Back On

Alright folks, sorry for the sabbatical, but right before vacation I took my computer to Best Buy and it just came back to me today, a week after I got back from Colorado.

Colorado is much better the second time around. That might have something to do with the fact that the first time around consisted of driving through in the dead of night on my way from Minneapolis to Moab, Utah. There just wasn't much time to get out and look around, you know? I ate dinner at a Chipotle on the way back through to Minnesota, but again, not much really to look at.

I like getting together with my wife's family, because there's always plenty of good food and good company and it's never dull...and we're all very productive. We didn't finish putting the new roof on Jeff's house, but it's not from lack of effort. It's just that we got a little ambitious with all the extra hands and so Jeff enacted a plan that will save him tons on heating this winter, and he built up another roof level. Basically, we stripped the old Cedar shingles and tar paper, built a new set of rafters over the existing plywood roof, put new fiberglass and foam insulation down, covered it with a new layer of plywood, then new tar paper and new shingles. Only, well, by the time Kathy and I left, it was just tar paper and three rows of shingles on the steeper slope side of the roof. The plan was for the remaining hands to split into two groups, one finishing the shingles on the steep side (we're talking steeeeeep, so the more help the safer it would be) while the other half (and half is a relative term, because I think this was the larger group actually) built the new rafters and so forth on the more gentle slope side of the roof.

In the midst of all the roofing, we managed to find time to gather and talk, eat, catch up, play some X-Box, watch (appropriately) The Money Pit, drive up Mt. Evans and Jeff and I squeezed in a short bicycle ride Monday morning before Kathy and I made the return journey. The new car handled the drive out well, the drive back well, and the drive up and down the mountain very well. Acrodyl missed us dearly, and behaved for my father (a first). And, as I said, I've been really without internet for more than a week. But no more! Look for an excerpt tomorrow per the status quo, and Wednesday or Thursday I will be calling for F.W.F. suggestions.

I would like to also formally welcome Jerry back to the world of Blogging. Go read up on Dennis Kucinich and the NHL.