Snow!!!

Posted on by jsudar
Today was a good day. It snowed! We needed the moisture, as this has been a very dry and mild winter.

Plus, we got the rolling cabinet, and all three wardrobes over to the house with a little help from our friend Doug and his dad. The wardrobe in the basement just made it! The little wardrobe is safe in our bedroom, and the wardrobe with the mirror doors is in the studio! It looks good. I plan to store fabric, supplies and project boxes in it. I decided to put the ‘bakers rack’ in the studio as well. It will give me bookshelf space and drawer space. This was something I was going to be short on as Dan has my big black book case.

Tomorrow after the Democratic county assembly, I will be moving more of the sewing stuff over. My mom will have 45% of her living room back for the first time in a year.

We organized the tool room today as well. That was a 3 hour undertaking. We’ve had all these boxes with bits and pieces in them because when we packed, anything went in a box. Now we get to sort it all out. I think I have enough little boxes to sort things into. While Dan took the last of the tools downstairs, I put the chairs in the breakfast nook. Then he helped me move the table in. It is a little bit tight, but it will do for now. Eventually, we may put a bench and tables in instead of the little round table.

The picture below is of the same room and table, but different chairs. Plus, my sons and nephew. Starting at the bottom right, Erin, Bryan, Stefan, Dayne and Daniel.

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Build a boat, grab an oar!

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Because it’s Monsoon Season! Here it is Saturday, and it has been raining almost non-stop! Apparently, it rained most of the time I was gone, and the few partial days we didn’t have rain have been made up for. My friend Chas posted a lovely piece in his blog. rain-on-back-order.html

As for myself, I blame my parents. teeheehee. You see, Hell is attempting to freeze over and all this rain is the result. My Dad decided at long last to retire. He has been a park ranger at the Grand Canyon for over 25 years.

Jon Sudar, Park Ranger
Jon Sudar, Park Ranger

Dad did the whole Interpretive Park Ranger thing. Trail talks, Evening Programs, etc. He was very good at it. However, over the years the politics of it has worn him down. Plus, he will be 72 in just over a month. So, he retired.

My parents bought a house and have slowly been moving things in. They did the final packing and left the Canyon yesterday. They arrived today on this bitterly cold August day. 30 degrees below normal! I almost started a fire in the fireplace! I woke up to thunder and lightning at 5:15am. Could not believe the length of the thunder roll. Nearly a minute at one point. We’ve had a few breaks in the rain, but not many. Right now, the gutters are flowing so full that they are spreading out into the street.

Monsoon!
Monsoon!

As for the rest of this week… I spent most of Monday and Tuesday trying to catch up on sleep and house hold stuff. Lots of running around and trying to get stuff done while jobs kept piling up on top of everything else that needed done.

We wired Boutique Blvd. on Wednesday. Marianne Smithey is a sweet lady who was having telephone troubles. Dan re-did the wiring and fixed that issue. Thursday I went down and worked on her computer for 2 hours. Made $50, which was nice. However, that will get dumped into the bank on Monday for bills.

Friday, we went with Maryjane H. up to visit her husband who is finally up at the VA hospital in Denver. Friday was Carl’s 77th birthday. He was happy to see all of us. He also learned that he has cancer that can’t be operated on. They can treat him, but not cure him. Not a nice thing to learn on your birthday. We stayed as long as we could and then had to drive home. The trip up had been wet and rainy. The trip home was just as bad. I swear that parts of the highway were under 2-3 inches of water at times. Dan drove which was a good thing. Got home around 10pm and collapsed.

I planted a few Italian plum trees in the back yard. I hope they take well. The plums are wonderful for cooking as they are very meaty and tart. At least I don’t have to worry about watering them for a while!

Busy, busy, busy!

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Finally had time to post again.  Here’s hoping I can actually type. I don’t know what I did to my hands, but they are so sore!

Sunday Dan and I went out to Pauline’s and got the “omygodsihopethisisthelastload” load. Barbecue grill, trashcans, dead tortoise and assorted boxes. I got covered in pine pitch trying to unload stuff at the shed. My hair was stiff with it. Therefore, we stopped back by the house and I rinsed my hair before Dan and I set off to Pueblo for the payday shopping trip.

We dropped off Blue with John and headed to Pueblo around 4pm. We got the shopping done and ate dinner at Applebee’s. We got back to Walsenburg around midnight. Unloaded the groceries and then tossed some laundry in the washer. Finally fell asleep around 3am. Not good.

7:30am came way too early. More laundry, (3 loads) and then off to 520 and construction work. We finished the OSB part of the closet except for the final fit on the door. We need to recess the hinges for a better fit. I also cleaned up the kitchen and bathroom.

We finally washed Brandy too. I hauled the tub to the center of the yard and we washed her there. Dan and I were both soaked. Took a bath ourselves and then had dinner. Gods it was a long day and I was a “drag ass” all day. Fell asleep twice while waiting for Dan.

Today we are heading to Pueblo to see Carl. Dan messed up his shoulder yesterday and so I will be doing the driving. Wheee…. sorta. Remember the sore hands…

Soooo Happy It’s Thursday!

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I am exhausted. This is the first day that Dan, Daniel and I have not been helping Pauline move. My Gods she has a lot of stuff. I knew she did, having helped in this process more than once, but you’d think she’d have gotten rid of some of this stuff somewhere along the way! Oh well. We have it almost done. In the course of all the packing and cleaning we did manage to get rid of some of the trash at 520. One of the previous tenants left mattresses and couches in the garage. Pauline let us put them out in one of the sheds. Wheee!

That of course meant that yesterday I cleaned out the shed area at the back of the yard. Moved everything out and actually found the brick and red sandstone slab floor. Also found an umbrella style clothes line that Dan may co-opt for an antenna rig. It is pretty cool. We also cleaned up the yard a bit since I must have moved a cubic yard of crud out of the sheds. Later this week we have to finish sweeping out the garage. That will be another cubic yard of crud. Whee…

We also got Blue up and running again. Blue stalled on us on Tuesday. We joked that he’d just had enough and decided to take a break. We think it was actually a vapor lock. It slowed down the whole process of moving junk out of the garage, but not by much. We are storing Pauline’s freezer and stove. Karen is in the process of buying her washer, dryer and dishwasher. We are using her fridge with an option to buy it as soon as we have some cash. Wheeee!!!!!!! We have a real sized fridge! Granted, we have to take out part of a cupboard to put in in place in the kitchen. At the moment it is residing in the breakfast nook area. After all the yardwork we did and moving stuff, we cleaned out the fridge. Something sticky and nasty had slid down the back of the fridge. Ewwwww! I took the scraper to it. After I washed it, Dan wiped it down with some bleach water. Daniel is happy as it means he finally gets his fridge back too.

Today we are suppose to work on the closet. I’m not sure either of us can even hold a teacup let alone a hammer or power tools. So far we’ve watched a few episodes of Babylon 5 and snacked on pie. :> Not the best diet, but oh it tasted good.

I’m also waiting to hear back about a job interview I went to yesterday. Crossroads needs a secretary. I think the interview went well, but at the same time, I felt I intimidated them a little. sigh… Hopefully, I’ll hear back soon as to whether I got the job or not.

I’m also trying not to be peeved with Big Morgan and Erin. Contrary to my request, they washed Erin’s diesel covered clothes in my washer. Now, if none of us had skin problems this wouldn’t have been an issue. However, I have allergies and John has excema and cellulitus. Not good things to have aggravated by diesel. Grrrr…. it will take numerous washings to get the washer clean enough to wash clothes in again. Stupid idiots. Morgan and Matt are more responsible than they are some times. sigh..

Oh… Before I forget. The deer are coming back into town. We saw a buck two nights ago right in front of me as I got out of the truck. He cropped the grass and then headed up the hill. We’ve also seen a mother skunk and her 6 babies. Reminded me of a fleet of ducks as they went down the sidewalk with their tails raised.

If you’re going through Hell, try to enjoy the scenery…

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Of course, as I start to write this post, Rodney Atkins “If you’re going through hell” starts to play. Rather appropriate. What a weekend. I didn’t want to say anything until it was all done. A bit superstitious I guess on my part, but… it is now over. All but one last bit. Now to explain.

Over the last month, we have been scraping by paying the bills for the company. When Carlos, our one business partner came to visit last month, we stated rather succinctly that the company was in financial straights. Not unfixable, but that it had to have something done fast. Karen and Carlos both said that things would get done. However, they had a severe case of “oh… look at the kitty” on about three other projects. RBT was not primary on their radar when it should have been. It was also expected that we drop everything we were doing in order to follow Karen and Carlos’ latest interest. Oh, and keep the RBT stuff running as well. This meant many long hours and short nights as we literally did double time to get things done for them. It was wearing both Dan and I out. At last count, there were at least 5 projects besides the wireless side of RBT being channeled through us.

Meanwhile, Dan and I have been working without pay for the life of the company. 9 months. We figured the first 4 or 5 months would be without pay. However, we did not expect this. Nor did we expect that we would be the only ones handling the day to day aspects of the business.  Doing some business projections, Dan realized that we needed a loan or a grant fast otherwise we were in trouble. We emailed everyone and asked for a meeting on Friday evening. No luck. All we got back was a terse email from Karen.

So, Dan and I talked all night. I cried. Dan was unhappy. However, as we realized that there was nothing for us to do financially at this point, we had only one option. We resigned. Dan and I are no longer part of Raton Basin Technologies. It isn’t what we wanted to do, but it was our only recourse. Both of us are have hit the limits to what we can do to creatively control our bills.

Yesterday we spent packing up and moving the business end of things over to Karen’s. Erin helped which was a godsend. There was way too much stuff that could not be moved by me or just Dan alone.  This morning we dealt with the IRS, Colorado business etc. Nothing is in my or his name now.  We will take care of the bank account and that will be the end of it.

However, that will not be the end of computer work. I have no doubts that Dan and I will be back in the computer repair business very soon.