Sidetracked Charley

Blizzard Or Post Traumatic Storm Distress.  I began skiing in 1970. I taught it for a dozen years, and attended exams and required workshops always seemingly timed with major storms. I have lived in Denver and Vail, and here in the mountains of north New Mexico for thirty years, 23 in Black Lake. In short I am no stranger to snow. I have been snowed into Winter park for three days, driven over most of Colorado passes in snow storms without four wheel drive. Stuck in Casper, Wyoming over Halloween in a five day blizzard. Had to spend the night in the lobby of the St. James Hotel in Cimarron, and a Holiday Inn in St. Louis because of surprise snowstorms. No rooms at the Inns. But the snow storm which bothers me is the one when I was home. It began December 29, 2006 and continued into the new year dumping feet of snow from Albuquerque north. It closed all five ways in or out of my valley. The Massive Blizzard , the worst some locals said in 70 years, is still talked about. It rem

The title is the closing line of my last blog. And I confess I did not believe it was going to be this much later. Things just got in the way. That is excuse one. Excuse two is that nothing moved quite as fast as I thought it would. But I suppose that is better than faster than what you hoped. A friend urged me a few months ago to go for a refinance of my house.  It came at a time when I was considering other changes in my path, no let's call it what is was, my rut. I was getting along with my rut.until a couple houses in the neighborhood sold and I realized I was not taking advantage of my assets.  So, nothing ventured; nothing gained. There are things I want to do like turn the apartment into and AirB&B, add a shower to my half bath downstairs, stain the outside of my house, and take a vacation to Maine with my sister next August. So I took my friend's advice, and it lowered my payments and gave me some of my equity out to be able to do all of that. But it took so

Transition A lot going on in my life since my last entry on this blog.  It is difficult when you are in the middle of a swamp to obtain the prospective to get yourself to solid ground. Especially if the solid ground is controlled by others or nature: things beyond your control. One of those things in the midst of the swamp was losing my flip phone. The pockets on women's jeans and even the small flip phone did not fit together. This was not the first time I lost my emergency connection to the world but it was significant to the point I did not want to buy another cell phone to again lose. How much time had I wasted on looking for that black thing which once found I had to go looking for glasses to read the messages on it. And to make matters worse it happened when I was frustrated with my server not having a working-well-enough website. So cutting to the chase my sister bought me a smart phone and put me on her service. I always argued I was not smart enough for a smart ph