Wreck This Place

Well, I'm waiting and waiting and waiting. This project takes forever to compile. I wait 5 minutes just to see if my one character of code changed anything. Nope. Not this time. Sigh.

Thankfully, the wait for the Cake Wrecks book tour was over last night. Jen and John from Cake Wrecks came to promote their book, and a good time was had by all. People brought (Oh hey, that compile actually did something) cupcake replicas of previous cake wrecks for a contest (see below) and we got to hear a bit from Jen and John.

I got my book signed by Jen, and it turns out we know each other from Summit Church down in Orlando. (Hmm. That compile didn't do squat.) That's pretty cool.

While I was waiting in line to have my book signed, I saw a picture of Bill Clinton from when he did a book signing at the Tattered Cover. There was a signature on a letter too. His signature was so weird it looked more like Brie Chiston. However, more disturbing was that he had a copy of a Clive Cussler book in his hand. (Whoops. That compile caused a run-time error.) Really? The President of the United States was reading Clive Cussler? I mean, Cussler was fun when I was a teenaged boy in high school, but I grew out of him when I was a junior. That's just disappointing.

Cake Wrecks didn't disappoint, and if you haven't checked it out yet, secure your gut to prevent busting (oooh, that compile worked! Good results!) and take a trip through their archives.

At Home

So, Jen and I have completed the move into the new place. There are few things left do: a few pictures to hang, a few drawers to reorganize, some decor to arrange. Largely though, we are all moved in. I'll have some pictures up soon of the house for those of you that won't be here to warm the house personally.

Jen and I have been going full bore and have been quite exhausted. Work has been rather busy for me, and there is so much to do with the house and our stuff and reconciling the two. Friday we took a breather to do basic upkeep things and relax a bit with each other. Yesterday we did some chores and then made a day of going down to Denver. We went to a friend's child's birthday, wandered around Denver, snoozed in the park, and then went to dinner at one of Jen's friend's house in the Highlands area.

Today we went to church, our third visit to one of our candidates as a possible home church, and had a good time chatting with folks there in a different type of service that put people into small groups. It was quite nice, especially as newer folks. It allowed us to get to know some people without the awkwardness of just making conversation.

For the afternoon, I had planned on doing some small tasks that needed to be done around the house, including the laying out of downspout slabs (conveniently after our three days of rain), and following that with some good relaxing. However, that small task ended up turning into Jen and I pruning, weeding, and harvesting the small garden patch here. We have a garden put in by the previous owner that has just about everything I could ever hope for from a garden. We have basil, rosemary, peppers, raspberries, and tomatoes. Oh, yes do we ever have tomatoes. We harvested three heaping bowls of them (one all green due to an unfortunate pruning accident), and there are still more on the vine. We have quite the plentiful harvest. I am currently examining recipe options for green tomatoes. Fried green tomatoes, of course, but did you know there's a recipe for green tomato pie? Hmm.

The weird thing is: we both rather enjoyed it. Doing some light yard work and gardening felt really good. This may lead to dangerous roads ahead. We may become gardeners and become obsessed about our landscaping. We must be very careful...

Closing Time

I went for my last ride from the apartment, heading down south of South Boulder Road onto the gravel path that cuts through a beautiful greenspace over to Marshall Road. Fall is definitely here. There was wood smoke in the air and the temperature was low enough to make me wish I had not packed my gloves for the move. I'm also wishing I had not packed my camera. The dawn light cast the grass, barns and mountains in a gorgeous light. The plants are drying out and starting to show fall colors: red in grass stems, yellow on the leaves of bushes, buff from dried out stalks. This was all tinted with the haze of smoke and softened by some clouds veiling the sun.

Unfortunately, the camera on my cell phone can't take high contrast or low light pictures worth a darn. I only tried to take a few, as it was a frustration that the gorgeous morning did not warrant. I'll miss having easy access to this place.

But I'm going somewhere mighty cool. Today is the day Jen and I close on our new house, and tomorrow we will move in, God willing. We are so excited. Jen did the final walkthrough yesterday and met the owner, who is graciously leaving us some good stuff and gave a lot of good information about sprinklers and the like. We are so blessed by God!

500!

Hey, so this is my 500th post! That's sort of momentous ... in a trivial and insignificant way. I'm glad I even noticed. What is not insignificant (I guess that'd be significant, yes?) is the amount of packing Jen and I have done this weekend. We are getting ready for the move into the house, and we made Saturday into an all day pack-a-thon. Everything non-essential has been boxed up and stacked in front of the fireplace. I have pictures, but they're on my phone and the USB cable for that is somewhere in the wall of cardboard. A week from yesterday and we will be in our new house!

Today was a bit of a breather as we continued church hunting (they passed baskets of excellent chocolate chip cookies around during the service!) and relaxed a bit, only packing a slight amount. We went over to Glacier for some extremely good peanut butter fudge gelato and then followed it up with pizza at Beau Jo's. I had been disappointed the last few times I went to Beau Jo's, but this time it was excellent. We avoided the marinara sauce and went with the Little Sicily, which was fantastic; really good crust and an olive oil sauce.

I'm looking forward to my parents finishing up their stint at Chatfield. They'll be coming up into the Boulder/Longmont area soon and will be helping with the moving and cleaning before heading back towards Oregon. It's been great having them here this summer.

So anyway, that's the 500th slice of life from yours truly. Depending on how this week goes, the next blog post may come from our new address! See you there!

Now I Realize

Jen and I started packing up the house this weekend. It's been just over two months since I moved in and already we are getting the house in boxes in preparation for a move in less than two weeks into our new house. We also went to Jen's friends Andre and Vanee's and had some amazing homegrown produce and homemade duck ravioli that was fantastic. Another social outing had us down at Isaac and Elsa's for homemade pizzas and games. It was a pretty busy weekend, and I'm yawning like heck as I write this.

During the weekend, I realized a few things:

1. I know of no country music artists that aren't white. Can you name any? I would imagine there are some Hispanic ones, but I sure can't name any. Unless you count Cleavon Little singing in Blazing Saddles I can't think of any minority country musicians.
2. Anime pumps up the back story of characters right before they kill them off to give the death more oomph. I guess it works some, though it doesn't pack the wallop if they killed someone who has actually been an integral character to the story. This is part of the reason why I think Orochimaru isn't dead: no build up to the death.
3. My relationship with Jen is so good, and I feel so connected, that I'm craving having more connectedness in my other relationships. The bar has been moved higher, and now I'm seeing more relationships that need to be worked on in order to get them over that bar.
4. Some webcomics just aren't worth reading. I recently did a clean up of my links page, and several comics I had been reading for a long time got the boot. The factor that made me drop them was that I had read the comic consistently for some time and was lost as to what was happening. That made me get rid of them, even as I retain comics that have mediocre art and aren't funny. Narrative sloppiness is a killer.
5. Games are losing their appeal to me as a social activity. I want to connect more with people, and it is hard for some people to connect while playing games, especially if there is a small child to manage. Especially if people aren't really into the game, it is hard to use that as a tool to mediate social interaction. My skills of socializing are at a level now that I don't feel I need to use a game as a bridge or crutch. In fact, if people aren't game people, games can be an interfering factor with making connections. This is a big shift in thinking for me.
6. Fresh vegetables are really, really good. I like the simplicity of just taking some good veggies, sauteing them, and eating them with light seasoning. I like the way they smell. I like the way they taste. I like the idea of them. Now if only gardening took little effort.
7. I have to go to work tomorrow. That's okay. I enjoy it. Less than two weeks till closing!
8. I want to walk more. I spend way too much time with computers and video games; things that aren't real. I need to spend more time in reality with things of substance, walking along the paths of actuality and interacting with objects that exist beyond pixels and binary.
9. I should go to bed now.

Monthiversary II: The Marriaging!

Man, I've been married for two whole months! It's good and getting better. In fact, we just got word that our loan is all set to go for the house. We're two weeks away from closing! We're getting adjusted to each other's schedules and figuring out how to share a bed. It's great to have someone to come home to and to be someone's person to come home to. And of course we both got haircuts recently so we're looking extra sharp. Nice.

Stoked!

So, I just found a several cool things. First off, Dunnies Series 2009 comes out in a few days! Plastic Chapel is going to have a release party for it. I am stoked. I even found out the proprietor of Plastic Chapel is a friend of my boss from way back when. I also found out that Massive Attack has a new album coming out. Nice! That's a good series of discoveries in the space of 15 minutes.

Comparison Shopping

I think it is a good idea to compare prices when shopping. It's also a good idea to compare prices when selling. Though my keen proofreader's eye caught that I was getting 12 more ounces for 25 cents less (and yes, it's the same product), I didn't point it out this time, unlike with some soup cans I can think of. Thanks, Target!