I was blocked from MyBloggers for a couple of days, but now I'm back. There are some things I wanted to tell you, so will have to dredge them out of the back of my mind.

Yesterday I drove down to Drake, the hamlet where I used to pick up my mail, and I'd seen most of the shocking things in photographs, so it wasn't a devastating revelation, but still a sad journey.

A lot of work has been done to restore the highway, and people have done some cleaning up on their property, but there is still plenty to see. I don't have a picture, will have to go back to get it, but there is one place along the river where the entire side of the hill slid down toward the river, carrying a forest with it.



This is right after the flood. The road has been rebuilt to a temporary standard.







They were paving it when I was down there yesterday. The goal is to have the highway completely open (but not 'done') by December 1, so they are in a big hurry.

Higher up in the canyon the workers were painting the yellow stripe on the asphalt. When I passed them, they were stopped on the shoulder and so no risk of getting overspray on my black truck.


Looking for fish in the Big Thompson:



I hope they found some.

I saw something yesterday that the FCC has new rules for telemarketers - they are required to have our express permission in writing to call us either on landline or cell phone, and if they've called us before and might claim we've already given them permission, that's no good: they need new express written permission. This doesn't apply to calls that are 'for information only' and the article didn't mention political calls - goes without saying that those are still protected - or so-called 'surveys' so I don't think we've seen the last of telemarketing calls.