A Year of Change

The Class of 1974 looked good. It was a big turnout. Had to be at least 100 classmates or so. Lots of people looked much older than I anticipated. Lori told me I looked the best and was in better shape than just about everyone. Mike Murphy, a short guy I knew pretty well, was in good shape too. The highlight of the night was when one lady came up to me and gave me a huge hug and said, “you should be named Mr. Congeniality as you were so nice to me and everyone in school”. I didn’t really remember who she was, and my first response was “really”, and she said, “oh yes, you were so nice and kind to everyone., no matter who they were” Now in high school, there were a lot of clicks. Three of us, Marty McCoy, who was there, Eddie Swanson and I, pretty much floated among all 550 classmates and could interact with them all. We weren’t in one click or another and knew everyone. In a way, we kind of ran the school as no one really challenged us. I was always the guy that sort of protected everyone. Not in a physical way (surprisingly we didn’t have a lot of fights in our school), but in an acceptance way. There was not really that much bullying but if I knew someone was being picked on, I’d step in and sort of make befriend them which sort of was a sign of acceptance and then whoever was bothering them, left them alone. I didn’t think much about it, but looking back, that was sort of the way it was. Now Marty and I, (not so much Eddie) pulled a lot of pranks. Marty said, “do you remember when we stole Lakewood High Schools homecoming float and brought it back and put it on top of our school”. Of course, I remembered and said, “oh yea, we got in trouble”, and he said yea, Pyle (Vice President Pyle) called us in, which he did. Marty also ate 365 gold fish one day at school. Lori said “why?” and Marty said, “just for fun”. I have a few other R or X rated stories I could tell, but I’ll save them for now. Lots of memories like that. School was kind of like the movie Fast Times at Ridgemont High. Caroline Griffith, who lived at the top of our driveway, and still does, said “can you believe how fast life went?”. She put her hand to her forehead and said, “it went by like that, poof”. There were lots of other people there too. I didn’t recognize too many but after seeing their name tags, knew who they were. Most people recognized me and said how good I looked good and that I hadn’t changed much. I don’t know if that’s good or bad, ha. We left after about 90 minutes to get on the road. We could have stayed longer but had the drive and wanted to stop in Frisco for groceries. As I said, lots of people looked old, as I guess 66 and 67, which most of us are, is old. Still, when talking to them, you could hear the 17-year-old in them talking, just like in high school. It’s like we all time travelled back to 1974. It was a good time.

Before that, we went to Tommy’s to see him and meet Holly. I walked in and gave her a hug and said, “might as well hug you as Lori says you’ll be family in a week or so”. This is when Tom said, “yup, and Holly stuck out her hand and showed us her engagement ring! Now this was a shocker in one way, but not in another. Tom is really head over heels for her and we’re super happy for him. The shock was it’s only been about 2 months or so since they really started dating. Tommy says it’s a 18–24-month engagement or so, which is good as it will give them time to really get to know each other and make sure they’re a good fit for each other. We’re both happy for him. I guess everyone knew but us as Tom wanted to tell us when we showed up. Holly seems super nice and I’m sure was a little nervous as who knows what Tommy told her about me, (can only imagine), but they do seem like a good pair. The funniest part of meeting her was when she said, “we didn’t really know if each of us liked each other, but then one night, Tequila Tom called, and we talked for 3 hours”. I immediately said, “oh, you know Tequila Tom?” and she said, “oh yea….”. Hope things work out for them. They’re both adults. I’m just that protective guy who looks out for those I care about. Congrats to them both.

Pretty clear up here this morning. Sort of smokey in Denver. We were home by 9 or so which wasn’t too bad. It was great seeing everyone, even if I didn’t know who they all were. Sort of surreal. It’s amazing how fast life goes. Most of us don’t feel old, especially Harry and I. Harry is such a talker and Tom gave him a few shots of tequila before we went, so he was particularly chatty. Got to watch out for Tequila Tom, ha! Here’s Shelly O’Connell, our old neighbor who lived in the neighborhood with Harry and I since 6th grade. She’s now a retired ER doctor in Seattle. The boys, growing up, would always go over and see her dad, who lived a couple houses away. He passed away I think 4 years ago. Good to see Shelly, and we exchanged info. She was always nice. We went to her older sisters funeral years ago when we still lived in Lakewood. Her parents were a big part of the neighborhood growing up.

So that’s it, big day with the reunion and meeting Holly. Still hard to believe it’s been 50 years since high school. It’s not fair that life goes so fast. Time is the one thing no one can stop, so get out there and enjoy and live each day to the fullest. God Bless.

Today is the day. I remember when Mom flew back to Wisconsin for I think her 6oth reunion. Talking with the guys last night, there’s not a lot of people I remember. You remember names of people, but if you haven’t seen people in 50 years, you don’t remember much else. Still, we’re going. Harry and I and Lori are going to Tom’s first and then will head over to Rolling Hills Country Club around 5. Not sure how long we’ll stay, maybe an hour or so, we’ll see how it goes.

Today is also James’s birthday. They texted us pics from Gillette Stadium last night before he went on. They were watching the warmup band, which is Mammoth, Eddie Van Halen’s kid’s band. Tonight James and Addy will go see Castor and his band play in some club. Fun time. A few of our group are going to Seattle for the last show and they want us to go, but it’s like Labor Day weekend and we’re just not up for travelling.

Clear and cool outside, we’ll take it. Ty made it back from Denver around 7:30 last night. Traffic was horrible. He works at 7 this morning and already texted asking if we’d bring him a Gatorade and a bagel sandwich. Jag and Ava should be in California, and he is now done with work. I think they’re back a week from Monday.

Lori lost her American Express card, so I was on the phone with them. We had about a dozen charges that were not ours. Always something.

That’s it, enjoy your day. Take care, stay safe and God Bless.

This morning, I cleaned out the little freezer, as it’s trash day. Time to re-stock. I’ll order up some stuff, (mostly burger and chicken) from Edwards down by our old house. Then later this month, we’ll get a quarter of beef from a rancher over in Montrose. Chickens should come today. For bacon, I buy it in 5- or 6-pound slabs and then we re-pack it into smaller packages before we freeze them.

Just for fun, I went back to Costco.com this morning to see how much gold and silver they have, and poof, they’re out. I did grab another ounce last night as I thought gold was going up, which it did. It’s $2475 this morning. According to goldseek.com, a long-time popular site, Costco sells $200 million of bullion a month! That’s like $2.4 billion a year! Maybe more people are paying attention than I thought. Although, the site said even investors are shopping Costco as their markups are so cheap.

Ty went to a concert last night in Denver after golfing earlier in the day. Jag is all moved into his new place. He rented a U-Haul truck and knocked it out. Jag and Ava go to California this morning, I think. They might have gone last night, I’m not sure. Lori would know.

A bunch of us got together for cigars yesterday afternoon. Addy texted pics from Gillette Stadium in Massachusetts where James was doing a walkthrough of the stage for the show tonight. Lots of fun pics from the birthday party. They landed in Boston like 3 in the afternoon. We all use What’s App as it’s hard for people to hack into our group.

Shultz had to put his mom in hospice yesterday. Feel bad for him. He’ll stop by today on his way to Glenwood to stay with his buddy for the weekend, unless he changed his mind.

A little smoke up here, but not too bad. We still have a good month ahead of us in fire season.

That’s it for the day. Tomorrow we’re going down a little early to the reunion to see Tommy and meet Holly. We’re looking forward to meeting her. We’re so happy for Tom. Then we’ll probably hang for an hour or 90 minutes at the reunion before heading home.

Have a great Friday, God Bless.

Last night about 20 of us got together to celebrate James 61st birthday. It’s actually Saturday but he leaves today for two shows in Boston. He’ll play those tomorrow and Sunday, then go to Brooklyn to hang out with his youngest daughter Marcella, (who Jag went to school with) and then play two shows in Chicago before he’s home for three days. Then two more weeks of shows and he’s done, except for the four final shows of the two-year tour, in Mexico City between September 20-28. It was a great time. He was super thankful and happy. Food was great and the cake was amazing!

Earlier in the day, I met up with Harry who drove from California for our high school reunion this Saturday. We went to Hovey for some food and so Harry could see Ty. We’ll meet up Saturday afternoon before the reunion. We were thinking we’d go see Tommy, if he’s around, before the big bash.

Lori has a lot of meetings today, all here from home. The cleaners come around noon. Then we have our cigar get together around 4. James fly’s out at 10m this morning, but the rest of us will be there. Nice up here, no smoke and around 85 degrees during the day. It looks smokey in Denver, at least on the news. Looks like four fires in all burning on the front range.

7am now and time to go to the gym. Have a great day and God Bless.

Looks like a few more fires popped up down on the front range. Nothing up here, knock on wood. Usually lightening starts fires around here. Not sure how they started down there. Lots of evacuations, hopefully they get a handle on them soon. The worst side effect, if you’re not directly in the path, is the smoke. We live with that usually every summer. Thankfully the rain last week, pushed that all out up here.

Today Chris, our stone guy, is coming by to see about putting stone or tile over our concrete. Concrete in Colorado cracks, no way around it. Lori works in Vail today and tonight at 6 we have James’s birthday bbq. Lori will just meet me there as she probably won’t get out of work in time to come home first.

Ty works today and Jag has only a couple days left. Tomorrow I’ll clean out our little freezer. I went to the dump yesterday with a large load from cleaning out the big freezer. In the afternoon, a couple of guys from the church in Gypsum came over to pick up the large executive desk we got from the neighbor a few weeks ago. We just didn’t have room for it and the church needed it, so it worked out perfect. I did keep the cool leather chair for my office.

Kellie, our egg and chicken girl, butchered a bunch of chickens last night now that 4H is over. I’ll get a dozen or so today for the freezer. We trade wine for chicken and eggs, so I dropped her a case and a half yesterday from the load I picked up the day before, just to get it out of the house. You haven’t had a chicken until you’ve had a fresh, free range, and I mean one that runs around the yard all its life, chicken. I talked to Jake up at the ranch in Wyoming yesterday about getting our beef for the winter. Time to fill the freezers back up.

The fire in Jefferson County down by our old house, has grown from 90 acres to 130, just as I wrote this. I’m watching the news while writing. Time to get moving and get to the gym. Then I’ll see Ty for breakfast. Be well and hopefully the smoke isn’t blowing over Tom’s house. Take care and God Bless.

July is almost over. Won’t be long now until we’re in the holiday mode. They come fast and furious starting with Labor Day.

Talked to Tom yesterday for a quick second. He was getting a flat tire on the Porsche fixed. Guess he ran over a screw. Robin is doing well, talked to her for 5 minutes or so. I made it to Denver by 9 or so and was headed home before 10:30. I hit a little traffic, but it wasn’t too bad. Just a little slow in the usual areas.

Big fire on the front range down near Loveland. 950 acres now with zero containment. Tis the season. Mother nature does her thing. Imagine a hundred years ago when fires just burned until they didn’t.

Heat advisories in Denver. Temperatures look to be over 100 again. Mid 80’s to maybe 90 up here.

I cleaned out half the freezer in the garage yesterday and have a few bags of old frozen food to dispose of. They’re in coolers right now so they don’t melt before the trash guy comes in a few days. Lori cleaned the freezer in the kitchen which prompted me to do the garage as we needed to move some stuff out to the big freezer. She also fixed the ice maker. She can fix anything. Guess the water hose had frozen due to the freezer being too full.

I did some grocery shopping yesterday stocking up on staples like flour and coffee and some of Lori’s favorite tea. I’ll do some more purging in my closet today. Oh, Costco sells gold! They have Gold Eagles and bars, and the incredible thing is they’re cheaper than you can buy them from any dealer, plus you can use a credit card. We bought a few as not only is there no tax and no shipping, but we get miles from using our credit card! No brainer. Then you just pay the credit card bill when it comes in. Just go online, put in your info, and the brown truck will deliver them in a couple days. Always good to have some gold and silver in the stash.

Time to get moving. 6:09am now. Have a great day and God Bless.

Looks like summer is in full swing. It’ll be hot in Denver all week long. We’re down Saturday for my high school reunion.

My neighbor three doors down, who is building a 10,000 square foot house in Ft. Collins, might list soon for $4.4 million! That’d be a new high for the hood and put us easily above $3 million. Not sure what we’d do but there are some cool houses out there for less than that meaning we could pocket some cash. Here’s just one example being built and ready next year.

Jag goes to California I think on Friday with Ava for a week. Ty has most of the week off, I think only working on Wednesday. Lori has been trying to kick a bad headache for a week. She did go to the Westin for a massage yesterday to see if that’d help. I have a lot of computer work today and need to see when I can get my topper on my truck.

Nice up here, cool at night and not smokey at all. Here’s another house on 20 acres we’re looking at. Nothing will happen until next year I’m sure, but fun to look. We do want some more land.

6:30am now so time to get moving. Have a great day, stay cool and drink lots of water and God Bless.

Don’t believe all you see and hear these days. The World isn’t what it seems. You see, the media is in bed with the elites, and they push this agenda that they think we all should subscribe to. Take the Olympics, which were founded on being non-political, and the embarrassing opening ceremonies. If you watched it, you saw the mocking of the Christian faith by creating a woke, perverted version of the Last Supper using drag queens and other offensive people, to spread, I don’t know what kind of message. It sure wasn’t one of inclusion. The elites of France are praising it while the people of France are embarrassed and apologizing to the World. Funny how they didn’t mock Islam or Mohammad, as the director and actors would probably no longer be with us this morning had they done that. Anyhow, so sad that this could happen. Now too, the Olympics will face a boycott and have a stain on them that the hard-working athletes don’t deserve. We weren’t watching it anyhow. Haven’t caught a minute of it, and for sure won’t watch any now. We’ve been watching Cheyenne Frontier Days all week and the finals are today.

Meanwhile here in our Country, the media would have you believe the Country is fine and Kamala is the savior the Country needs from the terrible monster, who they compare to Hitler, known as Donald Trump. They tell you she’s now tied in the polls, yet if you look at each of their rally’s, she draws a few dozen, maybe a hundred, (unless people are bused in which the Dems do often) while Trump commands thousands upon thousands of people who will stand in line for hours to see and hear him. Yet again, the media tells us, she’s now in the lead. When asked what’s she’s accomplished, one Senator says her greatest accomplishment is that she went to an abortion clinic. Another says she’s a champion for entrepreneurs. Really? After 3 and a half years, that’s all they got. Thought she was the Border Czar! The media is scrambling to erase interviews and comments from her for years and anything to do with the border, among other things.

So, as you can see, don’t believe what they tell you. They’re lying to your face trying to convince you to believe what they want you to believe. Why do you think they run $50 million dollar ad campaigns? It’s because the people, (who don’t always see what’s happening right in front of their own face) they think can be fooled by consistent messaging, even though it’s 100% not true. Wake up before it’s too late.

In our corner of the World, we went to the gym, and I worked in the basement for a while and around the house. More of the same today around here. It was in the mid 80’s up here, which is just about perfect. Ava made it home and Ty hung out with us last night. I think Madi gets home today. Ty works at 10 as they have the weekly Sunday night dinner at his work tonight. They’re doing ribs this week. It starts at 5, we might go.

Looks like a hot week in Denver coming up. We’re getting ready for Fall and Winter up here. I’d like to see if I can get enough stuff out of the garage to get my truck in this year. We should have built a three car garage. Our next house, will for sure have that!

7am now, here’s some pics, enjoy and God Bless.

One of Lori’s 4 baskets out front!

Lori fire roasting corn for salads!

And my new truck, topper goes back on this week!

The front of the house! Have a great Sunday, God Bless.

Yesterday the rain came down. First up was late afternoon when everyone was headed to the County Fair. Of course, we were at the grocery store when it hit. Next was about 11pm. Both were good soakers, like movie rain. Again though, we’ll gladly take it.

Ty works at 7 this morning and Ava lands at DIA at 6:30 tonight. We might go to the fair today, we’ll see. Lori worked all day, and I ran a few errands after my calls. Marty and Melanie made it to Montana with no issues. Wednesday is James’s birthday party. He leaves Thursday for one more month of shows that start I think Friday or Saturday in Massachusetts. Then next Saturday is my high school reunion. So, it’ll be a busy week, plus Thursday is August 1st! Fall will be here soon.

The silly season is in full swing. I’m in full on ignore mode and change the channel when anything comes on tv related to politics. You can’t believe anything you hear, on both sides, but it’s worse on the left. All I know is that I’m voting for policies, not personalities. If you do this, Trump should win in a landslide. Enough said.

6:39am now. Time to get moving. Have a great day and weekend. God Bless.

Best day in well over a week for air quality. It’s still a little hazy outside but nothing like it’s been.

I made it to Denver by 8:30 and was headed home an hour later. The new truck is nice, and the seats seem more comfortable. I think the tires are not as aggressive, so the ride is better. I was at the dentist by 1:45 and then we all got together for cigars around 4:30. We hung out for a little over 2 hours and I then headed home. I have calls starting at 9am until probably noon, so time to get going.

Ty works at 9 this morning and we’re running to the gym before my calls so time to go. Make it a great day and God Bless.