Goldilocks in reverse

Who knew that bears can find the refrigerator?

One of the things I hadn't heard a lot about prior to moving to Colorado were the stories of bears breaking and entering and raiding the fridge. It happened again this morning when an Aspen woman heard a noise and went to investigate. She walked into the kitchen and got slapped in the face by a black bear.

The woman was able to get away, her young son called 911 and the woman was taken to the hospital to be treated for cuts from the bear's claws.

Authorities say that in this case the bear found the sliding glass door unlocked and simply slid it open to gain access to the house.

Bears in Colorado at this time of the year spend 20 hours per day eating in order to consume the 20,000 to 30,000 daily calories needed to prepare for hibernation.

Pitkin County, which includes Aspen, has relocated 24 bears this year and has had to put down 12 bears, mostly for breaking and entering.

ROCKTOBER!

As I noted on opening day, I'm not the world's biggest baseball fan. I've fully jumped, however, straight on to the Rockies bandwagon. These guys are a lot of fun. They remind me a lot of the 1987 Minnesota Twins.

Both teams approached the game fully bought in to their manager's "one game at a time" mantra. The Rockies manager even claimed tonight that the Rockies have never had anything more than a one game winning or losing streak. Neither team was expected to do much. Both teams were (are) very young. And with both teams it was and is easy to forget that the players were (are) highly paid professionals. The players simply have too much fun and have too good of an attitude to be Major League Baseball players.

welcome autumn

Baseball played closer to heaven

The lead story in Sunday's Denver Post is a column by Mark Kiszla. It is the story about life, death, family, sibling rivalry and baseball. It is the story of the aftermath of the death of Mike Coolbaugh, a coach for the minor league Tulsa Drillers who became the first player or coach killed by a baseball in a pro game since 1920. It is a column worthy of the lead and worth the time it takes to read it and you can find it here. http://www.denverpost.com/sports/ci_7107832

A note for my friends in Austin

Colorado beat Oklahoma.

The end of summer

The high today in Denver is supposed to be in the low 80s.

The high tomorrow in Denver is supposed to be 50 with significant snow above 9,000 feet.

Autumn arrives overnight.

Wonder what the weather is like in Austin?

Defining a compassionate conservative

Indicted legislator needs pr help

Terri Hodge, a state legislator from Dallas has been indicted by the feds in a bribery and extortion scheme involving the building of low-income housing. Her supporters rallied around her by crowing about what a great advocate for prisoners' rights she's been over the years.

Talk about a self-serving politician. At least she'll have friends in the pokey.

I hate home owners associations

I'd never thought about home owners associations until we bought our first house in Austin. We'd gone through financing, inspection, resolution of inspection issues and were at closing when one of the documents we had to sign if we wanted our house was the document selling our soul to the local home owners association.

Now my guess is that when originally conceived, home owners associations were probably a fairly harmless little thing. But not today. Today, home owner associations are bureaucratic, red-tape manufacturers with the power to fine you and prevent you from selling your house if you don't conform to their rules. I can't believe anyone who believes in private property rights or individual freedoms actually thinks these things are a good idea.

The worst thing about home owners associations are the nattering ninnies who run them. These people have far too much time on their hands and appear to be, in my opinion, not the brightest bulb in the set of lights. Let me give you an example.

We just got our HOA Newsletter. It appears to have been mostly written by a man named Erik. One of the articles Erik wrote was about the horrible problem of people parking their cars on the street overnight. He wanted to remind people that the HOA Board is now enforcing a rule that says no cars may be left on the street overnight. He also detailed the reason for the rule.

"Parking on the streets is considered unsightly and hurts our property values."
and
"Cars parked on the street block the view of drivers, placing people at significant safety risk, especially children running or biking from the sidewalk."

So I'm now to believe that my property value is going down because there are potential buyers scouting my sleepy little neighborhood in my sleepy little suburb at 2:00 AM? That's silly. I'm sure that 100% of the people scouting my neighborhood for a house are doing so during daylight or evening hours when parking on the street is allowed!

And while I understand that cars parked on the street may block some views and be a hazard to children I'd argue that the bigger hazard to the kid walking or on a bike are the parents at home who are letting that kid walk and/or bike at 3:00 AM.

I would rather pay taxes to the federal government than pay my HOA dues.