Catching up...

Did you miss me?  For the past two weeks we have been without the internet much of the time and without our landline phone sporadically due to the horrific storms we've been having.  A lightning strike also fried a printer and our DSL router, so that took a few days to resolve.  And this past Sunday there were two wildfires started by lightning strikes on the property that adjoins ours.  Thank goodness we've had a bit of rain (finally) the past week and the fire department got the fires out within a few hours.

And when we weren't dealing with lightning, fires and electronic issues:





Another Pet Project volunteer (Glenn) helping to unload the food (see below for story) into Pet Project's storage shed.  There's barely room left in there to stand -- hopefully the mice won't find it!

• Our animal welfare group, Pet Project, got a call from the Pike's Peak Humane Society asking if we wanted some free pet food.  It seems that during the evacuations and Waldo Canyon fires in Colorado Springs, so much pet food was donated that the Humane Society was overrun with it.  So we drove to Colorado Springs two days in a row to pick up approximately 4000 pounds of pet food each time.  We do a pet food distribution once a month for people who are having trouble feeding their pets and this influx of food will allow us to distribute more often during the month.  See photo -- we filled a trailer and the bed of the pickup truck each time!

Marshall helping the Humane Society volunteer load the truck

• Marketplace Shops (the store where we have rented booth space) had their Chamber of Commerce reception which was very successful and then the Grand Opening. We sold $100 worth of stuff on day one, so that bodes well
• Marshall's claim with the VA for Agent Orange benefits (Agent Orange is known to be a risk factor for prostate cancer) got active with various evaluation meetings being scheduled.  We have one of those meetings later today.
• Our generator, which is the backup for our solar power system (automatically kicks in whenever we have a series of overcast days and the batteries get depleted), developed a "bad board" and one night last week we had no power at all.  The guy who maintains our solar system came out and brought us a loaner generator to keep us going until he can fix ours.  Fortunately, we've had a lot of sunlight this week and there has been no need for the generator other than that first day to recharge the batteries.  
• The motorcycle paint job is still a work in progress.  Now that the storms seem to have calmed down Marshall will probably go visit the motorcycle someday soon.  We applied for vanity license plates (STNGR -- referring to the Stinger Gunships from Marshall's time in VietNam) and it got approved so they are on order. 
• The greenhouse is still doing well.  We had a spinach salad the other day with greens from the greenhouse.  More strawberries are forming.  The green beans are finally producing.  The herbs are awesome.  We've had quite a few of the delicious small cherry tomatoes.
• Marshall still has bad days where the fatigue is overpowering, but he keeps on going.  He says this cancer is not going to keep him from doing the things he wants to do.  Yay Marshall!  The oncologist prescribed a very mild dose of an antidepressant which he says in most men helps to minimize the nighttime hot flashes and that appears to be working quite well.  In my opinion, it is also causing Marshall to sleep later every day (he sleeps till about 9:00 now instead of the previous 7:00AM).  That is not a bad thing.

So now we are all caught up!