My dog died.  I’ve been sad.  This winter has sucked.  Brad said that if our first winter in Boulder was like this one, we would have moved to the Bay Area.  I’ve been living in my pajamas and eating lots of macaroni and cheese, and hiding out from polite society — not in a Ted Kaczynski way, but in an Emily Dickinson way.  I’m sure I’ll come out of hiding when the sun shines again.

I had a busy November, and also had good intentions to blog about what I was doing and thinking.  I started about a dozen draft posts, and then didn’t finish them — but I figure it’s not too late to finish and post them in December.  My mother-in-law created a piece of art titled "The wall of good intentions," which I’m vaulting over right now.  Outdated / backdated posts to follow..

I love snow, which is good since we got maybe 18 inches of it in this recent storm.

Denali loves snow, too.

I love living in Colorado, but sometimes the weather is a bit more extreme than I like.  It’s snowing here.  The intrepid dishwasher repairman who just left my house used to live in Bettles, Alaska and learned some things about driving in the snow.  He told me that I-70 is closed between Vail and Georgetown, and the news says so, too.

When I tried to find the Colorado Department of Transportation website, I first tried http://www.cdot.com and found the Center for Development of Telematics, Telecom Technology Center of Government of India which is kind of interesting.

The CDOT road conditions website confirms the road closures.  And I wonder what happens to those people who are in their cars still sitting on the road?

And I’m glad my in-laws aren’t among them.  Stanley and Cecelia were here for a couple of days to see our new mountain house (a.k.a. their new summer house) and had a flight back to Dallas this afternoon.  They decided to leave this morning just after breakfast to miss the worst of the storm, and we’re all glad they did — although the trip wasn’t easy.

We got off to a good start when I backed their Hyundai rental car into the stone wall behind our garage and scratched the crap out of the right rear bumper.  Oops.  Maybe I should have told them the story about backing our car into a fire hydrant in Boston about 15 years ago and poking a hole in the right rear quarter panel before they asked me to get their car out to the main highway.  I drove their car without incident in a forward direction, and they drove my Range Rover Tank, and we traded cars at the highway.  I followed them into Dillon, where I turned and went into the grocery store since I was out already — but not before I saw them slide into the intersection on a red light, which made me a little nervous.  I spent maybe 45 minutes in the grocery store and when I came out it was basically zero visibility blizzard conditions.  I drove back to Keystone slowly and carefully.  I even turned on my flashers, which I’m not sure I’ve ever done before.  And I was definitely worried about Stanley and Cecelia.  I got home in time for Cecelia to call me and say that they were all okay, but had spun out and off the road about 3 miles short of the Eisenhower Tunnel.  A state patrolman helped them, and a tow truck came and towed them to the tunnel, but then they couldn’t get onto the road from the turnaround area where the tow truck had left them and had to get a push from a CDOT pickup.  By the time they called, the road conditions had improved for them and they made it safely to DIA, and then to DFW, where they called me again.  I hope our next time together is just as fun, but maybe a little less exciting on the travel front.

And the forecast for tomorrow is, of course, mostly sunny.

You do what you can, but sometimes things just don’t work out.

It’s a very gusty, windy day here.  I opened the front door to let Kenai outside and a big cricket bug blew in.  He was having major failure to thrive and was struggling to right himself.  I said, "oh, shit, now I have to save you," and went and got the glass and the piece of paper necessary to do so.  I scooped him up, trying not to damage him further, went out and closed the door behind me so he wouldn’t just blow back in, and lifted the glass off.  The piece of paper started to blow away down the front stairs, Kenai chased it, being the golden retriever that he is — and stepped squarely on the bug, killing it. 

I did what I could.  This one is on Kenai’s karmic debt.

According to Yahoo weather, it’s snowing in Keystone.  I’ll be skiing before I know it! 

Happy 40th birthday to me! 

And to update the story of the "missing" hiker in our neighborhood, it turns out that the entire disappearance was staged.  This guy really did not want to report back for more duty in Iraq.  See the Boulder Daily Camera article and CNN coverage here.  A sad story all around.

The Daily Camera has this article on the missing climber/hiker.  I keep thinking about mountain lions and bears, which are both active in our neighborhood.  I can’t imagine how hard this must be for his parents, family, and friends.  Good luck to the searchers today.

Getting ready to head out to Santa Fe and Albuquerque for Brad to run another marathon, and saw maybe the biggest spider I’ve ever seen on the wall of our house.  Outside, luckily.