Assortment

This morning, as I was walking to work, a pregnant woman tripped and fell right in front of me as she stepped off the sidewalk to cross the street. Of course I helped her up; she seemed OK, a little shaken and with gravel in her hand, but otherwise OK. It made me remember the time one summer in college when I was riding my bike to work down a street that had once had a streetcar, lo these many years ago. My bike tire got caught between the track and the pavement and I went ass over teakettle and scraped up a good bit of knee, arm, and hand. Several cars nearly ran me over, but nobody stopped to help or even asked me if I was OK. I picked myself up and went into work, washing off my wounds as best I could, and I never rode a bike in the city again. Still haven't. And I've still got the gravel in my knee. Anyhow, as the woman and I parted ways this morning, I told her I hoped her day got better, since it seemed like it wasn't off to a very good start.
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Birthday plans have been in the works for the Hulk for the last several weeks. He's turning 30 on Saturday, and we've all been planning a secret cabin trip for this weekend (it's not secret anymore; I told him last night). Our friend Julie came over for dinner last night, because I made Early Birthday dinner (not easy to make at the cabin): seared tuna steak with sesame seeds and teriyaki, wasabi garlic mashed potatoes, and purple cauliflower crack (tm Monkey). The best part was after dinner, when I brought out the tiramisu I'd made (mostly) from scratch. I didn't have time to make my own ladyfingers, and though they'd been at the store all week they weren't there last night, so I improvised using angel food cake. I think it turned out pretty well. Secret birthday plans were also involved in the coordination of this gift, which I'm pretty excited about, and I know the Hulk is thrilled about. Yay for the fruition of secret plans! We leave for the cabin this afternoon and we're supposed to have a whole weekend of good weather. Sweet.
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Last weekend, I didn't learn to drive my car. We wanted to go hiking on Saturday, but the weather was not about to cooperate, so instead we went to Boulder and windowshopped along the Pearl Street Mall. To give you an idea of the atmostphere of the place, when we first got there a street performer was juggling flaming batons on a 10-foot unicycle, having drawn a very large crowd. It was impressive, but we wanted to eat some falafel, look at art, peruse fancy and expensive kitchen gadgets and acoutrements, and play with toys. So we did. We even bought one gadget (a circular mesh rack thingy to go underneath pizza to make the crust crispier), and we gawked at the $26 napkins (like, $26 for ONE NAPKIN) and super fancy place settings, stuff for which we'd never have any use. After the mall, we went to the best hardware store in the world (McGuckin), an enormous store that has everything you could possibly think of, imagine, or want in a hardware store and a lot of stuff you'd never expect. We bought seeds, lightbulbs, painting tape, and a Revereware copper-bottomed pot to replace the pot that got burned a couple of months ago. This is the only place I've ever found Revereware to match the pots my mom gave me that SHE got at least 25 years ago (and they're still all good, except the one that got all icky). The new pot is really shiny and I'm almost sorry to use it.

The next day, the weather was far better, so we drove out to the Jefferson/Boulder county line to the northwest and parked at a trailhead and took a lovely hike. Earth day, we decided, is a good day for hiking, and lots of other people had decided the same thing. It was perfect weather for hiking, sunny but a bit overcast, warm with some breeze. We met oodles of people who were hiking with their doggies, and two people on horseback, and when we had a choice of trail, we picked the one that went "up" rather than the one that went flat. The up trail turned out to be quite a bit of up, down, up, down, and it ended at a fence marking private land. So we turned around and met quite a few more people with doggies. One couple had a matched set of what I think were Irish setters, all long reddish hair and bounding around, and a teeny tiny Pomeranian (I think) trying his fluffy best to keep up with the big dogs. 'twas very cute. And then our hike was over, so we drove home to hose off and then headed up to the Northland to have dinner wtih HulkRents and he got his FIRST birthday dessert, a Boston Cream Pie.
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So I'm leaving work at noon today, and we're packing up, hitting the grocery store for diet coke and vegetables, and we're heading on up to Wyoming for the first cabin trip of the season. I can't wait.