January 9th 2007
Good Morning
We feel an empty space inside, this morning as our friend Dave left for home last evening. Back to sunny and warm Florida for the hippie dude. We had a fantastic visit through the holidays. David is doing really well and it was a pleasure to have him here with us for Thanksgiving and Christmas. Still, it feels a little like sending a child off to boarding school. ECS (empty couch syndrome)
Yesterday was full, full, as they say around here. Where to begin? Chronological order or importance? My first job of the day failed to show up to meet me and I waited outside of a business which coincidentally housed Outland Tech the VCR shop, which Nell ran in my absence, as I was suffering from depression at the time. When I look back I can see that I'm truly blessed to have made it through depression and addictions and recovered with only the love of my family and some major self determination to guide me through. I shouldn't say, "with only," but I don't really know how I survived. I just know I didn't have a program to help me. It certainly was a blur from where I am now. I know what you may be thinking, "What does he have to be depressed about?" Thanks to my loving and smart parents I will always have the beautiful ranch to call home. Unfortunately, one thing hasn't anything to do with the other. Plus, we have my depression and addictions to thank for getting my act together and beginning the Morning Newsletter or the MNL as I called it in those days. My how time flies. Was that eight years ago? As I sat in my Trooper looking at the business sign on the store where I was doing my WiFi installation, I noticed it read "Open Monday - Wednesday - Friday." Damn, I realized it was Tuesday and wondered how long I had been sitting there spacing out on the past? I called the number on the door, nobody home of course, called back to the shop, they didn't know. Finally Ron from Desertgate called and said the guy flaked out. I filled the rest of my morning with a few minor repairs for Desertgate, then drove the short distance to Luna Community College to see if Kevin was back from Portland visiting his family. Not yet.
I drove over to the administration building or IT office, whatever it is called, and found Adam in the parking lot digging through his truck looking for a lighter. Adam has been helping me with my web pages. It was nearly Noon and Adam said he had time to play with http://outfitnm.com during lunch. We did and it was pretty cool to watch Adam work. Young people have an amazing advantage with computers over us old folks. Heck, we know all sorts of obsolete stuff. This should count for something, right? Not really. We have old timey skills. Why shouldn't we be happy being old? I am happy and unlike a lot of parents, I actually have been using computers since they were invented. I put in my time. Anyway, Adam is clicking away on the keyboard, downloading in three windows while the two screens on his work PC are filling with open programs. I try to keep up. Of course Adam is showing me stuff so he is going extra slow for the old guy. Nevertheless, he has at the very least twenty windows open at once. He and Matt are working together and from what I've been saying I want my web pages to do, they think we should drop the Deki Wiki stuff and go back to Joomla. I tried Joomla before, but I just don't have the ability to learn new programming techniques and focus my attention on renewable energy research too. I know this sounds familiar. As you may know, I'm about to switch up to fifty four years old. I have come to understand what I can do and what will stretch me too thin. Same thing goes with the evolution of this newsletter. The transition needs to be seamless or I fear I will lose my tenuous edge. I can't add anything major to my routine, besides I like routines. Same newsletter, same coffee cup, same seat, same morning window to watch the sunrise. Yeah, I love my life. It's the little things that count.
So this brings us up to the lunch hour. Christ, how the heck do I fit so much stuff into one day? Late the previous evening, I was told about a neighbor who plans to develop their property. They were going to meet at 1:30PM before the San Miguel County Commission. Members of the community were there and we listened to the proposal. Yeah man, they are going for it. First they sub-divide into large tracts, then they break it up again, and again. I never really thought much for people making money buying and selling land, especially those that break it apart and develop it. But I guess people need a place to live. It is just too bad we end up with a country full of ruined country side and loaded down with urban sprawl. Actually, I am not terribly worried about this development because I feel strongly that the energy crisis will hit America big time before they get anything built and people will be forced to either, build a rural light rail system which works or stay in the town where they work. Now this will probably be more of a retirement community, so maybe the residents won't need to drive to town daily. But this still leaves the question of water supply. We don't have any extra water here. If they build typical water-wasteful houses here, then I imaging that our river will dry up and certainly the irrigation ditches will suffer. So people buy the property just up the valley not knowing anything of our customs or habits and plan to build homes for more people who don't know anything about living in this climate where good drinking water is scarce. I was hoping I could do a little farming here. It's not looking good for that with a bunch of homes sucking up all the water. I know I'm always sounding doomsdayish, but this can't be good.
Unfortunately, I wasn't able to stay at the meeting as I had to go back to work. Pat was there and a few of our neighbors. We can only hope they said what needed to be said. I think by shear numbers we let the Commissioners know how the locals feel about this proposed development. I don't have a lot of happy thoughts about this. From what Pat tells me these people have done this all over the country. We probably can not stop them. Perhaps we can slow them down.
Yours truly,
Brian Rodgers
