Fall Travels, Part Two: Eating My Way Through Austin

Now that it's been another month, I finally made it back to the coffee shop by my apartment, where the wi-fi actually works. And here I go with another novel-length account of my most recent travels...

Back in early October, I took my first long vacation since my Reunions trip to Charlottesville and the DC area. I decided to go to Austin, since for the past year or so I have been thinking about moving when my current job commitment is up, and my BFF is almost completely decided on leaving *her* current life in New York City to pursue a slower-paced, warmer, and much cheaper way of life there.

Despite growing up in Texas, I never spent much time in our capital city. My knowledge of the area was almost exclusively limited to the University of Texas campus, since most of the trips I took were for state swimming meets (aside from one recruiting visit the summer after my junior year of high school - optimistically called an "Honors Colloquium" by the admissions department, and packed with interesting seminars, fun little activities, and a stay in a genuinely enormous dorm called Jester Center, which resembled a prison and housed enough students to have its own zip code and two voting precincts). I never seriously considered attending UT; I always knew I wanted to leave Texas for college, and maybe forever. I didn't fit into the Dallas culture and I didn't particularly enjoy the sweltering heat or the swarms of bugs. I was doubtful that Austin could provide enough of a change, enough of a new world for my adult life.

And so it's been almost ten years since I was last a true Texan, at least the way I see it. I've been a temporary Virginian, a reluctant North Carolinian, a fairly miserable Californian, and a poor example of a Coloradan (I refuse to ski, snowboard, climb, hike, or camp, although I love the weather and the scenic beauty of the state where I reside). And I have invested all my energy for the last five years in my job and the organization I work for. It's been a great experience - full of challenge, adventure, smart and dedicated colleagues, and steep learning curves. But living in three states in the last five years with no family or friends to provide a community means that my social life is almost nonexistent outside of work. I live by myself, I shop by myself, I eat by myself, I often see movies by myself - and it's only gotten harder to make friends outside of work, since my free time is precious and I am often too exhausted to make an effort to meet anyone new.

So I have almost decided to make a change. It's scary in this economy to think about leaving a secure job in which I am valued and respected, where I get along with my colleagues and boss and am constantly learning and challenging myself. But work isn't everything. And I'm tired of going for months and sometimes years without seeing family because they're so far away that I can't afford to visit them.

Austin would be an ideal location if I were looking to reconnect with family - I would be far enough away that I wouldn't feel stifled after years of independence, but close enough to visit easily. It's a liberal oasis in Texas, so I think I could find a lot of like-minded people there. I would have ample opportunity to do the things I enjoy - the music scene is one of the best in the country, there is a large film industry, etcetera, etcetera, etcetera. I would have the chance to live with my best friend again.

Then again, I'd have to re-adapt to 100+ degree temperatures for weeks on end, a winter with precious few crisp and chilly days and no snow, small hills rather than mountains in the distance, humidity, bugs, and Republican politicians. All things that have the potential to make me very unhappy.

So I took this trip to explore the city and hang out with some Austinites, in order to get a feel for the city and see if I could imagine myself living there. I flew into the airport on a Friday afternoon and Ruth, my incredibly generous hostess (whom I had only met once, eight or so years earlier, and who is one of my BFF's best friends from high school), left school early to pick me up. She is an incredibly easy person to feel comfortable around, which boded well - I was a little apprehensive that staying with someone I barely know could prove awkward, but I lost that apprehension within ten minutes. We drove around the city a bit and then she took me to the South Congress Alamo Drafthouse for a movie and some delicious grub. (The Alamo Drafthouse movie theaters are definitely a huge PRO on my list of pros and cons about the city; great movies plus great food plus beer? YES.) Then we headed back to her South Austin neighborhood and I hung out and played with her cute Cockapoo puppy Beignet (aka Benny). That night I enjoyed the wonders of cable TV while Ruth caught a show at the Austin City Limits music festival at Zilker Park.

The next day we grabbed brunch at the Galaxy Cafe, where I enjoyed migas with veggie refried beans and tortillas and french-press coffee. Then Ruth dropped me off to explore downtown while she went back to Zilker Park for the big festival day. I was on my own all day, and I wandered all over 6th Street, up to the Capitol, and then down South Congress, which is a recently gentrified, still funky area filled with great stores and restaurants. It was pouring rain on and off all day, and I spent my fair share of time dawdling in restaurants and cafes to stay dry. Fortunately I'd brought an umbrella and sturdy Chaco hiking sandals, and the weather was very warm, so it was actually nice being out in the rain. I finally tired myself out around nightfall down on South Congress, and I called a cab (which took a solid hour and a half to arrive, due to festival crowds and busyness) to take me back to Ruth's.

On Sunday we went to brunch again, this time at the Satellite Bistro, which was one of the best places I ate all week. It was in a random strip mall in South Austin, but the restaurant itself was chic and the food was amazing. We had bottomless mimosas, coffee, a shared plate of mini croissants with strawberry compound butter, and then I had the Launch Pad breakfast, which consisted of two fried eggs, bacon, super-delicious scalloped potatoes, and a couple of mini pancakes. We topped off the meal with a slice of the green tea cheesecake, which is - here I go with the hyperbole again - the best cheesecake I've ever had. Neither of us could eat more than a few bites after the epic brunch, so we took it back to Ruth's and I finished it the next day for breakfast. After brunch, Ruth drove me back uptown to the UT area, where we walked around and did some shopping on the Drag. We both drooled over the display of adorable Where the Wild Things Are merchandise at Urban Outfitters, and I bought an "Austin-City of Music" tee at one of the University stores. We went back downtown after that and caught an afternoon showing of Whip It! at the Alamo Drafthouse on 6th Street. There was a surreal moment at one point when I realized that all the places the characters were shown in a montage were places I'd been over the last couple of days, since the movie was filmed in Austin - and there was even a shot of the characters in the Alamo Drafthouse theater where I was watching the movie! We finished up the day with dinner at Chuy's, an Austin-based Tex-Mex staple that has restaurant locations up in Dallas as well.

On Monday, Ruth left for work and I braved the Austin bus system. It took me awhile to reach the closest bus stop - I definitely wouldn't live in Ruth's neighborhood unless I was working somewhere around there and had a car, as she does. I think I walked almost a mile and then waited for about fifteen minutes to catch the bus. The bus system is somewhat similar to Denver's in terms of convenience - pretty easy if you live near downtown, but not at all convenient if you're farther away as Ruth is. I had to catch two buses to get downtown from her neighborhood and it took me about an hour and a half. I will say, however, that the buses are admirably cheap - I paid, I think, $1.25 for a day pass. Once I was down there, I wandered around for awhile, then caught a bus up to the Hyde Park neighborhood north of UT. This is one of the neighborhoods I've looked at when thinking about moving, so I was curious to see it in person. It was very leafy and quiet, full of little old houses and a few apartment buildings. I felt like it was a bit removed from the vitality of downtown, though if I had a car or was a UT student it would probably be very convenient. I had lunch at the Hyde Park Bar & Grill and caught a bus back downtown to wander some more that afternoon. I finally made it back to South Austin around the same time that Ruth got home from work. We decided on barbecue for dinner, and Ruth took me to the closest Rudy's, a local barbecue chain whose locations are all attached to gas stations. The guys behind the counter let me taste all the barbecued meats - extra moist brisket, extra lean brisket, and smoked turkey - and the excellent creamed corn before we ordered. We decided on some extra moist brisket, a couple of pork ribs, some smoked turkey, creamed corn, new potatoes drenched in butter, and potato salad. They gave us shiny white paper to use as "plates" and all of our meat and sides on a tray with some classic white bread on the side, and we added our fixin's and tore in at one of the family-style tables. I finished up with some homemade banana pudding (taken back to Ruth's and eaten later, since I had to let my stomach make some room again).

(This was - here comes the hyperbole again! - probably the best barbecue meal I've ever eaten. It was so good that on Tuesday, for lunch, I ate the leftover plain barbecued meat. On its own. Honestly I think it might be worth buying a car if I were living there just to be able to drive to places like this).

Tuesday was my last full day in Austin, and I was starting to feel a bit under the weather, so I stayed at Ruth's and watched endless re-runs of the Golden Girls and Roseanne and various TLC reality shows while playing with Benny. I ate the leftover barbecue and some Blue Bell ice cream and pretty much just vegged out, happy as a clam, until the evening, when my brother's friend Will Dupuy came and picked me up for dinner. I don't actually know Will that well - we never hung out in high school - but he and Kevin have remained friends, and I had seen him once a couple of years ago when the bluegrass band he played with came to Denver and again a couple months ago at Kevin's wedding. He lives in a neighborhood close to Ruth's, so he took me to a local Louisiana-style place, Evangeline Cafe, where we drank Abita Seasonal Pecan Ale and I had a delicious sauteed catfish over steamed rice with crawfish macque-choux while listening to the live music at the cafe.

The next day I left Austin and flew back to Denver, glad to be home and out of the hot, muggy weather, but reluctant to leave the friendly atmosphere and excellent food of Austin. I was a little disappointed that I didn't get a stronger feeling either way about the city as a potential residence; I liked it, but I wasn't happy with the weather, and it didn't instantly grab me the way Charlottesville or Denver did.

So I'm still trying to make up my mind, and it won't be an easy decision. I have to come to grips with the fact that I can either live in a city that I'm familar with, that has weather and scenery I love, and stay safely employed but socially stunted and often lonely, or move to a city where I'd have to get my bearings all over again, re-adjust to central air conditioning and swimming pools being a necessity for most of the year, and find a new job, but actually have a life.

But for now? It's all up in the air.

Fall Travels, Part One: A California Wedding

The last time I posted I had just gotten into the spirit of the summer, and now, as I type this, there is snow on the roofs of buildings and unmoved cars. The ground is, as yet, bare; and even the snow that lay on the grass yesterday after the showers is gone. Only leaves, pale orange and gold mingled with green and brown, remain. They are scattered perfectly over the sidewalks and yards and their muted colors are the lone clue that we aren't on the East Coast.

Colorado hasn't fully relinquished the summer or fully committed to the winter. Tomorrow it may be 70 degrees, but today I had to don a fleece vest under my winter coat just to walk to the coffee shop. The autumn is my favorite season but I've felt shortchanged of it in the last few years. This weather, while I prefer it to the 90-plus-degree temperatures I encountered last week in Texas during my vacation, feels wrong. Where are the cool, crisp sunny October days I remember from my childhood in Dallas? Or the brilliant leaves I found in Virginia? I want to walk through the trees and crunch dead leaves underfoot, damn it. Or throw open my windows to let in the brisk air while I bake an apple pie from perfectly ripe seasonal fruit. WHERE are my Granny Smith apples?

I should perhaps explain that, at the moment, I'm suffering from a particularly nasty cold, which I suspect I caught on the packed plane ride to Austin but which didn't strike me down until the day before my vacation ended. So I missed two days of work and I've been out of my pajamas for approximately five hours in the last four and a half days.

It may be affecting my mood.

But here's what I've been up to since the last post. Work, work, work, a few dates (more on that later, perhaps, though I should probably be circumspect given that this is a public site), spending too much money, eating and drinking too much - all business as usual.

And several memorable trips.

The first was to Los Angeles over Labor Day weekend. My older brother got married on September 5th and I was there as a groomsmaid. I worked my tail off to make sure I had everything in the office taken care of before I flew out on Friday the 4th, and then I got up around 4 a.m. to catch the shuttle to DIA. By the time I got to LAX, I was exhausted both mentally (my fear of flying tends to make any air travel An Event) and physically (see the 4 a.m. wakeup time). I had to cab it to the hotel, since my mother's checked luggage had been lost the day before and my brother's fiancee was supposed to be taking her out to shop for new clothes. After a grumpy exchange with the cab driver, who thought I should know the address of the El Segundo Courtyard Marriott (I didn't), I wound up in the right place and found that my mother's clothes had arrived late the night before. Half an hour later I was whisked away by the bride to join her and her sisters and a couple of friends for lunch and mani/pedi treatments - all very nice, since it was her treat. All I wanted to do, however, was lay on the hotel bed and veg out in front of the TV. As a result I was quieter and somewhat snappier than usual.

Sitting in a massage chair with coastal breezes blowing through the door of the nail salon, however, revived me to an extent. I didn't talk to anyone for an hour or so, and it was wonderful. After that we headed back to Kevin and Sarah's to set up for the rehearsal dinner. As people started to arrive I perked up some more - they were mostly folks I had only met a couple of times, but everyone was congenial and excited about the following day. We practiced the rehearsal and Sarah teared up as she pretended to take her vows (which of course made me teary in sympathy). After that we had a casual backyard dinner with tasty sandwiches, chips, fruit, salad, and beer. I fell into bed rather late and the next thing I knew it was Saturday.

Around 8 a.m. on the wedding day, Sarah and her bridesmaid Erin picked us up and drove us to the salon in Moorpark, Euodia Salon, so we could get prettified. I had a very chatty and vaguely familiar-seeming stylist named Rebecca who gathered my hair into a crazy mass of curls pinned back to look like a cascading updo, and applied about three pounds of makeup (false lashes and all) to my face afterwards. I recoiled a bit at first, since I'm as low maintenance as you can get, but I got used to the beauty pageant look after awhile and upon seeing the rest of the girls I was glad I looked just as made up. We went to Sarah's parents' house in Moorpark for lunch and to get dressed, and eventually we got out to the wedding site at Rancho de las Flores. It was beautiful - despite the inland fires, there wasn't a cloud in the sky, and all the views were gorgeous. I was reminded of the Santa Barbara wine country. The afternoon went by in a blur of photos, and eventually it was time for the ceremony.

The wedding ceremony was short, sweet, and absolutely unique - really fitting to everyone involved in it. It included a quote from A Farewell to Arms, a personal story by the officiant (an old friend of the bride and groom's), and even some audience participation. All of it took place under an open-air arched walkway covered with flowers. I never completely stopped crying until we went back into the bridal dressing room to sign the papers (Sarah's sister Ana and I were the witnesses).

After all of us were presented to the guests, we joined in on the cocktail hour with wine, beer, sangria, and some amazing appetizers - deep fried artichoke hearts stuffed with goat cheese were the biggest hit, but there were also mushrooms stuffed with chicken sausage and some mini chimichangas. Dinner was a buffet consisting of grilled tri-tip steak and barbecued chicken, jalapeno mac and cheese, salad, grilled vegetables, and bread. And we followed it up with toasts given by some of the parents and siblings, dancing, and a dessert bar with a small red velvet wedding cake, mini cheesecake bites, mini creme brulees, brownies, berry cobbler with nutmeg ice cream, and homemade cookies. We were all stuffed and tired by the end of the night, and I dozed most of the way back to El Segundo.

The next morning we all met at a park near the couple's apartment and had bagels and juice, and everyone mingled until most of the guests had to head to the airport. My cousin Sarah, my friend Allen, and I went back to our hotel, swam in the pool for awhile, and then met up with the bride and groom for a delicious dinner at the newly opened El Segundo franchise of The Habit, a favorite hamburger stand of mine when I lived in Santa Barbara. I headed back to Denver the following day, tired, happy, and aside from a slight allergic reaction to something in the pounds of eye makeup I was wearing at the wedding, healthy.

My favorite memories from the weekend:

-Walking down the aisle to "Here Comes the Sun", which was played on acoustic guitars by a couple of musician friends of Kevin's (this started the tears. it was absolutely beautiful).
-A moment of silence at the ceremony for our grandmother and Sarah's grandfather, both deceased in the last several years (this kept me crying)
-My new sister-in-law telling me how glad she was that I was her new sister and that we are family
-Dancing with my nieces and doing the Twist with my dad
-Getting to see so many family members and friends in one place (I looked around several times and marveled at how surreal it was to have my dad and his mom, my sister and her kids, my mom and her brother and sister, my brother's old friends, and my new family all together)

Next up: Fall Travels, Part Two: Eating My Way Through Austin.

Tra La La

It's Saturday and I'm sitting in the coffee shop closest to my apartment because they, dear reader(s), have free Wi-Fi, whereas my apartment (which is supposed to) does not. At least, not for me. I think it might be a dead zone. Or full of evil Internet-hating spirits. Something creepy in any case.

I'm happy that it's the weekend, though I also feel guilty for sitting here dicking around instead of doing productive things like exercising, or doing laundry, or grocery shopping, or cleaning my apartment. This is why three-day weekends would really be ideal: you would have time to do your chores like a good human, AND dick around on the Internet. (Why the sudden use of "dick around"? I don't know. I just like the way it sounds. Maybe I'm channeling Judd Apatow-speak after watching Funny People last weekend and part of Knocked Up last night).

I had an okay week this week, except that there is some kind of devil-pollen (of the weed variety, according to the counts on weather.com) that is causing the upper part of my lungs to close up and me to have to overuse my asthma medicine. So that sucks. I'm sure a lot of it is mental after awhile, too - the more I concentrate on breathing the harder it gets.

Which is why the last two nights I've had a ton of alcohol, because for whatever reason, drinking relieves allergic asthma symptoms for me when all else fails. I have no scientific explanation for this, although my friend Melanie had some blah blah thing about alcohol thinning the blood and moving oxygen through easier or something when we were talking about it at Rio's last night over their excellent and lethal margaritas. I would think it was completely in my head - some sort of relaxation effect or something - except that it works best with white wine, and okay with liquor, and not at all with beer, which is probably my favorite thing to drink on a regular basis. So who knows? In any case it's strange to go to the liquor store and buy a bottle of white wine and then consume half said wine for the express purpose of relieving asthma, like can I get any more blatant with the self-medicating?

But I'm feeling A-OK right now, so either I'm still feeling the effects of last night's 2.5 margaritas and 1.25 beers, or the pollen's just on its best behavior or something. I'm still in that part of the day where I'm contemplating all the things I could do - though most likely I'll get either laundry or groceries done and then go wander around South Broadway with Melanie so we have an excuse to go to Sweet Action ice cream again. (Also, the Big Lots down there is closing and I love me some cheap crap, so hooray for clearance sales).

This past Tuesday I went to Film on the Rocks at Red Rocks with Anna and Melanie. We got there pretty early but still had mediocre seats - apparently there are a lot of people with nothing better to do who get there like mid-afternoon and take up the entire center section. We all ate brats and drank overpriced Bud Light as we waited for the sun to set. It took forever for the movie to start, as even after it got dark the Film on the Rocks people had to blather on about all their sponsors etcetera. Not to mention the local band, Opie Gone Bad, which played a seemingly interminable set beforehand and whose members were having way more fun, for the most part, than those of us in the audience listening to them.

But it was worth the wait. Is there any more fun summer night activity than watching Ghostbusters with ten thousand other people on a giant screen in a beautiful outdoor amphitheatre in 75-degree weather? I doubt it. The best part was that every time the theme song started up, and asked the question, "Who you gonna call?" pretty much all ten thousand of us shouted "Ghostbusters!" and then sang along with the electric guitar part that followed. Excellent. I would definitely go to Film on the Rocks again. And since this post is getting ridiculously long, I'll wrap it up with a few pics from my Film on the Rocks experience. And remember:

"If someone asks you if you're a god you say YES!"

More Summer Fun: Pools, Potterfest and Water World

Now that the summer's halfway over I've finally gotten into the spirit of the season. My last two weekends included:

-A long meandering stroll east through Capitol Hill and Congress Park, all the way to the Tattered Cover on Colfax and then back past the Congress Park pool on my way home (it was unfortunately closed for a youth swim meet, but it looked awfully nice).

-A trip to the other pool near me (at 11th and Osage, which seems like a neighborhood on the verge of sketchiness but was fine, at least, during the day when I was there), which was surprisingly (and pleasantly) almost deserted on the 4th of July.

-A viewing of Away We Go at the Mayan Theater on Broadway, which is old and cramped and has tiny screens but which I love anyway for its tacky Mayan decor (it resembles nothing so much as my favorite Tex-Mex restaurant back home) and upstairs bar, where you can buy a beer, a glass of wine, or a cocktail to take into whatever indie film you're there to see.

-A Harry Potter movie screening festival at my friend Hope's awesome 90-something-year-old Tudor house, which is worth a trip out to Wheat Ridge in itself just to tour. I came for the last three movies and brought my bastardized version of an English Trifle, which was a great success (recipe below).

-A day at Water World, Colorado's largest water park, for my friend Melanie's 27th birthday celebration. Melanie, Anna, Alexandra and I headed all the way out to Thornton and spent the day on various rides (several of which I, as Queen of the Wusses, opted out of and spent floating in a circle on the Lazy River) and getting suntanned (and sunburnt, in Anna's case). Not even the forty-five minutes or so of thunderstorms were enough to get us to leave. We were all exhausted and dehydrated by five p.m., but agreed that we all got our thirty-five or so dollars' worth from the visit. It was my first water park trip in about fifteen years, and I'm glad to say it was at least as fun as an adult as it was for me as a kid, even if I did have to wander round blind all day.

-Finally, a screening of Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince, which I saw on Wednesday night. I wasn't quite crazy enough to catch the midnight showing, though it was tempting until I realized I'd have to work the next day ... Nonetheless I very much enjoyed it and am geekily planning to see it again this weekend, since I felt that my giddiness on Wednesday might have clouded my ability to judge the actual merits of the film. And also, I just want to see it again. :-)

Bastardized English Trifle

1 Entenmann's butter loaf cake, cubed or otherwise sliced into small pieces
Amaretto Liqueur
Instant vanilla pudding mix
Cold milk
Strawberry preserves
Sliced strawberries
Sliced peaches
Cool whip
slivered almonds

First make the pudding according to the package directions (which will require the milk). It should chill for at least 5 minutes or until it is set.

Fill the bottom of a glass bowl with a layer of the cubes of cake. Drizzle Amaretto over the cake. Spread a layer of strawberry preserves over the cake layer and then a layer of strawberries and peaches over that. Spread a layer of pudding over the fruit. Repeat the layers and then spread cool whip over the top of the trifle. Sprinkle with almonds if desired and chill for at least an hour or until serving.

Summer

It's been awhile since the last post, mostly because I've been too busy at the office and haven't had any internet access at home (my wireless stopped working for me entirely a couple months ago, and I still haven't gotten around to calling the property managers to complain). I have almost completely recovered from the Lotion Incident, except for a few scars on my legs that look like mosquito bites. The only reason I even know they're from the allergic reaction is that Denver is freakishly (and awesomely) mosquito-free. It's one of my favorite things about the Mile High City. Sure, if I were to go hang out by a lake or other large pool of stagnant water, I'm sure I'd manage a bite or five - the mosquitoes find me very easily when there are any number of them at all - but in the drier areas of the city, even this year with all the rain we're having, I remain blissfully unbothered.

In the spirit of my mosquito-free summer I thought I'd post a list of my favorite summer things.

1) Long, long hours of daylight. Even when I stay at the office till an unreasonable hour I still have a good shot of getting home before dark. And I actually *want* to get up in the morning.

2) Swimming pools. As a child I spent about 3/4 of my summertime submerged. I even love the smell of chlorine. Unfortunately I don't have regular access to a pool, but I plan to fix this next weekend over the 4th of July holiday. My mission is to find a pool and spend all day alternating between submersion and reading beat-up paperbacks.

3) Outdoor dining/drinking. Growing up in the blistering Texan heat and spending college and my first year after college in the swamplike Southeast, I never really understood the appeal of al fresco dining. Then, a little over four years ago, I moved to California, and eighteen months after that to Colorado. These are places where, once it gets to be June, it's warm during the day and cool at night. Perfect patio weather. No wonder everyone out West is so outdoorsy.

4) Movies. Sometimes, I'll admit, it's a stretch to find something I actually want to pay increasingly absurd amounts of money to watch, but there's nothing like retreating to the dark chill of a movie theatre with a bag of candy and a soda on a summer weekend. I've already been to the movies more this summer than I probably went in the previous nine months. Next big thing: Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince. I have been waiting for this movie forEVER, and I don't think it will disappoint. And I may even pay to see it more than once in the theatre, despite the $10.25 for a matinee price gouging.

5) Frozen treats. I often lament the general lack of ice cream parlors in my neighborhood, though there's a new one not too far away I've been meaning to try. Still, I'm jealous of my more settled Highlands-resident friends, who have access not only to the Sonic on Sheridan by Sloan's Lake but also the Dairy Queen. There are days when I'd kill for a blizzard. In the meantime I make do by buying and devouring loads of popsicles. Ahhhhh.

6) Summer clothes. Sandals are my favorite variety of shoe, chiefly because it's almost like not wearing shoes at all, which would be my preferred way to go around. I'm also not really a fan of sleeves, so I look forward with glee to tank top season (this is a bonus of working in a casual nonprofit environment). And long floaty dresses can be fancy or casual depending on what you pair with them, which takes a lot of guesswork out of getting dressed.

7) Baseball games. I'm not even much of a fan of the sport, but there's something about sitting down in the stadium (particularly Coors Field, which is right downtown and has lots of cheap seats, expensive microbrews, and a stunning view of the mountains and the Denver skyline if you sit in the Rockpile) with a bunch of people and watching the sun set and the huge lights come on. My attention drifts, but even so I don't miss much, since baseball is so slow.

8) Barbecues. They're like instant festivity. And it seems like half the people I know are always having some kind of cook-out replete with grilled meat, vegetables, and cold beer. Colorado's no Texas when it comes to grilling, but the weather's nicer (see #3).

9) Getting tan. I'm feeling particularly fond of the old-fashioned dangerous method of tanning after the Lotion Incident (and who can blame me?). I don't intentionally tan most of the time; I just walk around in the bright sun and don't wear much sunscreen. Sure, I'll probably be visiting the dermatologist in the next few years to check out all these moles I've acquired living in California and Colorado, but for the most part I tan as easily as one would expect with my Native American heritage, and I only burn if I'm at the beach or pool for hours on end. Not to mention my fat looks so much less hideous when it's brown.

10) The general air of vacation that settles on everyone. No matter how old we get or how busy our summers are (and mine are pretty busy, since the summer is our crazy season), everyone's just a little happier this time of year. We all feel a bit as if school has let out, and as if we're all just a step away from going on an exotic holiday.

And now that I've rambled on about the wonders of summer, I'd better get back to work. That's right. I'm at my desk right now catching up on everything I missed this past week, when I was out sick (in a most un-summerlike fashion) for two and a half days.

Nothing's perfect!

Always Follow the Instructions on the Bottle: A lesson on the dangers of vanity and impatience

I've been looking forward to this past weekend (Memorial Day) and my upcoming June 5-10 sojourn to the Southeast for months. I've been trying (with middling success) to drop a few pounds, and in the last few weeks I went crazy and racked up the credit card debt buying summer dresses, skirts, etc. in anticipation. Well, given that I live in Denver and the warm weather just arrived in earnest a few weeks ago, my legs are about the color of raw mushrooms.

Un. Attractive.

So I decided it would be a good idea to try the fake 'n' bake once more. Back in high school, before my junior prom, I bought a Neutrogena self-tanner (said to be the easiest to use since they're streak free, and Neutrogena is usually a safe bet for your skin) and used it to heighten the contrast between my pale green dress and my not-yet-summer-ready skin. It worked okay, though it wasn't as dark as I'd have liked. This time I bought a gradual build-a-tan lotion, also by Neutrogena, at target. Excellent, I thought proudly. I actually planned ahead! I will start building my tan a week before my trip to Dallas. I can wear tank tops and skirts and I won't look like a big lump of raw dough! So after my shower, in which I was careful to shave and exfoliate, I smeared some of the tanner on my skin. The bottle's directions, like all lotions, makeup, etcetera, said to test some on a small patch of skin first. Of course I ignored these. The lotion went on. Everywhere. I went to bed after carefully washing my hands (wouldn't want them to be orange, God forbid!).

The next day I woke up and my underarms were a little itchy, and I thought, I probably need to be more careful and not get any lotion under those. I knew (from several painful experiences with fragrance-containing deodorant) that the fragrance in the lotion might set off a skin allergy there. My legs, however, looked noticeably darker, as did my face and chest. So that night post-shower I smeared more lotion on my legs and a bit more around my collarbone, shoulders, and neck, careful to avoid the underarm area completely. And again I went to bed.

The next morning, I woke up looking not like a lump of raw dough, but like a crust brushed with pizza sauce. Or a very fair-skinned person suffering from heat rash. Or a child at summer camp who'd rolled down a hill covered with poison ivy. And I felt it too. My underarms were bright red, my chest, neck, shoulders and arms were mottled with red bumps, my inner thighs had dark red patches, and all of it itched. I also felt nauseated, as though I'd been poisoned. The only part of me unaffected by my toxic lotion allergy was my face, oddly enough.

I happened to have a doctor appointment scheduled that morning, and as my doctor finished her cursory examination of me for the physical, I sheepishly showed her the rash and asked for a recommendation of some kind of treatment. She recommended hydrocortisone, and I bought some at the pharmacy. I also decided to take daily antihistamines to try and calm the reaction.

And I took my antihistamines and I smeared myself with hydrocortisone. And I wore long sleeves and tried not to scratch. And after the second day, when the rash only looked like it had spread, I went home to take an oatmeal bath. Needless to say, by the time the holiday weekend rolled around, the last thing I wanted to do was expose any of my skin. It had gotten better, but I was still mottled and red and constantly itchy. I had to explain, over and over to every friend and family member I greeted in Dallas, that no, I was not contagious. Just vain and stupid.

Now my neck and chest look like a normal person's again, and my underarms have faded back to their normal mushroom hue. My immune system appears to have almost conquered this thing - way to go, I can't help thinking sarcastically. Thank GOD you overreacted to this lotion. Who knows what damage a masking fragrance could do to my cells? - but as I write this post, my upper arms and upper legs are still itching, itching, itching, and what makes it itch worse is knowing I have no one to blame but myself.

So kids, do yourselves a favor: always follow the directions on the back of the bottle. Even if you think you tried the product years ago, trust me, things can change. Formulas, your own immune system, your memory of which product you actually tried. As for me, I'm going back to my old, fail-safe tanning method: carcinogenic UV rays.

P.S.

This might become a food blog.

This is shaping up to be a carbalicious month

It's been awhile.

My blogging capabilities have been severely limited recently due to a) my apartment building's free wifi, like, NEVER EVER working, and b) all the crazy projects I've been slogging through while chained to my desk.

The funny thing is I'd actually be pretty into these projects if I weren't so pressed for time, and if my magnanimous coworkers didn't flatter me by assuming I am more knowledgeable/skilled/quick than I am. As it is, though, I've got no time to breathe this month, my resolution to go to the gym at least three times a week is becoming a joke, and my normal, nonchallenging but still somewhat important tasks are getting pushed aside. And I feel simultaneously exhausted and frustrated at how much work I'm doing and how slowly my projects are going, and guilty that I'm not doing more. Not to mention I'm driving myself crazy having to push back finish dates for projects; my hatred of being late for anything is pathological.

This situation coupled with the aforementioned lame wifi is tempting me to just go ahead and pay for internet. As much as I hate to sign any kind of telecommunications contract (why is it that phone/internet/cable companies have the worst customer service and the most devious fine print in the world?), I'm thinking it might be nice to be able to:

-leave work at a normal time
-go to the gym
-check my email at home
-work some more once I'm in my PJs and relaxed

I think it might go a long way towards assuaging my current work burnout. At the moment, though, my brain cells are all screaming for a vacation and the closest thing I've got coming up is a very short trip over Memorial Day weekend. And there's just so much to get done before May 22nd...

All in all, I can already tell that I'm going to be scarfing down a lot of pastries from the Tattered Cover cafe this month. Today's goodie? Possibly the most delicious peanut butter chocolate chunk cookie ever baked.

I miss school

About a million people I know have long weekends for Passover and/or Easter this weekend. Not me. Nope. Because I am neither a student nor a teacher (nor working for an organization affiliated with religion in any way, shape, or form).

I mean, I'm not religious or anything. I'm not going to church on Sunday. I'm not pretending to be all sad today because it's Good Friday. I'm not planning on eating ham and whatever else people eat for Easter dinner on Sunday (my family didn't really do the traditional Easter foods, other than the candy). But neither are about 90% of the folks I know who got yesterday and/or today off. Unfair!

I think I'm going to go buy some damn Reese's Peanut Butter Eggs or something now.

These are a few of my favorite things ...

Five of my favorite things right now (yeah, that's right, goin' all Oprah today. I had to counteract the heavy posts from before):

1) Planning trips. I've got one planned already (U.Va. Reunions in June, woohoo!), another in the works (Dallas, Memorial Day weekend - just have to buy the tix), and about three more in the early daydream stages (New York in the fall? Canada ... sometime? Paris 2013, anyone?)

2) Celebrity blogs/tweets. Yeah, I'm late on the bandwagon. But I find it oddly endearing to find out that Shaquille O'Neal really wants to break his diet and go to Dairy Queen (I feel you, Shaq. I feel you). My fave celeb Twitter pages so far: Felicia Day, Michael Ian Black, Wil Wheaton, John Mayer (he's a douche, but he's a funny douche) and Idris Elba (mostly for the sheer number of times he uses "yuh mon" and "fanks." SO British! and he was Stringer Bell!)

3) Pandora radio. This has been a favorite thing of mine for awhile but it deserves a shout-out. My stations are becoming more and more refined -- I do get lots of repetition but it's mostly songs I love, and I'm still finding new and interesting artists. And I listened to romantic piano solos for nearly a whole day earlier this week. So much Chopin and Field and Schumann. So calming and gorgeous. Really made me miss playing the piano.

4) Fug Madness. I really don't care about March Madness, even though almost my whole office has gotten into the thing with the brackets and they have a pool and whatever. The Fug Girls, however (see my link to Go Fug Yourself), have a (to me, anyway) much more entertaining spin on the whole thing. My favorite to win it all is SWINTON. Check it out.

5) Emerald Cocoa Roast almonds. Seriously, these things are addictive. I had to divide them into individual servings in ziploc bags last week so I wouldn't just cram the entire container's worth into my mouth while watching TV. They're roasted almonds, awesomely crunchy, lightly sweetened with a little dark cocoa powder. Excellent 3:30 pm snack - I always want something desserty then, but these babies have protein too. Next project is coming up with recipes in which to include them. I am open to suggestions and I'll certainly post about anything delicious I invent.

by the way ...

I'm sure I'll have something cheerful to post eventually.

Unfortunately my habit is to write in a heavy and introspective manner. And I tend to blog late at night. Which means so far I'm really coming off as a glass-half-empty kind of person.

No Man Is An Island

... Any man's death diminishes me.

John Donne's words came back to me just now when I read about Natasha Richardson's sudden and tragic death. I knew of her mostly as Sally Bowles from the Cabaret cast recording soundtrack I've worn out, as one of the Redgraves, as Liam Neeson's wife. I can't honestly say I ever followed her, or made a concerted effort to view her work. But there's something in me that hurts to hear of her death, like it hurt when Heath Ledger died last year. I knew a lot of people who had similar reactions to that -- we were all sad, to the point of reflecting on it long past the normal celebrity-news attention span we have developed. And we were all embarrassed to be sad about someone we'd never met. Even people like my mother, whose celebrity knowledge is usually vague at best, confessed months later that she was still thinking about him.

I remember trying to pinpoint the reason for this unusually keen grief over someone I'd hardly ever thought about during his life. Am I really just that obsessed with Hollywood? I do spend a lot of time reading, talking, thinking about, and watching celebrity culture. I do feel, on some level, that I *know* these people, though of course at the same time I realize I don't.

Or was there a sense of identification somewhere in there - because after seeing him on film as a high schooler when I was, myself, in high school I felt a bit like we'd grown up together? Or maybe it was because his overdose, rather than from some typical heroin-and-coke-fueled celebrity orgy at the Chateau Marmont, seemed to stem from a completely understandable mix of depression, exhaustion, confusion, and just plain bad luck. Everyone I know has suffered from at least some of Heath's problems, and several of them (probably more than I'm aware of) have narrowly avoided sharing his fate. And a few *have* shared it.

Or maybe it comes down to fear. It's not enough that there are car accidents and homicides and heart disease and cancer and strokes; there are also accidental prescription drug overdoses. And fatal head injuries caused by minor falls. Probability for these kinds of events may be low, but as is demonstrated by the widespread phobia of flying (in which I unfortunately share), statistics mean nothing in the face of fear. Death can be so random. We try to work out, eat right, visit the doctor for physicals, avoid unnecessary risk; but we're unprepared to deal with these bizarre events. And if someone larger than life, with plenty of money and all of the security and care that can buy, can be snuffed out just like that? So can we. So can I. No one is safe.

So I guess it makes sense to be sad, even if it's about someone I've never met. It's not rational, but that's kind of what makes it human. We all share the same fears, and we all run the risk of our lives ending any day, from any random bit of bad luck. We're all connected in that way.

Every person's death does diminish us all.

Willpower vs. Stress: An Unfortunate Reminder

The past week and a half or so I've had to perform in two choir concerts (both on weeknights), layer my clothes like crazy every day since the weather has been so up and down, set all my clocks ahead for Daylight Savings Time and lose an hour of my weekend, take apart five old computers to remove the hard drives, figure out what's going wrong with one of the servers, fight a workplace plague that claimed almost all of my coworkers at one point or another, and use about half the albuterol in my inhaler thanks to all the tree pollen floating around.

Have I mentioned that I hate springtime in Denver? My allergies and asthma go nuts, work gets progressively busier, there are no holidays to look forward to (only summer, which is anything but holiday-like for us), the temperatures are summery one day and wintry the next, and there are hardly any flowers anywhere for more than a week or two. The best I can say for it is it's at least less torturous than the perpetual pollen-ridden Santa Barbara, where I lived before I moved here. But after growing up in Texas, where we routinely started swimming in our unheated backyard pool in March, and spending five years in the lush, green Southeast, I just can't appreciate the Colorado springtime.

Yes, I'm a cranky old woman. Thanks for pointing it out.

So anyway, I've been working to lose weight since the New Year and it's been going mostly well. I got into a gym routine and started carrying around a little notebook in which I enter everything I eat and corresponding calories (since I am lazy, and also have little to no willpower, this means I eat a lot of Lean Cuisine and other prepackaged foods. Oh, well. I'll cross the nuked-plastic-caused-cancer bridge when I come to it). That is, most of the time. Except when I decide to cheat, and then it's often too difficult (and shameful) to calculate the calories.

A couple of weeks ago, when I started having trouble breathing all the time (when I go to bed, wake up, walk a block or up a flight of stairs, and sometimes randomly at my desk) and waking up with a sore throat every morning, I decided to take it easy on the gym.

Mistake #1: disrupting an already fragile routine. Granted, since my asthma is partially exercise-induced, I try not to poke the beast any more than necessary when it's pollen season. But I should have found a less aerobic exercise so as to keep my momentum. Instead I used it as an excuse for a "vacation" from my good behavior. Since I was home at night, and bored, I decided to order takeout. Which turned into several days of takeout, buying junk food at the grocery store, eating random snacks at work, etcetera, etcetera, etcetera.

Mistake #2: exacerbating the problem by throwing my hands up with an "in for a penny, in for a pound" (or technically, in my case, three pounds and counting) attitude. I should be more careful, not less, about food when I'm not exercising - especially as food can also be really important in regards to my mental and physical health. I was especially tempted into all this because work has been busy and stressful, and I had the choir concert to worry about as well. I once read an article that described the results of studies that showed people have a finite amount of willpower (although luckily it can be increased with practice). Basically, if you're exerting too much willpower in one area you're much more likely to fail in others. I was concentrating on work and choir, and getting my other necessary things like laundry and groceries done, at the expense of the mental energy it takes me to stay on track with food and exercise.

Mistake #3: letting my mental energy lapse. I should always have a plan for ways to relax and de-stress. Enjoying myself and refusing to take life too seriously in my free time is what allows me the strength to do things I find difficult or scary the rest of the time. I know this, but I let myself slide into old habits, which only make things worse in the long run. Maybe rather than doing laundry I should have planned a trip to the library, or a long walk in the neighborhood, or an apartment-reorganizing project, or a non-food indulgence like a massage or a pedicure.

I realized today that my muscles are sore (maybe because on Wednesday I went back to the gym after a two week absence, or maybe just from recent tension) and that my plan to 'reward' myself with a massage once I get back on track was flawed. I can't deny myself pleasure and relaxation until I've been "good" again; I need to actively seek them so that I can be "good." Long story short, I scheduled a massage for tomorrow.

The Furniture Epiphany

I turned twenty-six in January. Not a major birthday, really. It was on a Monday, and I celebrated by taking the day off work - I went to the gym, went to my favorite hamburger place for lunch and spent the afternoon watching episodes of House on DVD, and that was it. There were no profound differences in my life to mark this birthday - I've been in the same apartment in the same city now for over two years, had the same job for over three, and remain as single as I was the day I graduated from college. But I did wake up with the keen awareness of being closer to thirty than twenty, and with that came an epiphany of sorts: I'm a grown woman, but my surroundings don't reflect my real life. How did I realize this? I looked around and noticed:

Everything in my apartment folds.

OK, not everything. Just everything serving as a seat or bed. I had two mismatched futons (one serving as my bed and the other as a drastically less comfortable spare couch/guest bed), a cushioned butterfly chair, and two flimsy wooden folding chairs.

I've been out of college and in the workforce for five years, I have my own place, and I'm a homebody who spends a lot of time in my apartment; I need a home that reflects those facts or I'll never feel like this is my real life. Cheap, folding furniture doesn't just indicate that I work for a nonprofit or live in a small space; it implies that my residence here is a temporary thing. That I could pick up and go with little effort at any point. That I wouldn't care if I had to leave all my furniture in an alley or sell it for twenty bucks on Craigslist because it was no more intentionally chosen or arranged than dorm room furniture. It's been very easy to prolong a college-student mindset in my life, because I've moved a lot and thrown myself into the culture of the organization I work for. In a way, I stumbled into the job I'm doing now, and for a long time I just went with the flow, committing for the minimum possible time, feeling sure I'd be leaving and finding a new career just as soon as I magically figured things out. I didn't bother trying to make friends or date outside of work, since I thought I'd just be leaving anyway. And then I woke up and realized that I like my job, I like this city. and even if I don't know where I'll end up or what I'll do when I get there, I can still live my life here, now, as if this is it. That I should.

So on my twenty-sixth birthday I made a resolution to put down roots. I decided to be conscious of living my life rather than just waiting for the next milestone to pass. Before the month was over, I'd made my first step towards acknowledging my life as a grown-up: buying a chair. A real one. It's stylish, it goes with the colors I like and already have in my apartment, it has a matching ottoman, and best of all? It doesn't fold.

For Serious

I've never been able to maintain any kind of diary, journal, or blog for longer than a month or so. But this is my year. This time it's for serious. Yeah.

Of course, like all journal/diary/blog entries I've ever written, this one is being created late at night. I should be asleep right now, but I've thrown my sleep schedule ridiculously far off.

Reasons I'm still awake at 2:35 a.m. on a Sunday:

- Stayed up till 4 a.m. on Saturday, slept until 1 p.m., so it only feels like ten or so at night
- Made and drank coffee (to prevent caffeine-withdrawal headache) normal length of time after weekend wakeup; which because of aforementioned late night meant the coffee happened circa 4:30 p.m.
- Went crazy on junk food while lazing around with DVDs and stomach is still full/hurting/spewing acid back into esophagus
- Shot of late night whisky (ew. still reminds me of slugs. but had just finished watching a delectable BBC series about a Scottish laird and was in the mood, and happened to have about a shot's worth of whisky in the cupboard.)

All of which make me sound like some kind of losery slacker college kid. Not that I have anything against college kids. But it concerns me that sometimes I feel that I act more like one now, at the age of twenty-six, than I did when I was actually matriculating.

One small comfort, I suppose, is that I don't feel like a college student. College students can shake these sorts of things off - I don't think I ever had a hangover until I was at least two years out of school, and there was an entire semester my second year where I got an average of four or five hours of sleep a night and seemed never to get sick. Not so now. Oh, and the last reason I'm still awake? It's Daylight Savings Time, so I lost an hour and only realized it at about 1:30 a.m. Yes, I'll eventually be glad for the longer daylight, but tomorrow (and Monday) I'll only mourn my missed sleep.