Category: Life

The high today, briefly accomplished, was 18 F. Before I moved to the state, I shared the common misconception that Colorado is very cold during the winter. However, at least here along the Front Range, daytime highs of forty and fifty are not uncommon in the winter, and it seems really cold right now.

The horses seemed resigned to it. I looked out this morning and they were all standing in the light snow, with an inch deep layer on their backs. Their fur coats provide sufficient insulation to keep the snow from melting from their body heat. The first winter we had horses here at home it used to bother me that they were not using their nice, new (and expensive) barn when it snowed, but over the years I found out that you can’t pry them out of the barn when it is blizzarding or raining, so I suppose they have their own set of criteria of miserable weather.

Dudley drove me crazy this morning by requesting to go outside, and then scratching the door to be let inside again, because, you know, it’s like COLD outside. By mid-afternoon, he had evidently decided that it was not going to improve and I no longer felt like a doorman for a dog. Damn: he just scratched again.

An Australia Shepherd provides evidence one is never too old in my sister’s weblog Slice of Life.

CarHenge: as Jack said, what else is there to do in Nebraska?

Yesterday, Jack and I played Carcassonne, a game by the author of Settlers of Catan which involves laying tiles. The game setup and play is easy, except for the end scoring of the placement of farmers. This review of the game discusses the issue.

For the past three years, a wood stove has been taking up an inordinate amount of room in our mudroom. Before that time, it had lived in our living room, where it was the backup source of heat for our house. Since a free standing wood stove that one never uses takes up a large amount of room, we had it uninstalled after complications failed to arise during the calendar change to 2000. Prior to that time, the stove worked fine: though it tended to render the living room uninhabitable due to excessive heat production.

A wood stove is not a very portable item. Despite this, I decided I would attempt to sell it at a garage sale my friend is holding this Friday. Yesterday, while I wrung my hands and kept out of the way, Jack managed to manhandle the stove onto the dolly, and moved it to the edge of the garage. On Thursday, we will load it into our stock trailer, and I will haul it to the garage sale. My friend thinks that if anyone buys the stove, it will be a good old boy with his own pickup truck and set of burly friends to manhandle it into its new home. However, since it will be in my stock trailer, I could possibly deliver it given the buyer has burly friends.

I keep wandering out to our mudroom to gloat over the newly liberated space. Anyone in Colorado Springs need a wood stove?

My trip to Albuquerque with Jack on the occasion of Bubonicon was marred by a head cold. I felt a suspicious scratchiness in my throat Thursday night, and had full bore symptoms by Friday morning. However, I had a relatively pleasant time despite the cold, though I did run out of steam by late afternoon each day.

The function space in the new hotel seemed to allow for a bigger dealer’s room as well as a larger art show. The con suite was up one level from the other rooms, and due to the way the elevators worked, it was hard to go between the con suite and the other functions. Tables, both for serving and sitting, filled the con suite room, and I found it a little too cramped. However, in total, the hotel was much nicer than the one last year. The air conditioning worked a lot better as well, which is important in New Mexico.

I enjoyed my visits to rubber stamp stores “The China Phoenix” and “The Stamper’s Pad.” However, I ran out of oomph before I got to the fabulous paper store on Nob Hill. I know I am feeling puny when I can’t find the energy to visit a good paper store.

In what has become a tradition of sorts, we listed to an audiobook by Ngaio Marsh on the trip: “Spinsters in Jeopardy.” Marsh has the facility of keeping us listening while simultaneously we critique the various reasons why we don’t think much of her plotting. In this book, there were just too many coincidences: I am willing to suspend disbelief, but not to the extent Marsh required. However, the setting was gorgeous, and there were a lot of comic bits. Most importantly, it lasted all the way to Albuquerque, and most of the way back.