Yearly Archives: 2012

Family, Travel

Jon, Jen, Ruth and Gabe

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Winter                   First Moon of the New Year

Sunny and 54 here in Denver today.  Heading out to the zoo with grandson Gabe and daughter-in-law Jen.

Ruth and Jon drove into the mountains to A-basin at 5:30 this morning.  Ruth has an all day ski lesson while Jon will try to find runs not crowded with newbies.  Not much snow here so the existing runs have become clogged.

Jon moved out here ten years ago and has taken full advantage of the location.  He skis as often as he can, which means weekly at least in most cases.  He climbs mountains and skies down rugged terrain.

He’s no youngster, either, at 43. He’s stayed in good shape and manages his chronic illnesses with grace.  He has diabetes, rheumatoid arthritis and addison’s disease.  Any one of these would give most folks an excuse to sit in the easy chair, but not Jon.

He’s an artist, a teacher, a father, an athlete and a home renovator. Pretty impressive.

General

Jon the Renovator

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Winter                   First Moon of the New Year

In Denver.  Kate and I got here around 3 pm, got a car, got on Hwy 70 and that was as far as we got for awhile.  An accident well ahead of us.

Very bright here and warm.

Jon’s done an amazing amount of work on their new kitchen, dining room, two new baths, a new bedroom.  He bought an old bowling alley, cut in half, took a to a shop and had it planed and sanded, put edging on it and has mounted it as their kitchen work spaces.  It’s gorgeous.

He also took pillars and framing timbers of old growth Douglas fir, sawed 115 years ago, glued it together and made shelves and more counter tops.  It’s beautiful.

He worked for a while with a Minneapolis renovator and learned a lot.  He’s tiling, putting in waterproofing, laying bathroom floors.  Quite a project considering he’s also teaching full time.

Granddaughter Ruth and grandson Gabe came running up to get their hugs.  Sollie, the dog, stayed with us this summer and he came up to greet us, too.  Family.

Dogs, Family, Travel

Travel Weary

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Winter                                    First Moon of the New Year

We’re off to Denver this afternoon.  Though I want to see the grandkids and the new addition to Jon and Jen’s house, I confess I’m travel weary and not looking forward to the airplane.  Also, I’ve just begun to ease into a new rhythm, working on my three major projects, doing the short burst training and going away for a week means I’ll have to reestablish all those things when we get back.

Once we’re in the air, on the ground and tucked into our hotel room, I’ll feel different, excited to be there, I know.  But right now.  Not so much.

The dogs are away at the kennel and the house has an empty, hollow feel.  Their energy, tussle and pull, keeps three year old inquisitiveness as part of our daily life.  I like it and miss it.

Though.  When we got to the kennel yesterday, Rigel, one of our big girls, right at 100 pounds, shook off the handler who had a leash ready for her and ran away from the truck.  Straight to the door into the kennel.  She likes the place.

Talk to you later from the mile high city.

 

Family, Friends, Weather +Climate

Playing Cards

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Winter                                 First Moon of the Winter Solstice

Oh.  The card gods had it in for me tonight.  And about time, too.  I got cards that were almost good enough, but not quite.  And I kept playing them.  And playing them.  And then some more.  I had a great time.  It’s fun playing with these guys, win or lose.

On the way back from the game I felt great.  Realized at this point that this feeling lifts me up and the serious, more work ahead feeling after political meetings, not so much, and I want more lift me up in my life.

Driving back there were snow flurries, the temperature was either 17–the truckometer, 12–the sign on 35W just after 694 going north or 28–HOM furniture, which always runs hot.  Around 13 by my educated ears.  Windy, too.  Downright chilly.

Felt great.

Off to Denver in the AM.  The Great Western Stock Show.  Grandkids.  Time with my honey.

Faith and Spirituality, Great Work, Travel

The Frigate Bird

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Winter                                     First Moon of the New Year

The Frigate Bird

This photo comes from the series on the Panama Canal, but I connected with these birds in Rio.

Abundant all along the way these graceful animals love the liminal zone where land and ocean meet.

The Ipanema Plaza, our hotel in Rio, had 17 floors with a coffee shop, swimming pool and lounge area open to the air.  From that vantage point I watched these graceful birds sail the thermals created by the meeting of ocean air and the breezes coming off the land.  They swing up and down with casual, almost lazy movement of their wings.  Maybe once.  Twice.  Then the soaring continues.

Ipanema beach shines white in the mid-day sun and these birds flew in oval shaped patterns, watching the beach, the streets and whatever else can be seen from their height.  It was balletic, an aerial gavotte.  A composer could, I’m sure, develop a line of music from their regularity, floating up, then down, curving in a pass over the beach, then circling back, watching, always watching.

It was the purity of their line, the effortlessness of their flight, its calm, unhurried grace.  That’s what took my heart.

 

 

Retirement

Ummm…. Money

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Winter                         First Moon of the Winter Solstice

Inflation is at 3.39%.  How about that?  Just thought you might like to know.

Only reason I know is that we adjust the draw from our IRA every January and we have to take the inflation rate into account when we do that.  How do we take it into account?  I don’t remember, so I just e-mailed Ruth to find out her formula.

And winter.  Sorta back.  I loved the guy in the Tribune this day who identified SDA:  Seasonal Disappointment Disorder.  That’s me.  A bad case.

Still squeezing that budget to make it fit our income.  This shoe is sooo tight.  We have plenty of money, we just have too many expenses.  Ha.

I’m definitely on the downswing with posts here.  More than made up for though by posts to ancientoftrails.com.  Check’em out if you enjoy other peoples vacation photos.

Media, Travel, Weather +Climate

A Puzzle

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Winter                                 First Moon of the New Year

Here’s a puzzle.  Tuesday night is trash night here in Kadlec Estates so I trundled out both the regular trash and the recycling.

The moon, at about 3/4’s full, was there, the lesser lamp, but the greater in aesthetic impact; Orion had risen in the eastern sky, now his usual upright self after his disturbing Southern Hemisphere headstand; and, there, on the western patch of lawn, the portion that abuts the driveway and goes down to the street, were regular bare patches, about 6-8 inches wide, then a much broader band of icy snow, a pattern that repeated several times as the yard slopes up toward the garage.

What could cause such regularity?  Baffles me.

Soon I’ll have several more chunks of photographs posted about the cruise at www.ancientoftrails.tumblr.com .  Going through them brought back a lot of the trip, its diverse geography, flora and fauna.  This trip will take a long time to settle in.  My eventual goal is to post my ancientrails entries in tandem with the photographs, but that may not happen for months.

Writing

A Dry Gulch

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Winter                                  First Moon of the New Year

I’m running through a dry spell here.  Might relate to my new work schedule since it involves a lot of writing.  Could be just a time when little of note (to me) is happening inside my head.  Don’t know.

I did set aside two hours last night and edited, then organized photographs from Panama and Manta, Ecuador.  I plan to do the same tonight.  I want to get as many as possible up before we go to Denver.

Other than that.  Need to hit the Ovid.

Writing

At Work

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Winter                              First Moon of the New Year

Beginning to settle in more and more to my new routine.  I’m focused on three primary projects:  novel, translating Ovid and writing reimagining faith essays.  I have a way of giving each one time during the week and, as my other obligations drop away, I find it easier to stay on track.

Kate and I visited our financial consultant today.  An important visit, preliminary to Kate’s full retirement.  No more part time.  Some number crunching still to go, but we’re aiming at getting her out as soon as possible.

 

Family, Travel

A Third of the World Between Sibs

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Winter(?)                                  First Moon of the New Year

Both sibs have sent photographs recently.  Mary has taken several pictures of elephants in a series placed around Singapore.  They’re part of a fund-raiser to help Southeast Asian elephants.

Mary lives within short walking distance of the Botanical Gardens of Singapore, a delightful collection of Southeast Asian plants placed on large grounds.  In fact, she used to work there when her university had its campus on the grounds.

The fund-raiser reminded me of the Charles Schultz cartoon characters St. Paul had up a few years back.

Singapore is an unusual place, a city-state like days of yore, think Athens, Sparta, Corinth, Rome, Venice.  It refers to itself as the air-conditioned nation.  Mary refers to it as Asia-lite.  I enjoyed my visit there a great deal.

Mark, on the other hand, is in a much less humid environment, Saudi Arabia.  He is in his fourth month teaching English in Ha’il, a former caravan serai on the pilgrimage route to Mecca.  It sits in the northern third of the Arabian Peninsula, near the center and has some elevation, about 3,000 feet.

He has settled in there, having taken trips into the desert three times over the last couple of months.  The first time he went dune bashing in motorized vehicles. The second time he  visited a camel breeding operation run by a student, black camels, and in his most recent foray wandered the desert where this photography was taken.

That puts me in the heart of the North American continent, Mary at the tip end of the Malaysian Peninsula, near Indonesia and Mark in the sands of storied Arabia.  That must be about a third of the way around the world to each sibling.