Akkkk! Where did May Go?

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I’ve been so busy, that I haven’t had time to post. At least not on this blog. May has been chock o block with meetings. The school board stuff has been running me in circles. For those activities, go to my other blog, Untapped Potential.

Our weather has been weird for May. Hot, cold, windy, cold! We even had a few days when it rained in town, but snowed up in the mountains.

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Work has been slow, so I’ve been vacuuming my parent’s house. Mom is 75, so I see no problem with this. Plus it means I get to visit with her at least once a week.

A friend of mine posted a neat website. All about INFJ’s. 🙂 Yeah, me. Visit it here, here and here. After reading that last page… no wonder I’m a good hugger! I love the posters too. They are a riot.

The rest of this month will be taken up with three graduations, negotiations and a trip with my parents to Las Vegas, N.M.  We’re going down to Charlie’s bakery. Best tortillas in the world. 🙂

Oh, last but not least, a friend of mine is illustrating my story, Fairy Light!

I almost forgot!!!

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Dan and Morgan went to La Junta and visited Otero State Jr. College on Tuesday. Morgan took her accuplacer test and maxed it out! She is now officially a college student. :)! Since she did so well on the tests, she will have nothing but 200 level classes! As she is 15, she will live with a family like an international student. When she is 16, she will be able to take her GED.

We are so happy and excited.!!!

When she got home, and after she had told me the news, I couldn’t help but tease her just a little… I said that I was so proud of her, especially as she was now in Slytherin! She looked at me, blinked and then it dawned on her. OJC’s mascot is the Rattlesnake! 🙂

Meetings and concerts and printers Oh My!

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April has been a busy month. Lots of school board meetings and plenty of long nights. Yesterday was a prime example of life around here.

7:am- Arrive at the bus garage to meet Dawn Olson our superintendent and head for Colorado Springs for a Professional Learning Committee meeting.

9:00am to 3pm- PLC meeting with teachers, superintendents, board members from 11 districts, and CDE. Lunch included.

3:15-4:25- Drive home from Colorado Springs

4:30-5:20pm- Attended Jeanne Wilkins retirement party at Peakview School.

5:30pm- 8:15pm- Board workshop with David Benson and Iris Williams. Lots of good work towards becoming good board members. Dinner included

8:30pm – 9:30pm- Watched and listened to the last half of the Outside Track Celtic Concert at the Fox Theater.

9:45pm-10:30pm- home, relax and go to bed!

And today, Lots of pictures of Dan’s latest project. He built a 3D printer. A RepRap. To say that he’s pleased is an understatement. He still needs to work on some of the firmware and await the arrival of the plastic.

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Don’t blink! The weather may change!

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This has been a weird spring. Hot in March. No real snow when it is usually our snowiest month. Now April is being weird. Last week was warm. Then there was the wind. Oh My! I swear that on Saturday my laundry was going to end up in Kansas. Or, at least at my friend Jacque’s house. Geeze!

Sunday started out okay. There was a heavy dusting of snow, but the sun came out and melted it. It was sunny, but not too warm by mid day. I was suppose to go walking with Jacque at 1pm. We didn’t go because it kept getting darker and colder just while we were on the phone. Instead, I went out and worked on the gardens. I picked up trash, dug out trees starts and thistles, and began to work on the front garden. I have this big chunk of rail road tie that I want to use as part of a garden bed frame. The front yard slopes and I want to stop the erosion that is going on there. So, I started digging the trench needed to put the tie in place. Lots of weeds and rocks. Ugh! I realized I couldn’t move the tie by myself, so I weeded the area by the bulls head. There are ants right there and I needed to weed when they weren’t out. Otherwise I’d have been dancing. I even found the irises! Wheeee!!! By this point it had started to rain, so I went inside.

It rained. It snowed. It snained. (both at the same time) It got colder. In fact, it got cold enough for us to have a fire last night. We had one Saturday night too! I hoped for warmer weather today. So far, no luck. At least the clouds have broken up a bit and let enough sunshine in to warm the Wendy House up to about 68. After my walk today, I’d best pick up some kindling to add to the wood pile. Brrrr!

Renovations and Aprils showers.

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Last week it was in the 70’s and 80’s. We moved furniture, oiled floors, figured out where to put the business bits and pieces. We even sorted out and threw a few things away!

Monday was cool. Cloudy. And by 2am this morning, we had 3 inches of snow. By 8am, nearly 8 inches of snow. At 3pm, we have over 11 inches of snow and it is barely 36 degrees! Brrrr!!!! Instead of writing today, I have been busy keeping warm!

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The pictures are of the back yard, the newly reorganized interior of the main house and the front yard.

Busy, Hectic Week

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This week was something else. Monday I spent catching up on all the email from the weekend and met with Sandi Hansen of Edison Learning. She is working with our school district to help bring up our educational scores on the Colorado student assessment tests. (TCAP).

Tuesday was meeting day from hell. Dan and I had a Southeastern Workforce Investment Board meeting in La Junta. This was also the day that Colorado tried to blow all of it’s topsoil to Kansas. We had miles of dirt fog. So much dirt in the air that we couldn’t see. Tumbleweeds were passing us and we were going 65! It took 1 gallon of gas to get to La Junta and 3 to get home due to the wind.

At the meeting, we discussed the workforce/employment issues in our region. The map showing the regions can be found here. We also had a really good presentation on Demographics for regions 6 and 14, which is what we are according to the state. It was very interesting and we actually got to solve a question that the Demographers had. There was a statistical blip that they didn’t understand and I looked at it and knew in an instant what it was. There was a burst of households in the 44 to 65 yr range. They didn’t get it and I explained that it was the grandchildren coming to Huerfano County to occupy their grandparents houses. The reason I knew that was that I’m one of those. I escaped the big city, Littleton, to come down to Walsenburg to raise my family in a low cost, low crime/stress area.

After that meeting, we drove home, grabbed dinner and then headed to the board meeting. This was the first regular board meeting for RE-1 in February. All others had been special meetings and/or workshops. We got a lot accomplished and once again, there is more on that meeting on my other blog.

Wednesday should have been quiet. I got some stuff done around the office and then went to meet with David Benson around 4pm. He and his partner, Iris Williams are working to help our school district with trust issues. We have a situation whereby nearly 100% of the district dislikes/distrusts one person. Not healthy, and it is causing major issues. It was a really good discussion and we talked till nearly 5pm. Afterwards, I went to the library and then went to work to pick up Dan. We had to be to Peakview by 6pm to see a 4th grade play called the Emerald Egg. That was fun.

Thursday we were up early and went with my parents to Colorado Springs. Dad had his cancer checkup. Dan drove us home as Dad was a little loopy from the pain meds. We stopped at Romero’s for lunch. Yummm!

Friday was just as early a start. I had a State Youth Council meeting to be at in Denver. The weather was  bit nasty, so we left early. The meeting was very good. More info on that over on Untapped Potential. We drove home through bands of snow. We were going to stop in Pueblo for dinner, but with the snow, we changed our minds. Good thing we did as there was a huge car pileup accident due to the snow.

Friday was also Daniel’s 22nd birthday. 🙂

Saturday was sort of a stay in bed type day. We slept in, relaxed and did as little as possible. 🙂 Better yet, we went to Wonderful House in Trinidad with my parents. It was my parents way of thanking Dan for driving. They even promised him that he could bring a date if he wanted, or if he didn’t, they have this daughter…. that they’d set up as a blind date for him. ROFLOL!! Needless to say, there were a bunch of blind date jokes all evening.

Today is catch-up day. Dan has gone into work for the day and I’m writing blog posts, reading emails and cleaning house. Wheee!

For more school board adventures, check out my other blog, Untapped Potential

Taxes and cuts and commissioners…. Oh My!

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I went to a County Commissioners meeting yesterday. Our superintendent was there too. Why? Well… a grocery story that opened a year ago, February 2nd, 2011, wanted a tax cut. Now, in general, that doesn’t sound like a bad idea. Unless you are the recipient of the monies that are gotten via that tax cut.

Their tax bill for the year was about $50K. According to law, new businesses can as for up to a 50% discount for up to 5 years. Usually this is asked for before they literally break ground. However, the local new grocery store is trying to get the tax cut after the year mark and after they’ve gotten their tax bill. Plus, you have to notify all the stake holders, which is anyone who receives funding via those taxes. At the moment, they are filing an abatement and the assessor is checking the tax records. This means that I get to go to the meeting next week too.

I was there with my school board president hat on. Reason… We get 49% of our funding via tax revenue from local sources. So, if you pay $100.00 in taxes, we receive $49.00 of that for the schools. Are you beginning to see why the school district might have an interest in taxes? We explained that out of $50K, we usually receive $25K in revenue. If they got their taxes cut in half, we’d only receive about $10K in tax income for the school district. That loss of $10K equals the salary of a custodian or an aide or 1/2 a teacher. Considering the budget issues that we are facing as one of the lowest funded districts, a $10K loss would be significant. We explained that to the commissioners and the grocery store.

Something that wasn’t said was the fact that the daughter of the grocery store owners works for the school district. Part time. The irony is that their win for a tax cut might literally cut their daughter’s salary right out of the budget.

Fracking!

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Huerfano County is worried about Fracking and the works of Shell Oil. The Guardian had a really good article on it here. I see this as such a double edged sword. Here we are in a depression cycle and yet this is a possibility for work or income. Yet again, it could destroy the very area we love and adore.

Which to choose? Or, is there a choice? Hard to tell with all the people debating it and Shell rolling in with their seismic equipment. Yes, we have coal and methane in the area. We have methane boiling to the surface and leaving dead zones in some areas of the county. No one says anything about those, as they are byproducts of the mines. “Old news” so to speak. Yet they damage our lands, our lives. Shell and fracking though is a much more visible danger. It’s a current danger. A new one. So, while we don’t care about the methane pouring into the air and the small dead zones we have right now, we are worrying about new ones. It’s an odd disconnect.

Oh, and we can’t forget that while we vilify the men from Shell, they are here spending money in our town at hotels, shops, fast food places, etc. They are actually helping our economy at the moment. Weird. Like snakes with shoes. Or, is that what we will get if they do their fracking?  Hm… Sounds like we are damned if we do and if we don’t. As a small community that depends on tourism for a large part of our income, we have some very difficult choices to make.

Nineteen years ago…

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I was doing the last minute packings and goodbyes to life in England. We had one last night and on the 19th, we would fly back to America, a land I hadn’t lived in for the better part of 14 years. Some years the anniversary is easy. Others it is hard. This one is hard. I’ll curl up with my cup of tea, twiglets and watch movies. Good thing Dan understands my quirky moods.

So much has changed over time. The four boys have grown and changed. Each has their own family and most have children of their own. I have eight grandchildren. John and I have divorced and moved on in our lives. The pets that came with us have crossed the rainbow bridge and are buried in the yard at the Walsen house.

This year is another anniversary. In 1996, I was on my way to the CASB Legislative Conference in Denver. It was cold and snowy, so I went up the night before. Micky D’Ambrosia and our Superintendent Mike Hinnegan were suppose to follow up the next day. That was February 29th. That night, I got a call. Mike had died in a car accident. I stayed at the conference as there was nothing I could do at home. Micky was taking care of the district. I notified CASB and when we went up to the Capital the next day, I listened as the state congress was told of his death. Then I came home and with the rest of the board, we put our lives and the district back together.

I have to admit that going to that conference was difficult after that. When I went in 2002, it was a little easier. So, when I left for Denver on the 15th of this month to head up to the conference it was with a slightly heavy heart. Being back on the board has been interesting and stressful so far, but this was a good conference. It gave me heart to keep going forward.

After the conference we walked around IKEA and then drove home. I’ve got two days to synthesize all the information and figure out how to impart it to my board. I’ll write more info on that over on my other blog, Untapped Potential.

About that cable…

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Yesterday around 10am. the internet died. So did the phones. Our first thought… did we pay the bill?

I went home to check and what did I find??? No one had phone service or internet. In fact, as it came out later, someone had cut the cable. The article in the Chieftain was brief.

In fact, it was almost as good as the one from the Weather Channel that said we’d only get a trace of snow. So far, that trace adds up to about 4 inches. Brrr!!! Thank goodness for Daniel who brought his dear old mum some firewood.

Now to catch up on everything I didn’t get done due to no phones, and no internet.  Oh, and I’m wiping one item off my agenda. I am NOT changing my header picture. It still looks like that outside. Snow!!!