I haven’t posted in almost a month.  Mia culpa.  I have no good excuse.  Yes, I’m busy because it’s summer and I like to be outside plus I have a lot of extra activities because it’s summer.  Pretty soon I’m out of time or just out of energy, and I don’t post.

I did promise you a blog that didn’t include information about the garden, or my leg, but the truth is, both of those things are part of why I’ve not been around.  My plot in the garden is growing madly.  The weeds are just about licked completely, so most of my time is spent watering , and nipping back the danged pumpkin vines, which are threatening to take over the entire thing.  I have three pumpkins on the vine, and as soon as I have about ten, I’m going to nip it and hope that it can keep itself contained.  We have been picking (and eating) squash, turnips, beets, and cabbage.  Tomato plants are loaded, the beans and peas should start blooming soon, one of the two broccoli are doing fantastic, the corn is getting ready to tassle, and the kohlrabi appears to be very angry with me.

My leg?  Good days and bad days.  I continue to bike three days a week, 30+ miles total.  Most days the ankle doesn’t bother me.  But it still freezes up, swells up, and aches, and I wonder if I will ever wear anything but tennis shoes and flipflops ever again.  Buggers.

Work has been…interesting.  We are getting a new department director (if they ever get through the hiring process) and in the meantime the current management is working through an aggressive and ambitious reorganization that includes getting everyone up to 40 hours a week as well as moving me out from under my current supervisor and more on an equal footing with the other specialists in the office.  This means I will lose my Fridays off, but will gain a good $800 a month in income.  This would bring me back up to the income level I had when I was working in Missouri, so this is a Very Good Thing.  This change will be difficult for my boss, and I will have to be sensitive to her feelings as we move forward.  But realistically, this is a good thing for the entire department.  My boss can spend her energy on projects that are appropriate for her, and I can be free to run the lab and manage student workers the way it needs to be done. It’s a win-win.

Speaking of work, I attended a consortium meeting in Steamboat Springs, Colorado, at the end of June.  Steamboat is about 190 miles west and north of where I live.  I loaded my bike on my car and headed uphill.  Steamboat is about 7800 feet, a nearly 3000 foot climb from the plains where I live.  My car did great, getting 41 miles to the gallon on the trip.  Once in Steamboat, I got my bike unloaded and road the paved trail by the river.  Steamboat is a pretty town, but I wouldn’t want to live there.  Other than touristy shops, there are two overpriced grocery stores and a Walmart.  And we already know how much I despise Walmart.  The nearest large shopping, including a Target, is two hours and 90 miles away, all on winding two-lane state highways.

The drive was beautiful, however.  I crossed the Continental Divide when going through the Eisenhower Tunnel, before getting of I-70 and heading north on state highways.  Despite the broad swaths of beetle-kill pine forests, there was much green there.  The landscape is mostly grazing land, topped with mountains and dotted with cattle ranches.  Large outcroppings of rock dotted the landscape.  This is not a place where cultivation occurs, but Cattle seemed to be doing really well.  Steamboat itself sits in a valley under the shadow of a ski mountain.  Both summer and winter tourism is big there; skiing and other winter sports in the dark months, and hiking and mountain biking in the hot months.  I’m glad I got to make the trip, even though it went by really fast and I wished I’d had the time and money to spend an extra day or two there.  Maybe I’ll get to go again.

Ski mountain towering over Steamboat Springs.

View from my cheap hotel in Steamboat – $80 a night!

View of the valley.

Where I rode my bike – there was a nice paved path alongside the river.

Lastly, my mother is visiting.  She came on June 24th and will probably be with us until the end of July.  We have taken a short trip to Santa Fe (that’s for another blog post) and we’ve hit all the thrift stores, and went to a few of my town’s events.  We will go to the mountains this weekend.  Mom-time is good, but it’s also tiring.  Being busy on top of that makes me extra-tired.  But as I like to say – winter is for sleeping.  Summer is for doing!

This entry was posted on Wednesday, July 10th, 2013 at 8:27 pm and is filed under Uncategorized. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.