Pueblo | My Blog

-23degrees is COLD!!!

Posted on December 9, 2009 by

After a week of snowy cold weather where I thought it couldn’t get colder, it did. BRRRRR!!!! I’m sitting between the fire and the heater and I’m still cold. Next summer, we WILL do insulation! Oh, and on top of everything else, the pipes are frozen. Argh…..

Only good (?) thing is that it is just Morgan and I tonight. Dan is up in Pueblo for a Colorado Workforce conference. Three days of central heat and lots of running water. Damn.

Let’s see… since Thanksgiving,… what has happened? Hm…. Oh. snow. Lots of it. Last Thursday, we had our friend Curtis down from Buena Vista. Of course it snowed. However, we had a good time. Lots of funny CW McCall music including Four Wheel Cowboy. In it is a stanza that says…

Well, Texaco’s open in Trindad
I didn’t stop for gas but I wished I had
‘Cause I could use some
They’s a bunch a’ wild women in Walsenburg
They all make love like a buffalo herd
I wish I knew one

ROFLOL!!!!!!

He might come back down on the 17th if the weather isn’t too terrible. We want to run around Pueblo. 🙂 You know, lure of the big city… movies, bookstores, food. 🙂 He is a ham radio operator, which makes Dan pleased. They chic-chat away.

I have Knit-Wits tomorrow. That should be fun. I enjoy my knitting time with the ladies. Dan gets home Friday and we have the Christmas train again Friday and Saturday night.

Saturday we also have a holiday party with Sangre De Cristo Volunteers for Change. Not sure if we will make that for more than an hour, but we will see. We also have to start digging up the water pipe to re-insulate it if the weather is warm enough. Oh, and one other thing. We have to repair my car. It is still in pieces due to the super cold weather. sigh….

I am looking forward to warmer weather. You know, something in the 40’s! 😛

There are days…

Posted on April 25, 2009 by

Life flows. You get into habits. Or, you get into bad habits. Comfy habits. Then things change. The job, lifestyle, something. That Cosmic Clue X 4 swings your way. You try to organize. You try to get life in order so that things just work. Anything to avoid that whiffling noise followed by the resounding crrrrrrack up side the head.

Well, Dan and I have been hearing that whiffle bat headeing our way. We are both still out of work. Not for lack of trying, but just circumstance. On my part, there must have been a ton of unemployed secretaries out there because every job I have tried for I have gotten the “nice letter”. sigh. Dan’s computer job in Springs turned out to be a wash. A scam. The company has a habit of courting techs, having them do some “try-out” work and then dumps them under the guise that “things just don’t really work out. The company gets the work done and no one gets paid. Dan was So Very Unhappy about that. At this point, we are probably going for the jobs at Safeway or 7-11, etc. yuck.

Meanwhile, on an upbeat note, we had another meeting with Debora Hood. She is a busiiness solutions consultant that we met at the BBB Power Breakfasts. Very neat lady. She has been helping us figure out how to set up LoboSavvy. (coming soon to your computers…. LoboSavvy.com… The Place to go to for Comouter Tech Support for your business or home.)

So, back to getting organized. All last week, everywhere I turned, I was running into articles about cleaning up, organizing, getting your life in line. You name it, the stuff kept popping up. Even in my fortune cookie!!! So, I took the hint and decided that it was time to get our asses in gear.

Do you know how HARD it is to convince someone who is normally very organized that he needs to get organized? Gads!!! However, I had a captive audience yesterday. In our desire to get home Thursday night, we forgot to pick up dog food. Normally, I would just have grabbed any old dog food. However, we have these two dogs that just don’t do well on the low protein stuff. So, it was off to Pueblo for dog food. While we were driving, I brought the subject up. We got a little bit of extra time to talk about it because the car decided to have a snit fit. So, as we sat on the side of the road waiting for it to cool off, we talked about how we need to get organized. Business wise and personally.I think the personal side will be harder than the business.

This means of course that we are starting today. Yarggggggghhh….. I know that I am just as bad, especially about sleeping in, but oh gods the alarm went off early on a Saturday. Plus, this week will not be a typical week as we have my parents to deal with and construction work on the house. Such fun. Closets and drywall and mud oh my!!!

Greenhouses, Gardens and Gagliano’s

Posted on April 21, 2009 by

It’s been busy this week. Granted, when isn’t it lately?

Dan made it to Colorado Springs safely and did his thing with the Computer Virus people. I worked on my computer and enjoyed the peace and quiet. Saturday we were suppose to have a garden meeting in Gardner. Howver, between the snow, cold and everything else, it got canceled. No big deal, I just went back to working on my computer and ignoring the world.

Erin came by around 3pm. He wanted to talk and finally got around to telling me that I will be a grandma again in December. This is #7. Gads. Dan got home around 4pm and we all talked for a while. John brought me some stuff too and I finally got to work on my computer.

Sunday the CSU extension office had their greenhouse workshop with Cord and Penn Parmenter. Dan and Matt when to it while I worked in the Community Garden sponsored by the Sangre de Christo Volunteers for Change. There were four of us working on the community bed. We shoveled dirt, alpaca manure and more dirt into the 4x30ft bed. I decided where I wanted my bed too. 🙂 Matt and Dan were still involved with the workshop, so I ran some errands before I picked them up. Once they were done, we dropped Matt off and ran up to Colorado City for some groceries at the Valley Market. Little, but good buys on stuff, especially the meat department. As we were walking around, we saw the candles we normally put on the altar. They had yellow and blue ones. I asked Dan what he wanted. “Just yellow. Don’t need any for protection… we have shotguns…” Which made us giggle and then invent a new “You must be a Red Neck Pagan if….”

***Bad Taste Warning***

You must be a Red Neck Pagan if you have no use for Blue protection candles, because that’s what shotguns are for!

*** Now to return you to the more “serious” blog***

Monday after I took munchkin Morgan to Badito, John and I went to Pueblo for the household shopping. First stop, Gagliano’s, this little Italian deli that my mom and dad showed me. Oh my….. Lick the walls droolable. In fact, I told John if he drooled, he’d have to sit outside. He almost didn’t make it.

We got sausages, olives, cheese, coffee, artichokes and bread. Best part is that I get to go there again in the morning with my mom and Dan. Wheeeee!

Afterwards we went to Romero’s Cafe for lunch. This is a fantastic little place. Robert Romero is a chile cook off winner and my parent’s friend. Good food!! Had avocado and pork burritos.

Then it was off to do the shopping. Sam’s Club, Vitamin Cottage and Walmart. Nothing exciting, but necessary groceries for the starving Huerfano’s. We got lots of greens for Beth which made her happy. However, the stuff out of Gagliano’s sent her flying too.

Today I was suppose to get all sorts of stuff done. However, I think that I went out sleepwalking last night. Went to bed early, but oh it was rough waking up. Felt like I’ve been asleep all day. Yawn….. I did take a nap, but.. other than a few errands and collecting info for the history articles for the Journal, I’ve gotten bloody sod all done.

Think I’ll go cook dinner.

Power Breakfasts and Snowflakes

Posted on April 15, 2009 by

If I had to characterize the last ten days it would snow, sun, snow, power breakfasts and snow. It has snowed almost every other day. Some of it wet and slushy, others of it freezing cold and icy shards. Then the next day it would be 65 degrees! Gads!!! On Easter Sunday, we woke to snow falling. In fact, it snowed for 12-13 hours. And yes, it was gone the next day.

I had the grandpuppy over to play. He weighs about 20 pounds now.

Spike and Blanca on the couchKids in the kitchen

On Thursday, we went up to Pueblo and attended the BBB Power Breakfast. We got to see a different business and see a friend we hadn’t seen in a few months. Debora Hood. We had a great time talking to her and Zella and then we met Debora again at Barnes & Noble where we talked for nearly 3 hours. It was great. We talked business, kids, and employers.

Saturday and Suday we tried to do the stay at home and relax thing. Didn’t work too well. Lots of running around.

Monday, we re-arranged the office area again. I cooked a big breakfast for Dan, Matt and I. Moving the furniture totally confused the dogs. Also ran to Pueblo for dog food.

Yesterday, we picked up little Morgan and went to Pizza Hut for dinner. She had one of those book-it coupons.

Today we took my mom to Pueblo so she could do her shopping. Dad is still having trouble with muscle spasms, so he didn’t want to drive. She picked us up at 8:30am and off we went. It was a really good day, and we finished it off by eating lunch at Romeros. Yummmm!

After we got home, Dan went off to pick up little Morgan and I puttered around on my computer. Erin, Morgan and Logan came by to visit. Logan ate enough gingersnaps to stuff a small ursine.

They left, I made dinner and Erin showed back up to talk to Dan. As he got ready to leave, we saw the deer! They are half a block away!!

We figure that this is the same herd we saw yesterday up at the high school. So Cool! Not more than 15 minutes later, they were on the front lawn, causing the dogs to go nuts. It was too dark for our cameras to get photos. Drat!

La Vida Pueblo

Posted on April 4, 2009 by

What a week. I think that I spent most of it in Pueblo. Not on purpose, but every time I turned around, we were heading up the road.

Tuesday after Dan got stuff done in town, mainly resigning from the Chamber of Commerce board, we headed to Pueblo. He had people to meet dealing with Pre-paid legal. We had lunch at Ruby Buffet and I went to Hobby Lobby. I found some cool yarn. Then we had to go over to the hotel where the Pre-Paid Legal meeting was. Found out that we had a few minutes to spare, so we headed over to Barnes and Nobel instead. I bought a book on Open Office. A sort of difinitive “how to” book. Then it was off to the meeting. Lots of “feel good” sales talk and lots of “go team go” stuff. Tolerable as Dan is starting to do the whole PPL stuff. We got home around midnight and headed straight to bed because we had a 7am meeting in Pueblo West.

5am came too damn early. However, the traffic at HWY 50 at 6:45am was more than we could cope with and so we missed the meeting. Had a nice breakfast and then went to Sam’s Club for tires. My poor little car needed new wheels to go vroooomm! Started home and then turned around on a hunch that Dan had. We went to see our favourite hippes down at the 29th St. garage. It is this huge car junk yard and the men who run it look like the Greatful Dead band members. Not that we’d ever say that to their faces. However, they are so sweet and so cool at at the same time. We asked them if they had a gas tank for my neon. They said yes. So, we asked them to fix mine. We went for a walk to see what other parts were available for my car. When we got back, the taller hippy asked if we wanted the tank replaced or just fixed. He had found the real problem!!! Not that we could have seen it without the car being on a lift. Dan and I took about 30 seconds to tell him to fix it. Wheee! 45 minutes and $75 later, my gas leak was fixed. We were happy!

We got home, took a nap and woke up to SNOW!!! A good 5 inches.

Thursday, we were suppose to get lots of stuff done that we hadn’t the rest of the week. Daniel came over with Spike, the puppy and wanted us to take him to Pueblo to buy a truck. Now, we knew that he couldn’t afford a truck nor had the credit. There was no telling him that though. So, we took care of the dogs and headed to Pueblo again. Daniel fell in love with a truck that was not in the best of mechanical shape. Pretty on the outside, but that is about it. He got mad at us for pointing out the obvious. However, after looking lots of other places, we went back and let him try to finance it. He has no credit history, and therefore needed a cosigner. None of us could do it. Just not enough credit. So, he was peeved, upset etc. However, there is no way he’d have listened to us tell him this. He had to learn the hard way.

We took him to dinner at Ruby Buffet, and let him look at all the pretty Chinese waitresses. Then he went clothes shopping. My Gods that boy has expensive tastes. However, he does dress nicely. We got home late again.

Friday, up early as Dan had to leave for Colorado Springs and a job interview. I helped him get ready and cut his hair. Oh, and trimmed up the beard too. Sent him out the door and then went to Pueblo with John to do the grocery shopping. We did all the regular stuff, and I got a new pair of clunk around shoes as my tennies had died. Oh! I also found a pair of high heels that didn’t make me feel like a poodle walking on two legs or in fear of breaking my ankles!!! I bought them because I will need a pair of heels come the Library Opening. Flat heeled penny loafers just don’t cut it with an evening dress. John got a new pair of dress pants and a silk shirt too. We got home fairly early, but then again, I had to get up early to go see to the dogs at 520.

7am came really early. I showered and then headed over to 520. Let the dogs out, fed them and then started to clean house. They had shredded the sheep, so there was stuffing all over. I swept, vacuumed and mopped. Finished just in time to head out for our afternoon.

Cold, quiet and queesy

Posted on March 30, 2009 by

Today was one of those typical Colorado weather days. Wait five minutes and the weather will change. We’ve had snow, sun and wind in various combinations all day. Oh, and Cold! My fingers nearly froze trying to get my resume ready this morning. I applied for a secretarial job out in La Veta today. Took Pauline with me so that we could catch up on each other’s lives. Turned into a nice girl’s day out.

We went to lunch out at the Rambler, and then went to a couple of shops. One of them being Collection Corners. Lots of antiques. I was so good. Looked and didn’t buy anything! I dropped her off around 5pm and came home. Dan had a meeting to go to and I decided to just curl up with my cup of mint tea and the computer. My lunch didn’t set very well. uggghh….

Sunday Dan and I took Blanca and Brandy to Pueblo and Petsmart. We needed to get her a body harness as Brandy keeps escaping the yard. We figured that fitting one would be better than just guessing. So, off we went. Blanca was very good. In fact, she was better than I thought she’d be. Brandy was good, but she yammered ala coyote at the other dogs and scared some of them. I teased Dan that there was a language barrier. Dog vs Coyote. Maybe I wasn’t so far off.

However, the girls had a good time.

So far, I have three resumes out. One to the local hospital, one to La Veta high school and one out to a gentleman wanting data entry work done. Now for the wait. sigh…..

I think I’ll go to bed.

I’ve got a new Grand….

Posted on February 26, 2009 by

Puppy. I know you thought I was going to say baby, but Bryan and Katie’s baby isn’t due until June. However, Daniel got an early birthday present. An 8 week old purebreed pitbull.

Daniel called and said that he wanted to show me something. I said ok, and that I was at 520. The basement had flooded at work after the city crew put a water meter in yesterday. Not sure what failed, but the basement was FULL of water. The city crew started pumping water, San Isabel turned off the electricity and then the city turned off the water and gas as soon as they could. Meanwhile, I realized I couldn’t do any work and took a day off using up some of my comp time. Wheeee….

So, Dan and I waited. Dan said that Daniel had a new dog. I said, nah, it couldn’t be. Twenty minutes later, Daniel got to the house. He walked in with his coat all curled up and all I could think was oh gods! What now? Dan gave me that “I told you so!” look. Daniel opened his coat and set this little wrinkley 8 week old puppy on the bed. I tried so hard not to think it was cute. Really. I did! sigh…..

He doesn’t have a name yet. I’m lobbying for Buster.

Of course the minute I picked him up, he went to sleep. Dan teasing me about Nana’s magic lap…

Daniel wanted to go get him a collar. He’d already had his shots and weighs a whole 5 pounds, 1 ounce. So, cradling my new grandpuppy, we headed off to Safeway. No luck. Dan suggested that we go to Petsmart in Pueblo. None of us had to be anywhere soon, so off we went.

Divot, my car decided to have lots of issues. It took us forever to get to Pueblo. We had lunch at Taco Bell, and then headed to Petsmart. We found a collar, toys, a book and a magazine on pit bulls for Daniel and a new water bowl for our two dogs. Blanca is constantly knocking the one we have over and I am tired of wet floors.

We then went to the Mall and Daniel bought Brianna a prezzie. A necklace and matching earrings. He even got a Wedgewood box to put them in. Very pretty! After that, we headed back to Taco Bell for dinner. Daniel’s request.

We drove home and then got to deal with jealous dogs when we got home. They could smell the puppy all over us, but couldn’t figure out where I had hidden it. LOL!

laptops, groundhogs and conspiracies

Posted on February 8, 2009 by

It has been forever since I wrote last. Why? Well… the backlight on my laptop died. It took Dan over a week to have the time to fix it. I was just glad that he had the spare parts! Having a Panasonic Toughbook CF 50 can make it a little difficult to find parts at times.

Then there was the ALA conference. John and Beth left January 23rd. That same day, we went up to Pueblo to get a few groceries and we ate dinner at the Village Inn. I just thought I had food poisoning. Oh no… I had some hellish gastro-intestinal thingy. 4am… up to the bathroom. Felt horrid. Crawled in bed, and got up nearly every 30 minutes. Ugh….. Still felt bad when Dan checked on me at 9am. He went off to do some errands. I threw up. Oh gods! Now, I hate to throw up. In fact, I don’t think I’ve done so in the last 9-10 years. However, I more than made up for it on Saturday morning. ughhhh… Crawled back in bed, and I think I finally surfaced Sunday afternoon.

Managed Monday at work. Barely. Felt ok, unless I ate. Gads. Oh, and Dan came down with it too. This wouldn’t have been such an issue, but we had the Groundhog’s Breakfast with the Chamber on Sunday. So, we were trying our best to get healthy. Saturday, we felt pretty good. Had to head to Pueblo to get a few things for the breakfast. While we were there, we tried the new chinese buffet, Ruby Buffet. Very good! Lovely atmosphere too. The waitresses were very people oriented. It was lovely food too. Dan was in heaven because they had sushi with unagi (smoked eel).

Sunday morning, we were up at dawn to get to the Golf Course and start the food for the breakfast. After all the stupid hassles during the week over this event, I was just glad it was underway. Dan, Chris and Bill cooked while I did prep work. I think I scrambled 40 dozen eggs. My parents came, along with about 121 other people. We served from 9am to 1pm. An all you can eat breakfast of scrambled eggs, bacon, sausage, pancakes, coffee, tea and orange juice. It went really well.

As much as I wanted to collapse, we did’t get the chance. Why? Well, because this was the meeting week from hell. One or two meetings every day. Some of it was about Ordinance 982, the Business license law the City of Walsenburg is trying to put through. Another one was about the garden workshop we are having next week.

Yesterday was suppose to be a take it easy day. We did for the most part. Ran to Pueblo to get parts for a job next week. Today I was suppose to go to Pueblo with John. He didn’t feel good, so Dan and I went. Just got home and now I get to go unpack groceries. Wheeee…..

Just another manic wee-eek!

Posted on January 17, 2009 by

Wish it was Sunday…. oh wait… tomorrow is Sunday. The days have boiled past. Now I could really go for a nice hot soak in a tub, a lovely dinner, watch a bit of a movie and then crawl in bed.

Saturday, I went shopping with Jolene. A girl’s day out! Wheeeee!!!! I got a few new sweaters, undies and a skirt. We had dinner at the China Recipe, a decent restaurant in Pueblo. Yummmm…

Sunday, I did grocery shopping with Dan. Not a lot to pick up, but it seemed to take much longer than necessary. Hmm…. maybe it was because we had Morgan with us. teehee….. She needed new shoes, and I refused to buy them without her trying them on. Fussy feet. We went to Chile’s for dinner and had to tease her because she has become a “veggiesaurus”. Best part was her trying to flirt with the waiter. He was late 20’s, and she’s 12.

I started Monday with taking the girls, Brandy and Blanca to the vet. My mom gave me a little bit of money and after paying off some bills, I decided to get them fixed. Dan did a deal with the local vet, and so we got two dogs fixed for the price of one and the repair of a printer. Wheeeee!

Of course, it snowed that day. Lots of it. The roads were slick, and the WorkForce people didn’t make it up from Trinidad. So, I did bits of their job as well as my own. Plus, this week, Dan has been helping me out trying to get the office in better shape. Since he is now the treasurer for the Chamber, he wanted a place for his computer to park when he has work to do. The dogs were real unhappy with the snow when we picked them up. Don’t blame them really.

Plus, we’ve had to pick Morgan up from school this week. Jolene normally takes her to school and has been bringing her home. However, Jolene’s schedule changed. sigh… So, we’ve been driving up to Gardner to pick up the girl after basketball practice.

Thursday, we met with City Council Finance committee and got the ordinance fairly well straightened out. Talk about a sigh of relief!

Friday I went to a meeting with the Colorado State University Extension office about gardening! It was a good meeting and I think that this will be a good project for the city and the county. Then, I got paid!!!! Wheeeee!!! We had to take a big box of brochures to Pueblo’s CF&I Steel Mill Museum, so we did a bit of shopping as well. Dan and I got home late because we stopped into Barnes and Nobel. I got a book and a bookmark. It says “You say WICKED” like it’s a Bad Thing!” and it has the witch from the Wizard of Oz on it. 🙂 We saw our friend Shirley there too. Caught her up on the fun from Monday. She works for Workforce.

Today we got up at the crack of dawn to take Morgan to her basketball tourney in Gardner at 8am…. yawwwwwn! HWY 69 is an East-West road, and coming back (eastward) at 7:15am this morning was horrid. We pulled over for 15 minutes to let the Sun get off the highway. Dan literally couldn’t see to drive.

After playing with the dogs for a bit, we came down to the chamber. Why? Because Dan was meeting John from the finance committee to get the treasurer’s books. Whee….. I put in 3 hours extra time. ah well… Plus played on the computer.

We headed to Gardner around 1:30pm to go watch the girls play in the finals. Gardner took second. The Craven team was really nasty. They played a foul offensive game. grrr… One of the girls got hurt. Liz. She’s a real sweetie, and smacked the begeezus out of her kneecap. Dan, Cathy (the coach) and I gave her ice packs and cuddles while the game finished. It is a bad sprain, but should be ok.

Of course, my car acted up on the way home and so it took us nearly 30 minutes to go 1 mile at one point. We were rolling downhill and couldn’t make the turn to the house so we glided to the Chamber parking lot. Dan worked on the books a bit and I decided to post for the first time in over a week. Gads! I want to go home now!

Where’s my popcorn and movie!?!?!?!?!

A cup of Mouse a day

Posted on December 27, 2008 by

Yesterday, I went to feed the dogs, and had to reach way down in the bag because we are almost out of food. I thought that there was a chunk of lint in the bag and so dropped the cup and started to tear the bag down a bit so that I could get the lint. I didn’t want it mixing in with the food because Blanca “wolfs” her food and if it fell in the bowl, she’d eat it.

So, I tore the bag, reached in for the cup and tried to scoop out the lint.

It wasn’t lint.

It was a mouse. I came up with a scoop of dog food with a mouse on top. I laughed, the mouse freaked and jumped off the cup. Brandy went for the mouse and Blanca just stared at the whole circus as Brandy chased the mouse. The mouse escaped, and then I fed the dogs.

Dan laughed so hard he almost fell off his chair when I told him what the ruckus was about.

The rest of the day was rather calm. We watched a few movies and then went to bed early. It was a real contrast from the 25th.

We did a wiring job on the 25th. Another contractor did the original job. He messed it up so bad that we had to go in and repair it. It should have taken 4 hours. Instead, it took 8 long hours. I was pissed. Dan was really pissed. This isn’t the first time we’ve had to fix this guys work. grrrrrrr!!!!

We did the shopping in Pueblo today. Very windy. Granted, it has been windy all week! I swear we went sideways a mile for every 5 miles we drove. It took us nearly 7 hours to do the shopping. Brrrrr!!! Dan and I were frozen by the time we got home.