Food on Friday: Bonus Photo Edition

Fall is here, my friends! With it comes cooler, snappy dry air, sweaters and tights, and my desire to eat things that involve apples and pumpkin. We had our first honeycrisps last week, and they were nothing short of fabulous. To celebrate my friend's fall baby, I made pumpkin chocolate chip muffins for her shower, and boy, were they tasty.

MLE's pumpkin chocolate chip muffins (makes 12, plus a few additional cookies)

1.5 cups all purpose flour (or 1 cup white, 1/2 cup whole-wheat)
1.5 tsp cinnamon
1 tsp baking soda
1 tsp salt
1 tsp ginger
1/2 tsp nutmeg
1/2 tsp ground cloves
1/4 tsp baking powder
6 tablespoons (3/4 stick) butter, softened
1 cup brown sugar
2 eggs
1/3 cup milk or water
1 tsp vanilla
1 cup pumpin
1 cup chocolate chips

Preheat oven to 350F. Grease and flour or add baking cups to muffin tin. In a smallish bowl, combine dry ingredients, set aside. In a medium bowl, beat butter and sugar together until fully mixed, then add eggs, vanilla, and pumpkin. Mix in dry ingredients. Add milk or water if batter is dry. Add chocolate chips. Scoop into muffin tin and bake for 15-20 minutes. With any leftover batter, grease a cookie sheet and plop remaining batter onto sheet, leaving quite a bit of room between each plop. Bake for around 10 minutes. Makes 12 muffins and 7-8 large soft pumpkin chocolate chip cookies.

Here are some photos I took on my way to work this morning. Everything is in transition; some trees have completely turned while others are just beginning.


City aspen will turn to gold when it Damn Well Feels Like It.









Here is the cake I made for Steve last weekend. I doubled this recipe, except I only used one cup of sugar and used bits of strawberry intead of raspberries. It was superdelicious.


And, apropos of nothing, a car in our neighborhood.


Yes, those are large, pink-lined, furry rabit ears.

An outing

On Tuesday night, rather than sit at home glued to the teevee, Dan and I actually went out in the world and did something.

How many of you read Cake Wrecks? Well, Jen and John of Cake Wrecks are doing a "world" book tour, and last week when I saw that they were going to be at the Tattered Cover in Denver, I said, "Self, that sounds like a rollicking good time." And it was.

We ate turkey sandwiches about 2 hours earlier than we normally eat dinner and then headed downtown, took the 16th street mall shuttle, and arrived at the Tattered Cover about a half an hour before the event started. I bought a copy of the book (because how could I not?) and Dan secured us seats. All told, I think over 200 people showed up, and before things got started I got some photos of the cupcake "cake wreck replica" contest entries.



My favorite one.

Jen and John presented a slideshow of some of their favorite wrecks, told funny stories, and then judged the contest. The winner received an apron with the official mohawk plastic baby carrot jockey Cake Wrecks World Tour logo.

We all flipped through our copies of the book while waiting in line to have our books personalized. It was a great event. Plus, everyone got a free cupcake!

Memory lane - a new series?

"Post a photo of you when you were 20," it said.

I didn't have any online. So I went home and I looked through some of my photo albums, particularly the one I put together from when I was in college, trying to find a photo of just me at age 20.

I didn't have any. The only photos of me at 20 (and there were only a few) had other people in them.

But in looking through the album, I found a few photos that tell a story of my college experience, something I don't think I've written much about before. It's amazing what sorts of memories come back when you look a a photo for a little while.

I also found it interesting how few photos I had at all. The first digital cameras were just barely out while I was in college, remember, the ones that used floppy disks? And then for a while you could get your film developed into photos and also put on a floppy? I didn't get a digital camera until - 2004? Before that, I never took a lot of photos unless I was on a big trip, because of the cost of film and the cost of film development. Consequently, I don't have a lot of photos from the pre-digital age. When I did take photos, they were normally photos of my friends, my college boyfriend, pretty stuff I saw - rarely did someone offer to take a photo of me.

Dan was kind enough to scan the photos of me last night (and alter one of them). Here they are, for your viewing pleasure.



This photo was taken on a camping trip. My college boyfriend and our friends and I went on a lot of camping trips to a campground at the Sonoma County coast when we were in college. I had thought that this was taken when I was 19, but in looking at the date on the back, I was actually 18. This means that we went on this trip either at the end of my freshman or beginning of my sophomore year.

That summer in between those years was the only summer I moved home. I worked at the Boys and Girls club in the art room for part of the day, helping kids do art projects and supervising field trips and catching all kinds of germs (including some crazy infection in my mouth that brought me to a doctor, a dentist, and an oral surgeon, one of whom eventually concluded that it was an adult-version of some kind of illness that almost everybody gets when they're a little kid, and is hardly noticable then, but when you get it as an adult it sucks ass. I couldn't eat anything, hardly, for a few weeks.) The other part of the day I was teaching swimming lessons, life guarding, and working the cash register (taking admission and selling concessions) at the community pool.

I was really lonely that summer, because College Boyfriend and his brother got it in their heads that they'd go up to Alaska and work on a fishing boat. They didn't find any work on a boat, but camped out all summer and worked in some fish processing plant. Most of my friends were either still in Berkeley for the summer or (the ones from my hometown that weren't Berkeley students) working their own summer jobs. College Boyfriend and I wrote a lot of letters back and forth and talked on the phone a couple of times, when he could scrounge up enough change to call me.

It was also hard coming home, having been independent for nearly a year, to the same family dynamic of being considered a kid. I didn't even have a room anymore, since Lissa had moved into my old room, so I had a lofted bed and one drawer in Laurel's room, with the rest of my stuff in the garage. Mostly I felt inconvenient and in the way.

College Boyfriend came home earlier than he'd anticipated, so the summer got a little bit better toward the end. Maybe that's when this photo was taken. In it, I'm holding a book I read the entire trip, and probably feeling gross and unwashed. And fat. However, as you can see, I was really, really skinny, so I don't know what the hell I was thinking.



I was 20 in this photo, one of the few photos I have of me at age 20. The other person in the photo, obscured by a Guy Fawkes mask thanks to Dan, was my friend and coworker from what is still probably my favorite job I have ever had. For about half of college, I worked for the on-campus notetaking service as a notetaker and an editor (meaning I fixed mistakes in other people's notes as well). The hourly pay was really good for a campus job and the hours were really flexible; I could come in for an hour at a time in between classes if I wanted. I was good at the work, both at the notetaking part and the editing part, and the other people who were editors were all really cool. We became pretty good friends. The particular friend in this photo went on to have a semi-successful career as a singer-songwriter.

I think this is one of my favorite photos ever taken of me. I look happy, and somehow, miraculously, my skin looks pretty good. And damn, I was still really skinny. I still have (and wear) that tank top, a gift College Boyfriend brought me back from China, but there's no way I could squeeze myself into those pants these days, even if I still had them.

I was in a good place in my life, in this photo. It was my senior year of college, and College Boyfriend and I had broken up (for the better, in the long run, though the breakup itself was horrible). I was happy in my job, happy in my classes, working on my senior thesis. I was planning my trip to Europe. No wonder I look so happy!



As happy (and damn, talk about skinny!) as I look in this photo, I really wasn't. This was taken in Santa Barbara when I visited College (now-ex)Boyfriend during my spring break my senior year. He'd transferred there to finish his degree in religious studies and while I missed him, I was finally getting to the point where I was moving on, though we still had a lot of mutual friends and stayed pretty close. Scarlett and her boyfriend at the time were going to Santa Barbara that weekend for a wedding, so I hitched a ride with them to go down and visit him. It was a mistake. He was really pushy, wanted to do things that I didn't want to do, and seeing him really confused me. It took us nearly a year after we broke up, all told, before we finally muddled our way through the other side and became Just Friends, and me going to see him for this particular visit made things worse. It was late March or early April of 2000, and I had just turned 21.

I look at this photo and can't believe that person was me. She doesn't look much like me now, at least body-wise (I've got about 20 pounds of muscle, 10 pounds of other stuff, and 2 cup sizes on her), and she was really unhappy when that photo was taken. We were headed toward the beach (hence the bathing suit under my top) and College Ex caught me at a silly moment. It was never as easy being silly around him as I wanted it to be. When we were together, I never felt good enough or secure in our relationship; he always wanted me to be skinnier and made me feel bad when I disagreed about a particular opinion or point of philosophy. Probably the best part of that trip was when I got to Santa Barbara but while he was still in class, when I sat in the Student Center and worked on my thesis, gazing out on the ocean, smelling the southern California coast. I enjoyed the stroll on the beach that happened right after this photo was taken, but as usual I was really self-conscious of my body and doubly so because I was with my ex.

Huh, this was pretty interesting. Maybe I'll scan some more photos and turn this into an ongoing series.

Cheers/Jeers: The weekend

I'm totally stealing this from my pal JT

Cheers: I got to bake a birthday cake and pumpkin chocolate chip muffins
Cheers: The baking was for two different parties we were invited to over the weekend. Parties! I love parties. Steve's birthday was nice and low-key on Friday, and Deb's baby shower was fun. I freestyle-painted a onesie (a green dinosaur with purple spikes. Alas, I forgot to bring my camera, so no photos exist).
Cheers: People that I don't actually know about read my blog. The proof was when we walked up to the house where the baby shower was yesterday and one of the hosts greeted me with, "Hey, I read your blog!" It was the first time anything like that had remotely happened to me. In the Swim, if you're reading this, post a comment, lady! What a small world, that the friend of the person who teaches the classes I take at the gym is a blogger, reads my blog, and recognized us because sometimes I put up photos of us here. (She found me initally through the lovely Leah.)
Cheers: After a cold and crappy week, weather-wise, Colorado paid us back by a couple of exemplary fall days. They were warm and gorgeous. The one regret I have about the weekend is that we didn't get up into the mountains to see any foliage at all, but we had a lot of other things going on. Like parties!
Cheers: Chu's wax works just as well when I do it myself. Plus, we got an excuse to buy a new pot.
* * * * * * *
Jeers: The baby shower was for the person who teaches the classes I take at the gym, and today is her last class for at least 8 weeks, and I am trepidatious about who might be taking over for her! I generally only take classes from instructors I like.
Jeers: Target, while normally a place that has everything I need, did not have several things we were looking for on Saturday. Including canned pumpkin, which the grocery store did not have either. I guess there was a run on canned pumpkin all over Denver. Luckily, I still had some frozen processed pie pumpkin mush from last year in the freezer.
Jeers: Fame, the recently released version. I was so looking forward to this, even despite the presence of SYTYCD-alum Kherington Payne, who I disliked when she was on the show but was willing to keep an open mind about. I love movies that have dancing and singing and all manner of talented kids in them, but I think the movie tried too hard to straddle the balance between performance and plot, and didn't have enough of either. It didn't help that some of the actors cast as the main character kids were terrible, and what little plot there was about them didn't give me any reason to care when bad things happened or whatever. If the movie had done more performance, it might have come close to awesome. If it had focused on one year rather than trying to get in all four, that might have helped. If they'd scrapped some of the performance and gone in for a really interesting plot, that would have been good as well. But as it was, the movie was just really disappointing. And a note to Kherington Payne: Stick with dancing. You can't act your way out of a paper bag, even when you're essentially playing yourself.

Thank you Mr. Farnsworth

Somehow, over the course of 2009 (or at least, since we got cable back in February), I have become a fan of television.

Now, don't get me wrong. I didn't have anything AGAINST TV per se, and have always enjoyed some shows, but most of the tv we watched for years was on DVD via netflix, because we didn't have cable and it's rare to find a network show that's really good. I've had my guilty pleasures, of course, like the few reality shows I'll watch (ANTM, Amazing Race, Hell's Kitchen, and, of course, SYTYCD), but for the most part we watched most of our TV after everyone else had already seen it. For instance, we finally just finished watching the last bit of Battlestar Galactica. (We have yet to catch up to Lost, so that will remain a DVD show.)

But somehow this season, TV has captured my interest. I need more than the fingers on one hand to count the shows I enjoy watching right now, and that's saying something. A few of this year's highlights:

Warehouse 13

A SciFi channel X-files lite-type, I love the interaction between the main characters. They seem to be a family, and the writing is far better than I would have expected for a summer filler-type show. I find the premise to be interesting and the way in which the artifacts (various famous things that are generally Dangerous To The Public) are portrayed, some as having sentience of their own, the way the artifacts and their legacies interact with the characters, and the unabashed nerdy humour drew me in. I like that the two mains aren't being played for will-they-or-won't-they sexual tension, and I like that it seems the cast has a lot of fun together. I'll be watching for this show to come back next summer.

Fringe

I was totally sucked into this show last year and was so excited it was coming back. The same guy who made Lost made this show, and so far I've been really interested in the different plot points and twists, seeing how everything fits together, and it doesn't hurt that Pacey Witter grew up to be very easy on the eyes. I'm not thrilled about the main female lead but I think the actress is finally growing into her role. Plus, what's not to like about Denethor being a mad scientist and keeping a cow in his laboratory?

Gossip Girl

This is, by far, the best-written and -casted, the most juicy, and the prettiest-to-look-at trash on TV, in my opinion. I'm out and proud as a Gossip Girl fan, even though I'm not in love with any of the characters. They're all quite flawed and at times the storylines can get ridiculous, but one could say that about just about any trashy melodrama. It doesn't hurt that the show is a love letter to NYC and shots of the city are the glue that hold the show together.

Glee

Oh my god. What is not to like about this show? It's funny, it's irreverant, it's about the drama of high school, both for students and teachers, and I just love it more every episode.

Mad Men

I saved the best for last. We started watching Mad Men on DVD, and, because each season only has 13 episodes, we were able to catch up on the show before season 3 started a few weeks ago. I don't think I can do the show justice in writing about it, but I highly suggest that anyone who likes TV that makes them THINK, that likes strong, well-written characters, that has any interest in (or lived through) the 1960s, should watch it. Each episode has so many layers, so many interesting aspects, it's hard to pull out just one or two things about the show in general to write about.

Anybody have favorites that I should be watching?

Mt. Falcon (updated)

Story here.

Because it had to be said

Current commercials I have a problem with:

Bud light with lime. So everyone is playing in the water, right? Except the water is yellow (I assume it's supposed to be beer?). Mostly it just looks like everyone is playing in a bunch of pee, and I don't dig on urine.

Cialis: Someone please tell me what outdoor bathtubs have to do with dysfunctional penes. I don't understand what a four-hour boner has to do with bathing outside. For that matter, why the hell would anyone put a bathtub outside anyway? This is similar to the problem I have with a mattress commercial, in which the bed is outside. This strikes me as a spectacularly bad idea, unless you live someplace where it never precipitates.

Prius: The ones that have people dressed as plants or whatever and they all move when the car drives by freak me the eff out. I think it's the creepy stepford music that plays during the commercial that really sends this one over the edge.

Just about every commercial for any sort of prescription drug. It's bad enough that they all have to list all of the possible negative side effects you might experience while taking them, but some of them strike me as infinitely worse than the problem you're trying to get rid of in the first place. Lyrica for fibromyalgia, for example. Now, I understand fibromyalgia can be debilitating, constant chronic pain as I understand it, but "may increase likelihood of sucicde" !?!?! Hm, do I stay in pain, or do I take pills that make me want to kill myself? And I am always amused at the ones that are "not for women who are pregant or may become pregnant" because most of them are things that I can't imagine a woman who is still young enough to be pregnant would end up needing to take, anyway. "I had a heart attack at 57," one commercial goes, and I think it's for some medicine that keeps plaques from building up in your arteries. Thing is, how many women in their childbearing years are going to be taking heart attack prevention meds? I understand that they're just saying what's required by law or to keep from being sued or whatever, but still. Really? It's my understanding that if you're pregnant just about any prescription drug is going to have to be OK'd by your doctor, so most of the time this just seems ridiculous.

Heat makes knitting less than fun

Just for posterity's sake: the finished blanket I made for the soon-to-be-appearing baby of the person who teaches some classes I take at the gym. I've been taking classes from her for nearly two years and we're pretty friendly, so I thought I'd put together a simple blanket. She told me the nursery for her son was going to be bright colors, so I took that and ran with it.


The yarn is big and fat and soft, machine washable and dryable of course. Loki kindly provided some scale for me.

It would have been finished weeks ago, except it's not especially fun to knit when it's hot outside (and inside, since we don't have A/C).

Mas sopaipillas, por favor!

Casa Bonita.

For those who are fans of the TV show South Park, you may have seen the episode about this Denver-area institution. Despite having lived in Denver nearly seven years, I had yet to set foot inside this unique establishment until this past weekend, when we took Scarlett and Jason to celebrate her move to Denver.

I don't think, even given the breadth of the English language, that I am capable of fully describing the Casa Bonita experience. Here are some things you may not know about it:

*It seats over 900 people
*If you are over the age of two, you must purchase a "meal." I use that term only in the most official sense, as I wouldn't say what I ordered truly was food. My "taco salad" consisted of half a head of shredded iceburg topped with five kidney beans, two slices of barely-pink flavorless tomato, tasteless cheese shreds, a plop of sour cream, a plop of something greenish that was supposed to be guacamole, all inside a fried flour tortilla shell. A small amount of seasoned shredded chicken came on the side. When I asked for some salad dressing, it took half an hour for the guy to bring it to me. The cost? $12.

"Food"

*When you get inside, you go through a veritable maze to get to where you can look at a menu. Then you order. Then you go through some more maze and you grab a tray and a napkin roll. Then some lady hands you what you ordered, which just came out of the kitchen. Then you walk through some more maze until you get to the second hostess, who shows you to your table.
*It features a variety of live entertainment, including cliff divers, people dressed as gorillas, sound effects, mariachi bands, Black Bart's Cave, and puppet shows.
*A little flag sits on your table, and when you raise the flag they bring you fresh sopaipillas.
*People come around to your table and try to sell you plastic glow-in-the-dark crap.


The area in which we were seated was set up to look like the inside of a mine. They had a recording of a snoring sound effect playing, which must have been near where I sat because I was the only one who could hear it. I guess there must have been a "miner" someplace nearby but I didn't see it.

Photo courtesy Dan, who managed to get my camera to do a manual 5-second exposure.

After we ate, we watched some of the live entertainment. We saw some people dressed in costumes (including one in a gorilla suit, who of course ended up in the water). We saw a cliff diver. Then we explored the place a bit and found Black Bart's cave, which was probably the highlight of the whole deal for me. We watched a "gunfight" and then decided we'd had enough.

Sign outside Black Bart's cave. Obviously they care very much for their attractions.

When we got home, we spooled up that episode of South Park and watched as the visions of Casa Bonita dancing through Cartman's head echoed our evening's experience. "Food and fun and festive atmosphere!" Cartman sings.

Well, there was "food." The sopaipillas are pretty good, anyway. Jason, at least, had a lot of fun (as did Dan, who hadn't been to the Casa since he was in middle school). And it is nothing if not a festive atmosphere.

Casa Bonita: the ultimate cheeze factory; an experience I only needed to have once.


Plus, this winner was parked next to us in the parking lot.

The week of stuff

Big stuff and little stuff happened this week.

Big stuff:

Scarlett moved to town! She and her boyfriend arrived with the u-haul on Tuesday, just in time for a seriously spectacular smoky sunset, courtesy the fires in LA and Utah and western Colorado. Her new apartment is wicked awesome and only a half block away from us.

We went on a hike on Saturday and reached the summit, though it was only 11,700 feet and not 14K+. I keep forgetting to upload the photos.

Little stuff:

We got amazing pears and peaches at the farmer's market, and I baked some peach cupcakes (adapted from this recipe). I frosted them with browned butter icing, which is super-tasty but also very, very rich. I gave half the cupcakes to Scarlett.

Our contribution to dinner with friends on Wednesday (game night!) was chocolate chip cookies, which means I baked twice in one week.

I gave blood yesterday and got my 1-gallon pin! I know I've donated more than that over the years but have officially given blood 8 times with this particular blood bank.

We watched Milk last night on DVD and it was fantastically good. It made me wonder: had it been released in October last year instead of December, would it have had any effect on the passage of prop H8 in California?

I finished a baby blanket for the person who teaches my classes at the gym, who is now 8 months along. I'll take some photos before I give it to her next week.

Burn baby burn

For my 22nd birthday, a group of friends went in on a gift for me. At my birthday party, I opened a handmade card (courtesy Bequi) to find a ticket to Burning Man for September of 2001 (Theme: Seven ages of man). Six months later, I had a boyfriend (Dan) and was living in a new place and was so excited to be embarking on what would turn out to be an amazing trip.

Eight years on, I don't think I can write a play-by-play of my experience at the playa. My photos, once online, appear to be lost to the ether. But I have snippets, things that stand out in my mind, memories of smells and tastes and sounds and sights.

*Braiding my hair in the car on the way up, small braids all over my head, to help minimize the likelihood of snarls when I knew I wouldn't be able to wash it for days.
*The powdery ache on my feet from the alkali dust that didn't dissipate even with the liberal application of vinegar.
*Having no hunger signals for days, then when presented with a fresh green salad literally salivating so much I drooled.
*The intense heat of the daytime sun and the relief brought by sundown
*Crawling through the 3-D maze, wishing I had more time to explore it more thoroughly and in-depth
*The profoundly moving experience of the Mausoleum
*Watching people get married, marry themselves, or otherwise participate in some sort of ritual of marriage
*Hanging out with teddy bear pants guy at the Burning of the Man
*Spending hours in a massage camp during one sweltering day for the shade and good energy
*Encountering a friend from preschool at center camp and spending quite a while hula hooping with him.
*Wishing I had the stamina to sleep during the hot day and stay up all night, and failing each day and night. I'm just not nocturnal.
*Getting advice from a guy sitting in Lucy's Advice 5c booth
*watching my friend Ian spin lit poi for the first time
*the incredible gargantuan full moon
*After a late-night adventure, sleeping for a few hours in a stranger-turned-friend's tent, then navigating a dust storm across the playa to get back to my camp.

And, of course, there was nothing like the cognitive dissonance of leaving Black Rock City, still covered in playa dust, and stopping in Reno to eat at a casino buffet. The amount of overstimulation was the same, but the purpose was completely different. When I got home, and undid my braids, and took what remains The Best Shower of my Life, I hoped my memories would remain acute. Like everything, though, they've since faded. I still have a few print photos (how quaint, right?). I went to Burning Man to experience it, to see and interact with the art and the people. I didn't do drugs or drink (I think I had maybe one drink the whole 5 days). I didn't dance all night, or have sex with a stranger, or witness anything that shocked me to the core. I'm sure lots of other people who went that year did, but none of those things were me or how I wanted to experience the event.

Every year, friends of mine still go to Burning Man. Oldest Friend, in fact, got there yesterday. Every year I briefly consider going, and every year other things take precedence, are more important financially or time-off-wise. It takes an enormous amount of resources (time, money, etc.) and a lot of preparation, particularly if you're not in Northern California, to attend Burning Man. As I get older, I think more and more that my one experience at the playa was enough.

Platz

One of my major life goals I set for myself early on was to travel. In high school, I knew I wanted to take a big trip to/around Europe after I graduated college, and so I spent all four years of school living as cheaply as I could and saving every penny for my trip. I spent months planning, doing research, and daydreaming about what my trip would be like.

I had a boyfriend for three of the four years I was in college, and while we were together I always thought we'd take the trip to Europe together. We broke up at the beginning of my senior year, and so I had to face the prospect of traveling solo. While I was excited to embark on such a journey by myself, I was also a little daunted, and thought it might be fun to try to meet up with other solo travelers along the way. During my research I came upon a website with a message board solely devoted to backpacking in Europe, and one of the sections of the board enabled people to post their travel itineraries for anyone who might be interested in meeting up for a drink or to travel together for a day or two.

Quite a few people responded to my post when I wrote about where I'd be and when and the sort of places I wanted to see, and I exchanged emails and photos with a few. I knew I'd be in Paris first, then Barcelona, then Nice, then Rome, and decided after that I'd play it by ear, so I arranged to meet up with David in Paris, with Chris in Nice, and with Clay in Rome. I saw the Louvre with David and we had dinner together one evening while I was there. I met a girl in Barcelona at my hostel and we did some stuff together, and helped one another weather the second worst train ride ever from Barcelona to Nice. I'd been in touch with Chris to let him know when I'd be in Nice, since he was taking a much longer trip and had already spent several days on the French riviera, and I knew when I got off the overnight train ride from hell that he'd meet me at the hostel where we were both going to spend the next couple of nights.

I got to the hostel, sleep deprived and sunburned from my first few days in Europe when I'd forgotten to bring sunscreen, totally cracked out, and Chris suggested I get a shower and we'd go play on the beach. I thought this an excellent plan, and after we got down to the water we'd already had conversations about everything from vegetarianism to abortion rights to gun control. Somehow this stranger, someone I'd expected to spend a few hours with, turned out to be a kindred spirit, despite our incredible differences in experience, religion, politics, all the big stuff. We just gelled. We spent the next couple of days exploring Nice and Monaco and then I got an email from Clay saying he'd had to cancel his trip so he wouldn't be coming to Rome. So Chris went to Rome with me. And Florence. And Interlaken, Switzerland. I can't really say why we hit it off so well, because we were so incredibly different - him a three-years-older Christian republican cowboy country singer who loved to play guitars and had switched from bullriding to broncriding after a motorcycle accident nearly killed him (somehow, the near-death experience on the bike made him less interested in courting death on the back of a very large bull). He was from Michigan and had a midwest accent, teased me about being from California, my hippie (to him) ways and how I said "like" a lot. Everywhere we went, we discussed things mundane and profound. He made sure I ate. He took care of me, which college boyfriend had basically never done, and I liked it.

In Salzburg, I knew that we had to split up. He was planning to spend time in Germany, and I was interested in seeing Prague and Krakow, and my trip was 6 weeks while his was three months. We said teary goodbyes at the Salzburg train station and I cried for hours on the way to Poland, wondering how it was possible that I had gotten so close to someone from so far away in such a short period of time. My memories of my few days in Poland are colored by the fog of sadness that was caused by having to leave my new friend, who had somehow become so much more despite our differences, that to this day I cannot think of a single positive thing about it, though I'm sure it was far more beautiful than I give it credit for. Let me just say, though, that I advise never going to Auchwitz by yourself if you're already really sad, because that was just about the most miserable experience I ever had.

I sat in an internet cafe and wrote him an email. I missed him. He wrote me back the next day; he missed me. I went to Prague and wandered around for two days and watched a guy vomit on his own feet and then I wrote him and said, "I want to come meet up with you again."

Right now I can't remember where it was I ended up going. Someplace in Germany, where he was, planning a bus trip up the Romantic Road. We saw Neuschwanstein castle in Fussen, stayed overnight in someone's house in Augsberg, walked around the wall and ate the local specialty of fried dough balls in Rotenburg, drank wine in Wurtzberg, went to Heidelburg, then headed back to Munich and had a great time at the Deutches Museum and wandering the streets, calling one another Platz (Plaza, in German, a suffix on signs everywhere, and fun to say). One night we ate at the Hofbrauhaus, learning that drunken Japanese tourists singing "Country Roads" performed by an oompah band wearing lederhosen is one of the experiences not to be missed when one is in Munich, and he bet me that I couldn't drink an entire stein of beer. The loser of the bet had to pay for our lodging for the night. Now, I hate beer. I hated beer then. But I wasn't going to let a little (okay, a lot, those steins were huge!) disgusting soapy beverage stand between me and winning a bet. I drank almost an entire stein and then had to pee. (You would too! I'm not kidding about the size of those things). While I was in the bathroom, the server took my stein. I came back, and Chris said that I hadn't had the whole beer, so I lost. I ordered another and drank half of it before he admitted I had won. We had a misadventure trying to get to the Black Forest, which is a whole post in itself, but involved cherry liquor, Stuttgart, and snails.

I was getting close to the end of my trip, so I had to head back to Paris and then over to London before going home. Somehow it wasn't as hard to leave, and yet it was even harder, because of the jokes and the experiences we'd shared in that additional week. During the last several days of my trip, I wandered around Paris by myself and London by myself, thinking over the adventure I'd had and my new friend Chris, wondering what it all meant. When he got back to Michigan from his trip, a month after I'd already been home, I flew to visit for a week. He came to visit me at Thanksgiving. We had already mutually decided that a relationship between us would never work: we were from different parts of the country and had different values and goals. He wanted to get married and have a family, being the last in his circle to do so at the ripe old age of 24. I was 21, fresh out of college, wanting to have more experiences and not at all interested in settling down. While personality-wise, we meshed incredibly well, we couldn't get past all the other things that were different. So we moved on as friends.

Chris and I were very close for years. He called me whenever he had women problems. I told him about Dan when we met and started dating. I saw him through two failed relationships and tried to make suggestions as I could. He was probably the person who I felt closest to, who I knew would tell it to me straight, who I wanted to stand up with me at my wedding were I ever to have one.

And then he met Kelli.

I heard about Kelli, how she was 20 and a widow with a toddler. How he didn't trust her not to cheat on him during a trip to Hawaii. How he didn't know what she was going to do with her life. But she was young, already had a kid, needed his help and protection. They worked through their relationship that first year and then one day, shortly after I moved to Denver, he called me up to tell me they were engaged. "Congratulations!" I said, having expected it for months. "We're getting married in September," he said. "And we're buying a house in August, and we want to come visit you in Colorado in May."

"Sweet!" I said. I bought a futon so they'd have someplace to sleep.

Chris and Kelli came to visit me in May of 2003. Dan came down from Greeley for the first weekend they were here, and we all hung out. Dan's and Chris's personalities were very similar, so they enjoyed joking around together, and Chris and I told stories from our trip that we'd taken. Kelli was jealous. How could she not be? She was much younger, had had no similar experiences, and, in her opinion, I knew her fiance better than she did. I think she was intimidated by me, though it was obvious I had no designs on her man, I had known him far longer than she had and I wasn't married. He was close to me, and trusted me, and I don't think she liked that.

"We're going to go explore Colorado," Chris told me on Monday morning. "We're taking a road trip, but we'll be back by Friday." "Have a great time!" I said.

I never heard from him again. I called his mom that Saturday to let her know he hadn't come back; she said they were in the mountains with no reception but they said they'd be back in Denver the day before. "I'm sure they're fine," she told me.

Nothing. No call. No email. I tried his cell phone, but had no luck. Their plane took off, I'm sure with them on it, that Sunday in May of 2003, but Chris had made his choice. He chose his fiance over me, even though it didn't need to come to that. She didn't want him to be friends with me, so he cut off all contact after being close friends with me for three years, after all the adventures we'd had. I'm sure they got married that September, though we never got an invitation. I'm sure they've since had more children, since Chris had wanted a lot of kids. He found someone who was the same religion, who needed him, who came with a built-in family, and he was from Western Michigan where guys weren't friends with girls they weren't related to by blood or marriage. His solo trip to Europe and his years of being friends with that free-spirited California girl were the only ways he'd let himself be different from everyone else in his small town.

Every once in a while, I'll see something that reminds me of the time I was in Europe, hanging out with the bronc rider. A joke, the smell of a kebab, hearing certain country songs. I miss him and hope he is happy, hope his family is well. Recently Facebook has been suggesting I add him as a friend, and every time his name pops up there I get a little sad. Part of me wants to extend that olive branch, to catch up, to reminice about old times, to call him a platz again. But part of me thinks that the past is better left where it lies.

Friday Faff: Not so faffy edition

Last night we had dinner with a work friend and her husband, who are amazingly like us in interests and intellect, down to the same exact tattered copy of The Chronicles of Prydain on the bookshelf. We played some Zauber Cocktail and ate homemade pizza and strawberry shortcake and played Cranium and had a generally wonderful evening.

The interesting part was that they're quite religious and completely opposite us politically.

Luckily, it didn't stop us from having a great time. But I did think it was interesting.

Of course, this isn't the first time I've been friends with someone who had very different religious and political views. Joey, for example, was Catholic and pro-life and I think I opened his eyes to the fact that someone doesn't have to be religious to be a good person.

Then there was my Christian Republican cowboy country singer travel friend, with whom I got along like peas and carrots, but with whom an actual relationship would never have worked for any number of reasons.

I find myself wishing that people who have opposing viewpoints would be willing to see the similarities between themselves and people who disagree with their viewpoints. Everything does not always have to be how one side or another is right. How about how both sides can work together to make things better for everyone?

August Adventure, Part 3: The Tallest Mountain in Colorado

Dan poked at me.

"It's time to get up," he said. "UUUNHHHG" I responded. It was 6 AM. I hadn't slept well; the altitude had made the small muscles in my chest hurt and I just couldn't get comfortable. It was freezing cold oustide as well, and I stupidly and groggily changed into my hiking clothes, shivered though the dismantling of the tent and the shoving of our gear into the car, and wished I'd brought gloves. And a hat.

Exiting the campground, we drove a short way up to the main trailhead parking lot, at which point we finished our preparation and began the 2 mile trek up the dirt road to the 4wheel drive parking lot. Moxie could have made it a little way up, we realized, but not very far, so it was just as well we'd left her where we did.

Car after truck passed us as we made our way up the road, but nobody stopped to offer us a lift. We crossed a runoff-swollen stream. We were making good time, we thought, but after a while it felt like maybe we'd gone too far. Then we came upon a sign that told us in no uncertain terms that we HAD gone too far, and we just hadn't noticed the turnoff. The 14er book had steered us wrong again, and we probably ended up going over a mile out of the way, all told. When we figured out the right path, we stopped to eat some energy bars and bitch a little bit about how much unnecessary uphill we'd done. Then, right as we started on the appropriate trail, Dan tripped on a footbridge and banged his knee up.

At least once we got going, the trail was flat and easy, went downhill a bit, and then took a sharp turn to the uphill and stayed that way. And stayed that way. And stayed that way. It was really, really tough going, and we had to stop pretty frequenly to catch our breaths and rest our legs. The book had assured us that the trail leveled out for a while, which eventually it did, but not for long enough, because then came UPHILL. We passed tree line (side note, the trees at treeline are pretty weird!) and each step was harder, each break more necessary. When you get up that high, the altitude can have varying affects on any given person, and when you combine that with the possibilities of any sort of weather, you never know what you might get.

The trail got rockier and steeper. Dan had slowed down to a snail's pace and I wasn't going especially fast my own self. We hit what I estimate to be around 13,900 or so feet and suddenly the summit was just too far to go - at least a half mile further, and nearly straight up. We both felt the beginnings of altitude sickness (in my case, it was lightheadedness and dizziness and a slight bit of nausea) and decided that 14,400, the summit of Mount Elbert, was not going to happen that day. A combination of bad/not enough sleep, going all the distance out of our way, hiking 6 miles to get to the top instead of 3.5 from the 4-wheel drive lot like most of the other people on the trail, the weather (sunny and snowing at the same time!) all conspired to send us back down the mountain before we'd reached the top.

Intellectually, I know it's better that we made that decision and didn't try to push through our feeling poorly in order to reach the top. People die every year because they ignore their bodies' warning signals and are too stubborn to turn around; other people are hospitalized for the same reason. But still, it killed me not to have reached the top of Mount Elbert, especially after we'd come all that way.

Downhill was nearly as difficult as uphill, especially on the steep, gravely parts of the trail. Loose rocks slide out from under you and it's harder to keep your balance going downhill. We stopped to have a snack when we got to the flatter part of the trail down inside treeline and watched flakes of snow fall from the sunny blue sky. Down doesn't take as long as up because you don't have to stop as frequently, but it still takes quite a while, especially on the steep parts.

Finally, finally, finally we made it back to the 4 wheel drive lot, hoping someone would be there from whom we could beg a ride back to our car, but it was not to be. I joked with Dan that as soon as we got to the end of the road, someone would drive past us, and lo and behold, I was right.

We made it back to the car about 8 hours after we'd began the whole trek. We'd hiked around 11 miles up a mountain and back (including the out-of-the-way bit). We were both stinky and starving and a little bit sun/windburned. We got in the car and drove home (stopping in Leadville for Subway sandwiches, in stop-and-go Sunday afternoon traffic for two hours between the Eisenhower tunnel and Idaho Springs).

It was a good weekend.

August adventure, part 2: poop, mud, aggressive chipmunk

Once the car was deemed good to go, we motored back up to the Maroon Bells wilderness area. Normally, cars are not allowed (you have to take a bus) from 9 AM to 5 PM during the summer, but overnight campers get a car permit (yet another reason, besides how amazingly gorgeous it is, to camp there) and even though we hadn't actually stayed in the campground due to the aforementioned car issues, the people at the kiosk didn't know that and waved us through. We passed through some beautiful scenery that would have been more spectacular had it not been foggy and kind of rainy. We decided to park at one of the more outlying areas and hike in to Maroon Lake and then do an additional hike from there, but it was pouring rain for a while so we sat in the car and read books to wait it out. Luckily, the weather turned nice pretty quickly, so we changed into our hiking gear and headed out on the trail.

The early part of our hike went through a jungly aspen forest, the trees towering above us, our feet sloshing through thick black or red mud and a ridiculous amount of horse crap. There was so much poop that it was basically impossible to avoid, especially since so much of the uphill trail was slick goopy mud. We wondered at several points just what the fresh hell the people who had ridden those horses had fed them to get them to produce so much; it was seriously every 5-10 feet.


After quite a bit of uphill, the trail began to descend and we came upon a clearing with a hitching post. Not exactly the sort of thing you see every day.

Then suddenly we were at Maroon Lake, where the tour bus drops people off. It was absolutely breathtaking, and photos cannot do it justice, but here are a few I snapped.


We opted to hike a trail to Crater Lake that was rated "moderate" (the other trails were all easy and we wanted somewhat of a challenge), a 3.6 mile roundtrip hike that turned out to be exactly what we were hoping for. The scenery was great, the trail wasn't too populated, and we finally made it to the upper lake and got yet another view of one of the prettiest parts of Colorado, the Maroon Bells (both 14K+ foot mountains overlooking the valley).

The only real drawback was that right as we arrived at Crater Lake, some very loud men from Long Guyland decided to share their inane conversation with everyone in a half-mile radius. Starving, we found a log to sit on and ate our PBJs and plums and some trail mix. As is usual in populated hiking areas of our fair state, there were plenty of small animals around begging people for food. To our chagrin, a greedy chipmunk decided we'd be good marks and kept running up to us, behind us, and around us, and though we attempted to discourage him from coming near, he wouldn't take no for an answer. I snapped his photo a few times in retalliation, but he wouldn't stay still so I only got one good shot of him.

Then suddenly Dan screamed loudly, almost making me wet myself, and asked "Is it still on me?"

"WTF?" I said. Or at least, that's what I thought. "Is what still on you?"

"That stupid chipmunk just jumped on my shoulder!" he said, and we looked but didn't see the little bastard anywhere. Maybe Dan's yell scared him off.

Finished with our lunches, we made our way toward the lake and took some photos, glad that the loud New Yawkers had left and it was quiet again. On the way back down to Maroon Lake, we finally saw what had been making the CHEE noise at us on the way up: a pika.

Of course, being me, I had to have some fun with the macro setting on my camera. At least these days I'm only taking photos of flower types I haven't already photographed.




When we got back to Maroon Lake, we opted to walk along the road back to our car rather than brave the horsepoop and mud again. From there, we drove south from Aspen along highway 82, went up and over Independence Pass, and down to the Twin Lakes area where we found a campground and set up camp in preparation for our big hike on Sunday. Normally I'm not a fan of hot dogs, but turkey dogs, corn on the cob, and a burnt-in-the-coals potato were absolutely delicious. And we looked into the sky and there was the Milky Way, something I hadn't seen in a very long time. There's nothing like stargazing to make one feel very small.

Weekend adventure, part 1: Bad luck and good luck

It was time to get out of town again, so this past weekend I took Friday off and we packed up the car and drove west on I-70, tunes a-blazin', possibilities in the air. We stopped in Glenwood Springs for some weekend food supplies and continued along highway 82 toward Aspen, in phone contact with Dan's cousin making some dinner plans, arriving at our destination at what we thought was 5 PM (by Dan's watch) but was actually 6.

Sadly, the Maroon Bells wilderness area only takes cash and checks, so we had to drive back into Aspen to get some of that (Aspen, as one might guess, is full of people driving very expensive cars. It is also kind of twee.), and back to Maroon Bells, set up our tent at Silver Bell #12, then realized we had no cell phone coverage to let Lori know we were set and ready for dinner. So we drove back out to Aspen AGAIN and met up with Lori and her husband, who both got a kick out of the Flying Spaghetti Monster car emblem and learned that it was not in fact 6 PM but actually 7 PM. We feasted at a local watering hole and heard a harrowing tale of the WORST customer service story ever, so much so that my gast was completely flabbered. After dinner, we said our goodnights and our thanks for hanging-outs and got into the car, only to determine that it didn't want to start.

Like, at all. No turning over. No nothing.

Luckily, they hadn't gone far, and when I called they turned around and came back to help us get things figured out. We attempted a jump start, which didn't work for quite some time. Finally, after quite a bit of finessing, Rich got the car started. Both cars sat there idling for a while as we decided what to do. The final verdict: Rich and I would go back to the campground in their sweet-ass Audi TT convertable and break down camp/get our stuff, while Dan and Lori would head to their house in poor Moxie, who up to that point had never given us a moment's trouble; in case something happened during the drive, Moxie wouldn't be at the campground out of cell phone range. Rich and I motored up, broke down our camp, stuffed everything in the wee tiny trunk, and made it back into the car just as the crazy rain and thunder and lightning started.

It wasn't the evening we were expecting: sleeping on the pullout couch, loved on by two doggies, sipping port and watching a guy on stilts on Conan rather than a tent under the stars and me beating Dan at gin. But it was a lovely evening nonetheless. In the morning, we found a place to bring the car, but couldn't get it started again, even with Rich's magic fingers. After some internet research, a few more things were tried, but ultimately we determined that poor Moxie was just not going to start. Luckily (and seriously, this was REALLY lucky), Lori and Rich had everything necessary to tow Moxie down to Basalt to the car repair place - tow cables, a Land Rover, tools, etc. and saved us $200 in towing fees.

I have to say here that riding in a car at highway speed when the car isn't actually on so you have no idea how fast you're going is extremely weird.

So we got to the car place and about 15 guys ran out and started poking around under Moxie's hood. While we waited, Lori and I took a 5-minute trip over to a convenience store to get some supplies and when we got back we were greeted by two sheepishly grinning men. "Guess how much it cost," they asked. "Two dollars!" said Lori. "Off by a factor of ten," said Rich, relating that someone finally figured out that the floor mat had wedged itself far enough under one of the pedals that it couldn't engage when we were trying to turn the car on. Twenty bucks for five minutes of troubleshooting, and two red faces, and a bunch of laughing Mexican guys. Hey, it could have been exponentially worse (and ridiculously expensive). I would have been mortified if we'd paid to have the car towed.

So all was well, and Dan and I headed back into the Maroon Bells area to go hiking, laughing and wondering what we could do as a thank-you to Rich and Lori for putting us up for the night and towing the car into town. Any ideas, internet?

What might have been

Do you ever look back on decisions you've made over the course of your life, big or small, and wonder if you'd made a different choice, what might the outcome have been?

It never ceases to amaze me how life seems at once to be a series of happy (or not-so-happy) coincidences and also a series of meaningful events. If I had not done this, if I had not gone here, if I had not gone to that party or written on that message board or applied for that job, life might have been so different. When I was a little kid, I loved to hear the story of how my parents met: at a party on Valentine's Day, at the home of mutual friends, when each was dating someone else. My dad dated 3 women with the same first name; the 3rd was my mom. If one or the other of them hadn't gone to the party, I never would have come into existence! How mind-blowing is that when you're five, or even when you're 30? If Dan's brother had never told him about the message board, if I hadn't IM'd him, if I'd been seriously dating someone else, if if if. So many choices, so many possibilities, so many futures that could have happened but didn't.

As I mentioned before, we saw 500 Days of Summer this past weekend, and while I don't feel talented enough to do a movie review that could actually do the film justice, there are a few bits that keep sticking with me. The theme of choices and how certain choices lead to certain outcomes, whether they be coincidence or whether they hold actual meaning, whether things happen at random or whether something is meant to be, whether you have a soul mate or whether any number of people could work out to be a good long-term partner, is explored in ways both subtle and profound throughout the film. Some people I know met their partners in unusual ways, while others knew each other for years in some fashion before ending up together. Either way, one might argue both sides of the meant-to-be vs. happy coincidence debate. Regardless of how you meet your SO, what really matters is what you do with the relationship once you're in it, whether you turn out to be compatible long-term or whether it will be a finite sort of thing.

It's not just relationships that this applies to, though, since the jobs that you apply for and the places you go and the daily decisions you make (salad or cheeseburger? gym or veg out on the couch?) all have influences on your life, long-term, even if taken individually they might not seem that way. You meet people and make friends and have adventures. People come in and out of your life. People you happened to become penpals with when you're a teenager turn out to be good friends despite living on the other side of the country 15 years later. People you think are going to be single-serving friends turn out to be far more important than you would have ever imagined - my aunt's best friend, for example, she met while in the hospital giving birth to my cousin. The best friend was in the next bed over, and they've been friends for nearly 31 years now, and though she was then the lady giving birth the same day, she and her son are family members now. Sometimes I wonder what people who were once in my life but no longer are might be up to; someday I'll write the story of my cowboy friend from Michigan. But that's a tale for another time.

Speaking of blasts from the past, I'm facebook friends with my College Boyfriend's brother. He just joined and last night put up photos of his two daughters (whom I've never met). The older daugher looks like her mom (CB's bro's wife). I had to do a double-take when I saw the photo of the younger daughter, as she had inherited her uncle's (CB's) eyes. I looked into the face of that baby and saw what my baby might have looked like had I had one with College Boyfriend. I never had more than a slight pregnancy scare during the 3 years College Boyfriend and I were together, and had I gotten pregnant during that time I would have been in no way ready to have a baby, let alone be tied for life to College Boyfriend. Things didn't work out with him for very good reason. Maybe it's because babies are on my mind these days, wondering how Dan's and my potential progeny will look. But seeing College Boyfriend's eyes in his niece's face gave me a little glimpse of what might have been, had accidents happened, had different choices been made. It was a little bit freaky.

Legacy, but not the good kind

Neck and back problems run in my family, so much so that my uncle became a chiropractor because of the pain he saw his mother (my grandmother) go through. My mom has had neck/back issues her entire adult life, and my sister had back problems starting in childhood. My first back/neck injury occurred when I was in high school, at a swim meet, somehow managing to mess things up during a flip turn. I saw a local chiro for months after that and was forced to wear my backpack on both shoulders (so uncool!) It acted up again during my first job in college, shelving library books, so much so that I was unable to get out of bed some days. Over the years, I've had twinges here and there, but then three years ago, I was in a car accident. A stupid kid rear-ended me at a stoplight. I got whiplash, work paid for me to see a doctor and a chiropractor for a while. I dutifully did all of the things the chiro told me to do to rehabilitate my neck and shoulder. Despite this, my neck has yet to heal fully and every so often it'll suddenly get all stupid whiplashy again, which sucks because a) it hurts a lot, b) sometimes it resolves itself on its own but other times I have to go back to the chiro and pay for it my own self, and c) it keeps me from doing things I want to do. Like hike 14ers, which we have still yet to do this summer.

Our weekend had no plans, and turned out to be spectacularly uneventful because I couldn't even comfortably go throw a frisbee around in the park. Sitting, standing, walking, and (especially lying down) hurt. Our biggest weekend accomplishments turned out to be going grocery shopping and walking to the Mayan theater to see 500 Days of Summer (which I really liked, at least enough to be thinking/talking about it the whole walk home). I spent Saturday in a small-to-medium amount of pain and Sunday in a pretty serious amount of pain, which was alleviated to some extent by walking in the sun to and from the movie.

But while it was a nice long walk, it wasn't nearly enough. We started out the summer taking hikes every weekend, but recently it seems as though there is always something else to do or something (like my stupid neck) getting in the way of our adventures. I spent all last week traveling around the state and was only reminded further how many awesome things there are to do here, especially this time of year. I feel sluggish and some amount of despair, because not only does my neck hurt but that means I can't do my normal routine, let alone tackle a crazy weekend hike. It's been far too long since I played with my camera or posted any photos.

I get to see the chiropractor tomorrow. I hope one visit takes care of the current problem and that next weekend's adventure is a go.

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.