Good Fences Make Good Neighbors

I'm wondering if my nights of waking to fights, stereos, and gunshots may be coming to an end. The owners of the parking lot I live above have recently put up a 7 foot tall fence around their lot. The wimpy gate arm that was constantly being broken has been replaced by a stout, mechanized metal gate with a matching gate replacing the chain on the other end of the parking lot. Perhaps they've decided enough was enough and are ending club parking there.

I certainly would not be sad to see that lot sealed off. As much as I appreciate having some emergency parking close by for when I have lots of junk to unload, I wouldn't mind losing the Tuesday night brawls and bass-thumping jackasses. Of course, I'd also lose the interesting parade of characters that cut through the parking lot. It's not every day you see someone in a bright red suit with a big white hat strolling along past your window. Thank goodness ;).

Fringe Benefits of Public Transportation

The Postal Service lost a package I sent to a friend, and they sent me a form to describe the contents so they could look for them. They said that if they didn't find the package, I could take the form back to the post office for a refund of my postage. However, if I had sent them the form, I couldn't use it to get a refund.

So I went down this morning on the way to work to make a copy of the form. As I was tying up my bike, a guy was walking by me. As he approached, he began to speak. "It may be a piece of glass," he said, "or it's the best bus ride of my life." He held out his cupped hand as he walked by, revealing what appeared to be a large and shiny diamond. I said, "Woah!" and he continued on down the street.

Oh, Yeah! Weekend!

So I had a pretty good weekend. I finished up the parking map, made a pie, went to the barbecue for Tim with Jen, played some Ultimate Frisbee with a full stomach (bad idea), swam with Isaac and Elsa in their complex's pool (good idea!), went to church, got some coffee, did reading for Jen's spiritual direction course, and played some UpWords. I think I even got some Zuma in. Last night I even passed the formidable level 9-4. However, the very formidable level 9-5 stopped my advance.

Ok, off to work. I get to see The Dark Knight tonight!

Peaches and Broken Glass

Peaches, I believe, are one of the ways God tells us He loves us. The fruit is so sweet and juicy and has a pleasing texture on both the inside and the outside. Even the color is beautiful. Plus they allow me to make peach pie, which I did today for Tim's going away barbecue. I even made the pie with a normal amount of crust rather than the one and a half recipe I normally use. My mouth is watering as I glance over at the pie. Mmmm.

I need this fruit-shaped assurance of God's love as I look around at the results of the irresponsibility and anger of the people who live around me. As I walked to try to find a copy store open on Saturday, I walked past myriad shattered bottles, garbage, and cigarette butts. One guy in front of me even flicked one out as a was walking behind him. Near the trash room on my floor, someone had set out some decorations that they no longer wanted, and someone smashed them up and left them strewn around the area. People are so stupid.

At Long Last! The Parking Map!

It's been a long time coming, but I finally have finished the parking map I've been working on intermittently for the past year. It's not a whole lot to look at, but I'm pretty pleased to be done with it. You can check it out at http://www.turbidwater.com/parking. Yeeha!

Pictures of Blue Lake

So, I forgot my camera when Jen and I went up to Blue Lake. Fortunately, Jen brought hers along and she was nice enough to let me not only touch her camera, but to take pictures with it too. I didn't quite get enough to warrant an entry in the gallery, so here's the pictures from our hike.

Flowers growing in the middle of a rushing stream.
The view up the valley towards Mt. Toll and Blue Lake.
A grand staircase style cascade of snow melt.

Jen and Mt. Toll above Blue Lake
Me, Jen, and Ice Floes on Blue Lake

Last Night

Man, I can't even come up with a good blog post title right now. Sad.

Anyway, last night I ended up working way late finishing up a cool little pod for Connect. I was supposed to meet Laura and the Turners for some downtown entertainment, so I rode straight downtown from work and we wandered along the 16th Street Mall. I bought myself some socks to prepare for the evening ahead. I locked up my bike and we went up to the Lucky Strike bowling alley lounge thing and got dinner. The food was all right; nothing special. We then did some bowling in the art bedecked lanes and my new socks were no luck charm, cuz I came in last. Maybe they're cursed socks?

I then rode home through empty streets, avoiding the traverse down into Cherry Creek and back up. The ride up Capitol Hill was hard enough with the burger in my gut. Perhaps it was good that I didn't go down to the bike path. This morning there was evidence of flooding during the night. Debris and silt were on the trail in certain patches, so even though we're missing our afternoon showers, evidently we got some rain last night. Flash flood: dodged!

Won't Be Long Now

Eeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeee! Neal Stephenson finally has another book coming out! He's one of my favorite authors, so I am stoked to hear that his new novel ANATHEM is coming out September 9th. I can't wait to get my grubby little mitts on it and bask in the geeky wonder of it all.

If you're unfamiliar with Neal Stephenson, I recommend you grab a copy of Snow Crash and dig in. Then move on to Diamond Age, Cryptonomicon, and the Baroque Cycle trilogy. Super good stuff.

Dr. Horrible is Wonderful

Oh, and if you're any shade of nerd, you should absolutely, positively watch Dr. Horrible's Sing-a-long Blog. Having just watched the last installment, my only gripe is that there were only three episodes. Gimme more, Joss Whedon!

UPDATE: Whoops! Looks like they took down the free version at midnight on the same day I posted this. Now you have to buy through iTunes or wait for the DVD.

Fail!

I tried to go see the new Batman movie today. Didn't work out so well. First I swung by Best Buy to pick up the Protection album by Massive Attack; an album inexplicably absent from my collection. Not only did they not have it, but they only had one disc at all from them. Sad. I then tried to get to the theater, only to sit through three lights trying to make a left turn into the theater center. When I made the turn, there was a line for getting into the parking lot. I chose a different parking structure further away and quickly strode over to the theater only to see that every showing for The Dark Knight was sold out. I was trying to hit the IMAX showing, but no dice.

So I headed up to the grocery store to stock the ol' larder. After almost being hit in the parking lot, I swam through seas of shopping carts and toddling shoppers. By the time I got out with my pasta and apples, my I-Hate-People index was pretty high. After the glorious day Jen and I had in the mountains yesterday, I think I was still trying to live in the relative solitude of the trail. But throw me in bad traffic in 100 degree and well ... let's just say I'm ready for my hermit's cabin.

To Blue Lake and Back

Yesterday Jen and I drove up past Nederland and through Ward to go to the Brainard Lakes area. Our goal was to hike up to Blue Lake in the Indian Peaks wilderness. We got up to the pay station for the area and were told that we couldn't go in because the campground was full. Evidently all the parking was taken or something. Luckily, two cars came out right as we got there and we got to proceed ahead through the crowded campground up to the Mitchell Lake trailhead. A note to cyclists from a cyclist: Sharing the road doesn't mean riding down the middle of a one lane road while a car is waiting behind you. Get over.

Finally we parked at the trailhead and started out on the really pleasant trail. We passed through spruce forests and over rushing streams bedecked with colorful wildflowers. We went along Mitchell Lake and then up through the valley beneath Mt. Toll past spectacular scenery. We got to Blue Lake and the weather was perfect: cool and mildly breezy, but not enough to require a windbreaker. We munched lunch and watched ice floes moving around the lake and white crowned sparrows flitting around. The view is tremendous of waterfalls cascading down the sides of Mt. Toll through a bowl and into the lake.

After lunch we wandered around the lake a little and saw huge marmots investigating hikers for possible handouts. They are so funny to watch. They moved a little bit like otters and look a bit like a beaver with a fuzzy tail swapped for the flat one. On the trip back down, we saw several more of the furry fellows and heard their sharp, piercing barks. We drove back down to Nederland and stopped in a coffee shop made out of a railroad car. We sipped some cool beverages to refresh ourselves from the pleasantly mellow hike.

Later that evening we went to Jen's parents' house for taco salad and appetizers and then watched some bits of the BBC's incredibly amazing nature documentary Planet Earth. The footage is nothing short of jaw-dropping. We watched the Ocean Deep section, and I was blown away by the footage of a feeding whale shark surrounded by a cloud of bait fish and swooping tuna. Science fiction and fantasy have not conjured anything quite so transfixing and amazing as the sight of this speckled behemoth surrounded by a swarm of fish so small that it appears as a cloud of smoke swirling around the titan. Add to that the wheeling and darting tuna picking off bait fish from the teeming school. Truly amazing.

Shard Free

What a wonderful night! The air is the perfect temperature for a stroll or driving with the windows down. I went down to south Littleton for a meeting about the church's website and on the ride back I left the stereo off and just opened the sun roof and windows and basked in the flow of air.

Also wonderful is that they finally cleaned up the broken glass outside my door. It took 2 weeks and 3 separate requests, but they finally did clean up the shards I was unable to sweep up. Man, I really need to get a vacuum cleaner.

The Radicalness

You are in the dark. Ahead you hear the scrape and stamp of feet coming towards you. Through the murk you spy sinister forms emerging from the gloom. What is this scary troop of monsters advancing towards you?
It's the Bamboo Zoo! Bamboo Zoo is a new series of vinyl art toys that I have started collecting. The artists behind it go by the fantastic name Peskimo. It's a collection of adorable little monsters. The picture above shows Maurice and happy, musical Hobson.
I saw the series on Net and knew I had to have them. The whole series looks great, though I have my favorites. After work on Friday I sprinted over to the store and got there 10 minutes before closing. I quickly grabbed 4 boxes out of the case, paid and drove home. Unfortunately, I discovered that I had two of my least favorites, Hobson and the troll Orr (above, right). I had Papa Bamboo (above center) with his interchangeable beards, and uh oh, I had duplicate of Hobson! The blind assortment gods had not been kind to me. Fortunately, Plastic Chapel, the local purveyor of Bamboo Zoo, graciously allows trading. So I grabbed my duplicate Hobson and returned today to the Plastic Chapel and traded him in for Onsen, the fastidious yeti to the left of Papa Bamboo.
I also decided to have another try at getting my favorites from the series, so I bought four more of the little critters. Now, I did not want to get duplicates, and in my browsing of the Web for info on the zoo's inhabitants, I saw someone who had bought a case of the figures and posted a map of where the different inhabitants were in the case. The map didn't match up with what I had drawn from the box, but it did show me that the more common figures were all bunched together on one side of the case and the more interesting ones were on the opposite side. I theorized that this might be the case with the case I was choosing from and picked from the opposite side of the case and never adjacent to each other. I was very well rewarded, getting my top two favorites of the series: The Tummy Toaster Terror (above, left) and Punga (above, center). I also got Maurice and one of the mystery figures, Miss Mishka (above, right). Woo hoo! That certainly made up for my lackluster draw the first time around.
The Tummy Toaster Terror is particularly awesome, because he has two little slices of toast that fit in his belly. They each have different expressions on each side. Also, the T3 has a little plug on his tail. Radical and adorable. Oh, and in case you were wondering why a man going on 30 is buying little vinyl toys. The explanation is clearly printed on the bottom of each box: "This is a work of art, not a toy." So, there!

Eight down, and eight to go! (Plus the color alternate of Miss Mishka. Can't forget that!)

Loveland Pictures

Hey, the pictures from our Loveland excursion are up. You can see them in my gallery.

Loveland

Yesterday Jen and I grabbed some Indian food from Little India. After we grabbed it, we ate it, and it was good. This is what you should do with food after you have grabbed it. We then went up to Loveland. Jill, Dean, Tirzah and Mike were camping just outside Loveland and had invited us up for dinner and games. Before we made it to the campground, we stopped at the excellent sculpture garden in Loveland and had fun perusing the art.

Then it was time for campground games. We played ImagineIff and Sheryl, who joined us in the festivities won handily. We then barbecued meat and had a good meal before bringing out the smores. I experimented with stuffing the chocolate into the marshmallow and then toasting it, but I find that the traditional way is both easier (I lost two marshmallows off the skewer! Unheard of!) and more gratifiying, keeping the chocolate crunchy.

On the way home, we stopped randomly in Loveland to get gas and struck the jackpot. There was a station selling gas for $3.86 a gallon! That's like the price from 2 months ago. Compare that with the gas I saw this morning for $4.19 a gallon. Also, on the way home we ran into our first DUI checkpoint and got checked out by the police. Jen noted that since she had done DUI clinic training before, we were wise to the wily ways of alcohol in an automobile. Not a real exciting first, but a first nonetheless.

Pictures are coming! Stay tuned!

Magical Beer

Man, it was stinking hot today. I sweat more than I care to mention. And right before we went to a meeting with a client, Flex decided to blow up and not compile my projects, so I was doing a little sweating there, and thankfully during the meeting I got it up and running again.

Yesterday, I went up to Boulder and Jen and I went out to Southern Sun and got some burgers and beer. But this is magical beer. Jen had their Anapurna Amber, which magically had no aftertaste. I had the spearmint/lemongrass wheat beer, which is about as odd as the name suggests. First you taste mint, and then beer. Very odd, but pleasant. What was more odd is that after I drank some of it, my lips began to burn as if someone had rubbed a cut jalapeno across them. Jen however did not feel those effects, so I gave her my beer and got a Java Porter. Why Java? Because it has coffee in it. And you know what? It's good. It's really good. It's smooth, creamy and has a coffee flavor to it. Why, it's magically delicious!

Long Weekend

Man, that was a busy weekend. I can't even begin to tell you ... okay, I'll tell you.

So Friday, which was gloriously free from Flex, skinning, or computer work of any kind was spent baking. I made a pear ginger pie and the ever scrumptious garlic cheese biscuits. Jen came down and we took our baked goods to the 4th of July barbecue at David's house. The barbecue consisted largely of eating, drinking, chatting, and spinning small children around on office chairs. The next day Jen and I went to the Cherry Creek Arts Festival and perused the creative wares.

There was some really neat stuff there and I wrote down names of quite a few talented artists. Sigh. Some day I'll have the means to spend hundreds of dollars on something with the sole purpose of looking good. I searched the Web for sites of artists I liked, with the idea that I could possibly get some art in return for making a website for any of the artists who didn't have a website. I found one, so we'll see if I get the momentum to follow through on that plan.

One interesting encounter came while I was looking at some photographs. One beach scene in particular looked very familiar to me. I went over to the photographer and asked if that particular picture was of Meyers Beach south of Cape Sebastian in Oregon. He was genuinely surprised and said I was the first person to ever correctly guess that. Turns out he lives near Brookings, just south of my home town of Gold Beach. While we were talking about Curry County, a couple came up and was standing nearby. The photographer asked if they had any questions. No, they said, but they were also from Curry County. The woman was from Brookings and the man from Gold Beach. They had lived there long before my family moved there, but man, that's a small world. The man and the photographer even knew someone in common. I also learned that there was a third mill in Gold Beach that I had never even known about. (It was across from where the Hunter Creek Lumber Yard is now. Makes sense.) Anyway, it was definitely a small world moment. Here we are hundreds of miles away from Curry County and three separate groups from that small, rural area met in the middle of a metro area of several million people.

After the art, Jen and I visited the Cherry Cricket and I finally got my burger from there. I hadn't been back since leaving for Orlando. Soooooo good. Later that evening we went to Isaac and Elsa's for some fantastic Mexican food and some Settlers of Catan. Isaac absolutely drubbed us, having evidently charmed the dice to roll for no one but him. It really was a spectacular thrashing.

On Sunday, I made the trip to church and talked with Pastor Scott, who also happens to teach at Denver Seminary, about a particularly troubling passage from Ezekiel. I may have some more musings about that later. Then I came home and napped for a bit before heading to Floyd's Barbershop. It's a bit more expensive than Great Clips or Supercuts, but it is absolutely worth it. No screaming kids, people who actually ask how you want your hair, and free massage and a neck shave with hot lather. For $4 more, I think it is totally worth it.

That evening, Jen, Laura, Debbie Mink and I grabbed some dinner at the Morrison Inn before joining some other people for a free concert by the Colorado Symphony Orchestra at Red Rocks. It was a great concert. Of course, I'm biased whenever Hall of the Mountain King is involved. The conductor, Scott O'Neil, was very funny and personable, and it was great to hear the music I grew up on in a live setting.

Oh! I also passed Zuma's level 8-4. This makes me feel very good. I am incredible. I have surmounted a nigh-impossible challenge. Now onto the challenges of level 9.

See? It was a very busy weekend.

In Pieces

Welcome Home!
Here's some shattered glass for your doorstep! Oh? You're wearing sandals? Well, never mind that. Just lift your bicycle over the shards of fluorescent tubing. Wouldn't want to get a flat! I hope you like the shards of glass. Tomorrow's the 4th of July, so the cleaning crew won't be in. Have a great holiday!

The Hard Way

Huh. Nine posts ago or so, I had my 300th post on this blog. Whoops. Guess I let that one pass me by.

I decided to finish off the tapioca I had bought for the Anger Pie Challenge today. I had some leftover coconut from Easter and remnants of a bag of sliced almonds from my Kristina Kringle, so I whipped up a batch of tapioca pudding and added in the coconut, almonds, and a liberal helping of almond extract. It is good, but seriously, tapioca pudding has to be the least return for the time invested. You just can't make it spur of the moment. First, you have to soak the tapioca overnight. Tapioca is not a dessert of passion. It is a premeditated, cold-blooded dessert.

Once you soak it overnight, you mix it with some milk in a double boiler and let it slowly cook for an hour. Then you add in some egg yolks and sugar and cook it for yet another 15 minutes. Finally you can mix in the egg white and vanilla. That's a lot of effort for what turns out to be textured vanilla pudding.

During the cooking process, I was watching a bird outside my window. It was around the size of a large starling or blackbird, but with a very short beak. It had been sitting there for quite a while, and then I saw it struggling to get on its legs. It seemed to not be able to move the legs and it would flop around a bit with its wings. This is where, if I were more tender-hearted, I would rush down with a shoe box and nurse it back to health. However, cynical me figured that it had probably flown into a window and broken important things in its nervous system. Nothing I could do for it in that case other than fill it with terror by trying to capture and house it. If it was merely stunned, then it would soon fly off and trying to bring it inside would result in me having a panicked, pooping bird flying about my apartment. I did not want to end up like the opposum Samaritan. After a while I checked up on the bird and it was gone. Whether by flight or by cat, that was the end of that.