Category: General (Page 63 of 64)

First, a shout out to our nieces Lilly and Caitlin. Both graduated from colleges in the last 2 weeks. Caitlin was the student speaker at her graduation, and we watched that event on streaming video. Caitlin (AKA: Cat) did an excellent job. Congratulations and Good Luck to both young ladies.

Lilly and Caitlin’s mom, Becky, deserves a tribute. A single Mom, Becky put her two daughters through college and upgraded her job skills at the same time. Not an easy task. Way to go, Becky!

Weekends are generally busy around our place during good weather. We get out to run the dogs, do chores around the yard, and do routine maintenance.

We started this weekend by cleaning the gutters.

Jerry got out the “big” ladder and cleaned out all the leaves, seed pods, and “stuff” that had clogged the downspouts. Between the garage and house he repeated this routine 4 times.

Another project for this year is to repaint parts of the house and garage. We had painted the place shortly after we bought it in 2006, but some of the trim, in particular, was getting a bit shabby. Jerry started paining the west end trim on the garage and the walk-up ramp leading to our deck.

Pam generally paints the trim around the windows, but Jer does the prep work, scraping and wire-brushing.

This is what the place looked like when we bought it:

This is what it looked like when we finished painting:

We did get other chores completed: weed-wacking, mowing, and planting some more flowers. It was a busy couple of days! Still, we had time to sit on the deck, run the dogs, and do our grocery shopping.

The lilacs are blooming, the iris are just about ready to pop, and the white lilac we planted on Mother’s Day (Pam’s gift from Jer) has new growth coming up from the base, so it looks like it will do OK.  Our tree peonies are  in bloom, or at least 2 of the 3 plants have blossoms on them. Weather is still unsettled, as we had temps well below normal (but above freezing) last week.

The next month will be very busy, starting with Jer’s trip to Wisconsin later this week, followed by a visit from Jer’s sister, Kitt. Jer next heads off to California for a motorcycle rally during the 2nd week of June, followed by another rally in Colorado – he is the co-sponsor – in Durango over the 4th of July weekend. We have been identifying potential land parcels to look at, and hope to get over to the Divide area, west of Colorado Springs, to look at some of them. We will be puppy-sitting Mr. Biggs for a week in June as well.

Last bit of good news…we have heard that Tabitha has managed to get her last foster puppy adopted. That makes 17 puppies adopted this spring! Now that’s an accomplishment.

Late-braking news…we learned late last night that Pam’s Aunt Angela passed away. Angela was 90, and had been living in her own place in Oxnard, California. We are hoping to get more information from her daughters,  Joan and Barbara, in the next couple of days.

That about wraps it for this post. Since Jer will be on the road quite a bit this week and next, the next post may be more than a week away. Thanks for looking in on us.

Thanks to everyone who posted a comment or e-mailed us about our “Colorado Dream” land search. Its nice to know you are interested enough to respond! I’ve created a new search category (see Categories at the right side of the page) called Land Hunt. Use the category feature to follow posts on a given topic, rather than looking at all posts. Of course, right now there are only 2 land search posts! 🙂 There will be more, I’m sure.

In the mean time, life goes on. Both of us are suffering from colds, not fun. Our out-door time has been curbed by snow(!) and hard freezes. We have been trying to cover most of our plants nightly, but don’t know, yet, what survived and what didn’t. Below-freezing temperatures are forcast for the next 3 nights, with a chance of snow or rain during the days. Such un-Spring like weather is hard to take!

This weekend looks to be a “chores to do around-the-house” kind of weekend. Jer needs to change oil and filters in both cars and wash them, get the lawn weed-whacked and mowed if possible, and then there is the regular stuff like grocery shopping.

Getting groceries is a bit of a chore for us, as our favorite place, and nearest full-line store, is about 30 miles away in Grand Junction. We typically run a few errands (including Wal-world), get groceries, and get gasoline all in the same trip. Getting gasoline consists of fillling up the car, and normally filling up Jer’s extra gas cans. On a bad day we purchase upwards of 30 – 34 gallons of fuel. The car that doesn’t make it to the gas station gets fueled from the gas cans. Since our local station is generally 25 – 40 cents per gallon higher than “in town” we can save arouund $8 – $15 per week  by getting fuel in Grand Junction. Jer says his using the gas cans is his form of “couponing”.

Thats about it for this entry. Thanks for checking in!

I added a video clip of Blondie and Bru (our dogs) playing tug-of-war to the Dogs page. Felicity had directed me to a service called Cincopa that makes generating code for galleries, slide shows, and playing video clips much easier than it had been. The tug-of-war video clip and the slide show on my XS 11 page are the result of using the Cincopa service. I get a kick out of seeing them work, and will be incorporating more of the same in the future.

I’ve made a few other minor changes to several of the pages, including getting the background image to load faster. Other changes include centering the navigation links on both the tops and bottom of each page, and some general clean-up work. I’m beginning to understand HTML a little better!

This is what we woke up to this morning:

Forecast was for “A chance of snow.” It will probably melt by this evening.

Just when I thought spring was here I saw our forecast for the next 7 days:

Even though its only March, spring is arriving. Pasque flowers are blooming in a neighbor’s lawn.

I even rode my motorcycle to work this past Friday. Still cool in the mornings – near freezing – but the afternoons are great, with temps in the 60’s. Pam started doing some yard work, and our tulips and irises are poking up. Nice to see the yard turning green.

I expect more snow before spring is really here, but this interlude is certainly nice!

Our old refrigerator was working, but we had taken to taping the door closed, as the cats had a habit of trying to pull the door open. In addition, the handles were always coming loose. Time to change it out.

Now, new refrigerators are expensive. Also, Pam wanted it in black. Off to Craig’s List to see what was available in a used unit.

Hark! A listing in a town we drive past to go to work. Black refrigerator, in good condition. Even had the dimensions listed, and it would fit our opening. So, I replied. Yes, unit was still available.

Turns out the listing was from a co-worker. You know when you’ve been to long in the same place when this happens.

Anyway, I had to take the doors off the refrigerator to get it out of my co-worker’s house, but did get it home and back into service. It works well, and no tape needed to hold the doors (Its a side-by-side) closed. Ah, the small pleasures of life!