With a title like "Finally Over" I am sure everyone is thinking that I am talking about the election. As a matter of fact I am.... not! Just had to add that for dramatic effect. What I am actually talking about today is that the work on my kitchen/family room is finally done. The work completed on Friday when the contractor finished some painting that needed to be done as a result of the unexpected leak from the upstairs bathroom. The final payment has now been handed over to the contractor and their lock box has been removed from my front door. I am quite happy that it is finally done. The work was supposed to take between 6 and 10 weeks instead of the 24 weeks that it took. Some of my decisions contributed to the delay. But the majority of the delay came from very small little things like a custom stainless steel cover for the ventilation from the over the stove fan and replacement of 2 warped doors on the cabinets.
Though Friday was the official end of the project we have been able to use the kitchen since August so it really hasn't been that big of a deal. The more significant pain in the butt was having to schedule the continued presence of contractors in the house. Over the last several weeks there hasn't been that much activity but I have had to watch out so that the dogs were kept in the basement and so forth.
I have decided not to publish any pictures of the completed project yet. There are still a number of things that need to be done like hanging pictures on the wall and deciding what other furniture I am going to put in the family room. So far we have two couches and the area rug in the family room. The smaller of the two couches is going into the basement and there will be two chairs in it's place. Table lamps, end tables and a coffee table are are also needed. Zack and I will be hosting Thanksgiving this year so I am going to do my darnedest to have all this additional work done by then.
On to the other issue that is "finally over". Yes - that is the presidential election campaign. Voting on the East Coast will begin in less than 10 hours! So that means we will be hearing our final campaign ads and getting the final robo-calls within the next few hours if that hasn't happened already. Colorado has been ground zero for the most intense campaigning. Literally I have received hundreds of robo-calls and every night during the 10PM newscast I see at least a dozen campaign ads or more!
With the campaigning pretty much done and the voting and litigating to do, things look pretty rosy for my candidate - Barack Obama. According to the reliable and well respected poll handicapping service "RealClearPolitics.Com" President Obama has a .7% lead in their poll of polls and he has a distinct 68 electoral vote advantage (303 to 235) over Romney. Of course these estimates are based upon the algorithms that they use to weight the various polls on both a national and state level. However, I have been following this website since the election of 2000 and they have been remarkably accurate in predicting the outcome of just about every election since then.
In the end run whoever is going to win is going to win, I can only hope the election will be free and fair. If President Obama wins we may finally see an overall shift back to a more liberal viewpoint within the electorate of the United States. It should mean that the Affordable Care Act will never be repealed. With Obama in the White House the earliest opportunity it could be overturned is in early 2017. By then most provisions of the law will have been in force for at least 2 years and it will be very hard for anyone to take those away once they are fully in place. There will be no going back!!
On other notes - Zack is back at school after a so-so week of fall break. It was only so-so because his trip to Washington DC was of course cancelled because of Hurricane Sandy. He was supposed to leave Denver on Saturday, October 27th at 7:20AM. We only found out that the trip was cancelled on Friday evening at 7:30PM. He was disappointed at first but that passed pretty quickly. The other down side to the week off was that he got sick and then I got sick. Tuesday night his stomach started feeling bad and by 8:00PM that night he was throwing up and sick as a dog. I got sick later that evening. He recovered by Wednesday afternoon whereas I didn't get back to feeling normal until Thursday night.
We have continued to get out and hike as much as humanly possible since I last posted to the blog. We did a major hike at the Rocky Mountain Arsenal National Wildlife Refuge on Saturday October 27th. The place is amazing as there are so many animals there and they are not very afraid of people! In addition to this hike we have been spending a lot of time racking up distance on the Douglas County East-West Regional trail. I've written about this trail before. It is a relatively new trail having only been around for the last 5 or 6 years and is still in the process of being built. Eventually it will go all the way from Chatfield State Park in the west to Castlewood Canyon State Park in the east. So far the trail has been constructed from Chatfield to I-25, so it about 1/2 way done. Our goal for now is to hike the roughly 20 miles of completed trail.
My back seems to have finally turned some kind of positive corner. With all the hiking and walking that I have been doing it seems like I have regained a lot of strength. As such the amount of pain that I am feeling in my hip and back has started to diminish in the last 2 weeks. In addition to the exercise I am doing the physical therapy really seems to be making positive changes. The pain isn't totally gone, but it is much better.
Thanks so much for reading. I know my writing has been somewhat sporadic recently and I will continue to try and write more in the coming days.
For all of you who are American citizens please do your civic duty and get out there and vote tomorrow. I will never discourage anyone from voting even if they intend to vote against my candidate. Regardless of that fact, just get out there and vote!
Thanks and peace to all! ~J
Though Friday was the official end of the project we have been able to use the kitchen since August so it really hasn't been that big of a deal. The more significant pain in the butt was having to schedule the continued presence of contractors in the house. Over the last several weeks there hasn't been that much activity but I have had to watch out so that the dogs were kept in the basement and so forth.
I have decided not to publish any pictures of the completed project yet. There are still a number of things that need to be done like hanging pictures on the wall and deciding what other furniture I am going to put in the family room. So far we have two couches and the area rug in the family room. The smaller of the two couches is going into the basement and there will be two chairs in it's place. Table lamps, end tables and a coffee table are are also needed. Zack and I will be hosting Thanksgiving this year so I am going to do my darnedest to have all this additional work done by then.
On to the other issue that is "finally over". Yes - that is the presidential election campaign. Voting on the East Coast will begin in less than 10 hours! So that means we will be hearing our final campaign ads and getting the final robo-calls within the next few hours if that hasn't happened already. Colorado has been ground zero for the most intense campaigning. Literally I have received hundreds of robo-calls and every night during the 10PM newscast I see at least a dozen campaign ads or more!
With the campaigning pretty much done and the voting and litigating to do, things look pretty rosy for my candidate - Barack Obama. According to the reliable and well respected poll handicapping service "RealClearPolitics.Com" President Obama has a .7% lead in their poll of polls and he has a distinct 68 electoral vote advantage (303 to 235) over Romney. Of course these estimates are based upon the algorithms that they use to weight the various polls on both a national and state level. However, I have been following this website since the election of 2000 and they have been remarkably accurate in predicting the outcome of just about every election since then.
In the end run whoever is going to win is going to win, I can only hope the election will be free and fair. If President Obama wins we may finally see an overall shift back to a more liberal viewpoint within the electorate of the United States. It should mean that the Affordable Care Act will never be repealed. With Obama in the White House the earliest opportunity it could be overturned is in early 2017. By then most provisions of the law will have been in force for at least 2 years and it will be very hard for anyone to take those away once they are fully in place. There will be no going back!!
On other notes - Zack is back at school after a so-so week of fall break. It was only so-so because his trip to Washington DC was of course cancelled because of Hurricane Sandy. He was supposed to leave Denver on Saturday, October 27th at 7:20AM. We only found out that the trip was cancelled on Friday evening at 7:30PM. He was disappointed at first but that passed pretty quickly. The other down side to the week off was that he got sick and then I got sick. Tuesday night his stomach started feeling bad and by 8:00PM that night he was throwing up and sick as a dog. I got sick later that evening. He recovered by Wednesday afternoon whereas I didn't get back to feeling normal until Thursday night.
We have continued to get out and hike as much as humanly possible since I last posted to the blog. We did a major hike at the Rocky Mountain Arsenal National Wildlife Refuge on Saturday October 27th. The place is amazing as there are so many animals there and they are not very afraid of people! In addition to this hike we have been spending a lot of time racking up distance on the Douglas County East-West Regional trail. I've written about this trail before. It is a relatively new trail having only been around for the last 5 or 6 years and is still in the process of being built. Eventually it will go all the way from Chatfield State Park in the west to Castlewood Canyon State Park in the east. So far the trail has been constructed from Chatfield to I-25, so it about 1/2 way done. Our goal for now is to hike the roughly 20 miles of completed trail.
My back seems to have finally turned some kind of positive corner. With all the hiking and walking that I have been doing it seems like I have regained a lot of strength. As such the amount of pain that I am feeling in my hip and back has started to diminish in the last 2 weeks. In addition to the exercise I am doing the physical therapy really seems to be making positive changes. The pain isn't totally gone, but it is much better.
Thanks so much for reading. I know my writing has been somewhat sporadic recently and I will continue to try and write more in the coming days.
For all of you who are American citizens please do your civic duty and get out there and vote tomorrow. I will never discourage anyone from voting even if they intend to vote against my candidate. Regardless of that fact, just get out there and vote!
Thanks and peace to all! ~J
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