Summer continues

June 29, 2006

Ariel and her parents are on vacation until next
Friday. They are going to Dinosaur National
Monument among other places. Martha is
hoping they'll stay in one area for a couple of days.

We had book club on Wednesday at Julie's
house and I thought the discussion was much
better than usual. We spent almost the entire
evening discussing the book as well as others.
The book was "Water for Elephants" by Sara
Gruen. It is currently on the best seller list
and it is clear why. It is a story of an elderly
man (93) and his life in the circus during the
depression. It's quite a remarkable story,
well written and special for me because it took
me back to my childhood. We, my parents and
brother, would get up very early the day the
circus was coming to town and go and watch it
come in. The best part for me was watching the
elephants work. They are amazing animals and
with barely a nudge they knew their jobs and would
get the big top up in record time. It was also fun to
see the circus people having breakfast in the food
tent and try and pick out who was who. Of course,
some of them were obvious. The animal cages usually
were the last to get unloaded and I don't remember
being terribly impressed by that, for some reason.

This week I had my annual physical. I feel good
and he could find nothing wrong. I am scheduled for
cataract surgery July 24th. It'll be good to get that done.
My right eye has gotten pretty bad.

Robert continues work on the solar project. He is
designing the racks to hold the solar panels using a
Google software package called Sketch-up. It's really
a helpful piece of software although the learning curve,
I assume is substantial. But he has worked a way at it
this week and seems to have mastered the intricacies of it.

I have written Jared Polis, Susan Polis and Steve
Schultz's son who is running for Mark Udall's
2nd Congressional seat, and offered to host a
pancake breakfast or ice cream social at the
schoolhouse. He has just come out and announced
he is Gay. That may make it tougher for him to
win, but since he is running in Boulder maybe
it'll not be a problem. I hope he makes it.

Udall is running for the Senate. I hope he makes it, too.