Escape to the City

NOAA is predicting 40 mph wind gusts for Eldora, and it feels as if they are stronger than that already, so I'm taking my very loaded car to the apartment in Boulder and after unloading will plan to stay overnight.  One of the items in my car is this foam mattress...

...which is going to have to suffice for a bed at the new digs for the time being.  The original offer of a double bed from a cabin here in Eldora whose owners were replacing it with a queen evaporated when they decided to put it in their guest bedroom in their Boulder home.  So, I'm taking bed linens, pillow, etc. and will try to turn this baby into a passable bed for the near future.

Much of the rest of this is dirty laundry.  I feel like a college student in reverse.  I'd been putting off doing laundry until the good old S.S. check came through and probably have $20 worth even with the slightly less expensive coin machines at the apartment building.  It will be nice to be able to do other chores upstairs in the apartment simultaneously.

This coming week I'm going to concentrate on removing everything from the storage unit I have in Boulder.  That's going to be a challenge with this bum arm, but I'm taking a little step stool that will give me another ten inches in height, so I won't have to lift things up so high.  We'll see how it goes.  My plan to is to take boxes back to the apartment and sort through them there.  I'm going to see if the apartment management has any objections to my putting any rejects in the common room for other residents to pick over if they want.  The idea is just to get out from under the monthly rent at Boulder Bins so I can give it to Boulder Housing Partners.  The shell game.

I've got everything battened down here so it won't blow away, I've given Vixen her "last breakfast" and I'll be off line for at least a couple of days.  More later.  Teddee

Wildfire

The third largest wildfire in Colorado history, according to a denverpost.com article by Kieran Nicholson today, was started by a lightning strike early last Saturday.  As of yesterday evening, the fire was zero percent contained, moving at 20 to 40 feet per minute and had grown to 41,140 acres.  It is about 80 miles from the cabin, but still brings home the threat of forest fires to the Rocky Mountains. 



Yesterday, after running a load of things down to the apartment and having a shower, I returned to Nederland, dropped off a library book, went to the spring for water, picked up pine cones for kindling, stopped off at Ace and had that last gallon of interior paint put back on the shaker and stopped at B&F and got some chicken quarters to boil up for the foxes.  The smoke from the fire was obvious from Nederland so I decided to drive part way up the ski area road to see if I could get a better perspective on the fire.  This is all I could see...

That's smoke not clouds, but for something so destructive, this appears fairly benign from this distance.  One 62-year-old woman, who lived alone in what must have been a rather secluded cabin, has been killed.  The denverpost.com article, quoting the sheriff, reported she received two evacuation notifications on Saturday, but both calls went to voice mail.  If she uses a cell phone and gets the kind of reception I do here in my cabin that seems totally understandable.


There was a lot of haze in the air yesterday...

The road visible in the photo above leads west to Eldora and the cabin.

Below, the ski slopes in summer..

High winds have been a major factor in the fire's spreading.  They aren't bad now...NOAA is predicting winds between 7 and 11 mph, gusting up to 18 mph for Eldora, but they could pick up tomorrow to 24 mph.  I hope the firefighters..."ground crews aided by five heavy tankers, five single-engine air tankers and at least five helicopters, with more choppers on order"...according to the denverpost.com article, are able to get this under control soon.

Strange, even with the death of a human being, my thoughts go to the animals, especially the newborns and young.  How terrified they must be.  I think if we had a fire here, I'd be more worried about Vixen and any kits than the cabin.  Teddee

The Wind in the Willows...er Aspens

You would think from looking at this photo that we are having an ideal Memorial Day...

...those stupendous Mountain Bluebird blue skies and just that little cloud in the distance.  But the winds have been annoyingly strong all weekend.  My neighbors have an anemometer....

...which you can barely discern against the background of trees.  I think it probably looks much like this image from Wikipedia...

I didn't know what these were called.  This is what Wikipedia has to say about anemometers:

An anemometer is a device for measuring wind speed, and is a common weather station instrument. The term is derived from the Greek word anemos, meaning wind, and is used to describe any airspeed measurement instrument used in meteorology or aerodynamics. The first known description of an anemometer was given by Leon Battista Alberti around 1450.^[1]

I asked my neighbor what speed their anemometer was measuring the wind gusts because I thought NOAA was way under-forecasting when they said as high as 28 mph today.  She said the highest they had was 50 mph, but because their anemometer is mounted too low, it usually measures about 20 mph under one owned by another resident in Eldora, so she was figuring 70 mph.  That seems more like it.  I can usually tell based on the noises various pieces on the cabin and outbuildings make.


I hoped I would be able to capture the winds whipping the neighboring aspens by using the same camera setting that enabled me to shoot falling snow last winter, but no luck.  You can see the tree tops bending a little in this photo, but it's not capturing the true magnitude of the wind gusts...

...and here they are straight again...

If I took enough of these images I could make an animated flip book...couldn't remember what these were called and had to look it up.  Love Google and Wikipedia.  A person can type the most poorly formatted question into Google Search and have it successfully interpret what you're seeking and direct you there.  In this case, this "duh" question, "Is there a name for the moving cartoons made by putting a different image on each page of a book?" typed into the search box took me to "Animation" and Wikipedia has some wonderful information on the subject:

Early examples of attempts to capture the phenomenon of motion drawing can be found in paleolithic cave paintings, where animals are depicted with multiple legs in superimposed positions, clearly attempting to convey the perception of motion. [I love this!  My comment]:

A 5,000 year old earthen bowl found in Iran in Shahr-i Sokhta has five images of a goat painted along the sides. This has been claimed to be an example of early animation. However, since no equipment existed to show the images in motion, [What about a potter's wheel?  My question] such a series of images cannot be called animation in a true sense of the word.^[1]

A Chinese zoetrope-type device had been invented in 180 AD.^[2] The phenakistoscope, praxinoscope, and the common flip book were early popular animation devices invented during the 19th century.

These devices produced the appearance of movement from sequential drawings using technological means, but animation did not really develop much further until the advent of cinematography.

So, making a bad segue from jumping antelope to foxes, I have been worried sick about Vixen, but was hoping she'd make an appearance and ease my concern before posting anything about it.  Unfortunately, not.  I haven't seen her since Friday night at which time she came at the appointed hour, ate her kibble and raw egg...

 
...while I sat on the bench under the cabin eave and watched her and chatted, then came up on the deck, took this huge piece of chicken from my hand and trotted off in the direction of her den.  No sign of her Saturday morning or Saturday evening, Sunday morning or Sunday evening.  Finally, about dark, the male fox I dubbed Valentino showed up...

There must have been some telepathizing going on because I'd been to-ing and fro-ing about putting out some chicken bones, wanting her to have them if she showed up, but not wanting to attract the bear, and had finally decided to put them out, opened the door and there he was.  But he's very flighty and left without taking the bones or another piece of chicken breast I put in the bowl...unless he came back after I shut the door.


...so now I'm trying to come up with a logical scenario...one that doesn't involve her being killed...and have come up with this:  After being attacked in the den, being injured and losing her month-old kits last spring, Vixen got pregnant again very quickly [gestation 52 days according to Wikipedia], which puts it at about May 5, needed nourishment badly so started coming for whatever calories I could provide, but remained so thin she just didn't look pregnant.  Brought her guy around a few weeks back so he'd know where to come for food when she couldn't.  Gave birth Friday night and can't leave the kits.  All this time she's been trotting off with pieces of chicken she was taking it to Valentino and now it was his turn to do for her and he didn't come through.  I can just hear the conversation...."Do I have to do everything?!"  

I do hope she's OK.  Teddee

Bunk Area Painted

I'm tired.  The wind was really blowing again this morning, but at 1 p.m. almost on the dot it quit so I decided I'd try to complete the bunk area painting project.  I just finished and it's 8 p.m. 

I pulled down the piece of plywood...

...I had to take it out the end.  You can see this is the really awful side that's splintered and looks as if someone had used it as a work table for Spackling.  I had turned this side up as one of the first things I did when I started living here because I couldn't stand to look at it...and it wasn't even painted then. 

I managed, without breaking something, to get it outside even though it's very floppy and hard to control...

...then I rolled on two coats of the dark charcoal brown paint on both sides...

In between coats I worked on the springs...

I experimented by spraying them just with the glitter paint and could see it didn't have enough density, so knew I was going to have to paint them brown first.  These were really hard to paint.  I don't remember it being that big a deal when I painted them white.  Maybe I just sprayed them and because the walls were white I didn't have to worry about over-spray.   If I got enough paint on either brush or roller to get the brown paint into the nooks and crannies, the wires just scraped it off...

I had so much paint on my drop cloth that I used it as a source of paint!  I had on clothes that were already spattered with paint from previous painting sessions, but I got paint in my hair and even up the sleeves of my long-sleeved t-shirt.  It was a mess. 

Once the wires and springs dried, I sprayed them with the glitter paint.  Can any one tell me why some paint companies continue to use these blasted paint lids that you have to open with a screw driver?  I absolutely tore this one apart trying to get it off with the paint can opener.  My screw drivers were in my plastic storage box "tool box" under the mattress!

I had the door open and opened the north window to get some air circulating through the cabin because this stuff was potent.  I held my breath, sprayed and then ran outside and breathed.  The springs now have a definite sparkle, but it is very subtle, which probably is good...

I spent the next couple of hours putting things back to rights.  I feel as if things aren't ever very organized in this one-room space, but when they really get disorganized like they do during projects like this, I sure stress out.  So, I put the painted plywood back on top of the springs; horsed the mattress back on the lower bunk (I put on a clean sheet while I had it on the table so at least I didn't have to have my usual wrestling match getting the bed linens changed); put my clothes bins back on top of the plywood, finished making the bed, put my prints and bedside lamp back up and the little tray that serves as my bedside "table."

Cozy, no?  I see I need to do a little touch-up here and there, but I'm generally pleased.  And, boy, does that bed look good and I'm hitting it just as soon as I have some supper.

Did you achieve a goal today?  Teddee

Winds Have Returned

We've been blessedly free of wind for several days.  I've even lost track.  But it came back with a vengeance this afternoon.  NOAA predicts gusts as high as 55-60 mph right on through tonight.  But it's warm, about 52F degrees and sunny.  I washed dishes this morning--my usual major project because I had put it off--then I cleaned up and shampooed and took Dixie to get the mail (still no check from Sears), return a book to the library and pick one up they were holding for me (a Walter Mosley thriller), get water and groceries.  I tried to get a shot of the wind blowing the stream of water.  It's just starting to bend a little here.  It made it more difficult to fill the jugs.

When we got back, my neighbors, who have been gone for weeks, were back and obviously unpacking camping gear.  When I first moved here, they felt obligated to tell me every time they left town.  I guess they've decided after two winters here, I no longer require a heads up.  I'll have to find out what fun place they went.  They were gone for weeks to Antarctica around Thanksgiving.  I think last year about this time of  year they went to Big Bend National Park in Texas.  They look very tan.

Dixie stayed in the car while I unloaded and still showed no interest in getting out when I was finished, so I just left her in the back seat with the door open.  I was concerned with the winds this high the door might blow shut, so was checking on her regularly and looked out a bit ago and the door was shut.  I went out there to open it and when I did she was gone.  I guess her owner's boyfriend must have come by and picked her up.  With temperatures getting warmer, I'll have to start  putting something in the door so it doesn't shut with her in the car.

OK.  Here are some photos of some of the things I bought yesterday at the Golden Community Garage Sale.

I left the price tags on things intentionally.  Obviously the white basket was 50 cents.  The clock chair is a plant pot holder I think, but I can see various uses for it.   It was $2.50.  The two little white buckets were 50 cents each.  The balls of yard were unmarked and I paid $1 for the lot.  The linen dish towel, the big winner, was $2.  Here's a close-up of it:

This is one of my favorite colors and the towel is in pristine condition.  My friend Cindy in Phoenix commented once when shopping with me that I color-coded my shopping cart.  Looks as if I did it again!

I almost missed these neat boxes... 

I had found the sale so unfulfilling I thought I'd go back around clockwise and see if possibly I'd missed something or if they were still putting stuff out, although that didn't appear to be the case as it had been at past sales.  And here were these boxes.  I got all three for $4.  They had been individually priced at whatever retail outlet at which they'd been purchased.  The tag on the large box was obliterated but the small box was priced at...

 

and the medium at...

 

What do you suppose they were asking for the large one?  They seem pricey.   

I also got a whole bunch of these clear glass ornaments...

They came in two boxes like this...

There are about 30 of these and I especially like the three large blown-glass globes with the glass loop incorporated as part of the ornament.  

That's it for today.  Were you able to find the beautiful in the everyday recently?  Teddee