Oh what a crazy month!

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This month has been crazy. Chaotic. Dizzying. Now, I thought it was a little crazy, because I spent most of the first week at the CASB Winter Conference. This is the big school board association conference held every year at the Broadmoor in Colorado Springs. It was a very good, although COLD conference. Average temperature was about 13F outside for most of the week.

I went up on the 4th, as I was presenting at the New Boardmember’s Boot Camp Workshop. 🙂 Five minutes of fame. LOL! Well, it started snowing on Wednesday morning and I was taking a school district vehicle. The VAN. A huge 12 passenger van, which made me feel like a five year old. I nearly needed a step ladder to climb in. Granted, it was nice to have the weight, as I was driving in snow and on ice most of the time.

This was also the first time in almost a year that Dan couldn’t come with me. As it was so cold, he stayed home to keep Brandy from turning into a Pupcicle. We had no one to feed her or dog sit her, so there was no choice but for him to stay.

Thursday was great. I went to my first session about Rural districts and then presented that afternoon. Five minutes on ‘how data is important.’ The rest of the conference was good, and I was very glad to get home on Sunday. Once I got home, we went and picked Morgan up from La Junta. Monday, I spent time with Daniel and Angela. We went shopping in Pueblo and had a great time. I should have gone to a District Accountability meeting, but I didn’t make it.

Tuesday was our board meeting. A long one, but good. Thursday was busy. Two events. A school holiday party and a school district office party. Sort of stacked together, but we managed both. 🙂 Good thing they were next door to each other.

Friday, we drove to Denver. We did a bit of shopping and on Saturday we saw our computer client. Got home late Sunday. The week started out busy. A trip to Pueblo, work for Dan, the holiday program at Gardner on Wednesday, cleaning my parents house and then up to Denver again on Thursday because our computer client was having weird issues. Friday we did shopping and then drove home late.

Saturday was Solstice. Yule. We got up at dawn and enjoyed the sun rise. Then instead of a nice breakfast, we had to check on the school wrestling tournament. Should have been a 10 minute stop. Nope. It wasn’t. At noon, I left to go help my dad stack a cord of firewood. I was done in 90 minutes, and went back to the wrestling tournament. We were there till about 7pm. Afterwards, we grabbed dinner and then collapsed in bed.

We woke up to snow this morning. Today we did odd jobs around the house and tried to relax a bit. Oh, and Dan built a faux satellite transmitter to test his ground station. The rest of the week isn’t looking much calmer.

This is the song that I woke up with on Solstice.

CASB

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Thursday night we headed for Denver for the Fall Conference and Delegate assembly. There was a lot of good information, and the assembly was short and sweet. There were good conversations and I got to see people that I enjoy talking with about school board and education issues. As usual, I took Dan with me. 🙂 He enjoys the conferences as well and participates which is great. It’s like having an extra board member with me.

Friday night we had planned to drive down to LoDo to have dinner at the Rio Grande. We were both too tired, so we ate at the Modmarket. Yum! I had a lovely salad. Oh that there was one in Pueblo!

Saturday, we finished the conference and then headed to a computer client’s house. We got to have our appointment a week early. 🙂 This means we can go visit Morgan on the 18th. Then it was off to IKEA.

Yeah, we’ve been there a lot lately. This time we picked up the light fixtures for the Wendy House. We got these cool lamps. I also found some cheap rugs for entranceways, light bulbs, a couple of holiday candle lamps, and fabric out of the discount area. 🙂 Once the fabric is washed, I’ll be making adjustments and will have curtains in the kitchen!

Sunday, we should have been doing work on the house. Instead, we went to Pueblo and went to Target and Home Depot. We were too tired and brain dead to do any actual construction. That will happen this weekend. Just in time too, as it is getting cold There was snow on the Spanish Peaks this morning. We had a cold slushy rain in town last night.

Cool Weather

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We have had cool, cloudy, rainy weather for the last three days. Dan puts it down to the fact that I cleared the dam across the sidewalk that we built to keep water out of the house. Plus, I finally got the tent and tarpaulin out to rinse off and dry. It almost got dry. Now it has been rinsed off by at least three or four good rain showers.

My squash plants have been loving the damp weather. I have a couple of zucchini that you could hollow out and use for canoes. 🙂 I foresee zucchini bread in my future.

After our crazy trip up and back to Denver, I went up on Tuesday to interview for a position on the CASB board. I didn’t get it, but asked an interesting question… Why didn’t they have a TECH committee? Matt Cook, the board president just sort of stuttered and said they’d have to look into that. 🙂

I went from that meeting and the drive home to a board workshop where we discussed the upcoming elections. We have two candidates running in one district, and we are trying to move to a district wide representation system. For too many years, we have had issues finding people to run for those seats. We end up appointing people who sometimes run for the seat after they’ve been doing it a few years. Other times, we end up having to appoint some one yet again. If we don’t do this, we will end up having to spend money to reapportion our districts. We’ve lost a lot of the population in some of them while other districts have gained. I just hope we can make the voting public understand.

Well, I’ve got to go find a heavier shirt to put on. It’s cold! 🙂 19C, or about 68F.

That long weekend…

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Memorial Day.

Where everyone thinks summer begins. For me it is a quiet day. The last two weeks have been hectic and the rest of this week will be much of the same. Last week saw two retirement parties. Three teachers and one staff member. Oh, and contracts to sign. Lots of contracts. On Wednesday, we have two 8th grade graduations and the last days of school. Then just a modicum of quiet.

On the home front, we made a little progress on the garden. Dan hasn’t been feeling well, so I wasn’t able to accomplish as much as I’d like. Maybe next weekend. We did do some changes in the house though. Dan moved his ‘office’ back into the ‘lab’. He just wasn’t getting enough work done. He was getting distracted and spent more time watching things with Morgan or disturbing Morgan with “Look at this jet engine run!” than he did work. There are days I am so happy that my office is out in the Wendy House. 🙂

I’ve been doing some sewing as well. I’m working through the repair-tailor pile and then it will be on to the Battlemoor clothes! Only three more months! 🙂 I’ll share photos as I get things done.

Oh, and we are cat sitting. My parents are off to Denver for a few days. Zoe is such a sweetie. 🙂

Now back to that quiet…

It’s the snow storm that never ends…

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Well once again, Mother Nature played chicken with us and we lost. After horrid winds on Sunday, warmth up to about 70 yesterday, we woke to clouds and damp this morning. I thought it would be rain. Smelled like rain. Looked like rain. Hoped it would be rain.

So, I went off to the County Commissioners meeting to hear the proclamation of Ludlow Centennial Year. This Saturday, April 20th is the 99th anniversary of that horrid day. So, the state has decided to have a year long event. Our three commissioners signed the proclamation and handed it to our local UMW representative. In June there is usually a memorial service out at Ludlow. I’ve written about this event before. Here and here. I will be writing more about it as the year goes on.

Once that was done, I did my usual Wednesday thing. Vacuumed my mom’s house and did laundry. I was just getting ready to leave when I realized that it was SNOWING! Oh My was it snowing. Big Fat Flakes. Instead of heading to the Laundromat to dry my clothes, I picked up Dan. We headed out to George’s and had lunch. We celebrated our 9th anniversary with pie. 🙂

Afterwards we stopped by my parents as they had just returned from Colorado Springs and Pueblo. They brought us fried cinnamon rolls. Yum! We went to the grocery, then to the Laundromat and dried clothes.

Now we are home and curled up next to the wood stove keeping warm and working on our computers. Oh, and watching snow fall on top of the 5-6 inches we have from this storm already.

In the Yuri’s Night Kitchen

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A long time ago, in a Universe not so far away….

Wait. Hold on. Let me start over. 🙂

On April 12th, 1961, Yuri Gagarin was the first man to fly in space. 🙂 His flight along with Sputnik in 1957 started off the scientific avalanche that became the Space Race. Twenty years later, on April 12th, 1981, Space Shuttle Columbia STS-1 launched. Twenty years after that, in 2001, a group of people thought it would be a great thing to hold a party commemorating the two important milestones in Space History. Thus was Yuri’s Night born.

Now, the week of April 12th is host to world wide parties. Mach 30, a group that Dan and I belong to held a Yuri’s Night Party yesterday afternoon. We had various maker spaces and students from our local high school here. Hurray for John Mall High School! You can read all about it here.  Or, you can watch the video and see what you’ve missed.

Heatwave!!!

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Okay, so it’s only 42 outside, but in comparison to the last week or so, that is nice and toasty warm. We haven’t had any more snow, but it has been cold. Lovely star filled nights with no clouds suck the heat right out of the earth, the house and I swear, my toes. By an hour after sunset, even Brandy, the dog wants in. So, I’m soaking up the heat today.

As for the rest of life… Dan is still in Cheyenne trying to find work. He is frustrated by the fact that there are all these jobs ‘open’, and yet no one is hiring. He’s also applying for jobs out of state in all directions. So, all good wishes for employment will gleefully be appreciated. With the computer business failing, we really must find some sort of income.

And… the sooner that Dan has work, the sooner we will be back together. It’s been 26 days apart at this point. Neither of us are happy about the separation. I know it’s necessary, but that doesn’t mean it’s been fun.

Well, time to go bask in the sun some more!

Supersonic September

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This month has rushed by. We started with Battlemoor and will end with the Spanish Peaks Celtic Music Festival In between, we have had birthdays a plenty. Morgan’s, Dan’s, Mom and Dad’s. And, since we got paid, there were new glasses for Dan and Morgan, new shoes for Dan and new tires for the truck. Then it was back to the daily grind of house work, computers and cleaning.

I thought I’d get a breather in there. Wrong. Day after his birthday, Dan felt ill. By Monday night, he was in bed. I won’t share the gory details, but he was not a happy camper. Oh, and he passed out/fell at one point. One moment he was fine, next… out. So, he spent most of the next day in bed and has been making a slow recovery ever since. Why? Well, when he fell, he smacked his hip and cracked a rib. We knew about the hip right away… Can’t miss it if it hurts to sit. And yes, plenty of bad jokes were made about cracks… However, it wasn’t until he actually began to feel better, and stopped hurting everywhere, that he realized he’d cracked a rib.

Now of course, it’s the beginning of the music festival. Dan is up in Gardner today with some of the musicians at the school. Tonight is a pot luck which I need to make a cake or something for and Thursday night is The Taste of Things to Come, the first concert. It is going to be a really good festival this year.

Oh, and on top of that, we are 1) cleaning house to do the plumbing-don’t faint, 2) cleaning house because it’s time to get ready for winter, and 3) Natalie is coming to visit October 1st!!!!!  I’m sorry that she’ll be here when it is all chaotic, but we haven’t seen her in nearly 6 years. (bounce! bounce! bounce!)

After mid-October, when I think I’ll get some time to sew, we’ll see what else crops up.

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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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!!!