The rest of June and all of July

Gosh! Summer is so busy, I don't even have time to blog! So much stuff going on! Since my last post there have been barbecues and parties galore, a trip to an island paradise, some backpacking, some hiking, a concert, baking, gardening, much familial hob-nobbing, a lovely wedding, sea turtles, and malasadas. Really, really good malasadas. We also learned a little bit about archery, put together another batch of bread, more backpacking, some Shakespeare, and have a run planned for later this afternoon (because we're having a heatwave here - clearly exercise and baking are the things to do when it's 95 degrees out!)

And here, in no particular order, is what we've spent the last couple of months doing:

We went hiking a couple of times. A dayhike from Frisco to Copper Mountain, and also a long weekend in the Flattops Wilderness (south of Steamboat). While in the Flattops we put out an abandoned campfire (which made us MAD), spooked a herd of elk, and got blown around by the wind a lot. It was quite lovely - lots of water and snow, and rolling green meadows. We went over the Devil's Causeway on the way out, which was a little freaky.


Brent also went solo-hiking recently. He spent 4 days in Grand Tetons National Park, where he didn't get eaten by bears, or have to be choppered off a mountaintop. He did an approximately 90 mile loop from the southern end of the park north past Jenny Lake and around back down. While Brent was wandering around in the mountains, my car died on the side of I-25 between Windsor and FtC at midnight. Actually, my muffler finally decided to fall off, so I just couldn't drive it the rest of the way back - sparks everywhere! Luckily, Cody and Kristin came to rescue me, so I didn't have to sit on the side of the highway for too long, but it was exciting!

We went to Hawaii for my cousin, Ceci's, wedding (her blog is here). Brent and I were only there for a few days, but the rest of the family was out there for about a week. There were lots of family gatherings - one with Mom's side, one with Dad's side, and, of course, the Wedding. So Brent and I didn't get a lot of tourism in. We went to a beach one day and there were sea turtles feeding on the rocks, so we just waded out and watched them. Sometimes there were 3 of them, just swimming around us, eating the algae and seaweed off the rocks. That was really cool. We also visited Hanauma Bay (haven't been there in years!) and Foster Botanical Garden (where you can take a walking tour of "Exceptional trees"). Super-awesome shave ice at Shimazu Store (Red Velvet shave ice with condensed milk rocks my world. Seriously. Better than many cupcakes I've had.) Malasadas from Agnes' Portuguese Bakery in Kailua (they'll make them fresh for you, and are worth the wait. Better than Leonard's - really!). I didn't get any musubi, and that makes me sad, but I ate a lot of poke, and that almost makes up for it.

We spent our wedding anniversary in Boulder this year. We ate dinner at Jax Fish House, which is GREAT. We saw Measure For Measure at the Colorado Shakespeare Festival, which was really well done. It made me want to go find a text copy of the play. Then we ate dessert at Boulder Baked, which only sounds like a marijuana dispensary. They actually bake cookies to order, and were really yummy. It was a lovely anniversary!

We've had several barbecue type get-togethers with friends, family, even work! Cody smokes awesome meats, Scott's got his ribs down to an art, and I've had a complete failure at cheesy corn bake. Stupid real cheese. I should know that you have to use Velveeta!

Brent's friend, Adwyn had his annual Barn Concert at the end of June. Brent played in 2 pieces this year, and a good time was had by all!

We took a little introductory archery class with some co-workers. It was pretty neat, and much harder than I anticipated. Fun really, maybe we'll do more of that in the winter, when there's not so much stuff going on...

Garden Update!

I can kill pepper plants really fast. Carrots are progressing nicely. Tomatoes are HUGE. Here is a picture history of my tomatoes this year. It's crazy.


We've eaten a few tomatoes, and they're great! I've got new happy cucumbers and cantaloupe too, as well as restarting my lettuce and failed zucchini. The farmers market is going full swing, and I have an entire box of apricots (only $10! for a TON of apricots...) in the refrigerator that I plan on dehydrating. We have more backpacking planned next weekend, and Korin, Charli, and Grandma are coming out for a while in the week after that. Lots of fun stuff coming up! Larimer County Fair! Switzerland! San Franciso! New West Fest! Colorado Music Festival!

Here's hoping I manage to blog before September!

Kim

May

So, yes, missed May too. But it was a really eventful month! I turned old! We went to Washington DC! We went backpacking! Korin, Brian and Charli came to visit! We ate Dim Sum! My Grandma went to Utah! See? Action-packed!

The backpacking is the freshest in my mind right now, so we'll start there. We met Nathan in Canyonlands National Park, where we wanted to hike Salt Creek Canyon. We were able to get the last series of back-country campsite reservations available for Memorial Day weekend. Lucky, lucky! It was an incredible hike. Petroglyphs, ruins, arches, pottery shards everywhere. That's not even mentioning the cool beasties, and that it was spring, and the wildflowers were blooming. Here's pictures of some of the cool things:

The first day was the day of ruins and petroglyphs. Seriously, there were ruins everywhere. Some of them were close enough to the ground that you could climb up and walk around in them (Carefully!). The second day was when the mosquitoes found us, and that was a little unpleasant. But the desert was blooming, there was globemallow, lupine, and yucca everywhere. Brent saw a black bear, and we saw tiger salamanders and their larvae. We missed the water source we were supposed to fill up at though, and ended up having to ask some campers at a 4WD campsite if we could have some of theirs. Once we were done panhandling the water, we found the greatest campsite ever. At this point the trail went up off the canyon floor onto the slickrock through a series of ladders. We camped about 800 feet above the canyon, and were treated to the most glorious sunset I've seen in a while. And there were even more ruins close by!

Anyway, it was a highly successful backpacking trip, and a lovely way to spend a birthday, except for the mosquitoes.

Earlier in May, Brent and I spent a weekend in Washington DC. We wandered the Mall from end to end, saw all the monuments you're supposed to, went to an airshow at Andrews Air Force Base, wandered around the Washington DC Botanical Garden, and went through the Smithsonian Air and Space Museum. It was a packed couple of days.


Korin, Brian and Charli came out to visit one weekend. We had a lovely time showering Charli with attention and buying her pony rides that she didn't want to go on. Mom and Grandma cooked up an entire Hawaiian Luau to celebrate, and everything was so delicious.

I know that you're all terribly worried about my stocktank/gardens, but have no fear, they're just fine. Brent and I increased our square footage by adding another whole stocktank, and I filled it with tomatoes, cucumbers, zucchini, and cantaloupe.

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