The Great Palmer Divide Heat Wave of 2005

This event is not to be confused with the Great Palmer Divide Blizzard of 2005 or the Great Palmer Divide Beetle Massacre of 2005 but it's pretty Monumental.
It's been toasty around Monument Colorado for the last week. Even with low humidity (like 12-16%) it gets pretty warm without A/C when the daytime temperature reaches 90+. Fortunately we live at 7,300 ft. so by evening things are comfortable again. I would wish a basement for anyone living in metro Colorado Springs...they have suffered with temperatures around 100 every day for over a week and Denver is like an oven these days.
I'm convinced that AccuWeather knows what they are talking about when they say it will cool down starting this weekend and stay pretty nice for the next 15 days. By then we will start making preparations for the first snow?....not exactly.

Rocky

Got a spare $500 Million Lying Around?

The NASA Discovery Mission was again delayed today as a result of yet another "glitch". So I suppose the costs for this adventure will continue to rise as they run through the "punch list" to determine why a sensor isn't behaving right.
I can think of about 1,000 better uses of half a billion than keeping this program alive. For starters, let's use the money to better secure our borders...or maybe pay our Military a bonus if they are handling summer duty in Iraq...or as a College Fund for families who lost their fathers or mothers in Iraq.
The classic argument for keeping the NASA program alive is that the private sector and society in general have benefited so much from the ancillary discoveries made by shuttle missions over the years.......excuse me, at 1/2 a Billion a pop I would argue that we could have put some pretty hefty government incentives out there for the private sector to come up with tiles that can withstand enormous heat...or whatever the "next great thing" NASA space shuttles have discovered. I believe this is a colossal waste of our taxpayers money and hope the next administration agrees with me.

Dennis "the Dud"...not in my book

A Weather Channel broadcaster refered to Hurricane Dennis as a "Dud" yesterday...guess it didn't bring the level of death and destruction to make it a ratings buster story? I have been through a moderate hurricane before and the disruption to life is something I won't forget soon - it was no "dud" as far as my wife, dogs and I were concerned.
When Hurricane Isabell hit our home in Virginia Beach, Va. September 2003, we lost all power for a week...that means food goes bad, no airconditioning during sweltering nights, candles for light at night, no cooking, no washing, no garage door opener, no TV and costly repairs to be made which are only partially covered by insurance. The loss of hundred year old trees and the removal costs were staggering. It's no different for up to 500,000 folks in Florida today. I don't think of it as a dud by any means.
The networks and cable outlets have become so obsessed about self serving ratings they have mostly lost their way in the compassion department.

Jeepers! 

Trail Rated? Not Exactly....

We just bought a Jeep.....guess we wanted to solidify our roots in the Rocky's and try to do a bit of off-roading and camping in the wilderness here. Anyway, I'm basically a chicken, so I can't claim to be "Trail Rated" even if there is an emblem on the Jeep saying IT is.
I started to read about how to set the "transfer case" (what on earth is that?) in order to traverse straight up and down mountainsides and became nauseous. Perhaps we can hire a "trail rated driver" to take us over the moguls in our macho man vehicle....cause I ain't doin' it!

Rocky

Yard Work....Me?

I made a decision in 2001 that I would never mow, pull sprinklers around a yard, trim hedges, rake leaves...well, you know...manual yard type labor. I've gone back on my word the last couple of weeks - by choice. I've spent too many years parked on a chair looking at a computer screen and banging away on a keyboard and not enough time shuffling my feet and moving my arms around.....heck, if I keep this up for a while, I'll be back on the golf course before you know it.
My second reason is that I've hired a couple of guys to do it recently and they either no-showed or wanted to bankrupt me to mow, trim and clip a postage stamp area of grass.
So I'll be up at the crack of dawn tomorrow and fire up the mower, hedge clipper, blower, chain saw and any other electrified piece of equipment I can find in the garage and do some yard damage...what a hoot being a yardman again can be!

Happy 4th tomorrow...fly a flag or at least think of how wonderful it is to go where you want when you want to and all of the other things I take for granted all too often.

Rocky