School Board Elections

Well, it’s official. I’m on the board come November. So are Julia Marchant and Eva Vigil. We have one district with no candidate and one with two candidates running. It will be interesting. Why? Because we are in the midst of a TDIP program. That stands for Targeted District Improvement Plan. Also known as haul the district up out of the depths of despair and fix it!

We’ve had a very sports centric board for way too long, and our test scores show it. Now we have to fix things and this new board should be interesting. I’ve been on the board twice before. Julia was a principal for 32 years and Eva was a teacher for about the same length of time. In some ways you could say that the pendulum is about to swing in the other direction. Here’s hoping we can get our act together fast and pull together for the best of the district.

Certifiable

For the last 8? years I have said I would never run for school board again.  Our school district has been a part of the Targeted District Improvement Plan for a year and while they have raised 10 points in their ratings, they still have a long way to go. Dan and I have talked about running and neither one of us thought it was a good time to run. Too much going on, etc.

Then we really started talking about it. Dan has too much going on and he said I should think of running. That was at 6pm last night. After the meeting I found out that no one was running in my district. Akkk!!! My civil duty minded brain couldn’t ignore that, so…. I took out a petition. I got home and suddenly worried that I hadn’t updated my voters registration. So, this morning I went to the court house and checked. Everything was in order. So, I was legal. Certifiable probably, but legal.

Dan checked too and he signed my petition. Then we had to give a report on Workforce and Youth council. Then we went down to the office. I got some signatures on my petition and then I went back to the office. Nothing went according to plan today either. sigh…. We finally got off at 6pm. We got paid for a job and we were able to get Bryan some teeshirts for work. He started work at Peakview Elementary this morning. Katie has a job to interview for next week too.

Oh, and the work on the Wendy house and main house is going well. Tomorrow we take a ton of stuff to the dump. Wheee!!!

Family!

Bryan, Katie and their two boys, Gavin and Talon are now living with us! Crazy! Busy! Very nice to have grandbabies here to play with!

We’ve moved into the Wendy house and Bryan and family are in the main house. We are working on the Wendy house to make it more livable and upgrading the plumbing in the main house. Dan and Bryan fixed the old screen door for the back door and have built one for the front door.

As Katie unpacks boxes, I’m packing things in boxes until we have the Wendy house done. We have some stuff in a tent too. Weird, but it’s working.

A Wild Time in Walsenburg!

Just in case anyone in the universe missed the news yesterday…. This   is what happened in Walsenburg. Around 9:45am, Dan called to tell me that he might be late getting home from lunch. He’d gone to get gas at the Acorn when suddenly everything went crazy. He got over to George’s Drive Inn and managed to grab a burger while waiting to see if he could get out of the area. He finally ended going up over the hogback and through the back side of town to get home. He also got the chance to talk to our local sheriff, Bruce Newman.

Meanwhile, Daniel and some of his work buddies were getting gas as well. Everyone got hung up. My parents were trying to come home from Pueblo where they’d gone early this morning for groceries. I don’t know how long it took them to get home. Oh, and Morgan and I were suppose to go to Pueblo to do some shopping. We got delayed and had to go out of town by the southern exits. We passed the scene and could see the car and the traffic backed up for miles.

We got our shopping done, had lunch at Bingo Burger and still managed to be caught in the traffic jam. We did see the Dougherty Gang being taken in convoy to Pueblo. Lots and Lots of law enforcement vehicles with flashing lights.

It certainly has been a media circus. Walsenburg’s one day of fame. Now to going back to a quiet sleepy town in Southern Colorado.

Wind Power in Huerfano County!

Who’d have thought that would ever happen? LOL! Good grief! We have more wind here than you can fly kites in! We’ve had wind studies for years. BP did one and said that there was No Viable Wind Power in the county! Others have said there is plenty of wind, but no one wanted towers to ruin the view. Now Black Hills-Vestas is going to try to bring wind power and the associated jobs to the county. It’s about time! We need industry in the county. We need to use renewable resources as well.

Read the article here

August Already?

Damn! Where has the summer gone? I want a refund or at least a rewind. One second it was June and now it’s August!!! sigh. It has gone so fast this year. Granted, we’ve been busy.

We have moved into the Wendy house in preparation for the great plumbing attack. I have the floors in the main part of the house oiled and I’ve been sorting out things. Do I use this? Do I use that? Oh, and why on earth did I keep this?!

On a trip to Denver we went to the IKEA store. Oh my god! It took us three hours just to walk through at a FAST pace. Lots of wonderful things to buy. Lots of things I’d like for my house.

We also did something brave. We moved the office out of the house and into an office on Main Street! Scary. Lots of change. Most notably, Dan has to wear ‘dress clothes’ most days. LOLOL!