Cold & Flu

Family and Friends,
 
The cold and flu season has officially arrived, at least for me that is. Tuesday morning I felt the onset of a head cold and began trying to fight it off. As the day went on I just felt worse and worse. By Wednesday afternoon I was miserable and left work about an hour early. I stayed in bed until Thursday afternoon, at which time I was feeling better. I got up and cooked supper, worked on my Spanish lessons, scrap booked our Taos trip, and made brownies; and I had plans to go to work on Friday. Doing those things was probably a bad idea considering by bedtime I had nearly gone through an entire box of Kleenex, had a throbbing head, and was coughing up a storm. Once again I was deemed to bed, but this time until Saturday morning.  I am still hanging on to the shirt tail of my cold, but I am back at work with a clear nose and head, yet an occasional cough makes its presence known.

Despite being sick and stuck in bed I managed to I spend some time attending to my online writing club and made significant progress on my Spanish lessons. I am almost caught up to Jimi.

Saturday morning we watched the movie "The Godfather" and later "Godfather II".

Saturday evening, we went to the University of Colorado football game. My girlfriend, Vicki from work, her boyfriend and son also went. We didn't stay for the whole game. It was cold the game was kind of boring; probably because we aren't really fans and not to mention because our home team was playing badly. 

Sunday we went shooting with friends, Brad and Ellen, at a shooting range in the mountains. We shot a 9 mm, a 22, and a 357 Magnum with both 38s and 357 bullets. Jimi also brought his 12 gauge shot gun, but he was the only one who shot it. We shot targets taped to boxes and full pop cans. We had a great time.

Sunday I helped Jennifer Nance take her dogs (Molly and Razor included) to the pet clinic for their annual shots. It was wonderful seeing the little dogs again and they were oh so excited to see me too.

Jimi worked on fixing the brakes on my car along with some other maintenance for our trip. He put in a new master cylinder and we sure hope this fixes the problem; however, just a few hours after the breaks were fixed something else went wrong and the idle was not high enough to even keep the car running. I am now driving the truck and he is trying to investigate what it wrong with the car.

Jimi won a contest making a poster advertisement for a local karate school and earned $100.  His first paid job.

We are preparing for our trip eastward bound later in the week. We are excited and looking forward to seeing friends and family. In addition, Christmas is approaching quickly and we are preparing for Jennifer and Daniel's visit.

I'm not sure if I will be writing next Monday, since we will be busy visiting loved ones. It may be that I will skip next Monday and catch up the week after when we return from Illinois and Michigan.
 
Love Everybody,
Lorie & Jimi

A week of photos.

Family and Friends,

 We hope you had a great week, as we did. Tuesday evening we sat in the living room with our eyes glued to the television, with anticipation watching for the outcome of the presidential election. “History in the making” are the words Jimi repeated to me. We were honored that we could witness this amazing and remarkable fate in history of our first black President.

 Wednesday night Jimi worked on his photos. I, on the other hand, was bored stiff. I had many things to do or many things that I needed to do, but I had no motivation. I was internally bored. I did manage to complete my first lesson in learning Spanish and I bought airline tickets for Jennifer and Daniel’s visit over the December holidays. Other than that, my evening was squandered.

We had tickets to the Minnesota Avalanche game for Thursday night, but we opted not to go and sold them. Rather, I worked while Jimi visited his friend Brad.

I completely forgot to mention Jimi’s adventure last week. On Thursday he went to a town near Vail, Colorado called Gilman for some urban exploration. This town was ordered by the EPA to evacuate in 1984 because of the mining operation polluting it with lead and zinc. Jimi parked his truck and hiked in to the town, as the main entrance is gated off. The exploration was really cool. The entire town abandoned, as something you would see in the movies and certainly not hitting so close to home.  The evidence left behind depicted a story with cars in the garage appearing as if they were undergoing repair at the time, people’s homes, a hotel, and school; some 85+ structures. Most of the interior of the buildings were bare. Traces of unwanted things left behind were laying around. Elements of weather claimed what was once a thriving mining town. Jimi took some really good pictures there, which was his main purpose, and his trip was good. With the wind blowing, the doors would bang loudly open and shut, which at times would freak him out a little, as he snuck around this abandoned modern day ghost town. 

This is what Wikipedia has to say about Gilman, Colorado.

Gilman is an abandoned mining town in southeastern Eagle County, Colorado, United States. Founded in 1886 during the Colorado Silver Boom, the town later became a center of lead and zinc mining in Colorado, centered around the now-flooded Eagle Mine. It was abandoned in 1984 by order of the Environmental Protection Agency [1] because of toxic pollutants, including contamination of the ground water, as well as unprofitability of the mines.

This past Thursday, he went to DIA getting really close to the runway under the planes, as they were taking off and landing. He spent a good portion of the day there with some super successful picture taking. After words he went to visit our friend Brad for a while.

 Molly and Razor went to Mead for the weekend and it appears that they will now stay in their once forgotten home with their new owner. We may bring them to visit on occasion or take them to the mountains for an afternoon hike.

 Jimi and I spent the weekend in Taos, New Mexico. It was a last minute trip planned in an effort to detour us from becoming couch potatoes, which is what we have noticed happening lately. We first visited the Taos Indian Reservation. It was walking only, in a small area, but Jimi got some really good pictures. We had a really nice dinner and then sat in the hot tub at the hotel before thinking we would settle in for the night; however, just before bedtime, we unexpectedly decided to set out to find a well photographed church, so Jimi could take his own pictures of it. We were at the churches location for about an hour before heading back to our room and really settling in for the night. Sunday consisted of mostly site-seeing and touring via the car. We visited the National Vietnam Veterans Memorial in Eagle’s Nest, New Mexico. A Doctor from the area build the memorial after his son was killed in 1968 while in Vietnam. The memorial was especially emotional, yet we very much enjoyed our visit there. That evening after arriving back home, we watched the movie Full Metal Jacket.

            

Today, Monday October 10, 2008, my son turns 16 years old. It’s hard to believe, but true. Happy Birthday Daniel!!!

 I also failed to mention that my parents celebrated their 45^th wedding anniversary on October 23^rd. Happy Anniversary Mom & Dad!!!!

 My sister’s birthday was this past Friday, November 7^th. Happy Birthday Marie!!!

Until next week: sunshine and smiles.

Love Everybody,

Lorie & Jimi

Happy (late) Halloween to you!

Family and Friends,

Hello hello! We don't have anything overly exciting to report: this past week was simple. We had two fun events and otherwise it was nothing other than normal everyday stuff.

I worked for Crocs and Cencorp; and, Jimi went to school; nothing new there. Tuesday evening we were both at home working on various projects and things. Wednesday night Jimi watched his weekly shows on the Discovery channel and I went to the coffee shop with my girlfriends.

Miller finished his antibiotics. The growth on his gums did not go away, nor do we think it will; however, if it were infected, the infection should be gone now.

 Thursday night we went to the hockey game. The Avalanche played the Bluejays. Our seats were club level, and though our seats were awesome, the Aves did not play well. The final score was Bluejays 4 and Aves 2. Hockey is an exciting sport to watch; much better that football and basketball, in my opinion. Through most of the game we were on the edge of our seats, and despite the Aves poor playing, we had an awesome time.

Friday night was our Halloween costume party at the Moose. The evening started out 

a little slow, but once we moved to the back room and got into a few games of poker pool, before we knew it they were closing the place down. Tammy was Peter Pan and Greg was Hook. Brad was a Pirate and Ellen was his Wench. Of course, you already know that Jimi was a convict and I a sexy cop. When the Moose closed, all six of us headed over to the Red Zone, but we only got one drink in before they were also closing the doors on us there too. We felt we could do nothing else but to call it a night, or in this case call it a morning – hardy-har-har.

Saturday morning we met Brad and Ellen at Lucile's Creole Cafe for breakfast. It is one of our favorite places to eat breakfast. They pride on their Louisiana style dishes, including homemade condiments: hot sauce, ketchup, syrup, apple butter, and more. And to boot, they have the best biscuits and gravy anywhere. After breakfast, Brad and Ellen headed home to Denver. Jimi worked on my car, while I did laundry and putzed around the house. Since this would be the last weekend with Razor and Molly we took them on a very long hike. That night we watched a couple of movies: Saw II and Pay it Forward. If you have not seen Pay it Forward, we recommend watching it. It is a very moving movie with a message.

There is still no news on refinancing my house. I knew "ordering the documents" was just too good to be true. Where it stands now is the underwriter again pulled the loan back, because she does not want to accept my second income. I will continue to keep you posted.

Sunday morning we went to Café Luna for Cappuccinos and bagels. I scrap booked our Halloween pictures, Jimi talked to his dad for a while, and then we took the dogs on a picnic lunch. We stopped by the book store, where Jimi found a book he bought, and later that evening I went to the grocery store. To complete our day we watched Saw III.

Jimi attended a free clinic at the college a couple of weeks ago. It was a great opportunity for him to get checked out, since he does not have medical insurance. He received the results from his lab work back this week, but they are written in code (Doctor's language). He has done some research on the internet and thinks he has determined that everything came back normal.

I have added our Europe vacation scrapbook to our blog. Be sure to check it out and make sure you have plenty of time when you do, because it is a big one. I did a lot of research on the history of the places we visited. Unless you want to, it is not necessary to read everything.

Here's the link again: http://dogbonegraphics.com/blog/?page_id=218

The holidays are near: only 3 weeks until Thanksgiving and 7 weeks till Christmas. Have you started your Christmas shopping? We started ours online over the weekend. Talk to you soon.

Love Everybody,

Lorie & Jimi

Back in the norm...

Hello Everybody,

With the excitement and fun celebrating Jimi's birthday behind us, our week resembled the more traditional outlook.

We worked on putting together our Halloween costumes. Jimi will be a convict and I will be a sexy cop. We’ll be sure to post pictures on our blog for you. For Jimi’s costume, is black hospital attire painted with white stripes. This didn’t work as well as we had hoped, but nevertheless it will be fine. Ideally, we had planned on white attire painted with black stripes, but the store did not have white attire. The final touch will be attaching a ball to a small chain and tying it around his ankle. My costume is fish net stockings, knee high boots, and a black miniskirt with a black collared shirt. I have a black studded belt to go around my waste with handcuffs  and to top it off a badge for my shirt and a police hat. Things should look pretty good. The party is at the Longmont Moose lodge on Halloween night. Our friends Brad & Ellen are joining us, as well as Tammy & Greg.

Jimi attentively worked on midterms for a few of his classes this week. He always does such good work. Often times many of the other students rave over what he produces. One of his projects was to make a tri fold piece of work. I really wish I could show it to you, because it came out really nice and quite professional looking. I’d say there is nothing amateur about his work. He’s good!

I met up with my Wednesday night group of ladies this past week. I’ll plan on visiting with them every week now that I am not making a cake. They are still crocheting; however, I really have no interest in it, so I will take something else to work on.

The refinance saga continues. On Monday I was told we were cleared to close, except that I had to put a railing on the wall leading down to the basement. By doing this the house would meet all FHA requirements. I had taken the railing down earlier to paint the wall, and never put it back up. It was in the garage and a simple fix. I did that immediately on Monday night, took pictures and emailed them to the appraiser. I didn’t hear anything all week until Friday when I received the phone call saying that the underwriter had decided not to accept the appraisal. I was frustrated beyond frustration. How can they keep changing their minds? Luckily for me my broker is a friend of mine and fighting tooth and nail for me. She had the appraiser pull three more comps and submitted them to the underwriter. Finally after what I am told was many back and forth phone calls the underwriter accepted the appraisal (again), and approved my loan (for the 3^rd or 4^th time). Yet, on Sunday night I received an email saying that there were some exposed areas on the trim around the garage door. They would have to be painted before we could proceed. Jimi went over Monday morning and painted all the trim. We emailed pictures to the appraiser and he resubmitted his report to the underwriter. Supposedly, the documents have been ordered and upon their arrival, we will close the loan. Keep your fingers crossed and your prayers going upward because I will not believe it until the papers are signed.

Friday night we went to Denver, so Jimi could take some photos. Jimi took pictures over the city, on top of a parking garage, and of a popular Jazz bar, El Chapultepec. He is experimenting with a new form of picture taking. After taking pictures, we went inside for a few drinks. We had fun listening to the music and joking around with the staff. But, about 10:30, Jimi said it was time to go home. When we got home, we drank tequila in the hot tub.  

Saturday morning we went to Janni’s Café for breakfast. It is a small family owned café of older stature. Jimi describes it as a place found in the middle of a small Nebraska farm owned community. Anyhow, we like to go there. That afternoon, we took the boat out on the lake for a while. The winds were blowing this day. We were not really expecting it and had a difficult time keeping control of the boat while getting the sail up. Once we decided to take the jib down, we had much better control of the boat. We practiced several turns by going from one end of the lake to the other and back again; getting about three hours of practice in. I was a bit nervous simply because the water was so cold and I DID NOT want to fall in. With the winds as they were the boat was a little rocky. It was a good experience and doing it over and over, encountering as many scenarios as possible is going to prepare us for our big adventure.

Molly and Razor stayed the weekend in Mead again. Jennifer said that all went well and the dogs got along great. The puppies will all be going to their new homes next weekend. After that Jennifer will be keeping Molly and Razor permanently.

Sunday morning I clean the house for about four hours focusing on the nooks and crannies, while Jimi worked on my car and in the garage. We went for a walk, Jimi went on a photo shoot, I went to the grocery store, got a haircut, and later that evening we went to the movie theatre to see Saw V. Good movie!

I have finally uploaded some of our scrapbooks on our weblog. Click on the link below to get to the main page. The scrapbooks are under the scrapbooks link on the right side of the screen. From there you can choose which scrapbook you would like to view. The pictures are a little small, but you can enlarge one at a time by clicking on them. We invite you to look through them and enjoy!

http://dogbonegraphics.com/blog/ 

Be sure to save this link in your favorites!

 

 

Hope you all have a wonderful week.

Love Everybody,

Lorie & Jimi

Suprise...Suprise...

Hello Everybody,

This week was special because it was Jimi's birthday. He does not like a big deal made out of his birthday, but in my family we have always celebrated the life of our loved ones, which as you read on, you will see this is what I have done for him. Every year he chooses a place to go for his birthday and this year he wanted to climb Longs Peak up to Chasm Lake in with the purpose of capturing the sunrise on the Longs Peak Rock through his photography. We left Saturday morning at 4:25am, began our climb at 5:18am and arrived back at the truck at 12:18pm. Seven hours with a few stops for photographs, the round trip was 8.4 miles and the terrain was good: not too steep, only some big stair steps, minimal ice, and practically no snow. The first hour of our hike was dark, but watching the sun rise while on the mountain was beautiful. On one side the moon was going down, as the sun was coming up on the other side, which was pretty cool to see.

Jimi got some fantastic pictures of the moon with plenty of detail. While he took pictures at our destination, I explored the lake hoping from rock to rock. He didn't get the exact pictures he was hoping for. He thinks it is too late in the season, but maybe we will try again next year. In fact, maybe we will climb to the top of Longs Peak next summer.

Unbeknownst to Jimi, over the past few months I have been designing, planning and building a life size makeshift birthday cake. I took Wednesday (his birthday) off work and while he was in school, I set the cake up in our kitchen with lots of birthday balloons, a real birthday cake and an overflowing amount of birthday cheer. When he arrived home, the Happy Birthday song was playing in the back ground and I jumped out of the cake. It was really pretty cool and he was stunned. I took him to the Rib House for a late lunch/early dinner and rest of the evening he relaxed in the living room.

The weather was cold and drab the first half of the week, but by Friday the days were beautiful in the mid 70s and sunny. Jimi took advantage of the nice weather to winterize the outside windows. He put storm windows and plastic on most of the windows to prevent the cold winter drafts from entering the house. We still have three windows left, but have decided to wait until winter really sets in. The plastic on those windows will be placed on the inside of the house; therefore, the weather has no bearing on our timing.

Miller has a large lump growing on his gum just under his left side bottom K9 tooth. It is now about the size of a pea. Jimi took Miler to the Veterinarian on Tuesday. They sent a biopsy to the lab checking for cancer. Even though the test is not conclusive, we were happy to learn that it may only be a bacterial infection. Miller is taking antibiotics for the next two weeks to hopefully clear it up. The lump may never go away, but we can watch it and as long as it doesn't get any worse and we don't see any other symptoms, we think all will be fine. Jimi figured out that Miller will be 14 years old in January.

Molly and Razor spent the entire weekend in Mead with Jennifer. She said things went pretty well. All the dogs got along and she expects that once her puppies are gone in a couple of weeks there will be minimal problems with their transition.
Exciting news…Jimi has created a weblog for us. He's been talking about it and working on it for a while now, and it is finally up and running at it's minimum. I will be posting my weekly updates there, as well as there are additional pages which will hold all the scrapbooks I have created and other fun things. I am not going to send you the link right now, as we want to perfect it a little more first. However, watch for the email from me with the link….it's going to be pretty cool. We are both excited about it.

That's it for now. Have a wonderful week.
Love Everybody,
Lorie & Jimi

Short –n- Sweet

Hello Everybody,

 This week lended it's usual routine for the most part: working at Crocs, as well as Cencorp. I finished the internet ADP training I have been attending over the past three weeks. I took Razor and Molly to Mead to visit with Jennifer (the tenant), and in fact she kept Razor for the weekend. She said Razor whined  the whole time. She thought it was because the dog missed us. I thought it was more because she was separated from Molly, but after reuniting the two, she still whined. It was then that we came to the conclusion it was because she wanted to play. After annoying both Jimi and I at bedtime to play, I stayed up and played with her for a while.

 On Tuesday we watched an old 1970s movie "The Verdict" with Paul Newman.

 I went to dinner with my friend Brenda on Wednesday night. And Thursday evening we stayed home and bar-b-qued.

Friday evening I went to dinner with some girls from work. Jimi sold the little car, finally. Jimi got the furnace running, making the house toasty warm just in time for a predicted cold weekend.

 Since the weather turned cold and rainy all weekend, Jimi and I stayed in most of the weekend other than grabbing a bite to eat. On Sunday I had breakfast with my friend Melody, whom I had not seen in months. Sunday evening we got Dairy Queen through the drive through and came back to the house where we sat in the hot tub eating our ice cream. It began sprinkling just then, but that did not stop us. We enjoyed every minuted and every bite.

 Jimi worked most of the weekend on reworking his website. I have attached a link for you and he would like to have feedback from anyone willing to offer their opinion. www.dogbonegraphics.com.

He also put two of the videos he created for class projects on youtube. One of them is an animation of silly bar jokes and the other is the animals in our house with their personalities depicted through music. They are really cute and worth watching.

 Bar jokes:  http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AFIWesJyeQQ

 Animals: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dUFuWF1niwc

 Friday night Jimi gave me a 'Forever' ring; more commonly known as a promise ring only more adult like. He said the ring on my finger will publicly display that I am forever taken and everybody should know it. Then he proceeded to give me scenarios of what we will be like when we are in our 70s. The ring is white gold with three amethyst stones. I was not expecting it.

 

I talked to Daniel for a bit on Sunday evening. He is doing well. He assured me that both he and Jennifer are being taken care of and things are not as bad as Jennifer leads. I somewhat assumed that Jennifer may exaggerate things, but I also must consider that we all have our own perceptions.

 It can be difficult having all four animals here. Although it is a very difficult decision for me to send Razor and Molly to a new home, it's a no brainer that I would choose a life with Jimi rather than keeping my miniature companions.  And don't let me forget to mention that since they have moved with me to Longmont and even though we have tried to create a new routine for them, they frequently purposely misbehave. In addition, they demand a lot of time and attention, and things can get stressful here, so the sooner they can go to their new home, the better. Otherwise I may be in need of a new home as well. Lol

 That was our week and all the news I have for you right now. Don't forget to check out the links above and send Jimi your feedback at Jim@dogbonegraphics.com.

Love Everybody,

Lorie & Jimi

Doing well….

Hello Everybody,

 

Not much to report this week.

 

Again I spent a couple of nights in Mead helping Razor and Molly adjust to Jennifer (tenant) and her dog. The second night did not go so well. All three dogs got into a scuff. Jennifer and I are both convinced that they will do fine once the puppies are out of the picture. Unfortunately for Jimi and I, this will take some time. More time than we were hoping.

 

Jimi spent a lot of time working on the chopper. He took the engine apart, cleaned and reworked the cylinders, and put everything back together. After refereeing the frame of the bike and the engine, he finally got it back together. Unfortunately to his dismay, the bike still runs as it did before he tore into it. He will continue to work on it in hopes he can fix the problem.

 

Friday night Jimi and I went to dinner with our friends, Connie and Rex. After dinner, we went to there house for dessert and drinks. We were so engaged in conversation that time flew by and before we realized it, it was 11:30pm: way past my bedtime. We had a wonder visit, as always!

 

Saturday morning we stuck around the house. We cleaned, did laundry, rearranged a few things, and organized a few more. We ran some errands and then grilled hamburgers and corn on the cob. That evening we watched an old black and white James Stewart movie called " Mr. Smith Goes to Washington". It was a really neat patriotic movie. Very educational and well done.

 

Big news (for me anyhow): I finished the Hawaii scrapbook. I can carry it with me now for the next few months to make sure all my friends get to see it. It turned out well. We are happy with it. It's not as big as our Europe book. The Hawaii book is about 26 pages, whereas Europe was between 45 and 50. 

 

Sunday we went to the coffee shop (like the old days). We worked on our laptops and drank lots of coffee. That afternoon we took the dogs for a walk and that evening I made a nice chicken dinner, worked my Cencorp job and of course more scrap booking. Jimi worked on his computer and we watched a little bit of TV.

 

I was notified by Beta Sigma Phi (my International Sorority group), that I am eligible for something called "Order of the Rose". It has something to do with the number of years of membership. Earlier I had told you that I wanted to leave the group. While I have made the decision to do so, I have not officially resigned yet. Ironically, on Saturday I ran into one of the elderly ladies in the group who I had not seen in a while and was quite close with. She was talking to me about staying in the group. Now I am wondering if I will stay, though I go back and forth on my decision. I will keep you posted.

 

That's all for now. Things have really settled down for us, but I think a break form the constant going will be good for a while.

 

Love Everybody,

Lorie & Jimi