Monthly Archives: January 2015

Colorado, GeekWorld, Weather +Climate

Sun As Snow Remover

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Winter                                                  Settling Moon

Rug down. Chair in place. Many boxes yet to open. But I’m over half done with the initial phase, the unpacking. Putting up bookshelves, then reordering my library still to come.

Colorado plates came today. I’ll put them on tomorrow.

Hunting for the box in which I put many of my usb cables, my webcam, the microphone and headset. Unfortunately no way to distinguish it from all the other boxes.

Coming from Minnesota, I didn’t believe this, but it happened today. The temperature rose and melted the snow off our driveway with no intervention by me at all. Amazing.

Meanwhile in Minnesota it’s been very cold and the flu season has taken a heavy toll, especially among the Woollies.

The painter called today and said he’d finished. This is the repainting of the Andover house. The new carpet goes in tomorrow. Then, a clean-up, staging and the house will go on the market when the weather cooperates. Exciting from our vantage point.

 

 

Aging, Colorado, Family, Feelings, Health

Yikes

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Winter                                                                            Settling Moon

Both Kate and I feel like we’re ahead of what we’d expected in terms of getting stuff liberated, sorted and placed. We’re maybe 60% unpacked in the house, somewhere between 40 and 50% in the loft and very little in the garage, which will probably wait until spring.

Had a bit of a scare last night when the dogs rushed inside ahead of us after we returned from the science fair. The dogs’ feet carried in snow which quickly melted and Kate slipped right at the door and fell. Scared me for her, with two metal hips. Fortunately, she has strong bones, no osteoporosis, and walked away with a skinned shin. Yikes.

This morning I got up and put a new indoor/outdoor rug down in the front of the door. We’ll do that at the other two entrances as well. All tile makes sense with the snowy weather here, part of the charm, but it also makes slipperiness an issue. Part of getting used to a new space, a new climate.

A light snow last night covered the driveway and our small deck. With the temps forecast into the high 40’s or low 50’s tomorrow and the next day, I’m going to see whether it will melt without shoveling. An experiment. Getting used to a new place.

Colorado, Family, GeekWorld

Fair Science

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Winter                                                  Settling Moon

We pulled into the Swigert Elementary School parking lot at around 6:25 pm, parking by coincidence just ahead of Jen, Gabe and Barb. Jen gave me a hug, said she was glad to see me. A bit of a thaw.

The science fair idea seemed tired to me. Some kids obviously put a lot of thought into their entries, others less. One of my favorites in this latter category discovered “how many licks it takes to get to the center of a Tootsie Roll Pop.” After dogged experiment, the conclusion: 360, not the 334 hypothesized.

There were more serious entries. One investigated barriers to wifi reception. Another bacteria in meat purchased at King Sooper. The most were in some organic turkey. One kid created a homemade tornado using dry ice and a small exhaust fan.

Perhaps it’s time for a new way to engage children around science projects. Not sure what it would be, but perhaps one limited to children who really wanted to put some time and thought and effort into their work. It was obvious there were kids at Swigert who could have done something more substantial and even more who couldn’t be bothered. Both strike me as ok. Just different.

Colorado, Family

A Rest More Day

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Winter                                                                   Settling Moon

Snow falls softly here among the pines, falling faster now than around 2, an hour and a half ago. Instead of borne on the west wind snow here tends to fall straight down, like snowglobe snow.

A rhythm of work harder one day, rest more the next seems to be emerging. Today was a rest more day.

My current goal here in the loft is to clear enough space to unfurl the big rug, put my chair on it, sit back and stare at Black Mountain or watch the snow. Maybe another day and I’ll be there.

An hour or so from now we’ll head into Denver, to the Stapleton area, where Ruth will stand beside her poster board explaining glucose levels in various fruits and the guesses her classmates had about them. Eight years old. Being there, present. A gift we can give and keep on giving to both Ruth and Gabe.

Colorado, Dogs, GeekWorld

Cardboard and Dogs

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Winter                                                                                        Settling Moon

One real marker of being here: driver’s license, my Colorado driver’s license, came today. A new state identifier. The license plates will follow. Then, we’ll be indistinguishable, at least at first glance, from other folks who live here.

More: boxes, opened. The ledge over the fireplace, a long one, is clear now. The small oriental is down in the living room with the coffee table on it for the first time in years. The coffee table was our television stand for the last 6 or 7. Found the amplifier and the dvd player, though playing dvds seems anachronistic. The little Roku hockey puck has replaced coaxial cable, receiving our television over a wireless connection to the internet.

Closing in, today, on freeing up space in the loft, especially around the window that overlooks Black Mountain. Working first to podcasts, then to youtube videos of the Band.

Kate takes Gertie in to the vet tomorrow. Gertie has an arthritic knee and needs pain pills to be her usual happy self. On the human medicine front we’ve located a Medicare specialist here to discuss our options. We have until February 20th to shift plans, but this is something I don’t want to do too near the deadline.

Still working on energy cranked up last month. Pack. Load. Unload. Unpack. Get this done. Get that done. As more and more gets done, I can feel relief waiting to break free. But, too, I can feel a sag, a slump coming after so much push. Time to collect myself, be non-productive, non-task focused. Not yet though. Not yet.

Colorado, Sport

Regional ldentity

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Winter                                               Settling Moon

There is no joy in Broncoville this morning for the mighty Manning has struck out. Seems familiar to me. Aging quarterback, once a legitimate star, leads team to playoffs, then has a less than starring role in a frustrating defeat. Can anyone say Favre? Or, Randall Cunningham? Or any of the other used-to-be’s who have been behind the center for the Vikings?

This, too, is a settling in issue. Local sports teams have a distinctive regional role, unifying disparate groups like stepson Jon, the Apache/Comanche/Spanish guy who helped unload our stuff and the customers at the Brook Forest Inn pub. When in a new region then, the newspaper, the jerseys worn, the conversations about sports, all reinforce outsider status. I’m not a Bronco fan, nor a Nuggets fan, or a Rockies fan.

My point here is not so much about sports because I am not much of a sports fan, though I’ve had my fling with the Vikings; rather, it’s about the nature of regional identity and its markers. I find the Western ethos of the Stock Show easier to assimilate, but that might be due to my Midwestern rural roots.

 

 

Humanities, Third Phase

An Intellectual Magpie

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Winter                                                    Settling Moon

As my books see daylight, they reveal my interests. So many interests over so long a time. Writing, art, Latin and the classics are at the core for me and still are, but history, religion, depth psychology, poetry, Asia, China and Japan in particular, the natural world, the West, environmental issues, Modernism, the Enlightenment, Romanticism and politics, are there, too.

Libraries are a Rorschach for at least the intellectual journey of their owners. And in this case it is a psychometric self-administered and evaluated as each book heads toward the shelf.

Maybe I’m an intellectual magpie collecting interesting bits of knowledge and threads of thought, then putting them in my nest all higgelty-piggelty. There is certainly that element to me.

Anyhow the nest on Shadow Mountain is still under construction.

Colorado, Family, Weather +Climate

Location Relevant Weather

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Winter                                                               Settling Moon

As Bill Schmidt said, the weather was still set to Andover, Minnesota. I changed it. The weather now reflects a personal weather station (not mine, not yet) located in my small neighborhood here on Shadow Mountain.

Jon came up and put the bed together. We’re not sleeping college anymore. Felt awful high off the floor though. Jon and I got the downstairs TV on its stand and into the cabinet area built for a T.V. The doors close over it now and it’s off the furniture pad. Jon had to get back and watch the Broncos play the Colts. I’m agnostic as to football teams for the moment.

Tuesday night is the science fair and Ruth has an exhibit that features the glucose levels of various fruits. We’ll be there. She recently tested into highly gifted (not a surprise) and Jon and Jen are considering sending her to a gifted and talented school. Good idea, from my vantage point.

More time unpacking books. Jon and I swung the treadmill around where I want it. Next is getting the tv up here and installed.

Snowing now. More snow due Tuesday.

Colorado

Three Weeks

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Winter                                                     Settling Moon

We’ve been here three weeks. Our bodies have acclimatized, though there is still more for them to do. It amazes me that this is a natural process, one borne of feedback loops. Hey, not enough oxygen? No. O.K. More hemoglobin. Also, let’s make sure we get plenty of rest. More fatigue. Good.

Settling in is like letting a compressed spring gradually loosen. All the household items packed away gradually come out. All those matters tied to a particular state get replaced: new license plates, new title, new address, new phone number. A process of subtraction, the move itself, becomes additive: a new doctor, a new grocery store, a new mechanic. At some point the additive process becomes simply life, albeit in a different physical location.

Colorado, Dogs, Family, Humanities, Third Phase

A Frenzy of Dogs

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Winter                                                 Settling Moon

Kate’s been fighting off a feeling of dis-ease. A couple of naps and a very reduced activity level seems to have her on the mend.

Vega got bit, by Kepler I think. We tried to put staples in it (yes, we happened to have some lying around in a sterile package. Doctors.), but Vega resisted. Teeth and muscle are a strong argument so we only got in two.

The bite was during a frenzy to get outside and solve some doggy territorial matter. Everybody was squirming, lunging, snapping at each other. I imagine Vega got a nip in at Kep and he repaid her. Not very significant  in the world of canines.

The book box opening proceeds, but not at a rapid pace. Unboxing them and stacking them on bookshelves is the first step. I love it, touching each one, remembering why I bought it, what I hoped to learn. That emotional response though makes doing too many at one time difficult. It’s going to take a while, perhaps longer than it took to pack them.

There is, though, no rush. There is no deadline, no race. Yet I look forward, very much, to the day when the books have found their new homes. Then my library can once again be the resource it has always been.