Home Improvements and SpaceUp Denver

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The last week has been busy. We’ve been doing lots of home improvements and we went to SpaceUp Denver. While the weather is good, we are working on replacing the garage door with a door, window and wall. We’ve cut all the joists to level the ramp and make a real floor. Then we got the chance to go to SpaceUp.

We went up the night before and stayed at the Hotel VQ. It’s this sort of geometric hotel next to the Bronco Stadium. Dan called it the 14 story Yurt. 🙂 It was. Better yet, as I was looking at the hotel layout, all I could think of was 1) Adafruit Flora and 2) Ironman’s reactor. We giggled a lot.

SpaceUp Denver is an Unconference. There were about 25 people there, and I was the only woman other than SpaceUp staff. Oh well. The speaker, Dr. Alan Stern was interesting. We had another gentleman speak on Citizen Scientists and then Dan spoke on Mach 30 and ODE.

Best bit of the whole day though was the Trivia quiz. You could get two points of you answered it without prompts and 1 point if you used the prompt. Well, Dan was wizing through the questions, so I just listened. Then they asked…”Who was the 1st American in space.” I KNEW that Dan knew the answer, so I didn’t even check. Especially after he’s been working on the Shephard Test Stand for almost a year. Even I knew that it was Shepard.Then the prompts go up and Dan gets this funny look on his face and I realize…. Mr Always has the RIGHT answer had gotten it wrong!!!! I laughed! It was great!

When we finished, we visited my sister for an hour and then went to IKEA. We found a sink for the Wendy House for 1/2 off. It was a great end to a lovely visit.

And yes, I am still laughing about Dan’s wrong answer!

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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.

And then Denver

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No sooner did we get back on our feet from Battlemoor, then we had a trip to Denver. Our computer client needed us. 🙂 So, we went up on Thursday and stayed in a hotel with a huge bed and bigger bathtub. I swear it was as big as our bed at home. It was a lovely soak!

Friday… After we dealt with the client, we headed to the Denver Art Museum and we saw the Spun Exhibits. They were good, but I wish there had been more quilting stuff.

Saturday… We had one last soak in the tub and then headed to IKEA. 🙂 I finally got my rugs for the Wendy House! A big one for the main area and a runner for the side of the bed. No cold floor this winter! We got a bunch of little stuff and a shelf unit for Dan. After that, we headed for Pueblo where we had a few things to pick up. We were home by 8pm, and I was so tired. I think I hit the pillow and the next thing it was Sunday.

Sunday… Dan was sick. Something he ate. ughhhh. So, while he tried to not turn green, I cleaned bits and pieces of the house. Hung the new curtains we got at IKEA for the spare bedroom and I finally had time to air the tent and tarp from Battlemoor. It was still wet from the rain a week before!

Today I caught up on some other bits and pieces and I am off to Denver tomorrow morning for an interview with CASB. I’m interviewing for a place on their board. Region 6.

Whirling Dervish Practice.

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This week has been busy, crazy, hectic… and a few more adjectives.

Monday was almost quiet. Lots of errands.

Tuesday: Up and running and off to Denver, for a computer client. Home by midnight.

Wednesday: In the middle of a Google Hangout, Daniel called. He needed brought home from Cheyenne because Angela’s father was in hospital. Daniel wanted to get to see Frank before he died. So, I drove up to Cheyenne. Traffic was horrid both ways and in the midst of Denver rush hour traffic, we got a call from Hillary, Angela’s sister, that Frank had passed. When we got to Pueblo, we met with Angela and Daniel went home with her. I got home around 10pm.

Today was another long day. Errands in town, vacuuming my parent’s house and then off to Pueblo. Why? Well, besides getting a new windscreen for the truck, picking up some groceries and items from Target, Lowes and JoAnn’s Fabrics, I had a brand new granddaughter to see!

Raven Alexandra was born at 7:50:16 am, July 18th. (A day she shares with her Grandpa John, Nelson Mandela and John Glenn.) She weighed 8 pounds 4 ounces and is 20 inches long.

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We had dinner at Romero’s and then came home to collapse!

A Snowy Tuesday

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It’s been a while since I felt like writing. On January 18th, after some of the most bitter temperatures in a while, I headed to Cheyenne. It had been 39 Very Long Days since I’d seen Dan. I swear that the travel fairies were with me as I literally flew up I-25. It is usually a 4.5 hour trip and I made it in just under 4 hours. 🙂 It was so good to be together again.

We had a computer client in Denver on Saturday. When we got back, we packed up all of Dan’s stuff and came home on Sunday afternoon. He will continue to look for work, but that will be done from here, instead of Cheyenne. Neither one of us liked being apart.

This last week has been hectic. Meetings, rearranging the house once more to accommodate the offices to the front porch where it is warm, and dinner with my parents. In that Dan missed Christmas dinner, he got to pick what he wanted for dinner. We had fried chicken, mashed potatoes and green beans with bacon. Mom made oatmeal cookies with butterscotch chips for dessert.

Friday we had a Spanish Peaks International Celtic Music Festival meeting. We are planning for the 9th Festival. It looks like it will be very good.

 

On Sunday we had a birthday party with a group we are a part of called Mach30. It was fun.  Monday was interesting. Dan got an offer to build some electrical parts for a local WISP. It is exciting and should actually net us some income. We had a school district meeting as well that lasted until nearly 8pm.

Today we were suppose to go visit Morgan in La Junta. It was going to be a quick trip as I had yet another school board meeting tonight. Well, we woke up to about 4 inches of snow with more falling. Right now I think we have had about 6-7 inches. The wind has settled down, but the snow is still falling. We stayed home and I canceled the meeting. My parents didn’t go to Pueblo either. They got about 25 miles up the road and turned back. About 30 minutes ago I took some pictures. We are snugged up in the Guest house keeping warm by the woodstove. 🙂

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Hail-atious Storm!!!!

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Dan and I drove to Sparkfun in Boulder and Rocky Mountain Test Equipment in Centennial today. After that, we stopped at IKEA to let the traffic settle down. While we got some cool and nifty things, we could hear thunder when we were near the checkout. We walked out at 8pm to see a fantastic lightning storm. Dan took one look at it and said we had to get moving. So, we did. The rain started before we were even out of Denver. By the time we hit Castle Pines Parkway, it was raining so hard we slowed down to about 40 mph.

Dan turned to me and said the clouds looked wrong. Then it started hailing. It wasn’t too bad, so we drove a little longer, thinking we could pull over in a minute. No Such Luck. It started hailing harder and we tried to find an underpass or turn off. No luck. People were pulling off everywhere and causing traffic jams. It was hailing harder and harder and the hail was piling up on the road. At one point I think it was nearly 2.5 inches deep. Plus all the water! Oh My God! We were afraid that the windshield would break because the hail was coming down so hard. It was so loud, that Dan and I had to shout at each other to be heard. Pretty bad considering that we were less than a foot apart!

Finally, near Castle Rock we were able to pull off under an underpass where we waited for at least 20 minutes. It finally lightened up and we drove into Colorado Springs. We stopped at Arbys to take a break. The back of the truck was full of hail from pea size up to nearly golf ball size! There are dents in the hood of the truck and on the left side. In the middle of the window casing on the driver’s side door, there is a dent nearly as big as my thumb where the hail dented it. I’ll put up pictures tomorrow.

Here is a Facebook page on the storm. Channel 7 News had this to say about it. Photos and story from Channel 9, Channel 4

Here is the Denver Post story. Wild Weather South of Denver.

 

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

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.

Wrapping up the year

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It is the last week of the year and  we are wrapping up various client work, and all the end of year stuff. blahhhh! Last week we had all of that snow and then a last minute trip to Denver to celebrate Christmas with the family. Maybe next year we can get everyone to meet down here in Walsenburg.

There has been a lot of change this year. Divorce, CEO of the company, new committees and responsibilities, moving family and the business and finally, school board. Some have been good and others, while not bad, could have been better.

Next year will be interesting. More involvement with the school board and all of the various committees that Dan and I are on are a sure thing. Our business hopes to land a couple of big contracts and that would be fantastic. (think good thoughts!) However, after moving out of the house, and having a slow year this year, we may move the business back into the house. It would cut our bills in half. It is something we will be looking into over the next month or so.

Paganism in the news

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CNN had a good article about Paganism on the Internet yesterday. It was nice to see such an even handed article. Yesterday of course was Halloween, and like many, we celebrated with our family and the rest of the little goblins in town. I dressed up for work.I had two wee Viking lads visit me and demand candy else they’d raid my basket of sweets.

Of course I gave in and deposited candy in their sacks. 🙂

Dan and I will be having a more traditional celebration on November 7th, which is the cross quarter day. This site is great for marking your calendar. This next two weeks will be busy. Election day today, Samhain, my first school board meeting, my birthday, a trip to Denver for a State Youth Council meeting and Dan has two days of work lighting the high school play. Wheeee!

Oh, and it is suppose to snow again tonight. We had our first real snow storm and we got about 14 inches. It was a wet sloppy snow, and the moisture was much appreciated.

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