On the news today they said that last night and tonight the moon would look bigger than usual.  This is because tonight the moon will make its closest approach to earth in 18 years.  This event is what astronomers call a "perigean full moon."  While driving around last night we had noticed that the moon did seem unusually bright.  Now we know why! The moon was visible for a bit tonight and indeed, it was big and brilliant!  But before I could capture a shot, it dashed back behind the clouds, showing no sign of returning. I was bummed at having to resort to clip art to illustrate my post, but then I realized that we all look at the same moon, so it should be amazing where you live as well. So here's hoping that you had clear skies and a chance to see it, too! 03/19/2011

As owners and managers of our own apartments (not affiliated with Century 21 Real Estate Center, Inc.), my husband and I made the decision to offer a smoke free, pet free and "party" free environment to our renters.  All ads that we run explicitly say:                                          No smoking, No pets, No parties.  Why then, do so many smokers call and come to view our apartments anyway?  We've heard it all: I only smoke outside", "Living here will be just what I need to quit", "It's okay, I only smoke with a hookah", "No, that ashtray smell isn't me, it's from my roommate," ...and the list goes on. Do we hate people who smoke?  No.Do we think smoking is the root of all evil?  No.Is smoking smelly and hazardous?  Yes.We go out of our way to maintain a strict, smoke free envir... 03/18/2011

Meet Eva!  She is the newest member of our extended family.  That means she does not live in our house but we will still get to see her as she belongs to my brother.  Can you believe she is only 5 months old?  I had no idea German Shepherds grew to be so big!  She is such a puppy even though she is enormous.  She likes to mouth everything and never tires of following all the kids around when they are together.  Of course, the kids are in love with her, too! Since Eva's arrival I have been able to learn all about the German Shepherd breed.  Apparently, they are very smart and very vigilant.  With the right training, which they have already started, these dogs can make devoted pets.  I understand it requires a lot of work, but is well worth the effort.  Isn't she cute?! 03/17/2011

Unlike Geocaching which uses GPS coordinates to locate hidden "caches", Letterboxing relies on using written clues found online (at http://letterboxing.org/) to find the hidden boxes.  We discovered letterboxing a few years back and decided to give it a try.  When we went online, we were surprised to find out that quite a few were hidden right around here!      As a matter of fact, anybody, can go to the site and find out if there are any letterboxes hidden in their area.  The first one we found was hidden in the forest under a giant, fallen-tree trunk.  We felt like we had found hidden treasure!  One thing you need to create when you letterbox is your own unique stamp, because inside of each letter box is a notebook which you will stamp with your stamp.  Another thing you need is your ... 03/16/2011

As mentioned in a previous post, Cheyenne, WY and Fort Collins, Colorado are the nearby go-to places for quick shopping trip outside of Laramie.  We like to joke that the temperature will be 10 degrees higher in either place so instead of bringing a just-in-case jacket we need to be prepared to lose layers instead.  Just for fun, I decided to see if indeed the temperatures were as different as we perceive. If these graphs are accurate at all, it explains why Fort Collins has spring one month sooner and fall one month later than we do!  The differences sure don't look like much on paper but it's amazing how different these three locations can be on any given day! 03/15/2011

We give names to things and people to clarify who is who and what is what.  We give names to places for the same reason. Sometimes, instead of making things clearer, names can cause confusion.  Like when someone says Washington, we always have to ask - Washington D.C. or Washington State?   Sometimes the confusion is created on purpose, like when a bar in a college town calls itself  "The Library".  In Laramie, the confusion is often caused by the name of a neighboring county.  The city of Laramie is located in Albany County, yet Laramie County is home to the state capitol, Cheyenne.  So if you see a yellow school bus in Laramie that has Laramie County Schools on the side, it will be full of Cheyenne students, not kids from Laramie.  Our buses have Albany County on the side.  Cheyenne i... 03/14/2011

Good morning!  Snow quietly blanketed Laramie last night while we slept and we woke up to the silent calm of a snowy spring day.  All is good, though, it is still spring and soon the sun will shine again!      Out the window, 6:00am, no, wait 7:00 am (daylight savings!), March 13, 2011. 03/13/2011

Another significant issue to consider when purchasing land in Albany County is water.  We have whole areas in the county with no accessible water.  Even if a well is drilled and water is found does not mean the water will be potable (usable).  Some land owners are willing to overlook this and haul water to their land and homes themselves, often storing it in their own underground containers (cisterns).  Other land owners are lucky enough to have well water, but the water is unsafe for human and/or animal consumption. In this case they resort to some sort of filtration system, such as a reverse osmosis system.              This homeowner chose to install a whole house reverse osmosis filtration system.  As you can see it is not a do it yourself project and consists of several parts that ... 03/12/2011

Since we are the land of wide, open spaces, we get lots of calls from people looking for rural land. Many of those calls come from people not familiar with the area. One thing to consider about country living in Albany County is the roads.  Albany county has miles and miles of dirt roads.  Some of them county, some of them private, some a little bit of both.  These roads range from ones somewhat maintained  regularly by the county to those not maintained at all, ever.  Even the well maintained roads can become impassable for days at a time with no guarantee or assurance of county assistance in getting them open again.   The Albany County Planners Office at one time published a helpful guide called Code of the West (By Michelle Weimer). It realistically describes what a homeowner can exp... 03/11/2011

They say that beauty is in the eye of the beholder, I suppose art is that way, too.  So it was with an open mind that I accompanied our children on a field trip to Laramie's latest installment of Sculpture, A Wyoming Invitational.  (www.uwartmuseum.blogspot.com ) in June of 2008. Seriously?!  Was this a practical joke?  The artist, a man from New York state, took this work quite seriously.  He seemed annoyed by the children who didn't get the deeper meaning of it and could only see it as a giant earth worm.  Me, all I can say is "Bless their little hearts" as NOT one of them made a single reference as to what else this looks like!I think the real title of this was "Over and Under".  Thankfully, there was a plan to take it down late the following summer and they did.  I always wondered w... 03/10/2011

(Post #17 in the "Why I Love Laramie" series) Oddities like the Ames Monument are another reason I love Laramie.  This is one of the strangest monuments anywhere.  It's not the monument itself that's so strange but the idea that this completed, majestic tribute to two people nobody has heard of exists at all.  Not only does it exist but it is aptly placed in the middle of nowhere on a dirt road about a mile south of I-80, between Cheyenne and Laramie.  There are no bathrooms, no picnic tables, no formal parking, no place to sit, no garbage can, no water.  There really is nothing but the monument and a sign. Apparently, it was built by the Union Pacific Railroad to mark the highest elevation (8247 feet) of the original transcontinental railroad.  There was even a  town, Sherman, that hou... 03/09/2011

You've heard of a one stoplight town....well, Laramie is a 42 stoplight town.No, I didn't drive around and count them all!  I've just lived here long enough that I simply marked them on a map then counted them.  I could have missed one, maybe two, but I'm pretty sure I got them all.  (Yes, I know, if this is what I do in my spare time, I might need to get out more!)Forty two may not sound like much but I think in Wyoming that only about 4 towns - Casper, Cheyenne, Gillette and Rock Springs - would have more.  Since I don't know the other towns well enough to figure it out with a map and there's no way I'm driving all over Wyoming to see, I guess we'll just have to try to not die from the suspense of it all!Do you know your town well enough to know how many stoplights you have?  I'd love... 03/08/2011

Yay!  The 2010 census results are finally trickling in!  Laramie is said to have increased by 13.3%, up to 30,816 people.  "Yee haw!", that's a lot of people! This number does not include the few thousand college students who claim someplace else as home but live here while they go to school.  Overall, the state of Wyoming is up by about 70,000 people to a new all time high of 563,000 for the entire state.         But for people here who love the general lack of people, don't worry, we still have the smallest population in the nation.  Since I love my 4 minute commute to work and the 7 minute commute to the kids' school, I like our lowest count status!  I wonder if I'm even allowed to call 4 minutes a commute?!  Maybe I'm missing the bigger economic picture....but whether I am or not, t... 03/07/2011

Yesterday, I talked about a question that always makes me smile.  As you can imagine, I get asked all kinds of questions - some easier to answer than others.  Some questions get asked all the time and I'm ready with an answer and others are one of a kind - like the time someone asked me if they could find a house in Laramie that had a swimming pool.  As you may have noticed from yesterday's post - it's a bit on the chilly side here.  Additionally, we are not a town of great wealth, so as far as I know, no one has their own indoor pool, either.  Though, I have heard rumors of a house with a lap pool..... We have a great community pool, a pool at our high school and two pools at the University of Wyoming.  But if someone is looking for house with a pool... it isn't going to happen.  Fortu... 03/06/2011

People from out of town ask the darndest things!  The #1 question that always makes me smile..."Does that home have air conditioning?"Air conditioning?!  In Laramie?  Ha ha ha ha ... you are kidding, ....right?!?  Yes, there are a few homes in town with actual, whole-house air conditioning and many businesses have air conditioning, too.  However, when it comes to our own houses, most people get by with fans and open windows.  We can do that because the hot, hot days of summer last only 2 to 4 weeks. And even then, these hot, hot temperatures rarely make it out of the 80 degree range.  Just about the time we think we couldn't possibly stand the unbearable summer heat any longer, a cool front blows in and the heat is gone.  So when it comes to air conditioning in Laramie, it's just doesn'... 03/05/2011

What is a "Mini Market" Report?  A look at just one small segment of our local market.Today's report: 3 Bedroom/2 Bath homes                                                                  Today, March 4, 2011, there are officially  36 3 Bedroom/2 Bath homes on market.They range in price from $89,000, for a modular in Prairie's Edge, to $1,000,000 to a beautiful cabin getaway in the foothills by Centennial.The smallest is 1120 square feet while the largest is described as having 3000 square feet.  Keep in  mind that some of the largest include unfinished basements.  The most common size for a 3 Bedroom/2 Bath home is between 1200 and 1500 square feet.  In general the older ones tend to be bigger with the ones being built in 2010 being on the smaller side - but more likely to have moder... 03/04/2011

Seems like I missed a little excitement at work today.My first clue should have been the two police cars still parked in our plaza parking lot.Turns out that an armed robbery had taken place at the Check Cashing business two doors down.And I missed it all - officers armed with handguns and M-16s, getting locked IN the office for safety and lining up at the window to watch the commotion.  Well, maybe that wasn't the best place to be... No worries, though, the suspect fled and got trapped in a neighborhood with no outlet where she was promptly caught.   Yes, it was a SHE!  I can't imagine what she was thinking, and all for $800.00 that she won't get to keep anyway! Even though I missed the excitement, I'm glad it all turned out okay, especially for the workers two doors down! 03/03/2011

One of my favorite places to window shop is the University of Wyoming's Art Museum STORE.  While I was admiring some spectacular glass work, a student volunteer told me all about the artist, Josh Simpson, and a very unusual thing that he does with some of his finished works.  Apparently, he and 1700 participants have hidden his glass planets in locations around the globe.  Why? You can find out here:  Infinity Project.  This may not seem that interesting but when you consider that the smallest glass planet I saw at our store was not only an exquisite work of art but also priced at $175.00, it does make for a compelling story.       So today I wanted to share this super talented artist and his work with you.  I hope you find it as intriguing as I do. 03/02/2011

Today in Laramie was a beautiful day!  It got up to 48 degrees.  There were puddles everywhere and the sun was shining.  Just enough of a glimpse of spring to sustain us until the real warm weather arrives, which will be July...and it will come with mosquitoes.  But after the last three months that all sounds pretty good!   03/01/2011

After watching a small snippet of the Charlie Sheen interview on the Today Show this morning, I just want to say: Small people of the world I am here for you!If you wonder why I would say such a thing, first, watch the interview yourself. Charlie Sheen must adhere to the old adage that bad publicity is better than no publicity and he is a master at bad publicity!                                                                                        In his interview he let us know that he is special, probably more special than the rest of us.  The other  great people who have relapsed after rehab are trolls, weak, defeated, and lacking the Adonis DNA that he has. And in regard to those people who don't get him and how special he is, he said, "I'm like a total bit**en, freakin', rock star... 02/28/2011