YCGL - Thursday, May 25, 2023 - So much....Fast Forward to Tuesday the 29th.

The theme of the Babies Shower was Winnie the Pooh.  

Juhl made a "Hundred Aker Wood" sign for the front yard.

Because he's like that!

I tried this entire weekend to post and couldn't.  We had a family get together in Fort Collins and Erik and Liz were here from Friday, May 19th  to Monday, May 22nd.  And I left both laptops at home.  I started four times on my phone and each time I got about four lines completed and something popped up on my screen.  As soon as the blog writer isn't the top screen, it erases everything that is on it.  I've got to come up with a better solution for when I have to use my phone.  

We originally had three events planned for the weekend.  Jere's son Robert and his wife Liz Porter (they are going by Liz's maiden name) are having twins on July 11th.  Saturday was the family babies shower.  Sunday was originally planned to be the Spring Family Birthday party, but it was decided it was going to be too much, too quickly.  Finally, Monday was scheduled to scatter some of Sandy's and Sally's ashes in the mountains.

Liz's (Porter's) parents and sister flew in from Chicago for Friday to Sunday.  Her folks are both doctors and have a clinic there, and so have difficulties getting away.  We had all met at Robert's and Liz's wedding in Chicago in 2019.  

---:Long Aside, but important -----

The wedding was on a Saturday.  It was a beautiful ceremony and Sandy actually made it there on time, with the help of many family members.  On Sunday morning, Liz's parents hosted a breakfast for everyone that had flown in.  That was the entire Edgar family including Eliza and Nick and all of the Wojahn family including Sandy.  After the breakfast, all the grandkids and our kids were leaving for the airport and everyone had a chance to say all the rounds of goodbyes before they left.   Jere and Tom were staying an extra day to help Sandy get home and  Sally and I stayed for a few days to have dinner with an old friend of mine (Miriam Lien and her husband Phil, who I hadn't seen in years) and then to see Hamilton.  

That Sunday evening, Sandy fell in her hotel room when Sally and Jere were just leaving for the night.  They got the EMT's there immediately and took her to the nearest ER.  Jere and I stayed with Sandy until 4:00am, by which time she had stabilized and they moved her into an ICU room where was talking with us and the nurses.  We were driving back to the hospital about 9:30 the next morning (Monday) when we got a phone call from Juhl's wife Lisa in Fort Collins, who told us that Sandy had just had a massive brain bleed and was not expected to live.  As I remember, Lisa had Sandy's medical power of attorney (having been an ER nurse for most of her career), Jere and Tom and Sally and I were at the hospital, and we were in constant contact with Jaye and Juhl.  Sandy had made it totally clear to each and all of us that she did not want to be resuscitated in a situation like this and it took all four family members to convince the doctors that her entire family agreed to "do not resuscitate."  We were able to get in contact with all the grandkids and Erik and Liz to say goodbye and we were with her when she died.  The nurses said she was sitting in a chair talking with them while they were changing her sheets when she started to mumble and then stopped talking.  She went from being lucid to essentially brain dead in 8 minutes.  

Needless to say, it was a tough wedding weekend, but Sandy had a chance to be with her entire family and every grandchild and their significant others had a chance to talk to her and say goodbye.  And frankly, Sandy couldn't have planned a better exit.  

--- End of Long Aside ----

Back to this weekend.....tomorrow.

--  Long skip in time....  -- You can skip to the next set of dashed lines ----

OK, It wasn't my fault!!  I swear it wasn't.  So I wrote the above on early Thursday morning.  Thursday afternoon, I was having a fiber-optic cable installed to the house.  The main trunk line box is on the other side of the alley behind the house.  The cable needed to go across the alleyway, along the fence, cut across the backyard, and then run along the patio to the south side of the house.  Fine and good, except in the process, they cut my main sprinkler line and the Spectrum cable which is my TV, internet and phone land-line, all of which I'm dropping when the fiber-optic gets installed inside.  They patched the sprinkler line (which I can't test because the sprinkler won't get turned on until June 6th) and the Spectrum cable, which worked until the next afternoon about an hour after they left Laramie to go back to Colorado where they are staying.  Spectrum came yesterday (Sunday) and put in a temporary line.  So, I've been without cable service since last Thursday. 

To add insult to injury, I haven't liked my living room TV since I got it for Sally to watch during the summer of 2021. (Important note:  LG has the absolute worst operating system in the universe.  Both Liz and Erik agree with that statement.  It's terrible.  And the LG DVD player is just as bad, no, worse!  I will never buy an LG product again!!!)   Almost everything I watch is available on Roku, so based on several recommendations, I decided I would buy a Roku based TV.  After reading a lot of reviews, I decided I wanted the new Roku TV by Roku, which was only available at Best Buy in Fort Collins.  I drove the pickup down for the weekend since it has comfortable seating for 4-5 and so I could get the box in the back seat.  It fit, with less than 1/2" space on both sides with the doors closed.  And the price dropped $50 between when I had decided on in it in Laramie and when I bought it in Fort Fun!

I got home Monday night, rolled the TV out of the truck and into the entry way, put it on the stairchair to get it to the main floor, got it unboxed and on the stands, sitting in the middle of the living room.  And it started right up and worked like a Roku.  Just right.  I had also ordered a sound bar to match up with it, a TCL 3.1.2, which, in addition to the two front stereo speakers and the bass speaker in back, has a central speaker in the bar specifically for voice.  With my hearing aids, it gives just another boost in clarity, although I'll still keep the closed captioning on.  The sound bar came on Thursday and I decided it was time to mount the system.  I took the old TV off the swivel mount, did a dead lift with the new TV (being careful to not touch the front of the screen), lifted it to head height and hooked it over the swivel. I felt like Arnold Schwarzenegger.  I got the sound bar mounted underneath.  And everything worked.  And then the fiber-optics guys arrived.  As they dug the trench for the fiber cable up to the house, they cut the Spectrum line and and the sprinkler system pipe.  

So now I'm back, I am supposed to get the fiber-optic hookup completed tomorrow sometime between 1:00 and 3:00, I hope!!! 

BluePeak came on Tuesday, May 20th, did a pretty clean installation and everything works.  Amen.

---------Back to the weekend

We started Friday night with an impromptu get-together at our hotel.  It was a chance Robert and Liz who I haven't seen live since almost a year ago (we zoomed with them at Christmas) and Liz's mom and sister, who we met at the wedding.  We pulled some tables together, ordered some pizzas and just sat and talked for a few hours.  Later that evening, Erik, Liz and I went out for some drinks at a nearby sports bar.  It was fun just hanging out with the three of us.  I hope we have plenty of opportunity to do that in the future.

Saturday, I picked up the TV in the morning and Erik and I unloaded it into my room.  Then at 3:00, we met at Juhl and Lisa's house with Liz's mom and dad and sister Sasha.  

Deanna, Will (Jere's Tom's son), Sasha, Ken, Liz, Kathy, Robert Zimmerman Porter, Erik, Liz, Juhl, Jaye, Lisa, Lyndon, and Jere.  Arthur and I in front.

Liz, Rob, Me and Ken (Liz's dad.)  There seems to be a little family resemblance.

Jere and sons Robert and Arthur and Liz (obviously in the center)

The Pooh cake which says "Welcome Porter Twins"

The theme of the party was Winnie the Pooh and the party gifts that people were requested to bring were favorite childhood books.  I brought "Good Night, Moon" and "The Runaway Bunny".  Liz is reading the inscription from Erik in "Make Way for Ducklings" which is about a momma duck and her eight ducklings in and around the Boston Public Gardens and the Commons.  (Sally loved the book, the pond, the Swan Boats and just about everything to do with the book.)

From our trip to Boston in 2019.  It 
was a special gift to everyone there.

 

Later That evening, Erik, Liz, Jere and I went out for some some snacks at a wine bar.  We sat outside the front door because the singer was so loud, we couldn't hear each other.  We split some sandwiches and it was just right.  Another nice evening.

Sunday morning, the Porter's had to head back to Chicago.  Everyone gathered at the hotel and we ordered Chinese food for a brunch.  After that, Jaye, Jere and Liz went to wander Old Town Fort Collins and Erik and I met them later and we had Mexican food downtown.  My plate was twice as large as the picture, so I had plenty for leftovers.  

Monday was the day we set aside to scatter some of Sally's and Sandy's ashes at Rocky Mountain National Park.  We all used to spend a lot of time there when Sally and I were undergrads at CU-Boulder and while I was a grad student at CSU.  Sandy and Wilb had a large pop-up camper and we had one end, they had the other end and the kids slept stacked across the dinner table/bed in the center.  We did lots of hikes and bonfires there over the years.  We scattered some of Wilbur's ashes there after he died, so it seemed appropriate to scatter some of Sandy's and Sally's ashes there also.  

Driving up the Big Thompson canyon, I told Erik and Liz about the big flood on July 31, 1976 in which 144 people died.  My Ph.D. advisor and I worked on a report for the National Academy of Engineering about geotechnical aspects of the flood and were allowed into the area a couple of days after it happened.  Sally and I were going to go camping in Rocky that weekend, but rain was predicted and the skies in Fort Collins that Saturday morning were absolutely weird.  

When Sally and I tent camped at Rocky by ourselves, we stayed at Aspenglen campground.  There was a really nice spot on an island where Fall River split and went around us.  On July 15, 1982, an old earth irrigation dam, Lawn Lake Dam, constructed in 1903 and raised in 1931 failed, killed one camper who was immediately below the dam.  Water crashed down the steep slope (2,500 elevation over 4.5 miles) ripping up trees and boulders.  It dumped a lot of the debris when it hit the Fall River Valley below, but washed over another concrete dam and breached it.  The flow from that failure washed through Aspenglen and completely washed away our favorite site.  One of my Ph.D. advisors went up with a state investigation team and said the embankment was of such poor quality that you could stick you hand in-between the layers of the embankment.  That spot was so important to us, we scattered some of Sally's ashes there also.  

After that, we went back into Estes Park, had a leasurely lunch, and then split.  Erik and Liz headed to the airport, with Erik's flight at 7:50 and Liz's at 8:55.  Jere headed into Denver and had a meeting the next morning at the Denver Mint.  I road back to Fort Collins with Jaye and Lyndon, picked up the truck and headed back to Laramie.  And then started the TV adventure.  

After I got home, I found I could roll the Roku TV box out of the pickup, along the driveway, up the stoop and into the entry landing.  I then loaded the box onto the seat of the stairchair that Juhl and Lyndon installed in August of 2021 for Sally.  I rode the box up to the level of the living room floor and could slide it into place.  

Next weekend is the Wojahn Birthday party in Denver.  And a quick note - May 17th, I had an interview with some members of the Library Foundation and last Friday I got an email that I am officially on the board.  How about that.