm, and L had to get ready to head back to the mountains, we were done and had it all cleaned up before 3pm. 

I took a spare CRT monitor over to the MIL’s on Saturday to replace her dead LCD. She was undergoing computer withdrawal since it had failed last Tuesday. After getting it set up and verifying functionality, I brought her dead LCD back here. In keeping with my reputation as the computer whisperer, I have it back up and running. I’m going to keep it running on the bench system here for a few days just to make sure I really fixed the problem and then will journey back over to return it to MIL’s computer desk. (I know she is having a hard time with the smaller screen and square pixels of the old CRT monitor she is stuck with right now versus the LCD with its 16:9 widescreen layout.)

It is amusing how dedicated both Mom and MIL are to their computers. Email, word procesing, and the web are an important part of their lives. Given that they both were drug, with at least some kicking and screaming, into the digital age decades ago, it is funny how important the computer is in their lives now. I often wonder what my grandfather would have thought of computers in day to day life if he had lived a bit longer. I still have a rudimentry computer game he built in the late ’50s using relays and a vacuum tube for the computing power. I suspect he would have enjoyed the modern computer and its prescence in daily life immensely.

Well, time to get some meeting materials put together for tomorrow. Hope your Easter was good and this week is off to a good (not mopey) start.

I guess I’ll go de-mope in the park with Molly. She’s just about ready to rise from the “L left” mopes and check out the park for squirrels.

misc, tuessday, weather

Oddball Tuesday

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Today was pretty calm. In a mini-heat wave it got up to 9 or 15 degrees depending on which weather reporter you believed. So it is below 0 right now and will undoubtedly be cold as I meander down to the radio station in the morning. I hate it when the combination of cold and wind is enough that one has to wear a scarf to cover the face or get frostbitten. Guess I’ll just have to wait for the weekend when it is supposed to get warmer.

I figured I’d answer/respond to a few of the comments from the last week.

First of all, I want to thank the people who read the story of L and I and thought it was sweet. As I read the other responses to Mama Kat’s challenge , I found a number of other stories that I thought were pretty amazing as well. It’s always fun to read the responses to the challenges. I really encourage everyone to journey over to Mama’s Losin’ It on Thursdays to follow mr. linky and read the results of the weekly writer’s challenge.

And to CJ’s mutual admiration of things cow, I’d add that there is a lawyer living out here with the custom plates MOOLAW. Maybe cows are the new cabbage patch kids? Who knows?

In the comments to Stupid (and Slow) Saturday , Kris Loves Chocolate from uptomyneckinchocolate said  the post gave her an idea for an upcoming post. I am waiting with baited breath to see what the combination of a nap and stupid criminals stories inspired. Somehow it seems an odd combo to inspire.

Blueviolet of A Nut In A Nutshell has my sympathies since she sometimes suffers loonies as well. All I have to say is that the maximum range of looniedom is coming to a close since I will be term limited out of office come November. Then it will be someone else’s problem. {*grin*} (BTW, you should go read her post for today. It has a funny story that really seems to appeal to the female of the species.)

In Week Before Super Bowl Sunday , I talked about my un-crowning and filled out the meme from blueviolet’s blog. I want to let Kelley of Magneto Bold know that dental cement is designed to be removed if need be, but artificial joints are epoxied in, so I don’t think it is much of a concern. {*grin*} (And you really should read her post for the today if you have any sense of techie humor. The parody of an O’Reilly cover is stunningly funny.) And for blueviolet and Jenners who thought that my answer to #23 was stereotypically male and funny, all I can say is guilty as charged.

And last but not least, the answer to the question posed by blueviolet : why did I walk to the dentist? That is because I walk most places. No sense in driving if one can avoid it. It is only about 6 blocks to the dentist from my home office, so it isn’t a tough journey.

I just heard “Green Eyed Lady” by Sugarloaf on the net radio. Boy does that bring back memories from high school. Sugarloaf was a band out of Denver that hit it big in my high school years. One local even filled in on drums for them right after they released “Green Eyed Lady” but before it became a national hit. That was how they became one of the few famous rock groups ever to play here in this small town. Hopefully this is a better tune to have stuck in your head than “In-A-Gadda-Da-Vidi.”

crown, dentist, misc

Miscellaneous Monday

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Q: What do you call someone who has been crowned twice in one month?

A1: Broke.
A2: A dual monarch.
A3: Relieved.

I’ll let you chose the answer you like the best. {*grin*}

Today was a bit chill out here on the plains. It got up to somewhere between 5 and 10 degrees (it all depends on who you believe). Add to that a nice 15 mph breeze and it felt downright chilly. I walked over to the dentist’s at about 2pm and it was breezy and snowing and cold. It never got any better after that. Now tonight it has cleared off and the temperatures are dropping fast, heading towards another subzero night. But the good news is that the forecast for the weekend is for days in the 50’s.

Ran into a former intern of L’s from her past business. The young lady was a Boettcher scholar and has finished her undergraduate degree now. Found out she is working near the university she attended for the nonce until medical school starts in the fall. It is always nice to see someone do well, especially someone who is a daughter of an acquaintance and went to high school here. She won my heart when she was working at the country club one summer at the remote stand. To fill the time between golfers, she had her calculus book and was boning up on definite integrals. Warmed the cockles of my scientist’s heart. She was back in town for her sister’s birthday and just happened to be in for her dental checkup when I was there. My dentist and I think she will be a good doctor. (She was also a classmate of one of my dentist’s daughters.)

According to my dentist, I’m now good for another twenty years or more. I’m just happy that I can open my mouth again and let the air in without a blast of pain. Amazing how much difference in quality of life $10 worth of glue can make.

Time to put my notebook together for tomorrow’s council meeting. We have a number of things to go over, including the approval interview of the new fire chief. Hopefully won’t run too long.