Looking Good

Wow, a real light IN the tunnel.

Sam and Robert are working in the barn and making good
progress. Before the flood Robert had begun to sort through
the stuff in the barn to try and clear it out. He didn't
want to leave a godawful mess for his kids to clean up. The
flood has hurried the process quite a bit.

Vernon has ALL the mud out of the fish pond and stacked
sandbags along the path to divert any further flooding into
the creek instead of into the pond. The inlet and outlets
are still filled with mud, but he has made great progress.
We and he use the pond as irrigation water when the dry
weather comes.

Sunshine had rain yesterday so Ingram Gulch flooded again.

Ecos is here again today and placing the Jersey barriers
behind the barn. They have brought up more sandbags so
there will be plenty of bags in addition to the barriers.
It should let us rest a little easier when the next flood
comes. The experts tell us we may have floods for the next
3 to 5 years. But, perhaps the trauma will not be so bad.
We'll no better than to leave anything we want, on the barn
floor!

Yesterday, I retrieved a disc that was hanging on a branch
near the pool. It was the one Robert said that he had left
in the boom box because both the boom box and CD were
covered with mud. The disc was certainly muddy, but I
decided to see how bad it was. I hosed it off and brought
it in. Using CD/DVR cleaner, I cleaned it and voila..it
plays beautifully. Nary a twitch nor twitter..clean sound.
Amazing! I had similar success with an LP that was muddy. I
used the same CD/DVR cleaner on it and it sounded fine. I
then copied it to a CD and the CD is clear and beautiful.
The LP is from the Isaac Stern 60th Anniversary Celebration
at the Lincoln Center in or around November 1985. I'm glad
to have retrieved it.

Steve, the window washer came today. The windows sparkle!


On the Longmont front, Kerry is working on the Landscaping and
Mike is sanding and staining the deck. Things are moving on
nicely on that front. I shall be anxious to see it when all
is complete. The house newly painted, deck stained and yard
put in shape! Already for us to move into....NO we're not
planning to do that any time soon despite fire, lightning
and floods.

One day at a time

Things are moving along.

Ecos, the company that has the contract from the County to
help with the clean up is here today. They have removed all
the sandbags, heaven help us if we have a flood today, and
are clearing out the debris from the sides of the barn. They
are putting the dirt on top of the pile and the rocks to the
side of the pile. They assure us they'll remove the dirt
Thursday or Friday.

Yesterday, Sam whom Robert has hired to work for us
twice a week, cleaned the rest of the mud out from the
freezer room and helped rebuild the shelf, under the
north window, which had collapsed. Between Marti,
Carl and Sam an impossible task has been completed.
Erin worked hard, too. She worked in the main part of
the barn. Connie would have shoveled, too, but I put her
to work on other things. Thank you, thank you everyone!

In the meantime, through all of this, I have been trying to
preserve our property in Longmont. The deck has been
power washed and will be stained tomorrow. The
Landscapers are coming today. They will be removing an
old fence, adding a trellis for the grapevine to climb over
the wheel chair ramp, fertilizing the lawn, re-seeding
where necessary and adding some plantings and grass
stop, and mulch to the front. It has also recently been
painted. On top of all that the plumbing seems to have
fallen apart. We had one plumber do emergency repairs,
but have called another to complete the job and get the
plumbing up to standard.

It always seems like things happen all at once. Fortunately,
I can deal with the rental property by hiring people while
Robert is dealing with the flood.

All in all things are looking up and we are grateful that we
are hail and hearty. It's just a nuisance that we so easily tire.

Working on reclaiming my LP collection.

I made a start at organizing my LPs. I have about 100 LPs, but not all of them were in the barn! Of the ones in the barn I have cleaned two and nee of those cleaned play beautifully; one is so scratchy that I don't think it is salvageable. A Dave Brubeck record plays beautifully on one side; the other side is hopeless. Carl says they have players now that don't touch the disks, but use a laser to read the music. If they aren't too expensive that may be in the future. I'll have to see how many I have to discard. I just discarded the "Messiah" by the German Gramophone (I don't have them in front of me and my German isn't good enough to try spelling what is on the label. Anyway, those records were covered in mud. I saw no way they could be reclaimed.

I'm currently listening to an old Herb Alpert disc. Probably, no one remembers him?? This is "The Lonely Bull" by Herb Alpert and the Tijuana Brass.

Thunderstorms have a 30% chance of occurring here this afternoon. We have cleared as much as we can to be prepared, but our Jersey Barriers are yet to be placed. We'll hope it is a minor storm.