Angels in the snow

It's hard to believe it is almost Christmas, and time for the annual Christmas tree cutting party. We got a little snow just in time to make the event a little seasonal. It's been an extremely dry fall so far, and several of the ski areas delayed their openings due to lack of snow. This year Jaimie invited Shannon Bailey, our Aussie liason exchange student, to go with us. She was pretty excited having never done it before, and also wanting to get up in the mountains to see some snow. She also can wield a mean chainsaw! As always we go up around Central City to some property owned by our next door neighbor Becky. She is trying to thin the trees to help lessen the fire danger around her small cabin so we all cut down huge trees and crop the tops. The rest of the tree is cut up into firewood size logs.

We had a huge crowd this year. Becky's daughter recently moved back to Colorado from DC, and is living with her until they find a house. Also, Steve and Marcella brought their "grandkids".

Bye,bye Altima

Well it was a good car while it lasted. A couple of weeks ago some Boulderite moron rear-ended us on the way to a party. Actually, we were on the way to a party, and he was on his cell phone, hence the moron reference. While filing the claim with his insurance company I strongly suggested that they double his rates given the circumstances.

The picture here doesn't really do the damage justice since I used a jack to straighten things out enough to get the truck lid to close. I was amazed at how flimsy these cars are made, as it took virtually no force at all to bend the metal around. I actually bent the lid out by hand and yanked things around till the latch lined up. All and all about 10 mins work. Anyway we finally heard from the insurance company and they decided it was a total loss as the cost to repair exceeded the value. Actually not a bad outcome, since the insurance payout will far exceed the used car value if I were to sell it myself. Also the o'l girl has been developing a host of other minor problems, lately, and Cathy has lost confidence in it's reliability.

After going through this I now understand why insurance costs so much. It took at least 6 people to handle the claim. 1) I called up and gave all the info to someone, 2) They forwarded the info to someone else who called up and told me to get an estimate, 3) The second person forwarded the shop estimate to someone else to review, 3) The third person reviewed the estimate and decided the car was a total loss, 4) The second person called to tell me they were forwarding the decision to another person who would contact me to discuss payment, 5) The forth person called to offer the settlement and forwarded the case to another person to deal with the car title, and towing, 6) Person 5 calls to arrange car towing, and to have person 6 send out paperwork for getting the car title. A-hhhh... good old Yankee efficiency. Now, if we can just get this process out-sourced offshore, our rates will probably decrease 100%. (The only problem is we will never be able to understand the outcome of the claim when we try to talk to the adjusters.)

Guys and Dolls

Just prior to Thanksgiving, Golden High School performed their fall musical. This years presentation was "Guys and Dolls". Jaimie landed a role as one of the "Hot Box Dancers" which got her a lot of singing and dancing stage time . I think this is one of the first times in her acting career that she did a lot of dancing, and she did quite well with it. The supporting orchestra did a much better job then in past years so the music wasn't as painful to sit through.

This weekend Jaimie spent 3 days at the Thespian Convention/Workshop in downtown Denver. Whoever came up with the term "thespian" definitely wasn't thinking and Jaimie did not appreciate my puns related to this term. I guess she met a cute guy there so all's well that ends well.