Last night, around 11:30, Nina and Tori woke me up because some kids were beating up my gas equipment.  I got up and yelled at them while standing on my deck in my underwear, waving a pistol at them. I went out and checked for damage, but there was none.  They just emptied the windshield wash bucket and used the squeegee to beat my equipment and left it and a shitload of paper towels lying on the ground.

Fire Update!

There is no fire update. Same shit, different day. Woke up to smoke, so the fire’s still there.

Pilates

Second day of my return to Pilates and I’m still glad I returned to Pilates. Colleen keeps nailing us with new things to do and I get a nice workout each week.

Erin

Today is the last full day together before we head east. Then we’ll not see her for over a week. That stinks! She’s bee playing a lot with Jeannie’s granddaughter, Aislen or some such shit. They’ve been having a lot of fun together in the store and outside.

Heading East

Yeah, we’re heading east again. More of a vacation than a cleaning up of Marylou’s shit, but we will spend some time in her Hell working on removing more crap. I hope to see the Kleywegs, Norketts and Johnson while there.

That’s it! Peace out peoples.

I’m sick and tired of noise, yelling, and TV commercials. I want peace and quiet now and then. I hate having the TV at a volume that I have to because everyone needs to shout. Last night I could hear an unnamed female, that’s related to me and is my granddaughter’s mother, talking downstairs over my TV upstairs. I wake up in the morning and watch the news at volume level 12 and by the time I go to bed the volume is set over 25. And I wonder why my ears are ringing constantly.

Sam’s Club

I hate Sam’s Club. I can tolerate the place during commercial member hours, which happen to be from 7 a.m. to 10 a.m., but the normal hours make me want to hurt people deliberately. People cut me off without thinking about the 800 pounds I have to stop on the cart I’m pushing around. I called one woman a dumb c**t yesterday. She just walked in front of me and stopped dead. She must be used to that phrase because she just glared at me and ignored me. I wanted to punch her. DAMN, I hate Sam’s Club. I was at Sam’s alone on Monday. Monday and at Sam’s, bad combo.

The fire above Pecos

When I went to bed last night, it had reached over 8000 acres. That’s about 12 square miles to my urban friends. The now have an official containment figure and that is 5%. That is a very low figure after 5 days and it’s because of the wind. This morning seems to have the worst smoke settling overnight that we’ve had during this fire.

Strange thing that affected a friend that lives near the fire. He has to get new auto insurance because of a divorce proceeding and was denied because all new insurance is being denied in San Miguel County during the fire.

Lodger’s Tax Advisory Board meetings have even been affected by the fire. Two of our board members live within the fire circle and they refuse to leave because they would not be allowed back. Lanier, won’t leave because of her animals and Huie could leave and return but since he’s the fire chief of the area on fire, he’s busy I guess. With one other member being out of the country, we will not have a quorum and it’s illegal to meet without a quorum.

Me and politics

Someone, a customer, told me to run for the county commission. He likes my views on politics and feels that I have something to offer. Profanity when confronted with stupidity is not something that has been considered “something to offer” in the county.

The mayor of Las Vegas is facing a recall attempt. Alfonso Ortiz is a good person and fiscally sound as a politician. Some dumb couple, mainly the female of the family, has it out for Al and has stirred up the masses to get out there with petitions to force a recall. I hope she gets her ass handed to her and loses her next election run for councilor. She ran against Al during the last election. Sore loser maybe?

Shirley

Still alive. No real active days lately, thankfully. Debra is working out great.

Marylou

She’ll return for round 2 after we return from Illinois. When we visit with her she just won’t shut up. I hope they break her of that before we get her.

peace

Picked up Erin yesterday. She was a bit pissy at first, but then she realized that it hasn’t worked before and wouldn’t work this time. She became her fun self again shortly. I think she is so used to ruling the roost at the Hern household that she finds it difficult to switch it off when she is picked up.

Didn’t get to see the birds. I forgot when we were heading home and by the time I remembered, I had just woke up from my nap.

Fire was not an issue yesterday. Erin and I went for ice cream around 7 in the evening and had a great time driving through Pecos and seeing all the police, forest service, and fire units in town. She kept pointing at the different vehicle saying “look Pake!” She enjoys riding in the front seat and I may have Nina sit in the back when we go to the bank this morning.

Not much else to say right now. Later.

Fire Video

It’s nothing big or anything, but I’m going to try to post something every day of the month of June. It may not be that easy since I’ll be on the road for some of this time, but I’ll give it my best shot.

Poker again, at Curt’s this time, but I’m not planning on attending. No limit Texas Hold-Em is not my favorite game. Sorry Curt.

Fire update

Yesterday evening I walked to the back of my property and noticed that the fire appears to have left the river and was moving due east and was several miles closer. The distance is still far enough that I’m not worried about anything happening to us. While I haven’t had a chance to see the news yet, I’ve heard from the forest service people that stopped here that progress has been made. This morning I can’t see a source plume of smoke, but the wind is stronger than yesterday, still reasonable though. Rain is predicted for today, but I doubt it will happen. It’s at 6200 acres right now.

Erin

We’ll pick up Erin today and take her to the cliffs to watch the birds. Cliff swallows have hundreds of nests on a cliff overlooking the Pecos River not to far from here.The young are scheduled to leave the nests about now and watching them has always been a favorite spring thing for me. I hope Erin feels the same. Have a great Sunday everyone.

Peace

As I look out my doors and windows this morning, I feel like the clouds have descended over us and cut our visibility to almost nothing. Sadly it’s not low hanging clouds but smoke from 2 nearby fires. The closest is around 20 miles from us with the other around 50 miles from us.

The closest fire is the Tres Lagunas fire, named after a high-end housing sub-division north of us, and it has exceeded 2500 acres. The fire is being left unchecked because the winds have maintained a 49 m.p.h. average, keeping fire fighting aircraft from taking to the air to fight this fire.

The fire is in a remote area and many of the areas now burning have not seen a human since the days when the Apache, Navajo, and Hopi hunted this area. In the center of this fire is the Pecos River and the fire follows the river as the easiest route and spreads north and south from the river. My home and business is on the Pecos River and I straddle the river. I’m not worried about the fire reaching us, but if it does I’ve prepared for this over the last few years.

Henry, my outside employee, has been “firescaping” our property over the last few years. We’ve started near the building and parking lot and removed shrubs that were dying and trimmed up all the trees above the 4 foot mark. After securing the business area, Henry has been moving toward the river as time and money allowed and half of my property and all of my buildings have been made safe.

Today the winds have subsided and the planes and choppers will fly. The firefighters that have been working on saving structures will abandon them and move into the forest and work in conjunction with the air support and start to contain the fire. Rain is predicted, but not expected by me, for Sunday and IF that happens it will help.

Have a great weekend everyone! Peace.

• Tori said that the month went by in the blink of an eye. 
• Petroleum construction company stopped by yesterday and did the site assessment I requested. I was told that my gas volume is pretty impressive for the store size. Should have the bad news sometime next week.
• I lost $20 at poker last night. I swear the bastards cheat.
• Hiring a new employee and doing the interviews today. Hiring people is a crap shoot, but I enjoy giving kids their first job.
• Sunshine Station, the place down the road from us is closed, as I mentioned previously, and I talked to the owner of the place yesterday. He asked me if I’d be interested in buying the place. I asked him about how long the place would be restricted and he doesn’t know. I do know that places I dealt with in the past were closed for periods that ranged from 2 to 10 years.
• Went 4 wheeling in my Rubicon yesterday. That freaking thing is scary how capable it is. I took it down a slope that I wouldn’t walk down and it just idled down as nice as could be. I then turned around and drove up that same slope. Amazingly agile! As a stock vehicle, it is more capable than my modded Sahara.
• SHIT! They’re talking about the next presidential election on the news! I hate politics.
• We have a fire nearby, again. The Tres Lagunas fire is surrounding a friend’s business. Since he happens to be a fire chief and the head of a smoke jumper crew, I doubt his business is in jeopardy, but I still wonder. This fire is about 15 to 20 miles from us.
• Once we know what’s going on here in the summer and fall, info that we should have in 2 weeks or so, Nina and I will plan a fall trip someplace. The info that I need will be construction, liquor license, and employee related. We’re leaning toward another trip to Ouray, but we may go elsewhere.

Thats all.  Peas.

I restart Pilates today. I’ve missed going and am going without Nina for the time being. She may or may not resume going too.

Erin did the Sam’s Club shopping with us yesterday. She’s Nina’s human cane. She walks holding Nina’s hand so Nina doesn’t fall again. It’s cute to watch.

Every week at Sam’s is $1000. You’d think we get some sort of award from them for spending that much money there or something, but nope. The bulk of the product gets set one fire, cigarettes.

Tomorrow we head to the foot doctor and have Nina’s foot checked out. I’ll update you on that later.

Day off for everyone but the workers at Pecos River Station. Sorry people!

• Nina and I are going to Sam’s Club
• Tori’s staying close to handle any dumb shit
• Debra is caring for Shirley now
• Andy will be doing nothing work related
• And Erin will most likely be with us

While I like the money spent during days like this, I really don’t care much for holidays. I guess it’s a holdover from my garbageman days. A day off meant working twice as hard before and after that day off.

With the train crashes and bridge collapses that we’ve seen this month, it makes you worry about the safety of this country’s infrastructure. Our country wastes so much money on wars in countries that mean little to us, and if we spent that money repairing the infrastructure it could go a long way to improving the economy. Wars no longer help the economy the way they did in the 40’s and 50’s.

Just heard a report that the infrastructure is being hurt more by fuel efficient cars than general wear and tear. They are reducing the trust fund because of their efficiency, and that reduces the money spent on roads. 18¢ per gallon sold goes into the trust fund to pay for road and bridge repairs. Ban fuel efficient vehicles and bicycles to raise the trust fund’s revenues!

To all my hooker readers, Joe from Arrow’s Ridge is up there alone until mid-afternoon and he sounds real lonely. Why not take the initiative and head up there to ease his loneliness.

Peace out people.

We have the little one again.  Always great getting her home.

We’ve had one good weekend so far and the motorcycles are already annoying me. Don’t they hear the racket they are making with their unmuffled shit bikes? Has me praying for weekend rain or snow about now.

Arrow’s Ridge had the Mixed Grill last night and I had a great time. Small group and our table had a great group of people.