The Blues & Brews fest was awesome and I totally loved it. (I bought a cute hippy bag with Ganesh on it, and Brett got a leather outback-style hat.) I’ve even posted Telluride pictures already.
Brett and I want to go back every year. Seriously!
Instead of driving directly from Telluride back to Ron’s, we all crashed at a hotel in Montrose… and believe you me it was worth every cent: it was deliciously dry, and there was a bed, and it was heated and everything! And one didn’t need $2 in quarters to get hot water out of the shower. Ah, luxury!
Ron knocked on our door to tell us they were taking off. Brett and loitered a couple hours, long enough to bathe and eat before we left the hotel.
Later we passed Ron, Amy, and Janelle putting upward toward the summit at about 45 MPH in Amy’s VW. We waved and they waved back. Later they passed us on the way down while we were lost trying to find the exit onto Hwy 6. (I guess the VW goes about 40 uphill and 80 downhill, making a trip average of about 60 MPH. Which really isn’t that bad. *grin*)
Our last night in Colorado, we made Ron go out to sushi with us, even though he really just wanted to veg on his couch at home. He’s a sport, though, so off to Sushi Zanmai we went.
Zanmai had the weirdest music soundtrack I’ve ever encountered in a a sushi bar – Madonna was playing when we walked in, and later we heard the Clash – but the food was really great. (I got drunk on saki, of course. “I just blame it all on the altitude!”) Amy showed up and said we were all troopers for going out right after getting back from Telluride, but I explained it was our last chance for sushi!
After eating, I rode up to Ron’s with Amy (and Prana and Sugaree) in the vee-wee, and Brett rode up with Ron. When we got there, Amy gave me a bag full of product from Bear Mountain Essentials and now I’m totally addicted to this cocoa/hemp lip gloss she gave me. Argh! (Their body products aren’t on their site yet or I’d link to it for you and then you’d be in trouble too.) (I really want to buy a dress or two from them. Oh, the cuteness! The site sez some fall colors are coming soon. I’m pretty much all about that.)
When we woke up that last morning at Ron’s, it was snowing. I’d slept on the leather couch in the entryway because Brett’s back was really hurting him and he was flailing much too much for me to sleep anywhere near him. I woke up, all disoriented, to Brett pointing at the window and inquiring belligerently: “Did you see this?!” as if I was somehow responsible for the fact it was snowing. Snort!
Brett’s ruptured disc hurt him (a lot) so I did all the packing while he iced his back and played video games. He felt bad for not being able to help, but I prefered him not moving to lurching up and down the steps making pain-faces so I was kinda bitchy to him: “You! Go sit the fuck down and get out of my way!” It’s terrible to see your big strong man hobbling up and down the stairs like an ancient, it really is. The chiropractor said it will take awhile to heal and that he should take it easy, so I try to make him take it easy as much as I can ’cause he won’t do it if I don’t make him.
Packed, we loaded the dogs up and went for coffee. (Er, I had coffee. Brett had chai.) Then we drove back up the hill and over to Nederland and visited Josha for a couple of hours since we basically hadn’t seen him the whole time we were there. Later we drove down to Boulder to the job site to pick up Brett’s tools. We both hugged Ron and thanked him for his hospitality and then we got on the road.
I desperately wanted burritoes and kept looking along Hwy 6 for Mexican restaurants; eventually we stopped in Brighton for gas and right across the street was a Mexican drive-thru. Who knew life could be so awesome? I got a supreme burrito and chips & guac; Brett got some fried beef taquito things. It was a lot of food for ten bucks!
The rest of the drive was just like driving through Nebraska has always been: boring. Long. Straight. Our stormcloud friend from the mountains, Bob, was with us most of the way so it was a boring, long, straight, rainy drive.
We got home around three. Joe woke up to greet us. The dogs were stoked to be home and ran around outside for half an hour before even coming in to sniff their house. I brought most of the stuff in from the Jeep and then, still wired, took the pics of my camera and transferred them onto my thumb drive. Finally crashed around four and didn’t make it in to work until about one the next afternoon.
Home sweet home! It’s great to be back and sleep in one’s own bed again!
Blues & Brews fest pics are now available in the gallery.
What a fun festival! Even though I don’t drink beer I had a blast! Never seen so many drunk folks in my life, honestly. Other than the rain – which really wasn’t even all that bad – it was a wonderful fun weekend. Telluride is drop dead gorgeous, of course, and I took lots of dorky touristy shots to justify my Iowa plates.
More vacation pics are coming soon!
Brett wants one of these: an International? 7300 CXT. Damn you, Jason!
I’m on my way home from a two week vacation in Colorado and will soon resume regular updates here on the ‘box.
Just you wait ’til you see the vay-cay pics… especially from the Telluride Blues & Brews fest! Yee haw!
Yesterday, Joy & Ella and I stayed at Ron’s all day. I knitted Brett a dark-grey-almost-black hat for this weekend (Telluride will be, like, five degrees at night… and we’ll be camping like total hippy freaks) and read Ender’s Shadow from cover to cover. Joy and Ella baked a cake and Joy made dinner, we all spent some time in the hot tub (Ella went twice), and I did some housekeeping and laundry.
Today I slept until ten because I was up ’til 2:30 finishing Ender’s Shadow. (Yum.) After I got up and clean and dressed, we three girls loaded into the Jeep and drove to Boulder to meet the guys for lunch. We went to a pub and everyone had burgers; I of course had a Gardenburger.
After foodies, the guys went back to work and we girls did a little shopping on the ped mall; I got two more O.S.C. books in the Ender’s universe at Boulder Book Store and some lip shit from The Body Shop, and then we said our goodbyes at the jobsite and drove on to our main goal: Boulder’s local yarn store, Shuttles, Spindels, & Skeins.
It was so wonderful! The place was huge and packed with so much great yarn. I bought a set of needles and some yarn, and tomorrow I’m gonna make myself a warm hat in a brown/garnet colorway for Telluride.
We were planning on going after that to a giant Salvation Army-style thrift store that Joy had heard about, but we were tired and Ella was at the end of her stamina, so we drove home. We passed the guys’ trucks at a bar along Hwy 72.
Ella fell asleep on our drive back to Ron’s, and woke up with a horrible earache like I used to get when I was little. Joy thinks it might be because she wasn’t awake to talk and move her jaw around I went to look it up to explain to her why her ear was aching, and this is why my ears hurt all the damn time and I can’t hear anything driving up and down the mountain: some lovely issue with a little tube in my ear keeps my ears from popping properly. I have always had a hard time in unpressurized plane cabins and driving up or down mountains; I guess I used to cry constantly when my folks drove me over passes. Poor Ella’s been crying almost constantly since we got home, except for when I asked her to ‘doctor’ my knee (I scraped it superficially tripping in the driveway while chasing after our rotten pack of dogs) and when we were explaining how air pressure differences were making her ear drum hurt. Joy called the guys and asked them to grab some asprin on the way home and it sounds like they just pulled in. It’s 6:59… and they’ve been off work since 3:30. Heh.
I’m off to help comfort Miss Ella now that her poppy’s home with aspirins. Ciao!
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Around six, Jimbo and Joy and Ella pulled up to Ron’s house. Yay! Now the house is truly full of people and dogs; it’s an instant party. Ella and I got into the hot tub shortly after their arrival, and soon after that Amy showed up. Ron, Amy, Brett, and Jimbo enjoyed a beer on the deck while Ella and Joy and I soaked in the tub. Ella loves the hot tub, it was really fun in there with her. We kept trying to get her to sit on the edge of the tub to cool off because her face was all red but she wasn’t having it one bit. Three-year-old girls can squeal when they’re having fun!
Brett and Jimbo ran to the store down the hill for beers and smokes and just pulled back in; the huge pack of dogs – Prana, Bindu, Stella, Shiva, Jenny (Ginny), and Thea – all barrelled out to bark at them. It’s dog central.
This morning Ron took us to an adorable restaurant over near Ned(erland) for breakfast. I had a breakfast burrito: eggs, home fries, peppers, and olives in a flour tortilla with vegetarian chili, cheese, and sour cream on top. It was fucking awesome. If I’d had room I would have had one of the bloody marys Ron ordered!
After breakfast we went up to Josha’s house and hung out there for a couple hours. His place is really cool – some kind of upscale Swedish 70’s ski lodge kind of vibe. It’s sooo neat! There’s a rockin’ greenhouse with a hot tub and stone cooktop in it. It’s just a really neat place. Josha said it “needs some work” but what house doesn’t?
After that we came back to Ron’s and Brett and Ron played video games. I surfed for awhile and then took a nap.
Yesterday Brett and I went shopping for sleeping bags for Telluride next weekend; I got two tops and a pair of shoes, Brett got swim trunks (because I forgot to pack a pair for him) and a pair of pants and a pair of shoes. After Target and the sporting goods store we went to a used video game store where I got a GameBoy Adv SP camera (!!!) and Brett got two Xbox games to play on Ron’s console.
Last night I slept weird and screwed up my neck, so I’m off for the hot tub again. Vacation is sooooo fun! It’s so fun to have Joy here too! Yay! Ciao!
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I have a trial version of Rayman Ultimate installed on my device. I love it. I finally played it long enough to get to the end of the trial level, and I can’t go any further until I buy it.
But I can’t find anywhere to buy it!
The vendor quit supporting PPC games and only develops and sells games for cell phones now. A search of their site for the game doesn’t turn one up for my platform. A search at Handango – where I probably downloaded the trial version in the first place – turns up nothing. Argh! I hope the vendor replies to my email with purchase directions so I can play the rest of this freakin’ game!
Check out Amy’s cottage industry (of a sorts) at Bear Mountain Essentials – homemade clothes and more. (Link’s fixed now!) I have a sample of the hemp-based lip balm and it’s the best! Yum!
Nifty wallpapers for Win and Mac. Now don’t you wish you had your own electron microscope?
Last night we went to Boulder after the guys got home from work.
First we went to a Mexican restaurant’s bar for the best margueritas I’ve ever had, then we met Jeff and went and saw Farenheit 9/11 at one of those theatres you can drink in.
(So in Boulder it seems you can drink basically anywhere, but you can’t smoke. It’s a pain in the ass, honestly, but I’m sure all the non- and ex-smokers love the clean air and yes I agree they do have a right to it. Just not in bars, for chrissake. Non-smoking bars are stupid.)
Amy couldn’t make it to drinks or the movie because she had to work. When she called Ron to beg off he said, “WHAT?!? Quit that fuckin’ job!” in a way that totally cracked me up – so much so that I was repeating the quote back to him for the rest of the evening. (You can tell he must get stood up pretty frequently by her job. I told Brett that that’s why I don’t make fifty grand a year.) (Sometimes Brett forgets he’s a slob and asks me why I don’t make lots of money. LOL! He asked me the other day how much I could make if we moved here because he’s all horny to buy property and build on it. I admire him because our current debt load daunts him not one iota; he manifests ways to get things done when he wants them done. It’s cool. Anyway, he was like, “I guess Ron’s girlfriend makes really decent money, could you do what she does?” I replied that I didn’t know what she does exactly but that yes, if I was willing to give up my personal life – which I’m not – I could probably make really good money. He had tried to tell me she “doesn’t work that much”, but I’ve only known the girl a week and she’s been woken up in the middle of the night twice and missed a movie because she had to go to work! And Ron was complaining about her getting calls at three in the morning. So there, Brett: the poor woman’s on call 24/7 and that’s why she makes the big bucks! Brett would so make me quit any job that interfered with his schedule more than once or twice; he gave me all kinds of shit the occasional times I was on call for LISCO or had to take support calls when he wanted me to be doing something else! He’s so funny.)
After the movie, Jeff took off. Ron and Brett and I went to a nearby rooftop restaurant for a late dinner. I was offered yet more booze but I settled for a giant glass of water and a half order of nachos. It was breezy and comfy out; no bugs and no humidity, and I enjoyed the conversation. Ron told us about buying his house and about a concert he went to; it was fun.
After eating we drove home. My ears still don’t like the altitude changes and tend to hurt for five minutes every time I drive back up the mountain. They also tend not to pop on the way down, so my entire evening was one of slightly muffled sounds. Maybe I need tubes in my ears, like they give to little kids? Heh.
I made a joke last night, when Ron said he hoped the weather would be nice this weekend, that it would snow. He laughed and told me to fuck off and said that he really wanted to ride his bike this weekend. Today the heat’s kicked on and it’s overcast and chilly out, with a big fat bank of clouds hanging in the sky. I was kidding about the snowing… or so I’d thought! All week it’s been hot in here (Ron’s living room) by this time of day (because the sun shines straight in), but today I’m glad the laptop is hot and I’m thinking about getting my slippers.
Since I’ve been here, I’ve done about an hour of cleaning every day. Not because I love to clean, but because Brett & I brought three dogs with us and if I don’t clean, Ron’s house will be a giant, filthy hairball when we leave. Ron says he generally hires someone to come clean when he can’t stand it any more; the place is actually really tidy but if I wasn’t sweeping every day there’d be hairballs in every corner! I had to scrub Bindu hair off the corner of the sofa where she rubs her little body as she’s going to hide in the corner! Silly dogs.
The cloudbank I’ve been watching is getting bigger and darker. I’m off to check the weather.
Ciao, babies!
