April

Okay, so I actually missed April. Sorry. Things came up. I'm only a day late!

List of cool things in April:

Wondercon in San Francisco! - I went out to SF to visit my sisters and attend Wondercon. Yes, I am a geek. I embrace it. Love it. Wear the T-Shirt. Get my picture taken with the stormtroopers and the guy wearing the Alien (Sigourney Weaver style) costume. It was a great con, and there were lots of cool costumes and creators. We met Phil Foglio of Girl Genius fame (which you should all be reading, and shame on you if you aren't!) and we met Ted Naifeh who did Polly and the Pirates and all of the Courtney Crumrin books (so good!). Many shirts were purchased from great places like these: Spicy Brown, The Public Zoo, Gama go, I heart guts, and some others I can't remember. Lots of cool stuff at Wondercon! YAY!

Brent and I ran our first half marathon - the Horsetooth Half marathon. It is apparently one of the harder half marathons in the US because of the elevation of Fort Collins, and the route they choose (almost 1000 feet of elevation gain!). We did pretty well, running the 13.1 mile course in 2 hours 5 minutes and placing just above 600 out of 1,300. I've been avoiding calling it our "first" half marathon, because I didn't want Brent to think that there was a great chance for a "second," or even a "third." But really it was a great run, training was pleasant, and I'd do it again. We're looking at a race in Moab to be the second!

We attended our last Opera of the season. It was Puccini's Tosca, and we liked it better than Tales of Hoffman too. We may have mentioned that we really didn't like that one. Somewhere. But Tosca was good, in that predictable-Opera way. You certainly don't go to an opera for plot twists and interesting denouements. But the singing was good, the sets were nice, and it wasn't too silly.

Our good friend Scott is starting a local nonprofit group called NoCo Artists. He had the inaugural performance just this last Thursday. The group is meant to introduce local, northern Colorado artists of all types to each other and to audiences through performances and events. The first performance was a huge success, with a much larger turnout than expected. They were setting up more chairs right up to the start of the performance! GO SCOTT!

That was most of our April. Brent worked a lot. And is probably working away even right this instant, on a Saturday, in New Jersey. Bleah. There was also a lot of moving type of stuff, as we try to move our stuff out of our storage bin into a different storage bin that's free. We have a lot of stuff in storage. I got a haircut, and it's cute. My grandma is still visiting at my parent's, and she makes lots of good food. My niece is still cute. Brent's brother keeps messing up the water in his shower. Apparently he likes just having hot water, or just having cold water. I can't understand any other reason for him to continue doing this. Sam is here visiting for the weekend.

Everyone have a great May!

Kim

March!

I'll just squeak one in for the month of March, which was actually a really cool month.

Here's a general list of all the cool stuff we did in March - in no particular order:

We went to knock around in New York City for a weekend. It was an amazing weekend - 70 degree days! We wandered around Chelsea and the Chelsea Market, and from there found our way to the High Line. The High Line is an old above ground train track, which the city has reclaimed as a sort of raised park and pedestrian walkway. It's really neat and very well done. When we were there, the trees were just starting to bud out, and the crocuses were coming up. I bet it's just spectacular right now. On a random note, I'm pretty sure we saw John Hodgman (of "I'm a PC!" fame) while we were there. If it wasn't him, it was someone who looked and sounded just like him. I didn't have the guts to interrupt him. It looked like he was having an intense conversation.

We went to see the NY Philharmonic. There was a little added drama, because I managed to melt a hole in the skirt I was planning on wearing about an hour before we needed to leave. Stupid synthetic fabrics. I had to go out and find a new skirt before we left. Happily, I was in New York, and there's cool shops on almost every corner. The next day we crossed the river to Brooklyn. We had a very successful breakfast and then walked to the Brooklyn Flea, which is in this crazy-ornate old bank building every Sunday. It's awesome, vendors sell out of closets, or any little room they can find, and the food type vendors are kept downstairs in the vault, which have 3 foot thick doors.

NY food highlights: the bacon sampler platter at the Clover Club (Duck bacon!), the 20 layer crepe cake brulee at Ayza, and the most incredible greek yogurt at 9th street international foods (creamy, tangy, thick, thick, thick! Oh, so good.)

Brent went to Bloomington, Indiana for Janelle's recital. He spent a couple of days out there frightening Janelle's 4th grade students and getting lost while running. The recital went very smoothly, and was excellent!

We went on another Yurt trip, this time with my family (Mom, Dad and Sam) and Sam's good friend, Loni. Brent had to leave early Saturday, which turned out to be a glorious day, warm and sunny. The rest of us stayed until Sunday, when the winds started really picking up, and it started to snow on us as we walked up to the car after hiking out! Food highlights: Mom had this incredible salad dressing she made - we were eating it straight, it was so good. My pineapple upside down cake was a messy - but yummy - failure. Next time, the pan will be big enough, the first time.

We went to see a Brazilian guitarist by the name of Marcus Tardelli in Denver. He is incredible. We decided that he must have extra-dimensional fingers to play all the notes he plays. He played everything from memory, about 2 1/2 hours of music - just him, a chair and a footstool. It was amazing.

There was only one bread this month - a sourdough levain. It was delicious, but it took a REALLY long time to make.

Lastly, y'all may remember that we live in an apartment now. 9 stories up, a balcony, no yard to speak of. This weekend, we changed that. No, we didn't move! We now have 2 40 gallon stock tanks full of dirt and gravel in our balcony. This means that I have a GARDEN! Woohoo! I've got most of the seed planted (except for the ones that needed to soak - forgot about those). It looks like this:

The green things you see are things that have been growing very unhappily in my aerogarden. They were so little and pitiful, I just figured I'd give them some dirt and see how they feel about that.

Spring is in the air, I have seeds in my "ground!" April looks very promising! Hope y'all have a great month!!

February

So I was a little worried that February would trickle by without anything cool to blog about, thus making it so that my New Years Resolution went down the toilet in the second month. Luckily, we did a few cool things that made February still bloggable.

Most notably, I baked a lot. Almost every weekend I've had something different in to oven. There was a series of lovely rustic loaves that made their way over to our friend Cheryl's birthday party, then there was a copious amount of hoagie rolls, which burned on the bottom. The best was the challah, though. It came out perfectly, and also made its way to a friend's birthday party (happy birthday, Dave!). I don't have pictures of everything, but here's what I do have:



I must rather snottily admit that I was really impressed by my own bread. We'd finished an entire loaf of challah before Wednesday morning (I baked it Sunday). I've even just made another dough! Whole wheat this time (because I ran myself out of regular flour with my earlier bread-baking shenanigans).

We also went to see The Barber of Seville in Denver, as an early Valentines Day. It was really good and entertaining, much better than our last opera, Tales of Hoffman, which we both hated. (They were too polite to say it, but I think Chris and Roni hated it too. It was bad.)

We've been having good luck in Denver recently - found some REALLY good breakfast places:
Duo - has something called a Zippy Cake. Doesn't it just sound like something I'd like? It helps that it was DELICIOUS though...
Lola - Green Eggs and Ham! So good!

And we went to dinner last night at my favorite Fort Collins Fish Market! Lovely, as usual. I've yet to have something on their menu that isn't divine. Everyone in Fort Collins should go there. Unless I'm trying to get a table. Then you should all go away.

So that's my random cool stuff for February. Otherwise, it's been a pretty steady state month: I've been working some overtime, Brent has orchestras and chamber music to keep him busy, we've both got some family visits in the coming months, and a wedding in Hawaii in July. We're tentatively planning a longish distance hiking trip in September, more on that later, probably.

Hope everyone has a great March!

kim

A random thing that we haven't done in ages...

This weekend, we went mini-golfing! And it was tons of fun! And I whupped Brent by almost 10 strokes! We tried to go bowling too, but it wasn't to be. It just goes to show, suburbia can be fun too!

Kim

Happy New Year!!!

It's been a huge while since the last post, but welcome to our New Years Resolution!

I've decided that it's silly to have a blog if you're not going to update it, so one of our 2010 resolutions is to do something blog-worthy every month, and then blog about it.

January's blog worthy thing just happened this past weekend! We spent the weekend at Upper Montgomery Pass Yurt. We snowshoe-ed up early Friday afternoon; the trek was a little less than 3 miles, but it seemed like the whole thing was straight up hill. There were 2 moose sightings, and we met some people on snowmobiles who were looking for a white cow. Seems like a bad place to be: in the middle of a Colorado winter, in a remote valley, looking for a white cow. You could be searching until the world turns green again!

Our friends, Cody and Kristin, had arrived at the yurt the previous day, so everything was warm and cozy on our arrival. Cody made us an awesome lamb stew for dinner, and we went to bed early, because that's what you do in the wilderness. Yurts get cold when everyone's asleep. Nathan was lucky, he got a top bunk - since heat rises, the temperature is much more stable (and warm) up there. It's also a lot harder to be the person who has to get up in the middle of the night to put another log on the fire.

Since we went to bed early, and there's a big skylight in the yurt, we were up pretty early the next morning. There was a lovely sunrise. Once again, Cody made us a fabulous meal involving cinnamon french toast, eggs and bacon. After breakfast and dishes, Brent, Nathan, Cody and I all went for another snowshoe. We headed up the trail toward the top of the pass. Cody headed back after a while, since Kristin had decided to stay at the yurt, but the rest of us slogged on, even after the road petered out, and we didn't know exactly where we were. Luckily, when you're showshoeing on a clear day, you leave a very obvious trail, so even if you don't know where you're heading, it's hard not to know where you've been. We made it most of the way up the pass, though there were interruptions for snow angels, playing in the pristine fields, examining ice crystals, and looking at animal tracks. It was a beautiful, clear day - perfect for a day of snowshoeing. We got back to the yurt at around 3 in the afternoon, and it was so warm and cozy that we all immediately fell asleep. After our naps and some coffee to bring us back to life, we played a few rounds of eco-Fluxx (a card game) at which Cody trounced all of us except Brent, who won one round. Dinner was squash soup and Brent's famous backcountry pineapple upside-down cake. What a great day!

The next morning, we had to pack up and head out. We managed to be on our way by 10:30, and back at the cars by noon. We got back into Fort Collins by 2:30, so just knocked around town with Nathan until we had to take him to the airport at 6:30.

Over all, a thoroughly enjoyable weekend. I'd post the website for the yurts here, but I already have a hard enough time booking them, so you'll just have to go up there with us sometime if you want to know where they are, 'cause I'm not telling!

Hope everyone's having a great new year!

Kim

My sisters hate me...

Or I assume they do. They haven't told me otherwise, so I'm forced to assume that their continued silence is evidence of their outright animosity, or complete antipathy. The result is the same.

Until they tell me otherwise, I'll just sit here in the dark.

kim

Happy Dia de los Muertos, Everyone!

I hope everyone had a happy, safe Halloween!

Brent and I went to this great Halloween party at Janet and Dave's place west of Denver. They really went all out on this party, and it was awesome! We had our auras photographed, our cards read, and our caricatures drawn! Brent was dressed as a wizard, and I was a green fairy. Mr. and Mrs. Potatohead were there, Dave was a very dashing Jack Sparrow, and Janet had on a really great hat.

Here are some pics from the party:


And here are photos of our Aura-photos:


Those dark spots on Brent's picture are supposed to be his spirit guides, and I am supposed to be unbalanced and ungrounded. Another crazy thing happened at this party: I learned how to smile for a camera! I can't decide if it was the costume or Janet's magic lip gloss, but somehow, I actually look nice in most of these pictures. I'm a little annoyed that the Aura-picture is such a good picture of me, but it's got all this aura all over it! There are a few more pictures on Janet's facebook page if you want to look for them...

On Friday night we went to an Eagles Hockey game with Cody and Kristin. We ate far too much fried food, including these absolutely evil little cinnamon doughnuts that came in a bucket. There were 2 fights, and the Eagles won! Woohoo!

Really, except for having to go in to work on Saturday morning, we had a pretty great weekend!

Kim