Sick!

For a little over a week now, I have been sick as a dog (whatever that means exactly). I've had a severe cold with all the wonderful symptoms that come along with it: sneezing, runny nose, stuffy nose, sore throat, cough. It's been a real pleasure. Plus we had a lot of chaos going on last week at work, so I was just generally tired and annoyed.

Today, I FINALLY have started to feel better. I'm still massively congested, but I'm not feeling quite as generally miserable. Hopefully tomorrow I'll wake up and feel even better. Unfortunately, since I've not been up to much more than going to work and laying in bed watching Netflix, I haven't felt like writing here at all.

Now that I'm feeling better, I have complete writer's block. I can't think of a single interesting thing to write about. So know that in the back of my mind, I'm not giving up on this blog. The crappy weather lately hasn't been of any help either. When it rains practically 24/7 there's not a lot of fun outdoor activity to be had.

This past Sunday, we did manage to get some flowers planted in the front yard. I bought and planted a variety of zinnia seeds per my mom's request. I told her on mother's day that since it was snowing then, I'd plant whatever kind of flowers she'd like once it warmed up a bit. Fortunately, it warmed up enough to warrant planting. The garden has yet to be planted, but I'm sure that will come soon.

Rain, rain GO AWAY!

There was only one thing worse than the fact that our internet was out for a week straight (flipping Comcast!) and that was the damned rain. It has rained practically nonstop for the last nine days. Generally, I enjoy a good thunderstorm, but this has been over a week of solid rain. There were a few breaks, but each of those days had a fair amount of rainfall. I think the total rain amount over that period was between 4-5 inches, which is a huge amount when you realize our usual annual rainfall is 8-15 inches.

This was just after the first rain storm when it rained *very* hard for 20 minutes.

Basically all of that was to say, I'm done with the rain! It has been a cool, wet, muddy and generally miserable week at work. The dogs, of course, have mostly loved it. I think even they are starting to get sick of being soggy all day too.

Mud puddles everywhere!

"What...is there something on my face?"

 To top it all off it snowed a good 4 inches or so last night into this morning. Everything was already massively saturated with moisture and the snow was heavy and wet. This is the kind of snow that snaps tree branches easily. So I got up today and took a broom out to shake the snow off the heavily weighted down lilac branches. Luckily, it looks like none of our trees or bushes sustained any major damage and the lilacs were done blooming.

You can see the heavy snow weighing down all the bushes and my dad helping clear them off.

Tomorrow's forecast is already looking up. At least for the next couple of days there is only a slight chance of more rain. In fact, Wednesday looks downright pleasant at 70 degrees and sunny. I could personally go for a few weeks without anything more than a brief thunderstorm or two. Local rivers and creeks are in danger of flooding and I don't think we want a repeat of the September 2013 flooding.

Not to mention all of this moisture has royally screwed up the interstate that I take to get to work. Somehow tons of the tar that's used to patch cracks and smaller holes has peeled up and made a mess on miles of the highway. And of course all of this moisture is just helping to create more and more potholes and preventing repairs.

I've never been a fan of summertime because I hate any temperatures over 75 degrees or so. Maybe it's because I was born in Alaska (though I only lived there for a brief four years), but I have never been a fan of hot weather. At this point though, I'm pretty much ready for the warmer temperatures. I'm tired of the snow (though today's has already pretty much melted away) and I am also tired of rain for now. Maybe I need to make a visit to the desert!

Baby Owls

I tried to make this post about a week ago, but was having some computer troubles. Figures, getting a new(er) computer doesn't fix all that. Of course, it could be that this computer is Windows-based and my laptop was a Macbook. At any rate, it seems to be working out okay now. This post will have to be short because I promised a couple of dogs I'd take them for a walk this evening.

In addition to all the lovely blossoms that spring has brought, there have been some adorable baby birds spotted at work. Specifically, three little baby owls in the nest over the parking lot. It's hard to get all three to pop their heads up at once and both days that I lugged along my digital camera in hopes of spotting them, only one or two were visible. I definitely wanted to get a couple shots with a better zoom before they flew away.

Hard to see in this picture taken with my cellphone camera, but if you enlarge it, you should be able to see momma and three fluffy babies.

This is the least cautious of the three babies as it sits up most of the day and doesn't hide from me

Look closely and you'll note both parents sitting on a branch (one of whom watched me closely as I snapped pictures)

"Who are you looking at?"

A second sibling briefly popped their head up to see me

I'm fairly certain that the owls in question are great horned owls, but don't hold me to that in court because I'm not an ornithologist. Both of the parents definitely have the defined 'horns' though, so that seems pretty likely to me that's what they are. We are all enjoying seeing these owls grow up and I suspect it won't be too much longer before the babies take off on their own.

In addition to the owls, we have some red-tailed hawks that hang out in the area. There are two big, open fields on either side of our location with lots of big mature trees as well. It seems to make for a great location for these birds of prey to hunt and raise their young in.

Spring Has Sprung

Just in time for all the lovely spring trees to be in bloom, it has to be snowing today. I'm  holding out hope that the lilac blossoms in the backyard will weather this storm, but not holding my breath. It seems like every year when the weather just starts to get warm enough for all the trees to be growing leaves, it snows heavily enough to start snapping branches. That's Colorado for you.

Snow...again? *sigh*

The general rule of thumb here is to wait until at least Mother's Day to start planting your summer flowers and vegetable garden. Of course, last year it snowed that whole weekend, so it was a week later than usual to start planting. I'm itching to get some gladiolus bulbs planted, but again it's best to wait until the freezing weather is done. We used to have several in the front yard and they were one of my favorites, but my dad got a little overzealous with weedkiller a couple summers ago and took them all out.

Luckily, one of the days off I had this week was gorgeous (75 degrees and sunny all day long) so I went and found a bunch of spring blossoms to photograph. So in lieu of having much else to say, I'm going to post some lovely spring pictures. I'm definitely not an expert on the different types of trees that are in bloom, but I like the variety anyway. Enjoy!

I like how all the branches came together in this shot.

I see these all over the place (some even appeared in the back yard), but I didn't know what they were, thanks to 20 minutes of Google searching, I am fairly confident that they're grape hyacinths.

I love the mixture of light pink flowers with bright green leaves in this one.

If you enlarge this one, you'll see little white blossoms amongst the red leaves.

And just for variety, some darker pink blossoms.

These white flowers had hints of light pink and grew in little ball-shaped clusters.

Lilacs in the back yard (it smells fantastic back there this time of year).

And a few tulips because it's not spring without tulips in blossom.

Excuses

There is always a laundry list of excuses for not writing and posting on the blog. I happen to have a decent excuse this time around though, because my laptop died on me. I still have a smart phone and a tablet, but I really don't like typing anything longer than a quick e-mail on those devices. I just like having  the feel of actual keyboard keys under my fingers. Maybe one day I'll be considered old-fashioned for typing on a physical keyboard like someone now would be looked at funny for using a typewriter.

Anyway, my brother had an old (not actually that old, there's touchscreen capability) computer that he wasn't really using that he sold to me for a reasonable price. Now I can try to get back into blogging a bit more regularly. A few things have changed around here since last I wrote, but nothing too terribly exciting.

One day, I just up and decided that I really liked the look of parachute cord collars that I saw on a few dogs at work. I looked into buying some lengths of paracord and the buckles and D-ring necessary to make a dog collar and in total it was about $5 for me to make Jonesy a collar. You can look around the web and find all sorts of tutorials on making dog collars and bracelets with paracord. In total, it took me about 2 hours to make the first collar, it took me a while to get into the groove with the pattern you knot the cords in. I kept getting it twisted and having to undo a few knots and restarting. The second time I made a collar for my brother's dog, it came out so much better. After several weeks of wear, I had to repair the one I made for my brother's dog, but Jonesy's is holding up fabulously.

Jonesy, modeling the collar I made for him.

Sadly, Turd Ferguson is no longer with us. I don't know exactly how it happened, but one of the plastic tubes that connected his cage popped loose (they never felt terribly secure to me) and he escaped. My brother came home from work at 2AM as usual and said he found a headless body in the living room. I suspect my cat, Oliver, is the suspect who committed the actual crime, but it doesn't really matter. I feel terrible and responsible for his death, but at the same time he never was able to be handled without biting, so I wasn't as attached to him as I could have been.

In his place I decided that I would get a guinea pig because they're generally more friendly and easy to handle and I want a pet that I can develop a bond with. Of course, from having worked at a pet store before, I knew that pigs were better in pairs because they're social, so I bought a big cage and got it all set. Then it was time to pick out a pair of piggies, which ended up being much more difficult a process than it should have. The first two piggies I picked out both ended up sick and having to be returned for treatment (one had ringworm and one had a respiratory infection). Not wanting to be completely without a pet in the interim, I picked out a new guinea pig who also ended up with a respiratory infection.

The lighter colored guy is the one who I returned to be treated for a respiratory infection and then brought home again.

When I returned the third piggy, the first one with a respiratory infection was healthy, so I brought him home again. The fourth guinea pig I got, who *knocks on wood* has been healthy and happy so far, I felt, is pretty unique looking. Of course there's a ton of different types of guinea pig coats and colors. He's mainly red and black with some white stripes which isn't all that special, but he has a rough coat, which I had not seen before. Based on some reading, it sounds like he could possibly grow up to have a curly coat, but it's hard to say right now because he's so young.

See his rough coat

 I haven't named the guinea pigs yet, but they're both doing really well with being handled. The darker guy is still more jumpy, but the light one is pretty used to handling because he was on daily antibiotics for a while. I'm sure with daily handling, they'll both get used to it in short enough time. I'm trying different kinds of vegetables and chews for them right now to find out what they like. So far it seems like carrots are a big hit, but they're not too fond of bell peppers. I gave them some chunks of the orange I was eating last night and that disappeared pretty quickly.

To wrap things up, the dogs are doing great. I recently took my brother's dog to work with me for the first time (there had been an ongoing debate about whether she could come along with me for free as if she's mine because I live with her or if he'd have to pay for daycare - ultimately we decided if they live under the same roof as you, they count as yours). I brought her along with Jonesy so she'd have someone familiar besides me. She did pretty well, but given that she's a Husky, I would have thought she'd be way more playful than she actual was. I think she will just need a bit of time to adjust to the routine and understand that this is just one big play date for her.

My brother's dog, Athena, hiding in the dog house at work with Jonesy

I'm on day one of three days in a row off, so I've been cleaning up around the house a bit today. I worked 11 days straight and prior to that, I had worked a week with about 55 hours, so I'm glad to have the break. I've just got to decide what to do with my free time the next two days. Tomorrow is the day to do something outdoorsy for sure as Wednesday looks like it will be a bit cooler and rainy. I'm thinking of driving to the mountains and going for a hike, but I'm not sure yet. I'd better get back to cleaning or else I'll never finish!

Marching On

I don't know why it still surprises me, but sometimes it sure feels like time flies. Just yesterday it seems like it was January and now here we are in March. We've had a break from the snow for a few days, but the forecast continues to call for more storms. At least the roads have had a chance to thaw out in between rounds of snow this time. There were a couple dicey drives to work in the last week. One day I was ten minutes late even though I'd left quite a bit earlier than usual.

For once, this week I was not the one having a bad week, but man did my dad have a doozy of one. First, he got into his car to start it and then when he stepped out to clear the ice and snow from it, the doors locked all by themselves. He had to call a locksmith to come out and open it because he only got one key when he bought the car. Needless to say, he went and ordered a second key for his car to avoid having such a thing happen again. Later that same day at work, he had a huge chunk of snow fall onto him and knock his glasses off and break them.

I helped out trying to repair the glasses for at least the short term. He has a lovely piece of tape around the stem for now, but he has to have them for driving at the very least. He hasn't decided yet whether he just wants to live with the taped up glasses for a while or order another pair. Of course, glasses are not inexpensive, but if they aren't going to hold up, he has to be able to see.

Just in case this was not enough, his monthly car payment was returned to him because the stamp had fallen off in the mail. This was returned to him just one day before it was due, so he had to go drop it off in person. He has had a series of bills returned to him over the years with a missing stamp. For some reason, the envelopes he was getting are too slick for the stamps to stick (or maybe he forgot to put one on once or twice, I don't know, he's not that old, but I could see getting in a hurry and forgetting).

Then last night he was watching TV and stood up to go to the bathroom. He coughed once, so hard that it actually caused him to pass out for a minute. My mom and I were standing in the kitchen and heard a loud crash. We ran to the living room to find him sprawled on the floor and unresponsive for a few seconds. Just before I could run and call 911, he regained consciousness and was very disoriented for a minute. After getting up, he realized that he must've fallen onto the corner of the coffee table because he had a big red mark and very painful spot on his back.

I took him to the ER to get checked out and make sure everything was okay. They tested his heart, did an x-ray of his ribs and an ultrasound to check for internal breathing. Everything came back looking all right, and it seems that he just had a vasovagal attack (which is a fancy way of saying that the vasovagal nerve overreacted to the cough and caused him to lose consciousness). After a few hours of waiting for test results, we were sent home with a prescription for pain pills to help him sleep without a massive pain in his side. Basically all he ended up with though was a big contusion on his side.

All of this reminds me of the week of hell I had back in February that included: emergency surgery for Jonesy, my brakes going out on my car and then my car refusing to start. I'm glad that I'm not the one having an awful time of it this go round. Prior to that week last year, I also had a foot injury that caused me to miss several days of work and a big medical bill of my own. At this point, I'm convinced that my family is just a big magnet for crazy bad luck. I'm not the only one who has had just a string of really awful things happen in a short span of time.

Oh Snow

All this week the meteorologists have been predicting a big snowstorm for the weekend. It was one of those storms where they kept adding to the snow totals as the week went along. What started out as 4-8" gradually grew into 12-18" of snowfall. The snow was supposed to start on Friday afternoon, but didn't actually start until late that evening.

When I drove to work on Saturday morning, I had about 6" of snow to clear off my car. The good news was that the ground was warm enough that there was only a few patches of minor slush on the roads. There was only a minor dusting of snow on the ground when I got to work and it started to seem like this was the usual case of the meteorologists making a mountain out of a molehill. 

My co-worker and I were standing outside just before 3PM and about ten minutes later when we were inside, you could see that it was not only finally snowing, but that it was blowing sideways. Out of nowhere, the wind was blowing very hard and it was practically whiteout conditions. Before I left work a couple hours later there was a few inches of snow on the ground and the roads were starting to get pretty nasty.

On the drive home, I passed a box truck just off the side of the highway laying on its side, facing oncoming traffic. I didn't encounter problems until I got off the highway. I couldn't get going after coming to a stop at the top of the off-ramp. My tires spun and I just kept slipping and it took a good 45 seconds to finally get traction. The same problem happened at every stop I had to make the rest of the way home, which was fortunately only about a mile away. I don't even want to know what would have happened if I didn't have a good set of snow tires.

This morning I woke up to probably around a foot of snow in the yard (it's hard to tell exactly because the wind blew the snow into drifts all over). I shoveled off the back patio area so that it doesn't turn into a skating rink for the dogs. While I shoveled, they ran around and played and I was glad that someone could enjoy the snow. As for me, I'm glad I don't have to drive in the snow today or tomorrow. I guess it's a good day to read or have a Netflix marathon.