Good Morning, Snowshine

Samhain                                                                Thanksgiving Moon

Gertie nov 20Flocked lodgepoles fill a south facing window. Black Mountain has become visible once again, lost in a whiteout all afternoon yesterday. The air is clear and cold, 8 degrees. Winter on Shadow Mountain.

More loft work over this weekend. Getting closer and closer to a finished space.

Kate and I had planned to go to services at Beth Evergree’n last night, a reggae shabbat, but snow closed I-70 from 470 to Silverthorne and made a mess of the mountain roads. So, we stayed home, concentrating instead on the chick flick series we’re watching now, Murdoch. Yes, Detective Murdoch and Dr. Ogden finally get back together. A relief.

Thanksgiving is coming with grandkids, their parents, and Barb, Jen’s mom. We’ve decided on a prime rib roast this year. Sugar cream pie, that sugar and fat dense Hoosier dessert, is on the menu, too. Some signs point to a big holiday storm. We’ll see.

Holiseason continues.

 

Friday Matters

Samhain                                                                      Thanksgiving Moon

20151119_134532Installation mid-point inspection today for solar panels. A steady snow came down when the Jefferson County inspector climbed on our roof with Nathan. What he said I don’t know since I was asleep at the time, but I’m sure we passed. Fortunately the remainder of the installation will take place on Monday, forecast as clear.

Kate and I drove to Home Depot and picked up various items, most relevant to the season. Fuel stabilizer for the snow blower fuel? Yes. Chains for the snow blower? Nope. Lighted, moving deer for a holiday inflection? Yes. Trufuel for the chainsaw? Yes. Clothing hook for the loft bathroom? A nice one from the pine cone cabin shop. Material for decorating the pine cone wreaths we bought at the Conifer High School Christmas boutique? Kate got those yesterday at Target. Lighted fox made from grapevine? Also from Target yesterday. Tire rack for the Michelin Latitudes now awaiting the end of snow? Nope. A normal sweep for this and that.

We had a mid-morning break at Lucile’s, another fine New Orleans food place. There’s a Luciles in Denver, too, but this one is closer to us. Chicory coffee cafe au lait and beignets. Delightful.

The snow has been coming down since sometime around 11:00 and it’s now almost three. This is wet, but not bulky. Pretty though.

 

 

Despair and Fear

Samhain                                                                    Thanksgiving Moon

Despair and fear crown the pronouncements of GOP candidates about ISIS. Watch mosques. Don’t let in any refugees. Make all Muslims wear an identifying marker. Yes, it’s easy from the left to see these notions as simply stupid, xenophobic canards, but they mean more than that.

At least I think they do. When I listen, I hear people who fear for the stability of their lives. People whose current situation seems so fragile that difference could make it shatter. The economy has consistently displaced the working class, leaving with them no job options that can support a family.

Veterans come home from fighting our misadventures in the Middle East, veterans whose personal origins are most likely working class or even lower on the socioeconomic scale, and find no work. The hawks who wanted them to stave off the coming tide of this group or that group want more money for defense but not for the defenders, especially the defenders now out in the work world after their military duty is over.

The flag wavers, the stars and bars loyalists, signal not so much love of country, but fear of missed or fading opportunity. We’ve created a unique, even Alice down the rabbit hole world where those whose lives are being ruined by the oligarchic 1% pin the blame on people fleeing the very same radical terrorists they want to eliminate.

It’s easy for a Ben Carson or a Donald Trump or a Ted Cruz to ignite the flame of discontent among these Americans. The lesson for those of us not taken in by these poseurs is that the anguish in this country is real. Life in the U.S. has been tainted by decades of war, by trickle up economics, by blindness to the history of this almost 100% immigrant nation.

These dark currents in our common life will not find resolution soon. We (the left) need to convince the Trump, Carson, Cruz voters that we do in fact care as much about them as we do about the Syrian refugees and the struggles of just folks in the Middle East. This sounds like a subtle difference, but it’s not. There is no choice, either us or them. No, we must use that very word, we, to include Americans and victims of terrorists worldwide. Life does not present us with only one option or the other. We can choose both.

And we must.

 

A Hand Out

Samhain                                                                      Thanksgiving Moon

20151106_174457That green cast? Gone. Kate’s left hand is free, free, free. She celebrated with a trip to Target and Nono’s, the New Orleans restaurant in Littleton. She’s happy; I’m happy. Over the next few weeks she’ll work on strengthening her thumb, but she’s already got good mobility with it. This quilter/handy woman needs her hands to be in full operating condition. A big step forward yesterday.

 

Heal

Samhain                                                                             Thanksgiving Moon

I’m finally back into a mostly regular rhythm with my workouts. Feels good. I haven’t added back in the resistance work I was doing, the P90X exercises, but I’ll get back to at least some of them soon. Dana’s got me doing a suite of upper body exercises, some tailored exactly for the cervical arthritis, some for the tendinitis. They occupy one full workout every other day. I’ll be able to do leg and back work plus the minimal p.t. exercises on the other days.

Snowfall

Samhain                                                                             Thanksgiving Moon

After our 15 inch adventure on Monday, I wondered how much of our seasonal total we’d already had. Since we’d had 8 inches not long before that, 23 inches. I thought, maybe half? Boy was I off. I looked up Conifer’s average annual snowfall-140 inches! Don’t know how I missed that in all the research I did about Conifer, but I did. That’s a lot of snow.

That Cub Cadet will turn out to have been a very good purchase. It’s more sturdy and capable than the old Simplicity we sold at a garage sale two or three years ago.  Looks like snow removal will become a skill set even with the solar snow shovel.

 

Solar Project Continues

Samhain                                                                 Thanksgiving Moon

20151119_134516Nathan and Luke have been on the roof all day. First, they used small pieces of plywood, maybe two feet by one foot, to scrape snow off the roof. They had to do this because the rails now in place make it impossible to use a broom to sweep snow down the roof’s pitch. What a chore.

Now they’re installing the micro-inverters which will allow segregation of panels and their production. This is cold, lonely work, much like roofing in the winter. But, they seem to enjoy it, cheerful and committed to solar energy generation.

20151119_134630Dana, the physical therapist, said her brother-in-law, an electrician, liked the plot of land she and her husband want to purchase. Excited, he said, “I can rig you up with solar panels and a battery that lasts for four days! How many times in Colorado do you go more than 4 days with no sun? You’d be off the grid.” An interesting point and I want to find out about the battery.

Solar is the ultimate sort of disaggregation, moving away from centralization by going directly to the source, no mediation save the solar panels. Being off grid, of course, only makes sense as long as there is a grid. The more folks move off, the less size grids will have.

 

 

I’d Kill For A Nobel Peace Prize

Samhain                                                                          Thanksgiving Moon

I’ve seen some of these before. But many, not.

The Quotes of Steven Wright:
1 – I’d kill for a Nobel Peace Prize.
2 – Borrow money from pessimists — they don’t expect it back.
3 – Half the people you know are below average.
4 – 99% of lawyers give the rest a bad name.
5 – 82.7% of all statistics are made up on the spot.
6 – A conscience is what hurts when all your other parts feel so good.
7 – A clear conscience is usually the sign of a bad memory.
8 – If you want the rainbow, you got to put up with the rain.
9 – All those who believe in psycho kinesis, raise my hand.
10 – The early bird may get the worm, but the second mouse gets the cheese.
11 – I almost had a psychic girlfriend, ….. But she left me before we met.
12 – OK, so what’s the speed of dark?
13 – How do you tell when you’re out of invisible ink?
14 – If everything seems to be going well, you have obviously overlooked something.
15 – Depression is merely anger without enthusiasm.
16 – When everything is coming your way, you’re in the wrong lane.
17 – Ambition is a poor excuse for not having enough sense to be lazy.
18 – Hard work pays off in the future; laziness pays off now.
19 – I intend to live forever … So far, so good.
20 – If Barbie is so popular, why do you have to buy her friends?
21 – Eagles may soar, but weasels don’t get sucked into jet engines.
22 – What happens if you get scared half to death twice?
23 – My mechanic told me, “I couldn’t repair your brakes, so I made your horn louder.”
24 – Why do psychics have to ask you for your name
25 – If at first you don’t succeed, destroy all evidence that you tried.
26 – A conclusion is the place where you got tired of thinking.
27 – Experience is something you don’t get until just after you need it.
28 – The hardness of the butter is proportional to the softness of the bread.
29 – To steal ideas from one person is plagiarism; to steal from many is research.
30 – The problem with the gene pool is that there is no lifeguard.
31 – The sooner you fall behind, the more time you’ll have to catch up.
32 – The colder the x-ray table, the more of your body is required to be on it.
33 – Everyone has a photographic memory; some just don’t have film.
34 – If at first you don’t succeed, skydiving is not for you.
35 – If your car could travel at the speed of light, would your headlights work?