rockies, weather, wisdom

A Popourri Of Random Thoughts

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The wacky weather continued here. Remember that it was snowing and we had blizzard like conditions on Friday? Well, today it was in the lower 70s and blowing. Tomorrow? The forecast is for rain turning into snow. Let’s hear it for spring time weather in the land of the Rockies! Not as bad as the below, but close!

Speaking of the Rockies, the Son and L ventured down to Arizona to watch a couple of Rockies’ spring training games (and get some sun burn going). Sounds  like they had a great time and also enjoyed a real nice photo day. Both L and the Son are somewhat rabid baseball fanatics. Me, not so much. I much prefer football, but even I can get wound up in a pennant race at the end of the season. Here’s hoping I get a chance to get wound up this year.

The downside of the lark is that they arrived back in the mountains at about 4am this morning and both had to work today. When I talked to L about noon, she was really happy that her first meeting of the day had been in a coffee shop so she could go for the 16oz latte. She needed the buzz.

Back to getting some real work done. It seems that the days are way to short to get everything done I need to. Especially when the day is warm and sunny like today so Molly and I can get some sun as we walk.

I’ll leave you with these nuggets of folk wisdom:

Time may be a great healer, but it’s a lousy beautician.


Never be afraid to try something new.
Remember, amateurs built the ark,
professionals built the Titanic.


Even if you are on the right track,
you’ll get run over if you just sit there.


In just two days, tomorrow will be yesterday.

art work, building, dogs, humor

Let Sleeping Dogs …

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I’ve been tied up with construction and permitting and planning and … for the new humane society facility, so I have missed a few bloggy sessions. In the course of some of the meetings, my collegues and enemies couldn’t resist sharing a few funnies, so now I get to return the favor to you.

First up is this classic exercise of dog naming:

Of course I thought the cartoon was hilarious – don’t you?

Then as we got down to nuts and bolts and the contest to name the facility once we finish construction, this funny made an appearance:

It explained so many things. How could I have missed it?

On the weather front, morning looks to be interesting and sloppily wet. After hitting the upper 60s the last few days, the wind is blowing from the north and it is not supposed to get above freezing tomorrow (today) and snow between 7″ and a foot.

Time to meander off to bed.

answers, caucus, politics

In Answer To …

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In answer to the question about yesterdays post – I am a Republican. It is in some senses a requirement here.  28.4% of the registered voters are Democrats, 70.4% are Republican and the remainder are split amidst the various other groups. Most rural agrarian communities like this county are strongly Republican with a smattering of Democrats. Most of the voters are like me and do not vote along party lines, but for the best candidate for the job. The office I am running for is currently held by a Democrat who is term limited. In many respects, running for county commissioner is like running for a non-partisan office. The process of getting on the ballot is different, but the party ideologies are not the focus, local issues are.

Tonight’s precinct caucus was interesting if for no other reason than the fact most offices have at least two or more candidates on the Republican side. The national and state senatorial and representative races seem to have  pulled a full scale onslaught of ideologues of all bents. The real problem is that many of them have forgotten the true test of reality – facts. Makes for interesting political speeches, but really inane debates. Likewise, there is an active pursuit of the governorship with a bit less of a loss of sight of facts.

All told, the caucus for the precinct I live in took slightly more than an hour. It would have taken less than an hour, but some of the standard speeches had to be made by party loyalists not running for office. We started by electing the precinct officers for the coming year. Then there was a straw poll for the gubernatorial candidates and the senatorial candidates, and after that it was all in selecting who the representatives to county assembly would be. Our precinct was apportioned 14 seats and we had 16 attendees, it could have been a race. Fortunately, one pair of attendees planned to be out of town, so the remainder were named as delegates to the county assembly. We then spent a little time drafting those not in attendance to be our 14 alternates. We also had to choose our dedicated delegate to the state assembly. Only three people were interested, so we elected one and named the other two as candidates for the at-large representation from the county. That was it for the official business.

In the tradition of all good precinct meetings, a couple of jokes had to be told at the start of the meeting. Although a bit stale, this warhorse was the winner:

Remember back when Ronald Reagan was President? We also had Bob Hope and Johnny Cash with us.

Now we have Obama as President and no hope and no cash!!

Time to get back to reality. I’ll leave with this to appease all the Democrats that read this blog:

drear, misc, politics

Manic Monday

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A dreary day today, especially as L departed back to the mountains this morning. Not only is Molly dog laying around looking like the world has ended, it was drear and overcast until this afternoon when the sun peaked out. I love the oddity of the weather at this time of year. Saturday was warm (60’s) and sunny, Sunday was overcast and cool (30’s). Forecast is for Thursday to hit 70 followed by snow and cold on Friday. Must be March in Colorado.

Tomorrow is precinct caucus day here. That assures entertainment for the evening as I attend my local precinct caucus meeting. The caucii (which sounds better that caucuses even if wrong) don’t have a huge impact on local office seekers like me. The caucuses feed into the county caucus which does little beyond determining ballot listing order for the primary ballot for local offices. So all the effort and dirty work and fund raising and … come up in June and July. Looks to be fun.

(For those who don’t remember, I threw my hat into the ring for the office of county commissioner a while back. It is my first foray into partisan politics. Non-partisan political offices like mayor just require the signature of 50 voters and then waiting for the election. It’s a bit different once the donkey and elephant get involved.)

Back to preparing documents for a Thursday meeting related to construction of our new facility (for my day job as executive director of the humane society). I’ll leave you with a quip I heard on during a conference call today:

Friendship is like peeing on yourself: everyone can see it, but only you get the warm feeling that it brings.

Can you tell I’ve been talking to construction contractors?

credits, misc

Variegated Topics

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It seems that whenever I do haiku on this blog, I get more comments than any other time. Maybe I should become a total comment hog and specialize entirely in bad haiku?

In any case, many of you commented on the pictures with yesterday’s haikus. To assuage your inner child as to whence they came, let me explain. I wrote the haikus first and then turned to Google Images to find pictures that illustrated what was in my mind’s eye as I wrote. I took none of the pictures. To give credit where credit is due, here they are with the information I have on their origins.

First up, this beautiful picture

came from Mr McLellan’s Sci and Bio page associated with the Nayland School in New Zealand. Photographer uncredited.

Next,

is a picture of Donner Pass, looking back towards Truckee Lake taken from Serene Musings, no photographer given.

Lastly,

is a photograph of a stream (near Death Valley, I believe) by Chris VenHaus.

Time to get some real work done. L is coming home from the mountains tomorrow early. Yippee! In honor of the even, yet another haiku:

L coming from on high
Joyous melding into one
Reunion is sweet

Things Done Right