Sunday, December 23, 2007

Merry Christmas!

A big welcome to those visiting my blog for the first time and a Merry Christmas to all!

If you didn't know, the moon and Mars were very close tonight and tracking across the sky together. Here's a picture I took (the best I could do with my equipment):


Tomorrow afternoon begins a marathon of worship services, which I'm really looking forward to. My handbell choir is playing at the 4pm and 6pm services. Choir is singing at 8pm and 10pm, plus I'm filling in with the other bell choir (also playing at 8 & 10). We just had a new organ installed at church this week, and I'm really looking forward to hearing all the Christmas music on it.





We are also singing and ringing for church on Christmas morning. I have an invitation to spend part of Christmas Day at a friend's house, and I'm looking forward to that. I also need to pack to leave for Kansas the next morning. I'm watching the forecast carefully, and so far it looks like I can get out of town in between storms. It should be an interesting drive. I'm taking an otter from our zoo and dropping it off at the zoo in Manhattan, KS on my way east. I'll have my dog in the front seat and the otter in a kennel in the back seat, so we'll see how that goes! For those not animal-savvy, otters are in the Mustelidae family, which includes ferrets & skunks, so they're pretty smelly. Here's a pic of Mulan that I took last night:


Lastly, here's a better picture of Hadiah and Mahal. They're still doing well together.

Wednesday, December 19, 2007

Hadiah & Mahal

To continue from my last post...

Hadiah and Mahal are still together. Today brought many huge steps forward in their relationship. Hadiah started off the day still acting afraid of Mahal. Then, mid-morning, while she was getting some treats from a keeper, Mahal climbed onto her and she did not freak out. After that point, there was more and more contact between the two and they started playing together. This afternoon, he took a nap sleeping in her lap and she carried him a little bit (she's still trying to figure that out). He had several temper tantrums today (I'm not sure why, but I think he was just tired), and Hadiah remained calm and even calmed him down.
I got a couple cute videos, but the pictures aren't great. Here's one of them from the end of the day:

Tuesday, December 18, 2007

Sad day in Primate World

Sometime early this morning our orangutan Sandra passed away. For those of you not keeping track of the orangutan saga, she's the one who adopted the baby (Mahal) about 2 1/2 weeks ago. She was very old (born in 1956), and with Mahal in her life, was much more active. It's possible that caring for him shortened her life a little, but it also greatly enriched it. We are confident that she died happy and with a purpose to her life. Now of course that left Mahal without a mommy yet again. We had introduced Hadiah to the 2 of them 6 days ago, so she'd been in with them during the day. We put her in with Mahal today. He was remarkably calm, but not too keen on hanging close to her. He actually seems to be dominant over her, threatening her if she got too close. He did apparently follow her some and she was close during feedings to get treats. They were left together overnight, and we're hopeful that within a few days they may bond.
Here's a picture of Mahal and Sandra that I took last week:


I'll keep you posted how things go!

Sunday, December 9, 2007

Snowy Sunday morning

We've finally had quite a bit of winter weather over the past few days, with sleet, snow and everything in between falling at some point. The sun came out while I was in church this morning and this was the view from the parking lot when I came out:

Sunday, December 2, 2007

I graduated!

Just a quick post...We had our last class of Dave Ramsey's Financial Peace University tonight. This class is changing my life, and I'd highly recommend it to anyone. Even if you don't have debt, you'll learn plenty.

Saturday, December 1, 2007

A New Mom for Mahal

It's been almost a month since my last post. My apologies for that, especially to those who have actually been checking it (you know who you are).

I've been really busy with work and projects leading up to the holidays. My life at work got a lot easier this week, though.

On Thursday, we introduced Mahal (the baby orangutan we've been raising) to Sandra, one of our female orangutans. Sandra is 51-years-old, which is probably equivalent to a 100-year-old human. She also has arthritis (and only 4 teeth, but that doesn't really matter in this situation). Initially, we hadn't really considered her for a surrogate, due to her age and mobility. But she had raised 9 babies of her own, and seemed the most interested in him during our observations.

So on Thursday morning, we left him in an exhibit and walked out for the last time. Within 20 seconds of being let in with him, Sandra was picking him up. We had really been encouraging Mahal to be much more independent than a baby orangutan normally would be at eight months. Not knowing how good a job the surrogate would do at carrying him, we had to make sure he was able to move around the exhibit on his own and get to us at the bars for bottles. As such, we never really held on to Mahal or restrained him. So when Sandra was grabbing him and not letting go, he did not like it. For the first couple hours, she held onto him and he cried and screamed. Sandra knows that a baby his age should be carried, so that's what she was trying todo. When she finally let him go, and he calmed down, she seemed to realize that he did better that way.

It's now been 3 days and they're still together. Sandra still occasionally grabs him to pick him up and he gets upset, but he's adjusting. He sleeps on her when he's sleeping, and he's doing a great job of drinking his bottles through the mesh.

Here's a couple of pictures of the 2 of them:
This one was taken during the first 2 hours, so Mahal isn't real happy, but it's cute!
This one was take today, when he was hanging out with her by his choice.

Sunday, November 4, 2007

More hiking, work & lack of sleep

Last weekend was much better weather-wise than the one before. This time of year you never know when that snow is going to come that might make mountain trails icy for months. So with temperatures around 70° last Monday, Sherrie and I decided to do some hiking and caching. We started off on a trail we'd never been on and found a couple caches. After the second cache, the trail pretty much ended in a couple of primitive campsites. We could either hike back out the way we came in and then hike up another trail, or just head up from where we were toward the ridge where the next cache was. Being our usual adventurous (foolish) selves we chose the latter.

This view was a nice bonus on our "shortcut".
This mountain chickadee was also along the way.

About 900 vertical feet later, with our leg muscles burning we reached the trail on the ridge. We had been on this trail before and from here it was a pretty easy stroll to the next cache. There were more great views from here, St. Patty's Overlook.
The vertical rock formation in this picture is called a hoodoo. The haziness in the air was smoke from the California wildfires. It actually smelled smoky that day. What was bad air for us was good news for California, since it meant that the winds were now blowing west to east.
Here's a picture of me at St. Patty's overlook.

From this cache we headed down the mountain on a different trail.

Friday night, I worked the James Taylor concert at my 2nd job at the World Arena. It was a great concert, but it didn't end until 10:20 and we were short-handed. It was 2:15am by the time I got off of work, and I had to work at 8:00am Saturday at the zoo. Needless to say, Saturday was a long day on 3 hours of sleep. I took advantage of the extra hour of sleep last night, went to bed at 9 and got 10 hours of sleep, even though I had to be at church at 7:30.

Monday, October 22, 2007

First Snow

It's been a couple weeks since my last post. I've been too busy cheering on the World Series bound Rockies to post!

Saturday we had record high temperatures in the mid-70s, and yesterday we had our first snow. It snowed and the winds blew all morning. Most of the snow just blew around, at least at my house. I did have about an inch of snow on my car when I got out of church. The north end of town and the foothills got more. Here's a picture out my back door when I got home from church.

This morning Sherrie and I went out and did a few geocaches and walked about 3.5-4 miles. It was still chilly today, but it was sunny and the snow-covered mountains were just gorgeous.

Sunday, October 7, 2007

Extreme Makeover back in town

Over 2 1/2 years ago, the very popular TV show, Extreme Makeover:Home Edition, did a build about 15 miles east of here. I spent some time out at the site in the spectator section observing and had a great time. This past Monday night, a co-worker of mine called me to let me know they were back in town helping out another family. She had gone out and volunteered. Unfortunately, with my work schedule, that didn't work out for me. I did have some very cool experiences again as a spectator.

Here's the back story of the family (well as much as I know): The Woodhouses are a family of 4. The dad is a Baptist minister. They have 2 kids a boy and a girl. Ten-year-old Kayla has a very rare genetic disorder which prevents her from feeling pain. I'm not sure if it's part of the disease or a separate condition, but she also can't really regulate her temperature and has to have a room temperature of 62°. This severely limits her life and where she can go, etc.

Friday night, they had a fundraiser/benefit concert at a local venue. The mom's favorite singer is David Phelps (a great Christian singer). He came and did a short concert. The concert was supposed to start at 7pm and I got there at 6pm. We stood in line for almost 2 hours and finally got to go into the event hall at 8pm. I think the concert finally started about 8:30. As they told us, "welcome to the reality of reality TV". He ended up doing 3 songs, one of them twice to get another take. I was definitely on camera, but odds are I'll end up on the cutting room floor. Here's a shot of the design team from the concert:
Left to right: Rib (new guy), Eduardo, Tanya, & Ed

They're doing 2 builds this week (the other in Oregon), so Ty was flying back and forth and was not at the concert.

Saturday night after work I went out to the home site. I got some pictures of the house, talked to some folks who had volunteered, and watched Rib working on the son's room (from across the street, through the window). I saw Tanya, Rib and Ty briefly.

Today (Sunday) was reveal day. I headed out after church and got there about noon. The family was scheduled to get back about 2pm. There were already quite a few people there, but I still got a good place along the fence about 1/2 block from the house. It was pretty chilly today, but the crowd was fun and good natured. They filmed the crowd shots long before the family came back, even some of the "move that bus" shots. They also did shots of the limo arriving without the family. The house was pretty much done yesterday, but there were last minute changes/touches going on. They repainted the garage door after I got there. Apparently, the finish they put on the daughter's room's floor was still drying when the family got home. Here's some pictures!
This shot was just before the limo arrived.

I love this shot of the family getting out of the limo, with the son, Joshua, leaping into Ty's arms.

Once the family went into the house, lots of people left. Then Ed and Rib came over and did photos and autographs.
Here's a shot of me with Rib (isn't he cute?). He explained to us that his real name is Robert, but Rib has been his nickname since he was five and liked to catch frogs (it's short for Ribbit).

Here's a shot of Ed and Rib. They were goofing off a lot together - teasing and competing.

Here's the family coming back out and seeing their new vehicle for the first time.

Here's a shot of the completed house with the new car in the driveway. It's a 2009 Ford Flex - not available in the market yet.

That's the summary of my fun weekend. Just like last time, it was really interesting to see some of what goes into a show like this, and it's a whole lot!

Monday, October 1, 2007

Another hike and other stuff

Wow! It's been 2 weeks since I last posted! Sorry about that. It's been busy, but not much going on if you know what I mean.


Yesterday afternoon, I went with several other people from church to see the Colorado Springs Philharmonic and The Colorado Springs Chorale perform Beethoven's 9th Symphony. They did a pretty good job. I had some issues with some of the soloists and I guess my ears are getting better at hearing bad pitch/intonation/etc. We met afterward for dinner, and my choir director had many of the same comments.

Today I went hiking with Sherrie and Laurie. The leaves turned really quickly here and with wind this weekend, I wasn't sure we'd still find yellow aspens. We found some with no leaves and some mostly green, but very few were in the brief perfect period. It was still a nice day for a hike and great scenery.
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This was a waterfall along the trail. I found some rainbow trout in this little stream. They were very small trout, ranging in size from 3-6 inches.

We did find one geocache and headed toward another, but had to turn back due to time. I wanted to get back before the Rockies game tonight. Go Rocks!

Here are some bird pictures I took today:
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Golden-crowned kinglet
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Pygmy nuthatch

Sunday, September 16, 2007

A Saturday off

Yesterday I had the day off of work, so I tried to organize a hiking/geocaching expedition to include some folks I don't usually get to hike with since my normal day off is Monday. Well, everyone ended up having other things come up so it was just me and my usual hiking buddy, Sherrie.

The hike I planned first required a drive up into the mountains to get to where we could hike. Not a whole lot of elevation change on the hike itself - we started at about 9300 feet and got to around 9750 at the top of Ormes Peak. A few of the aspen have started to change, but we're still a few weeks away from peak color. We found two caches on top of Ormes Peak. If you're unfamilar with geocaching, check out this site: www.geocaching.com

This photo of Pikes Peak was taken from the summit of Ormes Peak.

We saw quite a bit of wildlife including blue grouse, mountain chickadees, mountain bluebirds and Colorado chipmunks. Oh, and a ton of ladybugs on top of the peak.
This is one of the mountain chickadees.

We ended up hiking 8.5 miles, which I think was our second longest hike this season.

Happy Trails!!

Wednesday, September 12, 2007

Bringing up baby


I spent today caring for Mahal, our baby orangutan, so I thought I'd use today's blog space to explain what is involved with raising a baby orangutan the right way.

Raising a baby ape by hand is something we really don't want to do at all. Both Hadiah (Mahal's mom) and Kwisha (the mom of Umande the gorilla whom we raised last year) were young, inexperienced moms who were hand-raised themselves. As such, they were scared when their little ones came into the world and as a result chose the "hands off" approach. In both of these cases we tried for several days to give the babies back to mom, hoping she'd eventually want the baby back. But in both cases we had to raise the babies.

Once we decide that we have to hand-raise, our already arranged just-in-case team of hand-raisers steps in and from then on it is a 24/7 commitment to the little one. Mahal's team consists of 12 people working mostly 8-hour shifts around the clock. We have a night nursery set up in part of our kitchen which has a bed in it for the night caregiver. If his orangutan mom was raising him, he would be clinging onto her for the first several months of his life. We mimic this as much as possible, although we have to encourage him to be more independent than normal so we can reintroduce him at a younger age.

We wear scrubs when caring for Mahal and he is required to hold onto the scrubs whenever we're moving around, just as he'd cling to mom's hair. Sometimes he grabs our hair or skin, too! We spend as much time each day next to the other orangutans as we can. They can touch him through the mesh as long as they're being gentle. This helps him to know what orangutans are, so he won't be afraid of them when we put him back. When he's visible to the public or to other orangutans, he never has diapers on. We don't want the orangutans to be confused or the public to think he's make a good pet (he would not!). This lack of diapers means we often get peed or pooped on - thankfully scrubs dry quickly!

Mahal drinks human baby formula out of human baby bottles several times a day. We try to encourage him to take his bottle through the mesh of the exhibit, since that's how he'll have to drink it when he's back with the other orangutans. We also offer him some solid foods (he has 3 teeth), but food seems to repulse him right now. We spend our day playing with him, feeding him, and even sleeping with him.

Mahal was 4.4 lbs when he was born on April 4 and is now ~11.5 lbs. We hope one of our other orangutans will be interested in adopting him in a couple months.

Sunday, September 9, 2007

First Entry


I thought it might be fun to get in on the blogging thing, just as a way to keep in touch and let friends and family know what's going on in my life. So, in starting this, I won't go back and tell you about my month or year. I'll just start with now.

It's a lazy Sunday afternoon here in Colorado. I think fall has finally arrived after a long, hot summer. Temperatures are topping off in the 60s today, which feels great. The Chiefs lost their first game today and the Broncos pulled off a win with time expired (big frowny faces to both of those!).

I had church and Bible class this morning. Our youth group led the service and recounted their experiences at the recent National Youth Gathering in Orlando. Tonight, I have my first class of Dave Ramsey's Financial Peace University. I'll keep you posted on how that goes. I'm really looking forward to it.

The picture above is of Mahal, the baby orangutan that consumes much of our time at work. We're hand-rearing him, since his mom didn't know what to do with him. He is now 5 months old.