My Neighbour's Scott and Christina at the pig fest. Scott is my tennis opponent and we hold great matches at least once a week
The buffet at Tom's place where we had great food and live bands playing on his ranch for the day.
There is the pig on the rotisserie
Then there are the rodeo boys and trust me these cowboys take some big risks with some seriously agitated beasts.
all four legs in the air for close on a half ton takes some work.
Spectacular and crazy
And they look so docile in the field but beware these bulls can pull off some of the most amazing moves whilst trying to throw the rider.
Not all cowboy's get to stay on, the cowboy below got very lucky.
This is a great effort in hanging on with all you have!
Some of these horses seem to bounce up and down on all fours
But the bull riders steal the show as they really are dealing with very upset animals.
This is the view of the 14000ft peaks in the background taken from a peak I climbed with a team of guys and we are at 10000ft when I took this photo.
This is me hiking through dense and lush forestry in the Golden State Park in Colorado.
Well the Summer finally arrived and the months of July and August have been very pleasant with great temperatures, afternoon thunderstorms and generally a very green scenery in and around Colorado. Lesleigh has started her new career in Real Estate and she has been working on weekends hosting open houses and I have been relaxing at home, playing tennis with my neighbor, Scott, and keeping the garden in shape. With all the rain that we had this summer the garden took off and blossomed into a tropical landscape, lots of pruning was required to keep the garden from looking over grown. Last weekend we got up on the roof and replaced tiles and did some touch up painting on the exterior of the house to prep ourselves for the seasons ahead. I have a strong feeling that with the water table this high we are in for an early and colder winter than we had this past year. Oh before I forget whilst I was up on the roof replacing tiles I disturbed a wasp nest and the whole family came out and gave me a royal stinging which created huge swelling and became very itchy for about five days. I was lucky that they did not attack my face, because being up on the roof did not give me many options to move out of their way very quickly. I learned that the name of these aggressive fellows are yellow jackets. I will be sure to avoid them in the future.
With that being said I am still enjoying braaing out on our back veranda and playing tennis in the midday heat. I had not picked up a tennis racquet for some 20 years and started again in June. The first few weeks were awkward back on the court. I managed to break a set of strings for every set I played for the first 5 weeks. That starts to cost a fair amount of money to keep restringing. But now I have found a place that restrings with some better strings that seem to have lasted me a month an made me much happier not to have to keep paying $30 for every game I play.
I am working long hours in my job at the bank and have worked an average of 13 hours a day for the past year. I am also starting to do a fair amount of local travel which is great to visit different locations and meet with new teams of people. I have been to Grand Junction, Durango, Gunnison, Fort Collins, Oray, Pagosa Springs, Colorado Springs, Pueblo, Greeley, Winter Park, Steam Boat, Rifle, Aspen, Breckenridge, Avon, Eagle, Edwards, Dillon, Frisco, Delta, Montrose, Loveland, and Broomfield to host training with store managers over the past three months.
The bank has produced some great results with record earnings in the first and second quarters of 2009. But now the pressure is on to do it again for Q3 and at this stage there appears to be strong sentiment to cut costs which means head count reduction. Unfortunately I am part of shared services and am part of this group that will be under consideration for release. We will only know the outcome after September this year.
Economically the market continues to tick over without much lift as was envisaged by some of the authorities in the economics field. Whilst the exchange has shown a better performance the jury is still out as to whether we have reached the bottom of this recession. There is a lot of controversy regarding the new proposed national health plan and increased taxes which the democrats has promised would not be the case when running for office last year. One thing is for sure, it is great not having to watch or see political ads flighted all day and night as happened over the election period this last year.
So the months of September begins and for Lesleigh and I we will have two sets of close friends coming over to visit with us at our new home. I have taken leave over the period as well and cannot wait to see everyone.
