This and that

Monday was a free day; I worked on pictures.

Tuesday evening we went to Cafe Scientifique in Boulder.
The speaker was John Bally, a professor at CU and he is
an astronomer. He is an excellent speaker and I assume
taking classes from him would really be fun. He touched
on the changing of theories such as the Universe is
expanding vs the universe is not; that Einstein added
a constant to his equation in his theory of relativity,
because with what was known at the time his theory appeared
to need it; now it is known that his theory is correct and
the constant is not needed. And so forth. Sometimes
the speakers at these things are pretty awful, but he
was one of the best. After the talk we went to the
Gondolier with the Mosburgs for dinner. The Gondolier
has moved again and is trying to be upscale. I was
disappointed. I had eggplant parmigiana and it was
awful! Robert had lasagna and was happy. But, I
was left with the feeling that I really didn't want
to go back again.

Wednesday afternoon, 5 PM, we went to Boulder
County Democrat Headquarters for Caucus training.
Jared was there and spoke briefly. He is such
a good speaker. Then a couple of his aides
presided over the Caucus training and they didn't
do a very good job. I'm glad I have been to
Caucuses before or I would have had no idea what
they were talking about. I'm sure of the sixty
people there many were totally confused. I have
signed up to be Precinct Captain which means I'll
be running our Caucus which is great. I'm hoping
to pull many votes for Jared.

Julie had her bi-lateral lumpectomies on Wednesday.
She came through OK and Carey, her daughter, is
staying with her. They both stayed at the hospital
overnight.

Thursday I spent most of the day in Wheat Ridge at
Dr. Caskey's office with Susan. She was getting her
third chemo treatment. She is now half way though
the series. The affects of the first one were
pretty awful. She was very sick, but since then
the cocktail has been adjusted such that she is
still very tired, but not nauseated.

We talked with the other women for a bit and then I
went next door to Wendy's and brought back lunch for
us; I offered to get stuff for the three others, but
they declined. When I got back we ate and talked
while the others read or talked on the phone.

Julie called early in the morning, before I had left
to ask me to go to her house and check that her water
pipes hadn't frozen. It had been really cold. She
had left them dripping and all was fine.

On Friday I went to Boulder to have coffee with Jo
at 9:00. We walked over to the Boulder Book Store
coffee shop. It was bitter cold. We didn't waste
much time getting there. (Not as cold as Minneapolis
though!) We had a great time talking about everything
from politics to books to things on the Cape and so
on. We returned to her house shortly after 11:00.
I then ran errands. Finally, the bird seed store
had some bird seed. My poor birds have been without
any sun flower seeds for almost a month. I've had
safflower seeds, but they don't like those as well.
After I picked up the seeds I did grocery shopping
at King Soopers. I figured it was cold enough I
could even get ice cream. I also got tangerines,
but I wrapped them up carefully before I left
them in the car.

I then went to do my stint at the Carnegie History
Library. I had previously scanned about 100 glass
plates of pictures of Salina. Robert has since
fixed them up and down a fantastic job. Some of
the plates were so damaged it was hard to tell
what was on them, but with PhotoShop he was able
to rescue all of them. I had them with me on a
thumb disc. I transferred them to the library
disc and them posted them in the virtual photo
library on-line.

Marti has received another 1000 glass plate slides
from the Denver Library. They were all the slides
from the Boulder photographer, Sturtevant (not sure
of the spelling at this point). The Denver library
had made prints of them all, but Marti says the
prints are really poor quality. We'll probably
re-scan them and then ask Robert to fix them up, too.
Scanning is slow. It takes about 5 minutes for
each scan. Marti is trying to design some sort
of template so the scanner can be doing something
else at the same time. I told her that I wasn't
as good at time-sharing as I used to be, sad to
say. For me, it is probably just fine, if I
read a book while I scan. We'll see what she
decides and designs.

She is amazing. It wasn't long ago that she
had no computer and was adamant that she
didn't want one. Robert and I eventually gave
her one and helped her get going on it. She
then proceeded to become a pro with Microsoft
Word; even set up her book so it could be
published from her discs! She had to change
them from Word to PDF files and that was
a challenge since the Adobe software to
transcribe from Word to PDF walked all over
other software! But she got it done.

Now she is writing scripts on the computer to
make boring processes less so. I'm really
proud of her!

The big news of the week is that Robyn has
a job! She'll be the Physical Plant Supervisor
for the Rocky Mountain Biological Laboratory.
See their website and take the tour. Anyway,
the laboratory is in Gothic, Colorado which
is near Crested Butte. In the winter the
access to it is by skis.

She is being flown to Gunnison where she'll
rent a car and drive to Crested Butte. She
and her new boss will ski into the lab where
she'll meet the skeleton staff whom maintain
the facility through the winter. I think
she said that the director of the laboratory
actually lives in Gothic where he has an
in-holding in the National Forest and built
a house there in 1973. She'll meet him, too.

Needless to say she is really jazzed. If you
look at the Web site you'll see why. It is
her kind of place! I'm jazzed, too. She'll
be that much closer to us and it'll be a great
place to visit her in the summer. She is
stopping here for a few days on her way back
home. We're anxious to hear all about everything.

The job starts May 1 and goes through October.
She has a three-year commitment to them. She
has the opportunity to stay through the winter
as an hourly employee plus room and board. She
thinks she might do that some winter. It is a
great place for skiing and/or snow shoeing.

Echo Park Ski Area

Robert has been getting antsy; we've been home too long. He
needs a regular "travel fix," but we have nothing scheduled.
However, he found a TV clip on the Internet telling of a new
ski area, primarily for snow boards. It looked like a fun
place to be and to watch young people on their boards.

We headed there this morning leaving here about ten. The
sun was shining and it promised to be a lovely day. Ms
Garmin had the route plotted for us. We took off in the
CrownV for our adventure. We took route US 6 up Clear Creek
Canyon which turned out to be a mistake, but as it turned
out a rather pleasant one. By going 6 we overshot our exit
so Ms Garmin had no problem with that. In stead of going up
Squaw Pass Road we went up Little River Road. Little River
Road up the towards the Squaw Pass Road is much like our
Fourmile Canyon road, only it faces north and was very snow
packed. In most places it was sanded, but not everywhere.
The CrownV is good in snow though so we had no problem. The
scenery was gorgeous and a fantastic wind cloud was huddled
over the divide, perhaps we'll blow tonight. It was slow, but
we finally found out way to Squaw Pass and on to the Echo
Park (near Echo Lake on Mount Evans) Ski area.

Despite it being a lovely day, although cold, there were
very few people there. Viewing the clip snow boarding
looked easy and everyone always seemed to stay on their feet.
Watching in real life, real time was very different. Most
of the time it looked like more than half were sitting down!
No one seemed to get hurt,however despite the very hard
packed slope and they did seem to be having a good time.

We watched for a while until we got pretty cold and then we
went inside. The "inside" is pretty sparse. A "cafeteria"
in one building where you pick out what you want from a
cooler and then cook it yourself in one of the six
microwaves. In the cafe across the way you have a choice of
a corn dog or pizza. In the cafe they had tables and
stools, in the cafeteria they had chairs and tables. We
ended up getting a burrito and sharing it. It was OK, not
great.

Since I wrote last to this blog, not too much has happened.
Ariel was here Monday and Tuesday. We went to the pool on
Tuesday, but I didn't swim. Since then I have done some
cleaning and some cooking; installed my Christmas present
from the Buehnes ( a webcam and software enabling me to call
them and to see each other as we talk.) Carl also has a
similar set up. Connie and I were able to talk OK, but Carl
and I had some difficulties which remain to be worked out.

Robert went to movie Friday night, at the nomads, called "No
End in Sight." About the mess in Iraq and in our political
world in general. I opted out; it sounded too depressing.