Fun With Mom

It's been a good week.

Last Sunday Greg arrived in town, and I went to the office and worked for awhile alongside him.  It was nice to see him, but we didn't get a lot of time to spend together on this visit.  This is because he was pretty busy on the database, and also because my mom was in town.  That was a busy weekend - I was running around all over the place to pick up things like an Aerobed, sheets, closet organizing stuff, etc and then spending a lot of time cleaning in preparation for her visit.

Mom arrived on Tuesday night, and we had dinner at Charlie Brown's and then stayed up late chatting, as is my normal tendency when faced with visitors I haven't seen in awhile.  On Wednesday we got up early and went downtown, where I had breakfast and we sat for a little while until I had to go to work.  That was a difficult workday - I was tired, and I knew I had to leave earlyish, so I had to be efficient.  I met up with Mom at six o'clock and we headed to Cafe Colore, one of my favorite restaurants downtown, for dinner.  I had a wonderful vegetarian angel-hair pasta dish which also featured pesto and goat cheese, and as soon as we were done eating we hurried over to the Pepsi Center for the Carole King/James Taylor concert.



It was amazing.  They both sounded great -- he sounded, in my opinion, even better than he did as a young man (maybe because his voice is a little deeper and less nasal), and although she had lost a bit of her high range, she rocked out as well.  They played a long show - there was no opening act, and they started more or less on time, and did two sets broken up by an intermission.  They had all of their original musicians from the 1970 performances, and I knew almost all the songs they played.  The crowd was excited, though from what I could tell I was one of the youngest people there.  We clapped along to some songs, sang along to others, and gave more standing ovations than I could count!

After the main show ended - with a very moving version of "You've Got a Friend" -- Carole and James came back onstage for two encores.  One of them included a duet of "Up On the Roof," which I had never realized was written by Carole King.  It was wonderful, and we had very good seats thanks to my mom. 

On Thursday I had to work again, and once again I was very tired, so afterward I came home and relaxed with my mom.  We watched Say Anything, which she had never seen before, and she loved it, of course.  Then we went to bed and slept in the next morning, which was really helpful.  On Friday we walked down to Washington Park to have brunch at Lucile's, then wandered back up towards Capitol Hill on Broadway, stopping to look in all the interesting stores.  We ate some Sweet Action Ice Cream, which is a given considering I'm obsessed with that place, and then came back to hang out and rest for awhile out of the heat.  That evening we had drinks and dinner with my coworkers to celebrate the new database and all of Greg's hard work.  I'd been to Osteria Marco once before, but had never eaten their food.  Mom and I shared a beet salad which featured spinach, walnut vinaigrette, and goat cheese, and a fig and crispy prosciutto pizza which (while light on the actual prosciutto) was delicious.  Everyone was in a great mood and it was lots of fun.

Saturday Mom and I hopped the B bus to Boulder.  We got there around late morning and glanced around the farmer's market, where I took some of the below pictures, before wandering up to Pearl Street and looking around all of their art galleries and yuppie stores.  We had lunch at a cute little bistro and then after some more window shopping headed back to Denver on the express bus.  When we got back to town, we went to the Pavilions theater and, realizing that Toy Story 3 wasn't starting for another hour and a half, decided to go to Inception instead.  It was fantastic!  Great effects, imaginative plot, and first-rate acting.  After the movie we stopped at Tony's for some gourmet cookies and then came back to my apartment to continue our impromptu Joseph Gordon-Levitt film fest by watching (500) Days of Summer on DVD.

This morning she headed out to the airport.  I'm a little sad, as I always am when visitors leave, but now I'm alone in the quiet of the apartment and the rest of the day stretches before me at will.  Ahhh.  Good fun in the summertime.