Daily Adventures

I hope everyone who got to celebrate it had a wonderful Memorial Day.

( We had a pretty busy day... )

The high-desert moan of the wind has been omnipresent for the last week. The warm winds melted away the eight to ten inches of snow piled everywhere, other than in the most persistent shadows, still mounded with dirty ice. So the world, in the low slant of morning sun, was all the dusty taupe of Front Range winter. The trees were black lace against the grass and cold pale sky, and flocks of geese rose in deep V's heading, inevitably north. Their compasses already pointing toward a spring that still feels so far away.

( Read more... )

... it was 72 degrees yesterday.

Who would have thought there was a foot of snow less than a week ago?

( Cut for today's picture. )

We have four inches of snow this morning. 28 degrees.... and the quaking aspens still have green leaves!

The boys are out sledding. Jet is just so excited!

It's supposed to be 60 tomorrow. *laughs* Colorado weather...

In which we brave rain, mists, Forest Service Roads, the high plains, lowing cattle, and camping in the cold, get taught the ways of the Wildlands Restoration Volunteers. We learn how to identify four different kinds of high-altitude wild grasses on the plains of Wyoming, pick just the ones they want, eat a lot of great food, listen to a real black-hat rancher who seemed to be a good guy, sleep again in the cold, do more gathering, and end up being dispersed by a thunderstorm to the various parts of the square states we belong to and get home again.

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Last night in the middle of the night, I heard a crack of thunder and saw the room lit with a flash even though the curtains had been drawn in the bedroom. The window of the bathroom was open, so I hopped up and went into the bathroom to close the window; and just as I managed to get it closed and battened down, the rain started pouring down as if someone had turned on a faucet.

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The fire line on the hill glows bright, almost like some high school prank gone chaotic.

The winds today were typical Boulder winds. Steady 50's, gusts from 75 to 100 mph, with this light air it's not quite as strong as at sea level. But then the fire started from a downed electrical line. When we went to pick Jet up at his school to get him to the passport office on time, the whole hillside, one of the Front Range "hills" was on fire. The air filled with smoke, and when we came back home, the sunset was browned by the huge plume of smoke blowing to the West.

We're out of the path, but the Denver coverage is saying "Niwot" and "Longmont" for the location north of Boulder. We're close enough that the air is full of smoke. Close enough to be able to see how quickly the flames move. The fire is south of us and the wind, the Jet Stream (made Jet giggle) is doing the usual Western thing. The weather is dry and warm, the snow of a week ago is completely gone. It was nearly in the 50's this morning, and abrupt change from the days before.

They're on it. Keeping the "structures" safe, and reverse 911 gave some folks only five or ten minutes as the wind was moving the flames FAST, but everyone's evacuated. I'm very glad that the local news crews are sane about getting out when told to by Hot Shots.

There are things I love and hate about the first morning at the bus stop when there's snow everywhere.

The things that I love include my liquid velvet leggings under my sweatpants, my big wool scarf, my rabbit-fur bomber hat with the ear flaps to die for, my felted wool mittens, and my big, huge sub-zero REI boots that I got at like 75% off from one of their spring sales. I love Jet's snow pants (which he wears over his shorts because he is my husband's son), aelfsciene's gift of a hat with the huge pompoms that he wears religiously (even when half the kids are like, you look like a girl with pigtails!! He just laughs and throws snow down the back of their necks), the big coat my Mom got him because she was too cold when she looked at him, and the snaky blue-green scarf that he loves to wear along with the felted mittens he goes no where without when it's cold out.

With all his stuff on, he can play in the snow before the bus all he likes, take it all off when he gets to school and he'll be warm and dry for the day.

( What I hate... )

Thank you, everyone, for your responses, you've helped me out a great deal.

It also helped that it was 76° today and sunny and I ran around in it for a while like a loon. Got a ton of writing done, though mostly not my personal projects. Jet had a special musical program. And I wore out a bike seat.

Yeah. Actually wore out my bike's seat to the point it was breaking down and John actually had to go buy a new one.

( Read more... )

... of a cold. Where it get all thick and horrible and sits in the top part of my lungs and aggravates my asthma. And it's sunny out today, the light with that crystal clarity that can only be found up here, refracting off every drip from melting snow, the grass dusted with white as we walked the boy to the bus stop, but dripping off the roofs, the cars, and the back patio's screen. It'd be a beautiful day to be out... but I sit inside and drink hot drinks and cough... damnit.

Maybe it'd be a good time to channel Ukitake rather than Shunsui... *laughter*