cheerfulmonk.com

Click on the picture and be sure to turn on the sound.

December 14, 2025

For more details, click here.

Also, Andy says the temperature has been in the low 50s up in the mountains lately. I’m not surprised. Here’s a picture from the Valles Caldera webcam yesterday morning:

Almost all of the snow has melted.

December 13, 2025

Moderately Confused

Update on the beans: These aren’t very good pictures, but they show the one plant dying, the ones in the other pot still hanging in there.

December 12, 2025

9 to 5

December 11, 2025

I’m impressed! I was never good at jumping rope, and never even tried Double Dutch. Click on the picture for the video.

December 10, 2025

This was taken by the Valles Caldera webcam last Thursday:

This was taken yesterday morning:

And this one yesterday afternoon:

The temperature was in the low 40’s F up there, so the remaining snow was still melting.

Down here the temperature was around 47°F, so most of the snow is gone. They’re not predicting more precipitation for a couple of weeks — it will be fun to see.

December 9, 2025

Andy wrote the annual Christmas letter when he stayed down here Thursday:

Dear Family;
Well yet another year has passed. I hope all is well with you and we wish you a Merry Christmas and a Happy New Year!

Here in Los Alamos things are going well (for our age) but we are slowing down! No big health problems. We both have driver’s license and so far no tickets or accidents.

I am still going regularly up to the land and working hard trying to keep up with problems as they arise. For example a few days ago the control panel and the charge controller of our photovoltaic system stopped talking to each other. This means the data about the batteries (state of charge, solar panel output, etc.) are no longer available. The charger is still working OK so once I can use the backup motor generator set things can be repaired and still keep the lights on. Of course when I tried to use the backup it didn’t work because a battery had failed. I have replaced the battery so we’ll see what next!

The good news is that the solar heater on the roof has been replaced and I can turn it on to help heat the house (sun permitting).

Last summer Kaitlin and Torben came up for a month and placed metal roofing material on the shed. This was a good thing for fire protection! You may ask— why not have a contractor do it? The problem is that the Lab has doubled in size lately and contractors are all busy working on expensive houses and apartments down in the valley.

Jean is working in the apartment trying to keep up with the never-ending updates so she can keep software working! And still posting on her blog every day. As you can see retirement does not mean leisure!!!

Again, Merry Christmas and a Happy New Year!

Early Merry Christmas, everyone!

December 8, 2025

Only one of the bean plants has died so far. The others are trying to put out new growth.

I don’t know how long that will last, but right now they’re taking advantage of the light coming through the window. (There’s more in the winter than in the summer because of the angle of sun.) I’ll let you know what happens.

We humans are also enjoying the sunny days.

December 7, 2025

In the cartoon below, the airline is Poor People on Discount. Franco is talking about the apparatus being wheeled toward the plane.

Justo y Franco

It’s not an escape slide, it’s a gigantic shoehorn.

In the cartoon below, Jon says,

Look, Garfield! A turtledove!
I love those birds.

Garfield says,

Meh! I’ve tasted better.

Garfield

December 6, 2025

Andy stayed down here yesterday because of the snow. It wasn’t that deep here, but there’s usually more up in the mountains so better safe than sorry.

It was sunny down here in the morning:

Then it was overcast for a few hours and partly sunny in the afternoon.

Here’s a picture taken by the Valles Caldera webcam (a few miles away from our land) yesterday morning:

It doesn’t look like they had much snow, so Andy will try going up today. He’s being super careful nowadays, which we’re all happy about.

December 5, 2026