Rick's Ramblings

Saturday, September 12, 2009

Saturday Update

Wow! Has it really be 4 days since I posted last? How time flies when you are either busy or doing nothing—and I’m both.

I contacted a guy in Fort Collins that does beetle kill cleanup. He cuts all the dead and affected trees and hauls them away. The bugs go with them and that slows them down. He is going to come up on Sunday to take a look around and I’ll get a quote from him. We may not do anything right away, but all these dead trees need to be dealt with some day. By hauling them away, we could slow the pace of the infestation. Our only other hope is some sustained periods of temperatures at or below -30 degrees! That would kill the beetles, but is also a very unlikely scenario. It would be nice to preserve a few of our evergreens.

Ron came up on Friday and measured the bedroom windows so they can be replaced. The seal in the double-pane windows has broken and they are so fogged up we can’t see outside. The windows will be replaced under warranty, but we’ll have to pay Ron’s labor to replace them. While here we talked about our hopes to add on a bedroom, a mudroom and a garage and when that seems feasible, we’ll have him bid on doing the work. He is the guy who built the cabin, and we like his work.

We took a trip in to Laramie on Wednesday (or, was it Thursday?). We did some shopping for the food we’d need over the next few days and did a few other chores too like dumping our trash, dropping of our recyclable items, changing the oil in the truck, getting gas for the generator at the cabin, etc. It is too bad that even a short trip into town seems to eat up the whole day.

A neighbor, David, came over and introduced himself. He is an X-HP/Agilent guy like me and we had a lot in common including our overseas work assignments. He came to dinner on Friday night, too and helped us eat the wonderful Swiss Onion Tart with a salad and some home made cookies. I made Sylvie’s breakfast bread, and we had that for breakfast this morning. Yum.

Bella is in season and I think near the peak. We have to keep poor Alex crated all the time except when we take him out for walks. I feel sorry for him, but we can’t have him breeding Bella! We won’t be able to travel until she is refusing him because it is just impossible to deal with them in a motel room. So, we’ll see what happens. She should be fading next week. We take her down to the pond every day, where she is happy wading shoulder-deep into the water. This helps some because it washes her off and she smells like pond mud instead of bitch-in-heat.

A dear friend drove up from Fort Collins today, and we had lunch with her. Lynne made a wonderful layered salad yesterday. It is meant to sit for 24 hours before eating it and it was delicious.

The day started sunny and still, but turned cloudy and windy. Around noon we even had a few snow flurries! The sun came out again mid-day, but now it is cloudy again. The temperature is around 40 degrees and we’ve had a low, slow fire going in the wood stove all day to ward off the cold. Tomorrow is supposed to be a repeat of today, then it warms back up on Monday.

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