Tag: summer

Categories
Family life

Is it May already?

I cannot believe that we have entered the month of May. Allergies are bothering me to the point where I need to take the usual drugs in order to get through the day. The first several months of this year have just flown on by. We have already passed Cinco De Mayo. I have had another birthday, 62, and find myself still working. March flew by like a lion. The weather is starting to improve, yet a couple of weeks ago we had snow. Soon it will be summer, and the kids will be out of school for the summer.

Tis a typical Sunday that I find myself up somewhat early. Having tea and breakfast. Laundry is done. The dog is fed. Need to take some items to the recycling bins (glass and cardboard boxes). Vacuum cleaner needs to be run; a general spring cleaning is necessary. Yard needs to be cleaned up, especially since Jewel uses it a lot. Virginia creeper runs amuck along the once fence. If I don’t thin it out, it grows across the canopy of trees and slowly kills them. My backyard is a mess that is in need of some revitalization. I think about it every year but never really get any backyard project started. Yet it is time to plant the tomatoes in the deck box.

Ditto with the projects at the stables. Some of the wood in the buildings needs to be replaced. The wind can blow quite excessively, causing damage. The fence needs replaced in areas; a good coat of paint would improve the aesthetics of the place. Alas, soon it will be time to cut the grass, bail hay for the horses, and in general, try to keep up with the chores.

Soon I will find myself at the high school graduation. I cannot believe my little girl is 18 and a senior. Seems like it was just yesterday when she was doing little girl things. Where did the time fly? Soon it will be off to college and then taking care of the horses while she is away. Son will have wrapped up a very difficult freshman year. What will we have him do this summer?

This summer, I have taken a vow of sorts to do things that I want to do. Camping and other weekend getaways. Get to the gun range and target practice. Hiking and yes, some fishing. I want to sit under a tree and read books, to go to fancy restaurants, waste hours in bookstores, drink wine and visit microbreweries. Long weekend trips to visit friends, museums, art galleries.

Some of the planning is coming together for summer concerts. Robert Plant and Alison Kraus in Taos, Bruce Spingsteen and The E Street Band, and perhaps even Pearl Jam.

Yet I need a new iPhone, put the car into the garage, what else?

Well it’s a nice day and so I might as well see what I can accomplish. Until next time.

Categories
the week in review

Memorial Day 2021

Today represents the end of May. For the kids, in person school has ended for the summer and now they get to recover from the stress of school, the stress from COVID, and lockdowns. A feeling of hopelessness is replaced with a return to normal? I have received the vaccine. My daughter has received the vaccine. My son has had his first shot and the second one will happen next week.

For the summer I expect that daughter will get outside and spend her time riding. Hopefully she will feel a return to normal when competitions resume but that is compounded by having to learn to ride on a new horse. But I also hope that she spends time with photography and art. Son is a wee bit more of a problem in that his love is video games. Hopefully I can get him interested in some other things. I am thinking maybe some computer programming, maybe robotics, or flying his drone.

For me this is my summer to ponder the future. I need to finalize a plan and execute that plan. Work is changing and none of it for the better. I feel that stress and can no longer handle it. So it is time for me to do something else. As I have been contemplating the next cycle of my life, what will keep me occupied? What will keep me thinking? What will keep me motivated? Learning? Expanding? Old hobbies? New hobbies?

I was glad to see somewhat a return to normalcy when the New Mexico Gambling establishments (aka casino’s) have reopened. That said, I see that I still possess bad luck when I entered one yesterday for the first time in over 14 months. My losing streak continues.

For me, work has been normal for months as I have been in the office daily. In the past several weeks, I have been out for coffee, been to a restaurant to eat, had beers at a brewery with a friend. So I guess things are returning to normal.

Saturday. Out for beer with a friend.

Saturday was great. It was beautiful outside. The sky was blue, the beer was cold. The conversation was great. Most relaxed that I have felt in a long time. Laughed many times, got stomped in 80’s music trivia and after a few beers, didn’t dance on the tables.

Sunday. A walk and waiting for a coworker for morning coffee.

But the scars are long and deep. This pandemic makes no sense. It is clear that it started elsewhere. It is clear that governments failed to act, behaved selfishly, let it spread without consequence. The current clowns in charge of our government have done more in four months than a virus could to destroy this country in fourteen.

So for me, Memorial day is not just “a long weekend”. This is my second post of this holiday, as I posted in 2019. I just looked at that post as I was finishing the edit of this post. The picture below is almost identical to my post from then.

While it is a time to remember those who served and gave their life in the ultimate sacrifice, so too must we remember the calamity of the last year. We must understand why. We must understand why so we do not have to experience it again. If this was sprung as a weapon, then the evil that created it must answer for the crimes that they unleashed on the world. If it was natural, that must also be understood so as to avoid the pain and death that was inflicted upon the nations of the planet in a future event.

Monday. A display of the flag. Remembering those who sacrificed for our country.

So it has been a few weeks since my last post. I need to work on spending more time posting here. To that end, I have cancelled my Facebook account. Nothing gets me more angry than the garbage the emanates from the left. It is a stress that is manipulated by the left-leaning Facebook clowns who control what we think, what we say, and ultimately what we feel. I have a right to agree, or to disagree and to communicate my position. That is no longer a position that can be tolerated by the big technology companies. So I will stay away from them. I will not allow them to earn money from what I read, what I write, what I post. I pay to write this, to maintain this blog. As readers, you can choose to read, to comment, to return for something new, or not return at all.

I hope that everyone has a great day and that they and their loved ones are safe, health and secure. Until next time.

Categories
Family

First day of summer

Today marks the first day of summer. Started humming the Brian Adams tune “Summer of 69”, which I recall was big during the summer of 1983. I was back in Pennsylvania. I had graduated from college and was getting ready for graduate school. I recall that was a hot summer for some reason. And here in New Mexico, today is hot (mid-80’s) and windy. Low humidity, and blue sky. Yes, I was able to get back about midnight after the travel day from hell.

It was good that I was able to get home because I had lots of things to do. I had to feed the horse first thing in the morning, go to work on my day off to deal with some pressing things, pick up the dog from the kennel, take daughter riding and pick up son from nature camp. Horse and dog are fine, children are well, and I didn’t get sucked in on my day off.

Summertime usually coincides with the kickoff of the afternoon monsoon season. Monsoon season has been on again, off again over the past two decades. Monsoon season is usually when the rain clouds form above the mountains to the west during the day. By the afternoon, we have a thunderstorm with rain. They typically hit every afternoon and last about a half an hour at most. But the thunder and lightening can be quite impressive. They add their own unique set of colors to the New Mexico sky, which is a palette containing a variety of colors. The skies are often light blue or dark blue. They are some of the deepest blues that I have ever seen. And of course, the white puffy clouds. Often with the monsoons are large and very colorful rainbows. Sadly, I have yet to find a pot of gold. Another sky anomaly, depending upon the sunlight, the angle in the sky, and other weather conditions are the variety of other colors present in the sky: yellow, orange, red, and pink. These colors are often present at sunrise and sunset.

We have a quiet weekend planned. Daughter plans to work at Goose Downs. Son has nothing on the horizon but we have some work to do at the stables in terms of cutting weeds and getting the barn ready for the first delivery of hay shortly. Aside from housecleaning, perhaps I can read some more of my book.

Quiet is good. I never sleep well on travel, so I often return very tired and need the weekend to recover. Plans for July and August are starting to take shape. Two horse competitions; one in July and one in August. My 40th high school reunion is in a July. Still trying to decide if I will make it back. Sounds like a few folks that I haven’t seen in 40 years may be there. July is pretty busy already, making a long weekend trip back east difficult, but we shall see.

Categories
Family

Summer Break

This week starts the summer break for the kids, about three months off from school. For daughter, the time will be spent riding. What hasn’t been worked out yet is whether she spends the weeks here at the stables riding her horse, or splitting the week riding here and several days at the stables south of Santa Fe, where she gets her training. The great thing about the latter is that she gets to work with many different horses.

There are other advantages for splitting the week. She gets some professional training with people watching and coaching. This is something that she doesn’t get riding at the stables closer to home.

For son, his summer will be spent at several camps. The majority of the summer weeks will be spent at art classes. Interspersed between the art camps are camps for hiking and outdoors, and a two week robotics class. The hiking explores the landscape around where we live and the forces that shaped the local mountains, getting wet and dirty. The second week explores the creatures that live in the dirt, the water and the mountains.

Then there is robotics. There they will learn how to build, program and control basic robots. We thought this would be great since he likes computer games. Reading up on the subject, it looks like they use LEGO

kits. Hopefully this will allow him to learn basics, to be creative, and to have fun.

Anyway, this summer should be fun, busy and keep them outside.

Categories
life

Reading is Fundamental

Today starts the final week of the school year for my son and daughter. Every year the schools send out information about summer reading programs, books to read, things to try to get the kids to read during the summer months. It’s a great idea and I try to do my best to get my children to read over the summer. There are two approaches that I take to accomplish this.

The first approach is pure capitalism. They get to choose the book and if it meets with my approval, then they read it. For every book that they read, I will pay them twenty dollars. The book has to meet with my approval, otherwise, the legal minds that are my children will argue over what constitutes a book. There is no prescribed number of pages, it cannot be a short story or a comic book. A collection of short stories is fine, but they have to read all of it. There is no quiz, or essay. I just need to see them reading. They are not speed readers, so devouring 100 pages in a day will cause me to question the actual reading. But it is the honor system, which I try to impress upon them is as important as being able to communicate well. The art of communication is dying in our society, between texts and tweets and emoji’s. It is certainly something that I struggle with and try my best to get it right. But I will let you be the judge based upon my blog posts.

The second approach is to lead by example. By that I mean if they see me reading, perhaps they will also read. I cannot ask them to do something that I then will not also do. I’m not going to pay myself twenty dollars, but I am going to read. One reason will be to generate ideas for future blog postings.

For the start of my summer reading, I have chosen a book that has constantly gotten the better of me. On a Facebook post once, I commented in the category of things people may not know about me is that I have managed to read the Bible twice, cover to cover. Odd as I am not a religious person, but we can explore that in some future blog. No my challenge for the summer will be my fourth attempt to read Atlas Shrugged by Ayn Rand. Why? First is that being a Rush fan, their songs were influenced by the writings of Ayn Rand. Yes, I have seen the movies but the story is as important today as when it was written. Every time I start reading a book, I put the date and where I am at the time I am reading it. For this start, I wrote “here is hoping that the 4th time I will finish”. My copy is worn, having been purchased in the summer of 2011. I think I bought it as part of a trip to go see Rush in concert.

I’ll keep you informed of the summer reading challenge for both me and my kids. I’ll have more words tomorrow as I explore this new world of blogging and work to improve my own communication skills.