This was posted on Thursday, even though it shows as Wednesday.

Another blast-from-the-past Wednesday morning at the Party Pool, when Marna showed up. She works the Colorado Renaissance Festival on summer weekends, and spends some of her off time here, though our paths haven't crossed in years. Her younger daughter Zaine is Lisa's age, and years ago the girls would hang out together here - and once each winter when we'd attend the Arizona Renaissance Festival where Marna also worked.

We took two cars into Alamosa. Tom and Steve 'needed' to stop at the liquor store, and then they made a stop at the book store where Tom found the sci-fi book Terry had recommended, while we needed (notice no quote marks necessary here) to hit the quilt store for my RBR pattern. We had also planned a quickie at the grocery store, but the wait at the construction zone caused enough of a delay that we 86ed that idea so we could be on time to dinner...  which Tom and Stever were not.  Dinner at the Greek restaurant where Loretta works was okay (though neither Tom, Terry, nor I were very impressed) but it was good to see Michael, and of course Elijah. Afterward we swung by his place to see the new greenhouse, which was very nice, especially considering how little he had to spend on materials.  

We couldn't see any smoke from here yesterday, but once we got down Road GG a bit toward the highway we were far enough back from the ridge for a view of the still-impressive plumes. And the entire San Luis Valley sure had a haze hanging over it.  I wasn't able to find any news up-dates last night newer than 24 hours, so no idea how many acres have been consume by now, or what the containment figures are.  But it's obviously still seriously burning. 

Since Tom will be on Dinner Duty for a couple of nights when Terry returns to Denver to give Richard a break with Elinor (as a contractor he needs to come home and check in on some houses he's building) Tom and Steve made the grocery run for us.  Our drive home was somewhat stressful because Neil was ready to get out of the car (not usually a good idea at 60mph.) 

This morning Neil is in a really grumpy mood after a particularly restless night, no doubt in part caused by the break in his routine yesterday. I had hoped to be able to drag Terry up to soak today for some much-needed R & R (she hasn't been up in the two weeks we've been here, saying it's just not the same without Neil) except that Dan and Lisa will be here for dinner, so she's got lots of "fun cooking" (HER words, not mine, since I would never put those words together in any sentence) to do to get ready for that.