Odd Days: Bird Perils

I cannot drop the critter thread without a brief blog on birds.

When we first moved to CO, we learned that although we had protected ourselves from death-by-earthquake, we had traded one hazard for several others.

One of the new hazards was west nile virus (our county and our neighboring county led the state in WNV cases). Another was avian flu. And in fact, an article in the local paper advised us to call the health department if we came upon a dead bird.

Within a week of the time I read that article, I found a dead bird on our porch. Naturally I called public health, but the woman who answered the phone told me to put the bird in the garbage.

Huh?

I was indignant that she had so little regard for my (and Durf's) health, but what could I do? So I put on my HAZMAT suit and dropped the bird into a plastic bag. Then I nested that bag within 14 additional plastic bags and tossed the entire bundle in the garbage.

A few days later, Durf and I were reading the newspaper in the living room when we were both thrown from our chairs by what sounded like a sonic boom right outside the house. We dashed out onto the porch and found...yep, you guessed it...a bird. It had flown into our front window. I headed toward the garage with the intention of retrieving my HAZMAT suit when Durf asked what I was doing. I said, "Two words: Avian flu."

After he was done laughing, he said, "That bird just flew full speed into our picture window. What do you think killed it?"

"Why," I asked haughtily, "would a bird fly directly into a window unless he was impaired by some deadly disease? Duh!"

Well, over the last six years, we have learned that birds are drawn to our picture window like Florida lovebugs are drawn to windshields.

Colorado score: +1 (birds safer than earthquakes)

Dissendat.

The number up yonder is the number of visits to this blog.

Here is a photo of Mr. Snake. He was leaving at the time:

Typical atypical and tree begone.

One thing that keeps Colorado from being boring is thunderstorms. They happen almost anytime and they usually disappear quickly.

Today I was sitting in my office when I saw a lightning bolt shoot out of a clear blue sky not too far in the distance. A few minutes later the sky got dark, then it started to rain. Soon we were having one heck of a thunderstorm. The wind was blowing really hard and rain was falling in sheets.

Twila was in the kitchen and I was standing at our front window, watching the show. Suddenly our tree lifted out of the ground right in front of my eyes, then disappeared to the north. My mind was boggled.

Here is the tree in its better times:

Now it looks like this:

and this:

Never a dull moment, I guess.

I love this.

State of the T-Rex.

Now she's looking more like a helicopter. There's work to do, though. The linkages that control the pitch of the rotors have to be connected (just snap them on), and some electronics need to be installed. When that's all done there's a calibration procedure that will take a couple of hours.

I just ordered parts that weren't included in the kit: a battery, a battery charger, a receiver (receives signals from the radio), a pitch gauge (to calibrate the pitch of the rotors), and a replacement for a part I broke during assembly ($1.25). The total was $390, which is almost as much as the heli cost. I probably should have picked a cheaper hobby, like worm farming, or something.

The dark side of all this is something Twila said she was going to blog, but she didn't want to jinx me. The T-Rex took many hours to build, and it was expensive, and there is about a 90% chance that I will crash it in the first 10 minutes of flying. I'm going to get a flight simulation program so I can practice on the computer, but outside there is wind and excitement and tension, and been there, done that. OOPS, crash! And $$$$$$ flying away. Just breaking a rotor blade is $50, and they break easily.

The bright side of this is that... is that... well, it's a neat looking helicopter!

Odd Days: Moth Murderer

Jan asked how I feel about our moths. I'm so glad she asked.

We have a boatload of miller moths every year, not because I keep a bug-friendly house. No, it's because we are in their migration path. And it isn't the first time our house has been in the path of swarms of insects that are on their way somewhere else. In Dublin we sat smack dab in the middle of the ladybug migration path. I'll bet you didn't even know there was such a thing as a ladybug migration.

Now, it's true that having large quantities of ladybugs in your house is not that pleasant. They are *not* cute. And when they get stressed (like when they hear a vacuum approaching) they bleed yellow blood as some kind of weird defense. But that's about it. And then they are gone in two weeks.

The problem with the moths is that they think the house belongs to them. As soon as you sit down in the evening to read a book, they join you, flapping around the light and dive-bombing your book. They also like to hide in the folds of towels and jump out into your hair just as you reach for the towel. Oh yeah, they also like to hide in the toes of your shoes, but they don't always escape before you put your feet in. What's really annoying is that they die wherever and whenever they feel like it. You are forced to spend a significant part of your day (for a month, btw, not two weeks) vacuuming them up because if you wait for the dust-to-dust part of death, you're going to have a rancid-smelling house.

I don't like miller moths. And I'm not alone. A woman wrote an article for our local paper in which she described in gory detail the methods she has devised to murder the moths that enter her house. Durf thought she sounded sick and insane, but I'm not so sure. The water boarding torture chamber she built looks like just the ticket.

Colorado score: -1

State of the T-Rex.

Odd Days: Don't tell PETA!

When we would go running on trails in CA, we never had to worry much about rattlesnakes because other runners went berserk when they saw them. No sooner did the snake hit the dirt when a virtual telephone tree of runners sent word along the trail.

That doesn’t happen in CO. The attitude here is: If you move to CO, you should expect to see snakes. Caveat emptor and all that. And in fact, we see snakes all the time. As some of you already know (and have seen), we found this beauty in our driveway. (See video below. Ophidiophobics beware!)

Most of you know Durf as a gentle, reserved and compassionate man. But when he saw this rattlesnake in our driveway, he yelled at me to get a broom. I thought he was about to sweep the thing away, so I complied. But no. What Durf wanted to do was poke at the creature until it coiled so he could get the whole thing on video.

The video is much better with sound, but I had to convert it to a silent film because of all the screeching in the background. While Durf was poking and shooting, I was busy screaming (literally) at him to back away. Really I was beside myself and I sounded like Roseanne.

It’s not that I have a morbid fear of snakes or anything. Far from it. After all, we had snakes for pets when I was a kid. But geez. What if something had happened to Durf? Who would mow the lawn? (just kidding, sweetie)

Colorado: +1 (excitement factor)

Not even...

When Twila read the last line of my politics post she said, "You sound angry and despondent. But I guess you are." But I wasn't despondent, because I never had any hope. I was angry, but I'm much better now that I'm apolitical, and those Mitch McConnell nightmares seem to have gone away.

I never should have posted about politics, anyway, because my Golden Rule is to never discuss politics or religion. I mean, what's the point? It's possible to intelligently argue politics, I suppose, but most people are entrenched in their views. And religion? Well, "intelligent" is off the table when discussing religion. That's what "faith" means. Since I'm already dirty, though, this is my religion post.

Probably you should know that I was raised Catholic. As late as my senior year in high school I was considering becoming a priest, which shows the power of indoctrination. That year my principal, a Christian Brother whom I liked and respected, told me that I'd lose my faith if I went to a non-Catholic college. He was pushing for Manhattan or Notre Dame, but even in my fuzzy, religion-addled brain, I had to wonder why he was concerned about my being outside the Force. So I went to Hamilton and renounced Catholicism before the end of the first semester in my freshman year.

I used to have this thought: "The good news is that there is a God. The bad news is that he's dying." That was creepy, but it isn't difficult to imagine worse.

One of the other things I used to think about is Hell. It really sounds like a nasty place, worse than a cheap Indian hotel. Hopefully only the worst of the worst would go there. So I wondered, if I showed up at the Pearly Gates and St. Peter asked me whom I would send to Hell, whom I would choose. Whom would you choose?

My answer was no-one. Not terrorists, not Hitler, not Mitch McConnell, no-one. For one thing, I am in no position to judge anyone. The other thing is that an eternity of punishment is way too harsh for anything a human might do in a century on Earth. It's ridiculous. Even the United States prohibits that kind of torture. (Let's leave Dick Cheney out of this, for the moment.)

In fact, if St. Peter asked me that, I think I'd say, "Me." Because I wouldn't want to be in Heaven with a God who would create a Hell for his creatures. I cannot even imagine that. I'd rather be burning for all eternity and knowing that I was a loving person, instead of being in paradise with an evil god I hated.

Round Mountain visuals.

Odd Days: Galumphing Bison

The previous critter posts have not done justice to the abundant wildlife viewing opportunities we have in CO. Since we’ve been here, Durf and I have made the obligatory pilgrimage to the local eagle nesting site; we’ve been chased by a rutting male elk (that sounds funny, I know); we’ve ogled a local herd of bison; and we have failed any number of times to capture pix of bighorn sheep we’ve spotted in the canyon.

One of my most exciting encounters was during our first year in CO. I was heading up to Winter Park to ski (a generous description of what I did) with my brother and his family. We had almost arrived at our cabin when out of nowhere, two large beasts galumphed over the snow piled at the side of the road and onto the asphalt in front of us. There ensued lots of screaming followed by the screeching of tires. No injuries. Then we all watched the beasts galumph over the snowpack on the other side of the road and disappear into the woods.

“Whoa,” I said into the stunned silence. “Those poor skinny bison looked like they were starving!” The car exploded into derisive laughter, and my brother said, “What? You don’t know a moose when you see one?”

Well, what do you expect? It was my first safari.

Colorado score: +1

Not even the top 5.

I am about to make a significant change in my life that will increase my happiness and improve my blog posts - I am going to become apolitical.

Actually, I was apolitical for most of my life. I remember voting for Richard Nixon in 1972, which probably says a lot. After that I had opinions on some of the big issues, but I wasn't really involved. Until George W. Bush became president. When he was first elected, I thought it would be interesting to see what happened. There was no way I was able to imagine how bad things would get.

So I became a political junkie. I read books about politics and scoured newspapers for editorials and op-eds. I wanted to know what was going on and understand what might happen. But that doesn't make any sense, it only causes unhappiness.

Americans seem to want to believe in our "exceptionalism", meaning that we are the best country in the world. We aren't. We aren't even in the top five, and I seriously doubt that we're in the top ten. We are big and rich and powerful, but far from great. The standard of living of our middle class has been in decline for twenty years. Meanwhile, the pay of corporate executives, which in other countries averages about three times the pay of the average worker, here has increased to three hundred times that level. Our health care is by far the most expensive in the world, but its quality is somewhere around 13th and dropping. We are the only wealthy country which does not provide affordable, quality healthcare to its most needy citizens. We run average or low in happiness and personal freedom. We are rapidly losing our edge in science. (Hint: one does not choose what to *believe* in science, because science is knowledge.)

Our federal government is not only dysfunctional, it is corrupt. Bribery of public officials is legal in the guise of campaign contributions, and it is very clear that our representatives are in government for their own enrichment. When is the last time you saw a Congressperson do something right even though unpopular?

I used to have faith in the courts, but even they have become corrupt. The Supreme Court clearly has a partisan agenda, which is exactly what a court that interprets the laws is not suppose to have. Remember Chief Justice John Roberts saying at his confirmation hearings that he would be an "umpire", interpreting the laws but not making them? Yet he, in a highly unusual move, expanded the scope of Citizens United in order to overturn 100 years of precedent and give extraordinary political power to corporations, to the detriment of citizens.

But that isn't the worst of it. Consider healthcare. President Obama championed and finally saw passed the first significant healthcare reform in 60 years. Immediately Republicans, displaying their loyalty to insurance companies and for-profit healthcare providers, vowed to see the law repealed and began to derogatorily refer to it as "Obamacare". The law, though chopped up and defanged by necessary compromise, will eventually make healthcare more affordable for everyone and available to almost every American. And yet the GOP shamelessly promotes falsehoods such as "death panels" that will deny care to granny, and then the drooling morons who comprise the GOP "base" dutifully march to the polls to vote against their own best interests. And that, indeed, is the problem - most of the people in this country are dumber than spit.

You might ask if I love America. I don't. I don't even know what it means to love a country. I will continue to try to be a good citizen, but that will only mean boning up on issues in order to vote intelligently. The editorials and op-eds can go to hell, because they make no difference and do no good.

Round Mountain visuals delayed.

When Twila and I were climbing Round Mountain we took videos and photographs to put on the blog. When Twila saw them, however, she decreed that she was not to appear. I still intend to post them, but after I do the required editing. I hope I get around to it.

State of the T-Rex.

Odd Days: Critters Part 2

When we left off, Rodent Busters had picked up on the first ring. That, all by itself, is going to give CO a +1.

Back in CA, our lot also abutted open space, so we had critters there, too. For the most part we managed to keep the critters out of the house, but at some point, unbeknownst to us, the flap over the stove exhaust pipe (which vented under the porch) became dislodged and a family of ??? (we hope never to find out for sure, but probably rats) made their home in the pipe.

This story is wildly interesting in its detail, but suffice it to say, we called CA Rodent Busters. Several times. And when someone finally came out, he assessed the situation, turned to me with astonishment and said, "That pipe vents under the house." I nodded. He said, "I don't go under the house. No sir." And that was that. (Guess who cleaned the pipe.)

Back in CO, my drawling, slow-talking, cowboy-boot wearing Rodent Buster showed up within two hours of my call. He performed the extraction, asked me if I wanted to see it (I demurred) and then told me he was going to run to the store to pick up a screen to affix to the dryer exhaust pipe that...yep...vents under the porch. I was in love.

It didn't end there, though. I thought my cowboy would balk when he saw that he had about 7 inches of clearance between the porch and the ground. He would be crawling into the dark, over...ugh, I can't think about it.

But no, this guy just looked at the clearance. Then he laughed and said it was a good thing he didn't send his partner, whose butt would never fit. With that, he dove under the porch. A few minutes later he calls out, "Well, I found the pipe. And there are three pretty fresh rabbit carcasses under here too. Wanna see." What a guy. He wanted to share.

Colorado: +1

Do you even believe it?

Since the readers of this blog are all friends and family... I mean, who else would read it?... I think it's okay for me to make this confession: I am the one who got Twila involved in sadomasochism.

It happened about 35 years ago. Twila was a grad student working at the Lawrence Hall of Science at UC Berkeley. I was, at the time, the best friend of her S.O., Jack. The three of us spent a lot of time together playing bridge and cashing in 2fer coupons in Reno. Then LHS announced that they were going to sponsor a run from Berkeley City Hall to the LHS building. It would be the first annual Strawberry Canyon Run, and Twila wanted a T-shirt. She wanted the shirt and I wanted her, so I told her I'd run and give her the shirt.

At the time I was, to say the least, soft. The only exercise I'd had since leaving college was lifting beer bottles, and I'd lifted quite a few. But I put on some tennis shoes, and with our friend Arthur I ran 8 miles on the Strawberry Canyon Trail. That afternoon I spent two hours soaking in a hot bath - I was in serious discomfort

Eventually I bought running shoes and got myself into a low level of shape. I managed to run the race and win a T-shirt, a significant accomplishment. Then, to my surprise, I made running part of my life. Since I'd run competitively in high school and at Hamilton, I only knew one way to train - try to set a personal record every time out. It was difficult, but the beta-endorphins flowed.

Most of the time I ran in Strawberry Canyon, which is beautiful. I wanted Twila to see it, so one day I invited her to jog along with me. We ran at a slow pace and she huffed and puffed and made it out about a mile. It was fun. But we know Twila. She didn't like huffing. She didn't like puffing. She decided to get in shape, and she became a runner... a very good runner.

So I am, I suppose, responsible for creating this monster for whom pain is pleasure. It's a concept I don't understand. I mean, pleasure is pleasure, isn't it? Pain is pain. What goes wrong in a brain that gets them confused? The more miles I ran and the older I got, the more I thought, "Okay, done this." But Twila just kept running. And she wanted me to run with her.

I haven't run in a couple of years now, but Twila is on the road every other day. We still bike and hike together, but that's where it gets confusing to me. Whatever happened to a nice ride down to the malt shop or a stroll through a wildflowered meadow? Those are throwaways for Twila - she wants to bike and hike in the Rockies, and going downhill is the part she doesn't enjoy.

She does get beta-endorphins, which helps. The anti-depressants I have to take inhibit endorphin production while exercising, so the pain keeps increasing until I stop. That doesn't help.

Yesterday we climbed Round Mountain, all the way to the top. It was a 9.5 mile Hell Hike, but Twila loved it. I was glad I was able to do it without dying, but that was the extent of my pleasure. Now Twila is bubbling with happiness that in three weeks we're going to climb Pikes Peak, which is approximately Round Mountain times three. In one day. At altitude.

Geez, I don't even like thinking about it. I guess I'll stop writing now and lift a few beers.

Odd Days in CO: The Critter Factor

Y'all might recall that no sooner did Durf re-enter CO from NY than he was ready to turn around and go back. But as time goes by, I see him settling back in. ("Sure, mowing the lawn is a PITA, but look at all these cool tractors we can buy!")

As for me, my dreams of a pied-a-terre have gone the way of Greece's credit rating. So now I have resorted to weighing the pros and cons of life in rural Colorado. Do we move? Do we stay? Why stay? Why move? Which brings me quickly to the dark side: the critter factor.

Within days of returning to CO, I had to do some laundry. I went through the wash cycle without incident. Then I opened the dryer door for the first time in six months and the next thing I knew, I was coming to on the floor, and the noxious odor permeating the room was threatening to render me unconscious again. I'd know that smell anywhere. Dead rodent!

Fortunately, said rodent was not in said dryer. But its body odor was. If Durf had been home, we would have faced an impasse. I would have wanted to call Rodent Busters and he would have told me he didn't smell a thing. Under extreme pressure he would confess to noting a slight odor, but would say, "Who cares? The smell will be gone in a few months. Don't have a cow."

Fortunately, Durf was safely in NY and Rodent Busters picked up on the first ring.

Colorado score: -1

Getting even.

I consider myself relatively open-minded. I enjoy arguing and I suppose I am as happy as anyone when someone switches to my point of view (rare), but argument is most rewarding when I can learn and my own point of view can change. I even read right-wing editorials, although that has been less useful since the GOP switched from principles to mindless opposition to anything the Obama administration does (see Healthcare -- Romney, Mitt). When thinking about this blog post, I lost an argument with myself and my opinion about the topic changed.

Vengeance is among the worst of all human motivations. To pursue revenge puts us at a level not much higher than our enemy, and it is profoundly unrewarding. I do understand the appeal. If someone did something awful to Twila, I can see myself transmogrifying instantly from slothful and unmotivated to armed and dangerous. Hopefully I would come to my senses before doing anything regrettable.

Some years ago courts of law began to allow relatives of a victim to speak before sentencing. I've long considered that practice unseemly, at best. Imagine a family wailing and then a judge, with a tear in his eye, saying, "I was going to sentence you to 30 days, but I changed my mind. Life in prison!"

I assume, though -- and everything changes if my assumption is incorrect -- that the appeals of a victim's relatives have no effect upon the sentence rendered. So what is the point of all the weeping and gnashing of teeth? It was my intention to say in this post that there is none, and that the practice is demeaning. But then I thought about it.

The point is closure. The statements allow the indirect victims of a crime to speak to the court and, more important, the criminal. They are relief, however meager, for pain and frustration, and an expression of love for the victim. Whether they have an affect on anyone else is irrelevant.

T-Rex 1.

That is the T-Rex 500 after two hours of assembly. There are a lot of parts so it's going to take a while to build. I'm doing it on the dining room table, though, so I really have to finish before Thanksgiving.
  

I'm starting this project with both optimism and trepidation. It makes me a little nervous that many of the teeny weeny screws require either Loctite or CA, aka Super Glue. That will make them hard to remove if I make a mistake.
  
Fortunately, I'm planning to not make any mistakes. I learned my lesson in 1989 (yes, I'm that old) when building a large balsa airplane that Twila gave me. I really got into it and worked on it day after day when I got home from work. Unfortunately, I never finished it, even though the carcass is still in our garage and I have the rest of the parts somewhere. It was really discouraging when I learned that I had built the wings backwards. I had the idea that if I put the propeller on backwards, too, I could fly in reverse, but I didn't get far enough to test that theory.
  

The important thing is that I learned that drinking Wild Turkey shooters and doing complex assembly don't really mix. That lesson was reinforced when I tried to fly my first helicopter and embedded it in the wall of our garage. I don't drink much WT anymore, so I should be safe. Certainly a glass or two of wine won't hurt.

WHOO WHOO!

At last I have my blog partner back!

Odd things on odd days. Very imaginative. I guess I'm stuck with even things on even days. 

I'll do my best.

Odd Days: Here We Go

Back by popular acclaim (thanks, you two!), I thought it best to reveal what I've been thinking. In truth, I've been searching for purpose. The NYC blog had a purpose, which was to stay in touch with friends and family, all of whose lives revolved around what we were up to in NY, don't you know. And without the blog it would have been virtually impossible to keep in touch. After all we were in the wilds of New York with no phone, no email, no Skype. We were forced to blog.

Once we returned to CO, I feared (with all my heart) that our blog would look much like a series of Facebook posts. You know, the kind that Durf parodied so effectively by posting his toilet breaks. But then I realized I have a lot to say, and Durf is eager to say the opposite. So....

The theme of my posts will be Odd Days in Colorado. That's because my intent is to post on odd days about odd aspects of life in CO. No doubt this will be all encompassing enough that Durf can post whatever random thoughts come to mind, which is what he's been lobbying for.

I don't know if the CO theme is circumscribed enough to make me feel purposeful. If not, I might switch to The Tax Aspects of Retirement Plan Distributions. But if I do that, Durf might not post.

Stay tuned.

Moth morals.

The miller moths that have been infesting our house for a month have mostly moved on to the mountains. Every few days a bunch of stragglers stop in, though.

To help deal with the moths, I'd bought a bug zapper. It is somewhat of a humane zapper. When a moth flies in and hits the grid, it doesn't make that satisfying ZAP sound. Usually it just stuns the moth, which then falls down to the bottom of the zapper, which is, I learned on the first morning, open. So after the first day I put the zapper on top of a large jar half full of water. The next morning there were about 20 moths in the water. I dumped the jar outside, and at least half of the moths flew away. That eased my conscience.

Yesterday, though, I began to think that probably some of the freed moths just reenter the house. I wasn't willing to drive them to the next county to release them, so I wondered if it would be okay to leave them in the water until they drowned. That is, after all, a relatively peaceful way to die, once you stop struggling. You don't actually inhale lungfuls of water, because when you eventually have to inhale, your throat constricts. You just suffocate, and possibly see mermaids in that long tunnel with the light at the end.

I was thinking about that last night and watching the moths around the zapper when I realized: those moths are really, really stupid. They bang and bang on the protective enclosure, trying to get through to that violet light, even though ten seconds before they saw their Uncle Fred get through, hit the grid, and get blown to smithereens. What are they thinking?

I made my decision, and I don't think I'm a bad person. I really do hope the moths get to see mermaids.

Write-in campaign.

I guess I should have named this blog "durf-sez", since contributions from "oui" have been scant. It's time to get rolling again, and the way to do that is to put a little pressure on esteemed blogger Twila, who otherwise might slither and dither until all readers have long gone. She is, after all, the one who preaches that a blog needs a daily entry to stay alive.

I can't publish her email address here, but most of you already know it. Please drop her a note asking her to get her blogass in gear!

Flying, or not.

As I mentioned in an earlier post, a couple of months ago I bought my first collective pitch RC helicopter. It's a micro, for flying inside. It weighs 1.6 oz, its total length is 9", the main rotor diameter is 10", and the tail rotor diameter is 1.5". I had just learned to hover it when one of the servos (which receive commands from the radio) burned out. It turns out they're backordered for two months, a bummer. What to do?

I decided that I'd buy my ultimate (in current projections) heli, a much larger model for flying outdoors. I ordered it last week. (I left a human in the pic for relative size.)

Here are the specs. It weighs 3 lb. 12 oz., its total length is 33", the main rotor diameter is 38.2", and the tail rotor diameter is 7.9". So it's a lot bigger. It will arrive in a kit, so I'll have to build it.

The best part is that it's really cool. The worst part is that every crash will probably cost $100 or more. But I'm going to be really, really conservative. ACK! Bad word! I mean, really, really careful.

My philosophy of life, compleat and unabridged.

Love is everything.

Chris Bliss, P.S.

Here are a couple of minutes of his show last night (well, you know).

Chris Bliss.

Twila and I drove to south Denver yesterday and had an excellent dinner. We then went to the comedy club (I don't remember the name, but it was something like "Comedy Club"). Somehow we managed to end up in the front row - I was resting my feet on the stage. The first three acts varied from :p to :), then Chris Bliss appeared. He was wearing clothes that looked like they were pulled from a dumpster, and he looked a lot older than in his glory days five years ago. But he was hilarious. It didn't hurt that his political leanings are the same as ours - if he had said that Mitch McConnell had just been run over by a steamroller, we would fallen off our chairs laughing. As it was, many times I laughed so hard my eyes watered.

At the end of the show he did one of his famous juggling routines, in which he juggles three tennis balls in time to music. It was amazing.

Chris Bliss

All in all, a great date!

An anniversary.

Last year on June 4 Carl asked if I'd like to go to New York for six months and work on NuSTAR. I laughed and said no, but then agreed to think about it. Twila was in Texas for a graduation. I spent the weekend thinking, thinking, thinking, and finally decided that I really did not want to do it. I had to propose it to Twila, though.

Twila arrived home on June 6, and we sat down with wine, cheese, and crackers. When I felt sufficiently lubricated, I tossed it out: "Hey, you don't want to live in New York City for six months, do you?"

She said:

And that was the beginning of that.

Finally examined!

The pros and cons of a man sitting down to pee.

Life as we know it.

I've been wanting for Twila to start blogging again, because it seems easiest and best when we do it together. She's insistent on having a "theme", though, and she hasn't thought of one yet.

Yesterday we climbed 3 miles up Round Mountain. I considered it training for my attempt at Pikes Peak in about 6 weeks. (Twila could climb Pikes Peak tomorrow, if she wanted to. She could probably climb Mt. Everest, if it weren't all icy and stuff.)

The hike was difficult, but not as hard as the last time. That's a good sign, maybe. But when we got to the bottom, Twila said, "Wow. That was fun." And I was like, "Huh?"

We're all pleasure people, I suppose. Really, who doesn't like pleasure? It's kind of in the definition. But when I think of pleasure I think of cuddling, having my feet massaged by my super chair, a hot shower, web surfing, or an afternoon nap. Twila thinks pleasure is struggling up the side of a mountain for 12 hours, clambering over rocks and boulders, gasping for breath at high altitudes, fighting past constant pain, putting up with bone-chilling cold or intense heat (sometimes on the same hike), and forcing your body to do things it doesn't want to do, and probably was not designed to do, except in extreme emergencies.

So we did climb Round Mountain, and I felt some satisfaction, but when she said, "Wow. That was fun.", my oxygen- and nutrient-deprived brain could not grasp what she meant. I'm still working on it.

Tomorrow night we're going to Denver for dinner and then a Chris Bliss show. Chris Bliss is the guy who went viral a couple of years ago by juggling to a Beatles tune, or something. I don't really remember what it was, but I know seeing him is going to be a lot more fun than climbing Round Mountain.

Durf gets a raise.

Today is, for me, historic. It's the day I make my last obscenely large health insurance payment, about the same amount for one month that people in civilized countries pay for a whole year. As of July 1 I am a Medicare baby (as, I might add, we all should be, and not because we're geezers).