Where I was

Last week, we had some friends over for dinner on Wednesday night who are moving from Colorado to California, and they brought their 2.5 year-old son who spent most of the evening chasing the kitties around, declaring "Kitty!" as the kitties ran away, confused about this small monster who smelled like and resembled a human but was surely way too small to be one. He liked the magnetic letters on our fridge and insisted on having a drink that looked just like the mojitos the adults were drinking, which I served him in the only plastic cup we have, which is covered in horse holograms from Churchill Downs in Louisville.

We enjoyed dinner, especially spending time with our friends, and bemused at their reactions to and apologies for their son's behavior; he was actually very well-behaved and acted like I would expect a two-year-old to act, but I think since they knew we aren't around little kids very much that it might be kind of weird for us. Luckily we like them and we like him and all went very well.

The next day, Scarlett came back to town in order to look for an apartment and get some last-minute things settled for her upcoming move to Denver for grad school. Her boyfriend joined her this time, and we spent the weekend showing them around and cheering when Scarlett found just the right place and signed the lease (only half a block from our place!) and eating pub food and ice cream. In the middle of their visit, I had to fly to Durango for work (flew down Sunday night, flew back Monday after a day-long training). The trip to Durango was short and relatively uneventful: I had breakfast at(and bought coffee beans for Dan from) Carver's; I had dinner at a fantastic Himalayan (Indian/Nepali/Tibetan) restaurant. I stayed in the Strater Hotel though my room didn't resemble a brothel but rather perhaps the vomit of a wedding cake. Our training was over in plenty of time for our afternoon flight, but something kept our plane overly long in Denver and it was really hot, so despite the plane being not even close to full there were some sort of weight restriction issues that I didn't fully understand and we were told that five adults had to volunteer to take a bump to the next flight or the plane couldn't take off. Since I live in Denver, I volunteered. I got a $200 flight voucher and got to sit in the airport for an extra few hours, which was OK once I got the free wireless to work. I got home a lot later than expected and didn't get to spend as much time with Scar and Jason as I would have liked, but that evening we played a game Dan got for graduation called Zauber Cocktail which was super fun, and we all went to bed late, and I called in late for work on Tuesday.

Tuesday evening Dan drove up to Glenwood Springs with me for my Wednesday training, and we had more pub food and stayed at the Hotel Colorado, which (as I've mentioned before) is supposed to be haunted, but the only unusual thing we noticed was the lack of cool air in our room. Man, was it hot. We got up early so we could have breakfast at the place we like and on the way back up to our fourth floor room my neck suddenly took a giant crap, right before I had to start my training. After that was over, we drove back and got home at a reasonable hour, but my neck was still killing me and remains so.

I have one more training to do, which is tomorrow in Denver. The upside is that no travel is required. The downside is that there will be more than 60 people there. I'm used to training groups of 15-30, so 60+ is going to be a challenge. Wish me luck, internet.