Happy Valentine’s Day! We’re having a quiet Friday here. It’s relatively temperate, starting at a chilly 23°F, but with a forecast high of 55°. 

Beginning of decorating

We started decorating the house for the Christmas holiday today. The kitties have been paying close attention to all the changes. Here’s Rufus exploring the tree skirt. 

Bean checking out the nutcrackers

Rufus getting in the way in the kitchen

Rufus in an ornament box

Christmas tree with lights in the breakfast nook

Christmas tree closeup - needles and lights

Christmas tree in the front yard with lights and snow

Happy Thanksgiving!

Wishing you a Happy Thanksgiving 2024! I took “the girls” out to a Thanksgiving buffet, at the Garden Terrace Café, in the Inverness Hotel, about 20 minutes from here. We had a wonderful Thanksgiving dinner! And no cleanup! No leftovers, either...

Freaky Friday

I hope you have a safe and fun Friday the 13th! It’s the first Friday the 13th of 2024, seen as one of the most unlucky days of the calendar year, a “spooky” reputation it earned centuries ago, although I had a positive experience on this day during my childhood, so I've always thought of it as a lucky day for me. This year will see the date occur twice, with the next one in December.

Wishing everyone a happy and safe Independence Day! Please treat your pets especially well today, as many have a rough time with the legal and illegal fireworks. 

Our kitties got through the first round of fireworks ok… but after several days of illegal fireworks in nearby neighborhoods, they were over it, and getting skittish and on alert.

Finally caught it

Well… crap. A few days after we got back from Yuma and San Diego, Jennefer got sick with a sore throat, and a few days after that, I also got sick. We tested positive for COVID-19 about that time. Likely from the unmasked guy with obvious symptoms in the same row as us on the plane. 

We pretty much lost our holiday to this virus. I’ve had the worst of it, even relapsed a few days after Christmas, and am still feeling pretty lousy. It doesn’t feel life-threatening; more like a bad flu. Hoping for some relief soon. 

Happy Thanksgiving

Wishing everyone a safe and thankful and fulfilling and Happy Thanksgiving day! 

 

Darn it, we forgot (yet again) to listen to the KBCO broadcast of Alice’s Restaurant all the way through. So much for our wannabe Thanksgiving tradition. We did manage to catch the last few minutes of it… but Jennefer says "that doesn’t count."

We tried something a little different this year… we lost track of the turkey (haha - referring to the image above), so we made an afternoon reservation for Thanksgiving dinner at Inverness! 

As the time to leave approached, Jennefer was having a bad day, and didn't feel like eating, so the three of us were sad to go to dinner without her.

Halloween at the Gardens

Chilling and snowy 19°F Sunday evening outing to see “Magic of the Jack O’Lanterns” at Hudson Gardens. Lots of fun lighted displays to enjoy - some animated, some smoke effects, many different areas with special themes. Good thing we dressed warmly!

COVID-19 exposure

Sep 12: And now, to top off the day, I just learned that I was exposed to COVID-19 by a friend with “cold symptoms.” We were both wearing masks, and he’d rolled open his car window, so there’s some chance that those teeny little germs didn’t make it through both our masks. We’ll see…

Update Wednesday 9/20 evening: Day 8 since my/our COVID-19 exposure, and still no fever or other symptoms. Every once in awhile, we feel flushed, but we never have an unusually warm temperature. We’re calling that bullet well and truly dodged.

Kayaking in Maine

I loved kayaking in Maine with my brother-in-law and my cousin’s husband, from our vacation spot, out and around in Winnegance Bay. 

Happy New Year 2023

I woke up in front of the TV, with Jennefer already in bed (after I fell asleep), and The West Wing running back-to-back, to loud booms outside… groggily wondering what’s going on… then I really woke up, and realized… oh, yeah, people are out there celebrating with their illegal fireworks, and it’s time to wish you a very Happy New Year in 2023! 

Merry Christmas!

Merry Christmas!

 Quiet day for us. Jennefer still isn’t feeling all that well. She was a little better, so we went for a walk today, and the streets were all still icy from the snow on Tuesday. The sidewalks were pretty navigable though…

 We enjoyed a pretty sunset a little while ago, while we were talking to my sister's family in Atascadero. 

 Now we're just relaxing on the couch and watching an episode of the Netflix series The Crown, about Queen Elizabeth II...

Record low!

The weather folks say that Denver Airport hit -24°F last night, the lowest temperature in 32 years! I think that’s kind of a funny record, since the airport hasn’t been there that long - it was first commissioned in 1995, but “whatever,” as Dad would say. We’re glad to have a relatively new, fully operational and (comparatively) very efficient furnace, and woke up to a comfortable morning, with this beautiful view out the bedroom window. It’s somewhat over-exposed, but I really liked it that way, since that’s about how it looked to my sleepy eyes.

We received a few inches of snow overnight, which made the drive to pick up breakfast prettier. We went out to shovel the driveway before leaving, and I had on warm boots, thick socks, flannel lined jeans, three upper layers, and a hat. And I still froze my ears and face off... and decided to quit before finishing, for fear of them literally freezing off… with earmuffs and a scarf a short trip into the house away, I had no excuse, but still didn’t wear them, which felt kind of dumb, after the fact. 

Somebody is having fun decorating their yard, at a house that we see on our way to pick up breakfast.

Pretty expanse of snow-covered grass at Little’s Creek Park, on our way home from picking up breakfast.

The local birds are enjoying the bird feeders even more in the cold weather. We’ve seen House Finches, Chickadees, Nuthatches, Woodpeckers, Flickers, and Dark-eyed Juncos. 

Here’s a House Finch inbound to the tire swing bird feeder, with what looks like a bank of frozen ice crystals in the air over the foothills.

The local squirrels have been somewhat miffed, ever since we turned off the hospitality switch for them, after they chewed through my Christmas lights in multiple places. Sorry guys, you’re free to do what you do, but I’m also free to decide I don’t like that.

Lights and sunset

I caught this nice sunset picture, with my Christmas lights on the deck. I'm glad that the squirrels have focused on the first string of lights, and left the second string alone. The first one happens to run past the bird feeders, and the deck box where we used to put out the bowls of seeds for the squirrels and larger birds. I had the lights daisy-chained, but after they chewed out several sections in the first string, I dragged the power cord around to the second string, and so far, we still have some pretty lights out there in the evenings.

Wire-chewing villians

Happy Sunday morning! We woke up to a gorgeous 29° morning, with a few hiccups already. Jennefer first noticed that our squirrel “friends” had completely chewed out a bulb on the Christmas lights that I had just put up on the deck railing last night. So we only got one good night out of those lights. 

 

When we went to pick up breakfast, I came out with the bag, and we realized they didn’t give us our green chili sauce, so I went back in to ask for it, feeling very proud of ourselves, that we caught that error. After we got home, we realized they gave us a Denver omelette, instead of our usual green chili omelette, which was a deal-breaker, since Jennefer doesn’t eat pork. So we called them, and drove back to pick up “the right” omelette. Come to find out, I must have ordered the wrong omelette through their app, since the original receipt says Denver omelette on it. Oops! I called them to apologize, and to offer to pay for the replacement omelet, but they’re such good folks, they wouldn’t have it. 

 

After we got home again, Jennefer caught the squirrels in the act of chewing on the wire again, and noticed they had cut out yet another bulb. Argh. I’m pretty angry at them right now, but… without a common language, it’s hard to tell them, it’s OK to eat the seeds we put out for them, but not the wires. We may end up without Christmas lights in the back this year… very disappointing... at least they’ve only chewed on the one string closest to the bird feeders, so far. 

 

Update: We found yet another Christmas light bulb and section of wire chewed out, when we got back from being out and about this afternoon… that makes four bulbs completely chewed out… those squirrels are voracious! 

 

I've read that the squirrels can mistake the bulbs for large nuts or acorns, and be proud of themselves, for getting themselves such a prize. In this case, they must have realized the bulbs weren't what they expected, so they left them behind. Apparently, squirrel teeth grow very fast, and they have a need to gnaw on everything around them, so their teeth don't outgrown their mouth. I've also read that manufactures have been mixing soy into wire insulation in recent years, to make it more environmentally friendly and recyclable, and an undesired side effect, is that rodents love the taste of the wires. 

 

Car owners, take note - they also love the wire harnesses inside your engine compartment. I was a lucky one, but there were people at work, who had significant damage done to their car wiring, while their cars were parked in the covered garage. My coworker had a strange warning light illuminate, on his trip home one night, and found to his chagrin, that he needed to splice a few dozen wires in his engine compartment, which had been chewed through completely. In some places, entire sections over a foot long were chewed through at both ends, and the entire wire had fallen to the ground. He had quite the challenge, repairing all that overnight.