Saturday afternoon after that push to the gully Fedex showed up again, again annoyingly interrupting Linda’s workday reveries, to finally surrender our “out for delivery” dogfood as everything including the driver’s computer said it was…but, eh, Fedex; a thorough search of the truck failed to turn it up…and it still took considerable persuasion on L.’s part to get them to

remove Friday’s two large boxes cluttering up our front steps. Next day, sunny but mild, saw

Further Progress up the hill to 8390′, nearly to the rock steps…and an attempt to be kinder to the feet on the descent to more reading, painting, sewing etc. until it clouded over and became

too chilly/windy to eat out, first time in awhile.  Early to bed reading Portis’ essays, uneasy

sleeps to awake to the world in a cloud, a raining cloud, raining all the way through a soggy

Monday; no further progress up the Lone Pine trail in the wet, UPS making it but still no dog

food [“out for delivery”], so the next morning after a coolish rudimentary walk around the block

we were off to Pueblo, temperate weather for once, to find, thanks to Bill and Mu, Liz’s Tamale House, then other errands – 80-20 Wines, Target for paper goods, ripoff Petsmart since we’re

now out of dog food and then, ninth of ten stops, Los Girasoles’ a la carte pork and avo burrito with a relleno [a good choice though one of Liz’s tamales et earlier remained actually quite

fulfilling] before a last stop at the Vitamin Cottage

and the intermittently wet Interstate south to

exit 56, west on Red Rocks to 69 for a last most distant view of wind mills, home

about four to the usual desperate dogs, much to unload and, still, “out for delivery”. Of course…

Wednesday wetness, mosses and on

the afternoon’s soggy walk a distant sighting of First Snow [!].

Thursday the dogs and I finally made it to the Steps…not once but twice as I discovered, already

halfway down, I’d left my sticks there, making for a bit of extra exertion, all to the good.

But the Big News, after seven days of “out for delivery” with nary a sign of the F-DEX truck for

four of them, was that the dog food had finally been delivered…somewhere.  Turned out it was dumped up by the cattle guard at Jim’s but at least, after all that bullshit, we have it.

Friday, much befogged and too wet to walk, we drove up to the domes for Dean and Sibylla’s [combined – 90 + 80] 170th birthday party, well attended despite the rains, which continued

to have their way with the infrastructure. A lively enthusiastic crowd [not shown], lots of food,

drink [I partook of the excellent local water], good feelings and history even though some clueless idiot had arrived early to park their Volvo halfway into the roadway. I kept watching attempts to maneuver around it from within the celebration until we took our leave, not sticking

around long enough to see what sort of havoc [or getting stuck] this caused as the crowd thinned out though a foretaste was evident to the left of the car in the muddy damage to the

meadow even before anyone set out to extricate themselves.  We went home to our own

muddy meadow, not obliged to drive destructively into it…and didn’t.

Happy Birthday to Dean [90] and Sibylla [80]!