Tuesday Rambles

I'm still here in Greeley. I know you were waiting with baited breath for news of my many activities here. Right. I have been just hanging out, not having much to say. It's been very relaxing. I've been doing lots of beading. If I can get the "macro" feature of my camera to do what I think it should, I'll post pictures.

I took a long drive this evening (yeah, I know, I'll eat Mac and Cheese the rest of the week). I just love the country around here. If you've never been to Greeley (and really, why would you?) it sits on the prairie east of the Colorado Rockies front range. Highway 85 goes north to Cheyenne, and if you look to the east on that road, all you can see are grasslands. Being a prairie person, that is my kind of land. Just rolling hills with grass, a few cows, and a couple of antelope. I can take a really deep breath here. Lots of horizon to see. If you look to the west, you see the wonderful panorama of snow covered mountains. The majestic Rockies. Takes my breath away.

Hardly a day goes by that I don't remember how lucky I am to be able to have this lifestyle. Lucky, fortunate, blessed, take your pick. I don't know, I'm just darned glad to be living it.

I think about how far flung my friends are this summer. Oregon, Wyoming, Illinois, Ohio, New Mexico, Arizona, even California (Get out of there, John!). Yet we manage to stay in touch with our cellphones, email, and our blogs and flicker pages. Amazing.

I like to keep up with the technology of emerging energy forms. My favorite was wave power. I can't really explain how they do it (I know there are three different technologies that all work), so in layman's terms: they put a generator on the ocean floor a couple of miles off shore, with cabling back to a structure on shore. The incoming waves push a piston forward, then the outgoing waves push the piston backwards. The piston moving generates electricity. You can google wave power and find out more. There are electric buses in Scotland that run off electricity powered by these wave machines. Very cool.

But now I have a new favorite. I saw this on the new channel DirecTV has, Planet Green. Two young women have a prototype of a generator powered by people pushing a revolving door around. Really, I couldn't make that up. I just love it. Make all doors into public buildings revolving doors, and put that power into batteries or sell the power back to the electric company. How innovative is that? Shows that everybody can help in the fight to be energy independent.

I'm doing my part. Since September, I've only plugged into the power grid once. (It was 95 degrees in Las Vegas, so shoot me). Most of the time I'm off the grid completely. Since I use my generator so seldom, I'm not using a lot of diesel. It's a small thing, true, but I'm proud to do my part.

We went to the Moose Lodge last night for Bingo. I only had six cards, so it was MUCH less stressful than the first time I played bingo and had to mark up 24 cards. That was just awful. Remember, LJ? But this was much better. It's still kind of boring, though, daub, daub, daub, somebody yells BINGO, you throw away your page and start another game. Same thing, daub, daub, daub, somebody else yells Bingo, and you start all over again. Five games, intermission, five more games. We didn't win anything. It was something to do, though. Joey's dauber kind of exploded, she had to buy a new one. That was fun.

This Moose Lodge has the nicest people. I guess I say that about almost every lodge I stay at.

Those are my ramblings today. Maybe I'll do something more interesting than laundry so I'll have something to say. Have a nice day.