Colorado Melons

While organizing some files, I came across a directory of the “Insider” newsletters that I published for a couple of years in real paper & sent out to about 3,500 people every 45 days. Those files revived many good memories of our initial transition to Colorado, a transition that many of you helped make a very pleasurable experience.

Having been able to try something new that I’d had no experience with whatsoever in an area where I had no contacts was a daunting experience at first; but the realization that one could do quite well simply by doing the right thing and treating people decorously was another real-time reinforcement of a closely held belief system.

The company in which I had developed many good relationships here has since changed hands and no longer exists, but fortunately some of those relationships continue to grow.

The actual layout may or may not be a bit off depending on your program and/or version, but here’s a sample of a couple of those newsletters:

Volume 03 Issue 01

Volume 03 Issue 03

‘ picked David up from a sleep-over this morning, took the family to breakfast and then went to sign the boys up for High Plains Little League since their Basketball season has just come to an end. We were politely greeted by the person behind the first table as we entered the registration area and were directed to progress from table to table where the boys would get fitted for shirts at one stop, meet some vendors at another, and eventually finalize registration and pay at the end. Simple enough, so Mom and I began to make the round with our two eager-to-play boys.

We no sooner get to the second table where a man walks up and asks us what we’ll be volunteering for. I open-mindedly and ready to pitch-in ask him, “Whaddaya Got?” and he starts listing them, “Coach, Asst Coach, Team Mom, etc” and in the course of the conversation informs us that “I’m not asking you to volunteer. I’m telling you. There’s none of that asking stuff.”  Continue Reading »

I went out for a quick cruise in the ‘66 this morning and as I was heading south on Rt 24 towards the old Peyton bridge, I remembered a buddy sharing some folklore with me recently about the old Peyton Jail so I thought I’d take a couple of minutes to go exploring.

As the story goes, the bridge abutments were hollow with barred windows so that prisoners who were working on the road crews could be put in the hole at night, a piece of plate steel being slid over and a dump truck parked on top to prevent their escape.

The highway being all but desolate early on this cool holiday morning, I parked alongside the road and headed down the embankment to take a look for myself.

Sure enough, window openings built into the embankment and some still had the barred gratings on them, just like he said.

Closer inspection revealed that over time these openings seem to have become more of a party spot for local adolescents, as you might imagine. I’ll spare you the interior graffiti.

As I checked things out, one of the first things that came into view was the continuously poured ceiling on top of the deck trusses. I could find no evidence of where an earlier top opening would have later been closed or poured-over.

The second thing that came to mind was that these openings were actually made large enough to climb through; intended more of as a man-way, for the bridge base to ventilate & “breath”, and for future inspections and maintenance access, guarded by bars in a failed attempt to keep the would be explorers out.  If we were going to keep people in here, we probably would’ve left them a much smaller, impassible hole.

To keep things in their proper perspective, when we were talking about this story, something to the effect of “you know how those stories go” was also mentioned, so I didn’t do this to prove or disprove anything. But it did give me good reason to stop the ride, get out of the truck for a few minutes and take a walk down by a little, half-frozen stream that evidently gets crossed from time to time by some four-wheelers & ATV’s.

I wonder if there’s any cool, old stories about the adjacent, defunct train tressel. No matter. I’ll just bring the boys. They’ll give me enough reason to go climb around it. 

While I was sleeping late yesterday morning after working this week’s series of night-shifts, Wilbur and Orville caught a rabbit and were having a tug-o-war with it. By the time I woke up, Leigh and the boys had taken what was left of it away from them and cleaned everything up – except for the patches of bloodied snow.

My first question when I heard what had happened was probably quite the same as yours would’ve been, “Did you get any pictures?“. The answer being a resounding “No” from both she and the boys led me out to grab the only snap-shot I could get, the one of Wilbur (above) protectively clutching the last bit of fuzz in his mouth from that conquest.

Now before all you tree-hugging-bunny-kissers start writing, you need to understand that I accept this as being about as natural as hound dogs can get. And even more amazingly is the fact that they actually caught something… since hounds instinctively bark and howl as soon as they see something, giving ample warning to any prey they might be after.

It was a triumphant day for the dogs indeed and I guess rabbit’s feet aren’t so lucky for the rabbits.

Five weeks of a planned maintenance outage at one of our powerplants crammed into <10 mins of video. It’s how we roll.

Enjoy!

‘ just working on making my own videos play as they download (like on a “real” website) so you don’t have to wait forever before deciding if you want to watch it or not.

As a lot of you know, working six or seven days a week is a good thing from time to time no matter what industry we’re in; and as long as we don’t make it our modis operandi and drive ourselves to burn-out & a negative attitude without realizing it, the short-term adrenalin increase can actually help us to step-up our drive & enthusiasm for our respective professions and generally increases productivity and/or sales… not to mention the long-term positive “successful accomplishment” influences on the team.

We’re in the middle of one such “boost” at one of the plants I’m working in, and although I wake up looking forward to going to work each morning with the same exhilaration a lot of us feel after making any positive change – it also makes it difficult to get much done around the home right now. A case in point: Continue Reading »