Our World

Category: Chris’s Blog

  • Day 101 of 2026 – April 11th

    Day 101 of 2026 – April 11th

    I have been remiss in posting for the last two days, the bottom line is there was not much going on. Today, however, was a busy day. I didn’t get everything done I wanted to get done, but that’s OK, it was a Saturday. I started off the day with my normal get up, have coffee, let the dogs in and out, give them their snacks, and then wade through my personal email. do a quick check on work email – I always make sure nothing urgent.

    When Jesse got up I too Res on his morning walk, today was a lone walk and we did about 3.25 miles. It was a good walk until Res noticed that I was starting to turn him back to the house, then he changed speed from bunny speed to snail speed. He likes being out and about and when I turn back to the house he notices.

    When we got back home it was now Climber’s turn. I took her on a slightly longer walk because she walks a little faster than Res does and she needs her exercise, she needs to loose 9 pounds. We have cut her back on her food a bit. I am being a little stingy on her treats, and I am going to start figuring out how to start giving her more outside time during the weekdays. Anyways, her part of the walk was really good, except for something that I will describe after her walk gallery.

    I love our Prairie Dogs, the are cute, they are funny, and even Res and Climber love to watch them. They are harmless. They build their colonies in empty fields, they do not build in peoples lawns, and they have family units. So, imaging my surprise and horror when I see some asshole in the field next to one of the churches up on Tower Boulevard in the middle of the Prairie dog colony.

    What this idiot was doing was using a shovel to seal off one end of the tunnels and then he was sticking a long hose with a funnel into the other end of the tunnels and dumping something, I assume poison, down the hole and then sealing the colony into the holes. The way he was approaching it, he has done this before. As soon as I saw what he was doing and started taking photographs of him, his actions, and his license plate, he suddenly put his stuff away and got really nervous.

    I want to point out that there are so many things wrong with this. First, poisoning entire colonies of Prairie Dogs is wrong. Second, he did not mark the field so no one knows what chemicals he was using. Third, if another animal gets one of the poisoned Prairie Dogs they will die was well. Poison is forever. Third, this is baby time, this is the time the young ones are born and in the caverns. Given where he was, this apparently is a sanctioned activity by the Church. Perhaps someone should sit down and read a few passages in the Bible about compassion and all that stuff.

    I will be filing a formal complaint with all my photos to the State Wildlife Department, the Aurora Police Department, the Aurora Animal Control department, and the State Department of Licensing (wildlife control is a licensed activity and I somehow doubt this idiot was licensed.) There is nothing I can do for that colony of Prairie Dogs, but I can sure follow-up on this and make sure at least this idiot’s actions are seen and noted.

    So, after I walked back home from that little discovery, I sat down and had breakfast with Jesse. And then I decided I wanted to go swim. I got to the Central Recreation Center, and believe it or not, got a lane pretty quickly in the lap pool. Unfortunately that did not last long. I had just gotten about 300 yards in when there are kids jumping into the lap pool without looking. It turns out that they had to close the main pool because yet again someone had a bathroom accident in it. This is now two weekends in a row, and that means that the pools will be bad tomorrow.

    I gave up and decided to drive over to the Utah Indoor Pool that just re-opened and everyone keeps telling me that I should try. It’s a 25 meter pool, a little longer than the 25 yard pool I have been swimming in, But, it’s about 6 miles from the house and takes me a little longer to get to. I was able to get in a nice 2000 meter swim. I was annoyed, but recovered. I haven’t swum in a 25meter pool in a while so it took me a while to get used to the wall that had moved (25 yards to 25 meters — do the math kids.)

    When I got home I decided to tackle putting the irrigation system box in place for the right side of the backyard, one more step to remove some heavy water use from the system (we are moving to drip and micro irrigation for anything that is not lawn area. It’s just not an easy thing to do as the yard is clay and I have to find the lines that I can disconnect and the ones that I need to tie into.

    Anyways, then it was time to take Res and Climber on their afternoon walks, and feed them, feed us, and relax for the evening. I managed to get the laundry done, well actually waiting on the last load to finish drying, but one less thing that I do not need to worry about tomorrow. On my list of things I really want to do tomorrow is to dig out all of my hydroponic planting stuff from the shed, figure out where it is going to live this year, and then I want to build the double buckets that are now sitting in the living room still packed. This will be a part of the hydroponic setup this year, and I think that should keep me busy most of the day. I may skips my swim tomorrow, not sure yet on that one. I will see how I feel in the morning. Nothing’s wrong, but I do want to get some stuff done around here at the house.

    Anyways, Res and Climber say goodnight and maybe we will see you all tomorrow.

    Don’t they look innocent?

  • Day 098 of 2026 – April 8th

    And I think with this post I am caught up. Sorry, but I hate to admit that I was behind by two days of posting and then also needed to get today’s post in. Today was a “at home” or “in the office” day after yesterday’s travels.

    Not all that much to write about today, I did get out to swim during my lunch break. I think I am going to shift my swim time a little later in the afternoon, to maybe 12:30-1:00pm start of my break. The pool is way too busy earlier and once again I was shoved up against a wall sharing a lane and I scraped the top of my right hand something awful. But, eventually I was able to get a lane by myself and finished my workout.

    I only did 1750 today, but I do have problems with other people in my lane, would not be bad if the lanes were not so narrow, but me being 6’3″ and I have a very wide breaststroke kick. I need to work on that, but that is the last of my worries. I need to increase distance.

    The rest of the afternoon was catching up on some other issues regarding tech support, processor support, and other related tasks. Finally I was able to finish at about 3:30pm MT and spend some time with Jesse and the dogs. Climber has a little bit of an attitude problem growing and we are going to have to deal with that. Jesse and I have always been about the dogs being dogs, but she is really pushing her luck recently. I need Mindy to make a visit and tell Climber to knock the crap off.

    Anyways, I am tired today, so it’s enough for today, we will see you tomorrow.

  • Day 097 of 2026 – April 7th

    And today I did have to go into the field and do an HVACi inspection up in Fort Morgan area.

    It was a residential property that had water intrusion, but it is a special property. It was one of those that the walls are insulated with straw bails. This is an extremely efficient form of insulation, but is time consuming and very expensive to build.

    Look at how thick those walls are, and you can see the straw “blocks” that are being used for insulation. I love seeing construction like this, unfortunately there was some damage to the property, but the owner was really nice to work with and very helpful. And, they will be able to fix the issues and it will all be good. My trip up there was just one step in the process.

    On my way home I was able to take a short “lunch break” and get my swim in. I have been trying to get a mile in every day during the week. I really need to try and get a 2 mile swim in one of these days, but during the week I am sort of tied to my desk, and on weekends I try not to take too much time away from things I would like to be doing here at the house.

    Anyways, that’s it for today, I will see you tomorrow.

  • Day 096 of 2026 – April 6th

    I have been slow in posting for the last couple days. This post is for April 6th, that would be Monday. Not much to write about today, basically the painters “finished” on the house and Climber had a well visit at our new vet.

    First, Climber’s well visit. Yup, she has officially been told she is overweight and needs to go on a diet. She needs to loose 9 pounds. Ooops, that may be my fault, but I also blame Res. We will work on it and maybe at her next vet appointment she will be back to the weight she should be. She has a build a lot like Lady did and she can put on weight before I even know she is.

    Then, the painters have wrapped up the outside of the house. Well, sort of…. they have a bunch of touch up to do as they were sloppy on their last day of work. But, we went from the brown trim to our awesome burgundy that we have used on other houses.

    Take a look at the difference:

    Anyways, that will be just about it for the 6th.

  • Day 095 of 2026 – April 5th

    This is going to be a short post today. I got up late, took the dogs for their walks, and really didn’t do much else for the rest of the day.

    The above is Res’s walk, we did what he wanted to do and by the time we were done it was about 3.66 miles. Not bad. He’s asleep now.

    Climber ended up doing a little bit of a longer walk, by about a mile, but that girl knows where she wants to walk and that is were we were going. No questions at all. I just sort of followed her, gave be a little bit of guidance when we needed to turn, and pressed the crosswalk buttons for her. The girl likes “going” but would go way too far, At least I got my steps in.

    Today was a “no swim” day for me. Not by choice, I got to the Rec Center and the lap pool was full. I think the trialtholon group was in it again. I was going to wait for a lone, but… oops, helps if I remembered my swim trunks, so no swim for me.

    Anyways, this one is short, I will see you all tomorrow, goodnight.

  • Day 094 of 2026 – April 4th

    Day 094 of 2026 – April 4th

    The photograph I am starting this post with showed up on my Facebook page today, it’s a set of photos I took 9 years ago when were in Florida. At that time we had six greyhounds, and unfortunately they are all at the bridge now. I firmly believe that I will be re-united with Mindy, Peanut, Ranger, Rambo, Lady, and Leona sometime in the future, hopefully far in the future. Missing from this photograph are three other Angel pack members: Raven (she hadn’t joined us yet when this was taken), Bracken (he was long gone by the time this photo was taken – he went to the bridge during a dental that I still blame myself over – I tried a newer vet, closer to the house that we should have never trusted with him), and Gizmo (she was hiding someplace). Sometimes Facebook memories are good, sometimes they suck. I think this is one of the better ones.

    Started off the day at close to my normal time, well…. maybe 30 minutes late because I just didn’t want to. Did my normal routine, let the dogs out, gave them their snacks, and got my coffee. I did sit down and just preview my work email real fast, I had some techs that I had excepted some responses from and I wanted to make sure I received them. I am glad I looked, I had one urgent issue that I needed to take care of. I also made sure that I caught up on the last two days of new technicians and got them added to Alpine Intel University so they could do their training. Note to self, I need to send out reminders next week to techs that have not logged in yet to do so before they get turned off.

    I do one of my normal “over the weekend” tasks, and that is to do my Moodle and system updates. I don’t like doing that during the week in case I have to shut something down, but over the weekend is always a good time to do Linux upgrades and Moodle LMS upgrades. Another one done and now everything is current. OK that’s it for work today.

    After Jesse got up I started walks. Saturday’s and Sundays are lone walks for the dogs. I think it is really important to remind them that they can go places and come home without each other. We also work on walking manners and get some distance in. Res always goes first, today we did a little over three miles because he did not want to stop. For some reason he really wanted to do the same walk I do with Climber, it was almost like he knew where she went lest week and he pulled me in that direction.

    It was a nice day for a walk and I listened to one of my Podcasts while we were out and about. He was a little slow near the end, but I think I finally may have figured him out. he likes to be outside and when we are heading back to the house he does not approve.

    Climber was next, now Climber is a pup on a mission some times, she knows exactly where she wants to go and she makes it very clear when she is unhappy about our directions. I got to the end of the part today and I wanted to turn left and go down the hill as I had a specific walk in mind for her. Nope, that was unacceptable, she wanted to cross the street, turn right, and do our walk past the credit union. Actually, think she wanted to go further, but I vetoed that as I didn’t really want to cross that intersection with her this week. So, she got part of what she wanted, just not all of it. She was a little stiff today as well and I didn’t really want her to be hurting so I did the best I could to keep her walk under 4 miles, we ended up with 3.7 miles by the time we got back to the house.

    She did give me a little bit of a hard time on the way back up the hill next to the park as we were headed to Power Line Trail. She did that the last 3 weekends. She is fine once we get past that spot, but for some reason that area is not good for her, and I am not sure why. She’s curled up asleep now, maybe I wore her out? Nah. Not a chance.

    After Jesse and I had a late breakfast, I decided to take a chance and go swim. Why take a chance? Because the pool is a nightmare on Saturdays, it has way too many people and the lifeguards work real hard to make sure open swim in the general and kiddie pool does not spill over into the lap pool. Anyway, I was able to get in 2700 yards in a total time of 57:50 minutes. I should have tried for 3000 yards and done the hour, but I just didn’t feel like it. I think tomorrow I need to work on pace rather then distance, it may be an hour of so of 100 yard swims. If I can do 25 of each of Freestyle and Breaststroke I would be happy. But, let’s start small and see if I can even do that.

    I am happy were I am at with swimming right now, but I really need to get some of my times closer to the 1:30 per 100 yard pace and down from the 2:00/100yd. I am pretty sure I could do the 2.5 miles needed for the Mountain Lake Swim, but I do need to improve my pace a bit. I also need to, for pool swims, not make a fool of myself when I work on my flip turns. Yeh…..I’ll think about it. Maybe.

    Onto other news, we ordered the Droplet Water monitor from Hydrific Water and it showed up today. It clamps on the main water pipe coming into the home, after the meter, but before any splits and you train it to recognize what fixtures are being used and what fixtures are not being by identifying what is running over a few days when it is showing water flow.

    Droplet Water Monitor Installed on a pipe

    I think it is a little confused on it’s first day and hopefully it will get much better at this. It is currently showing that we used 9.58 gallons today with a shower at 5:45PM this evening. There is just one problem, nobody has showered today yet, that happens in the evening, and more recently I am showering at the Recreation Center after my swim. I think it may have gotten the washing machine right, and I think some of the other appliances, but the shower???? Not really. Maybe that will fix itself in a few days.

    Jesse and I are a little concerned about this Summer when our water use normally increases. Our water department, Aurora Water, has us under drought restrictions. This means that we are going to pay a surcharge per 1000 gallons over our Winter water use. We use an average of 2000 gallons per month during the Winter months. This changes drastically in the Summer when we start to irrigate the lawn and gardens. We have already made some changes to the irrigation system that will help, but we got a ways to go. As you can guess it also varies a lot with my travel. On weekends after I come back from a trip we have more heavy laundry. On weeks where I am traveling the daily usage is lower. We are also going to do a lot with hydroponics this year for our vegetable gardens and greens. So, I will keep you all posted on what’s happening with that.

    Anyways, it’s time to wrap up today, I will be back tomorrow, I am going to sit back, relax, recharge my Garmin watch, and sit here read and watch TV for a bit. There is probably another 100 things that I need to get done, but I just don’t feel like it. Anyways, goodnight and talk to you tomorrow.

  • Day 093 of 2026 – April 3rd

    I think the best way to describe today is “quiet”. I got up this morning to some very urgent dogs, both of them were in a hurry to go out for their potty breaks and then they wanted treats. It was a cooler morning, probably around 35 degrees, I forgot to look. After they had their snacks and stuff I went to go get my coffee. Ooops, I forgot to set the time last night. A 15 minute wait on that coffee.

    I was able to get out to the rec center today to swim, it was a shorter swim then yesterday as I do not want to hurt myself, and I also needed a recovery day after my long push yesterday. I did 1700 yards. My goal was to get my mile in, and I did it.

    The rest of the day was busy with work. Hang on, I have one more email I need to answer. Anyways, today’s stats:

    • 8 email requests for file reviews
    • 2 tech support incoming phone calls
    • 10 pricing requests / 4 of them commercial electrical
    • 14 Cause of loss determinations
    • 14 New tech support requests, all of these handled, 11 of them already complete
    • 12 Older tech support requests handled and closed.
    • That leaves me with 3 in progress, and 3 sitting in my “need to discuss with management team.”

    I think a good day overall.

    Now I am going to spend some time with Res and Climber. Res is being a bit of a crate baby tonight so I am wondering what that’s about. He grumped at Climber a little bit earlier, again not really sure why, in this case she was innocent. Not that the grumping wasn’t deserve red for past actions.

    Anyways, goodnight all. I will talk with you tomorrow.

  • Day 092 of 2026 – April 2nd

    Not all that much going on today. Got up this morning and had a 7:30AM conference call. One of the challenges in working remote from another timezone with an East Coast company. This happens every other week and I am used to it.

    Spent the morning working on various projects at work. It was pretty busy, but not as busy as yesterday. I had:

    • 18 Cause of Loss Determination Requests
    • 6 Direct tags for quote/invoice and resolution review
    • 12 Pricing requests
    • 15 New Technician Support Requests
    • 24 Total Technician Support Requests closed.
    • 4 Technician Support Phone calls.

    I finished off the day with some problem emails, but that is sort of expected when you are trying to maintain high standards of inspection and findings. For many tradespeople do not take correction or coaching well at all. Anyways, another day done. I will have probably need to have a conversation with my manager about two technicians (probably only if they complain – but I may give him a heads-up, I will see how I feel about it in the AM).

    I did take my lunch/swimming break today around 11:15 or so and went down to the Rec Center. I had one of the best swims I have had in a long time. First. I was able to complete an 1800 yard freestyle (crawl) swim. I haven’t done that in over 3 years. Second, I was able to break my personal record an the 1650 yard portion of that. And finally I crossed another Swim.Com challenge for April off the ‘To Complete” list. I did my 3,000 yard swim today. So yesterday I completed the 1,000 and the 2,000 yards. Today I also completed the 1 hour challenge on Swim.Com and also wrapped up April Swim Month on Garmin. That makes me happy. I have April Swim Week left to do on Garmin, but that doesn’t start until next week and is much shorted than what I have already done. For Swim.Com my next major stepping stone and goal is the 5K swim.

    This evening is a rest period, and now we are sitting down watching some TV, watching Climber be crazy, and watching Res nap. I think that will be it for today and I will see you tomorrow.

    Day 092 of 2026 – April 2nd

    18394 E Arkansas Ave, Aurora, CO 80017, USA
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  • Day 091 of 2026 – April 1st

    Day 091 of 2026 – April 1st

    I set today’s feature image to a photo provided by NASA of the Artemis II liftoff from Florida. Best of luck to all of the astronauts aboard the ship, and may your journey be eventful, but not dangerously eventful. For many of us we remember the first steps on the moon, I think this is the first step in the path to return 50 years later, with greater technology and maybe pick up where we left off.

    Anyways, today ended up being a busy day at work. Not sure why, maybe it was a full moon. But, logged in around 6:45AM, took lunch from 12-1pm, and then I finally finished what I could do around 7:00pm (I did take a break to go walk the dogs and for dinner.) My stats:

    • 7 Commercial pricing requests
    • 27 Tech support and coaching requests
      • All 9 that came in today were addressed
    • 2 tech support from the past are still in progress
    • 22 Cause of Loss Determinations completed
    • 5 inbound calls for tech support (from techs)
    • 8 separate requests for file reviews from our resolutions team
    • And my standard task of enrolling new technicians to Alpine Intel University

    I think that just about wraps up the work tasks for the day.

    I made it to the pool for lunch and was able to get a lane, had to share at first but then the person I was sharing with snagged another open lane. It was a good workout today. I managed to do 2075 yards according to my watch, but looking at my stats/interval I can see where it missed a length and this should probably have been 2100 yards. Regardless, I accomplished what I wanted to do as my average workout should be a minimum of 2000 yards. By the end of April I am trying to go to 3000 yards per workout. Slow progress is a good thing.

    Came back and finished out my day. Took the dogs for their evening walk, fed them, and then us. We had Chicken Tenders and some really good potato salad. And now I am sitting here, writing my daily blog, and watching Res and Climber nap. Climber won’t stay this way long, she is really good at getting in trouble. I need to get some time to run her around a bit.

    Photo of Climber Napping
    Photo of Res Napping

    And with that, I say goodnight. See you tomorrow.

    Day 091 of 2026 – April 1st

    18394 E Arkansas Ave, Aurora, CO 80017, USA
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  • Day 090 of 2026 – March 31st

    And it is the end of another month. I think March was a good month overall. I was able to get a few answers regarding my shoulder pain, and it makes sense. At work, my promotion was finalized this month, and I am getting used to the new role. I have traveled less this month than I have in prior months, and I am starting to see some results with my tech coaching. However, this promotion did come with an increase of work load.

    My fitness this month has actually been awesome. I did not get as much swimming in as I wanted to, but I was able to complete all of the Garmin Connect+ fitness challenges this month.

    • March Calorie Burn
    • March Battery Booster
    • March Photo Share
    • Low Stress March
    • March Heart Walks
    • March Speed Walking
    • March Epic Hikes
    • March Time To Swim
    • March Walking
    • Active March
    • March Step Month
    • 2026 Walking – Stage 1
    • 90K Step Challenge (x4)

    On Swim.Com I also completed several fitness challenges:

    • March 1K Challenge
    • March 2K Challenge
    • March 3K Challenge
    • 5 Swim Activities in March
    • 10 Swim Activities in March
    • 1 Hour of Power Challenge

    I finished out the month with a decent swim today. Did a 1750 Yard swim, 36 minutes, 32 of those are the actual moving time. I felt pretty good about it when I was done. The only reason I didn’t get to 2000 yards is that I started to get worried about time.

    Anyways, as we wrap on the month of my fitness, some things to share:

    133 miles of walking – 38 hours
    18,925 yards (10.75 miles) of swimming – 6 hours
    41 miles of hiking – 11 hours

    I also have some health gains as well. Significant loss of weight while maintaining muscle tone and bone mass. I lost 10 pounds over the course of the month, and for the most part my blood pressure has stabilized in the normal range. May have something to do with my traveling as well as the fact that we are really trying to watch my salt intake and balance out the diet as well. In terms of weight, we hare wondering if I have been not eating enough. It sounds stupid, but the weight watches diet that we try to follow may not be aimed at really active people. We are starting to follow a different version of the diet that is heavier on the protein intake. It is really possible that I may have been not taking my fitness activities into account. We will see what happens over this next month.

    So, what is happening this next month? I have several goals, all with the aim of being ready for the Mountain Swim Series in June. First, I am cutting back on my non-swimming activities. Believe it or not I think this may have been part of my shoulder tightness and pain. I am limiting the Garmin fitness challenges in April to mainly swimming:

    • April Swim Week – 3281ft of swimming in the first week of April
    • April Swim Month – 13,123.4ft of swimming in the month of April
    • April Battery Booster – Maintain a body battery of 76 or higher for 7 days in April
    • Low Stress April – Maintain a daily average stress level of 50 or lower for 7 days in April
    • April Calorie Burn – Burn 8,000 active calories in April
    • April Photo Share – Share photos on 3 activities in April

    I am also going to make sure I complete the Swim.Com fitness challenges:

    • April 1K Challenge – Complete 1K of swimming in a single activity
    • April 2K Challenge – Complete 2K of swimming in a single activity
    • April 3K Challenge – Complete 3K of swimming in a single activity
    • April 5K Challenge – Complete 5K of swimming in a single activity
    • 5 Swimming Activities in April
    • 10 Swimming Activities in April
    • 20 Swimming Activities in April
    • One Hour of Power – Complete one hour of swimming in a single activity
    • 10 Hours of Power – 10 hours of swimming in multiple activities

    And then, finally I am going to complete the following US Masters’ Swimming challenges:

    • 2026 USMS April Fitness Challenge – 1000yards of Freestyle in a Single Session

    Anyways, that wraps up today, I have some end of month cleanup to do on my laptop, I move my Download directory to a archived Download Directory, I clean out my mailbox and start a new month of work related emails. I move my sent mail to a monthly sent mail folder. And in general do some regular maintenance so I can find things. Keeps me out of email and download hell.

    Anyways, I think that is about it for the day. We are home, all is good, and I will see you tomorrow.

    Day 090 of 2026 – March 31st

    18394 E Arkansas Ave, Aurora, CO 80017, USA
    Get directions