Lightning, Bottled

How many times, do you suppose, have I re-set clocks in this new house? It feels like more times than all my old-house existence combined, although that perhaps might possibly could be an exaggeration. But I am starting to think that battery back-up exists for a reason. Yes, the power went out. Again. This wasn’t […]

Picking and Choosing

Yesterday a police car parked in front of Pat’s Screen Printing for probably half an hour. Normally this is nothing I worry about; sometimes the police are even customers (the chief himself came in to purchase masks for his staff early in the pandemic) and sometimes officers park near crosswalks to make sure cars are […]

A Business Concern

Update: Without leaving their homes far away from me, friends saved the day yesterday. Dan fixed my phone, which used 10 percent of its battery in the last 24 hours rather than 90 percent. Matt (whose birthday is today) not only improved the sound on my computer, but it quit running non-stop. Best of all, […]

For the Birds

I am almost out of blogging time and I haven’t even started. For a long while, I wasn’t sure I was going to be able to begin at all, because it took two restarts of the computer to even locate the cursor. Maybe other people can function strictly on keys without a mouse or touchpad, […]

Any Bodies

Blood donation was a rather surreal experience yesterday. On its surface, it was like most of my donations, but everything seemed different. It started with the e-mail reminder of the donation appointment, which I didn’t bother to read but Lynn did. The advice has changed: now you should eat a salty meal the day before […]

Not a Passing Grade

Yesterday Fortino stopped by work for the first time since he left us for the world of concrete. He would have been by sooner, he said — except his father died. On Fortino’s birthday. Of covid-19. He also lost his grandfather recently to the same cause. Neither of Fortino’s relatives was living in Gunnison, but […]

A Weak End

One of the standard conversational gambits at work (my work; perhaps yours as well) is to ask one another on Fridays what our plans are for the weekend, and then on Mondays, how the weekend went. My answers, rarely exciting, these days are that I am running at full tilt and never getting anywhere. Here […]

On the Fence

What a difference one week can make. Not in the world in general, not these days, but it’s been massively different in my backyard since Rufus arrived. One week ago my sister and brother-in-law were sitting on our back deck, their first visit in the time of Pandemia, and they were remarking on how many […]

Nursing (Un)certainty

I stopped in to see a friend yesterday and heard this charming story — well, I found it charming, and it made me laugh, so I’m passing it along. As I’m retelling it, please remember I got the “proud papa” version in case you want to quibble with details. I’ve known Sara since she was […]

No Lining of Any Color

Some days it’s just impossible to find a silver lining. I know you already know this about me, but I just can’t fathom the level of stupidity being evinced at the national and some state levels. These days, it feels unrelenting. In the last 24 hours I read four very angry columns that lambasted the […]