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Eek! I could not let August escape without at least one more post. Work has been keeping me really busy during the decent blogging hours (and it’s bound to get worse these next couple weeks), and my social life has kept me away from computers during the indecent ones.

Last weekend was a fantastically fun time. So much so that I don’t remember great swaths of it any more. Luckily, I wrote a bit about it in an email to a friend on Monday, so I can go back and consult said email to figure out what it is that I did. [pauses for consultation]. Oh, right! Here goes:

Friday night was the Last Concert Evar for Parallex, my favorite local band. I probably should have posted pictures from that show on flickr first, but it looks like I skipped straight on to Saturday. Anyways, the show was good, and Dana and I had a great time dancing until we couldn’t move any more. We had a couple of Jager bombs before we left for the bar (we took the bus, no driving = yay), then had a couple of stiff drinks once ~at~ the bar, and then we left the bar to go to (you guessed it) yet another bar, where they were having a special on pitchers of Long Island Iced Tea. So we split a pitcher and were entirely trashed by the time the show even started. ;)

Saturday evening, Dana and I decided to be adventurous and make a recipe out of Cuisine at Home (one of the magazines my company publishes). We settled on a linguine/proscuitto/parmesan concoction that ended up tasting absolutely ~fantastic~. I could send you the recipe, if you’re interested (or you could just buy the damn magazine, should be on newsstands very soon, October 2006 issue).

We had a bottle of wine with dinner, then celebrated the success of dinner with a mudslide. And another mudslide. And another mudslide. :) Then Scott, Kate and I had shots of vodka and we all caught the bus to campustown, where we met up with Krystal, Rachel, Sam, Molly, Jess, and Justin, as well as two random strangers named Krystal and Jason. :) There, we convinced the bartender at Cy’s Roost to make us a pitcher of rum & coke. And then another pitcher. Then I had few shots, and a few beers, and half of a really over-tequila-ed long island, and so forth and so on until it was very late and Rachel gave Dana and I a ride home. Whew.

Sunday, I was the only one of our group I spoke to who wasn’t hung over. I’m usually lucky that way. Just the same, I decided not to play racquetball. Why press one’s luck with excessive jostling?

This week has been similarly fun-yet-busy, but I need to get back to work, so I’ll try to post again some time soon.

Umm… the more you eat, the gayer you look? Seems I’m not much of a poet anymore. :p

I ate an entire banana a couple of days ago. For those who know me well, this is a landmark moment. See, bananas are one of a long list of fruits and vegetables what make me itchy. My skin doesn’t get itchy, but the inside of my throat does (which is significantly harder to reach). And my lips and tongue tend to swell. Not to dangerous proportions, but certainly annoyingly so. Enough such that I hadn’t eaten a whole banana in probably seven or eight years.

But a couple of days ago, I went to grab an apple from the fruit bowl at work (many fruit bowls everywhere, cool company et cetera), and they were out. But, I was really craving fruit, so I had myself a banana instead. And it didn’t hurt! And so I had another banana yesterday, and I equally did not die. And so far today, I have had one and a half bananas (half of one in a smoothie for breakfast, a whole one with lunch), and have yet to snuff it.

Of course, I have woken up in the middle of the last two nights with a horribly itchy throat, requiring I drink large amounts of liquid and lay awake miserable for a while. But I don’t know that there’s a correlation. Could be an entirely unrelated allergy. Especially because my central air is on the fritz at the moment, so I slept with my bedroom window open last night.

Sigh… school started up again yesterday, and I was not in it. This was very difficult for me. I felt like I was cheating somehow. I also felt like I was missing out on all the fantastic nervous excitement associated with the beginning of any school year. All last week I kept fantasizing about going back to get my Ph.D. I eyed various school websites. I read a couple of academic (well, Technical Communication) articles. I even submitted an article to Kairos. I felt vaguely better about my decision last night when Dana was in class until 9pm and I remembered that, for the first time in 7 years, my evenings are free and my own. And then I realized I didn’t have anything to do, so I mostly laid on the edge of my roof with a glass of wine, bored and restless, and watched the sunset fade into subsequent stars. Scared my neighbor when she got home, I think, to find me sprawled over the edge of the building. ;)

I would like to formally announce to the blogosphere that I have invented the world’s greatest contraction! Behold:

I’d'nt’ve - I would not have.

Example: I’d'nt’ve done that were I you…

Brilliant! The beauty is, it contains only contractions what exist elsewhere, such that those yet ignorant should still be able to divine its meaning. I’m sure everyone can appreciate a self-illuminating contraction.

I’m not sure all self-illuminating contractions would work quite so well, though. Consider:

Could’nt’d'nt’ve - Could not, would not have.

Example: I could’nt’d'nt’ve done that!

While this would certainly be useful for those times where one needs to explicitly explain the complete and utter impossibility of some task or accusation set forth (on both rational and ethical grounds), I think it might be a little cumbersome yet.

I’ve had a fairly uneventful week (or so), all around. There was a lot of watching of movies, a bit of reading, and more eating than anyone really deserves. I’ve had more ice cream than usual, and more peanut butter. I’ve drank at least one beer every day from August 3rd through the 14th. I’ve also played less racquetball, as my membership has expired and I’m waiting on paperwork to go through so I can give them a bunch of money to let me play again. These things combined do not spell a happy immediate future for my midsection.

To that end, I bought a blender last night! My goal is, instead of having peanut butter toast in the morning and ice cream in the evenings, I can start replacing said delicacies more often with smoothies made of soy milk, Splenda, and sundry fruit (which might as well be made of wax, at that point). I like smoothies, and they seem to sit acceptably well with me, so hopefully this purchase with affect a positive dietary change. Either way, it looks pretty sitting on my dishwasher (the only available counter space), so even if its purpose in life is to collect dust, it will do so attractively.

Either that, or Wednesday nights will become piña colada nights. I’m happy regardless.

My car is visiting its friends at Karl’s Chevrolet today. It was time for its 6,000 mile oil change and tire rotation, and they also (finally!) contacted me about applying a paint protection coating I purchased when I bought the car, so they’re doing that today, too. I talked them in to trying to fix up the scratches my car has already sustained in various parking lots over the last 15 weeks and 6,400 miles (over 400 miles per week, not even counting I spent one week without it in Colorado!), since I’m pretty sure several of them would not be there if they’d applied the protection coat some months ago.

Anyways, I’m driving a rental today. I drove in a subcompact Chevy Cobalt, and I left in a huge 4WD Trailblazer. It was the last rental they had. In fact, about 30 seconds after I got there, another person in need of a rental came in, and it sounds like they get to drive a 2006 Impala off the lot instead of a rental. I sorta wish I’d hit a red light on the way in or something. I’d've much preferred the Impala. I haven’t driven anything this large since one week I had to borrow my grandfather’s pickup back in 1999. It makes me nervous driving through I-235 construction in something so massive.

It sounds like my going-out plans for this evening have fallen through. :( I’m trying to decide if I want to try and develop new going-out plans, or if I just want to head home and clean my apartment or something. I think Dana is planning on spending the evening continuing to plan her classes for the coming semester (which starts on Monday), so I’d rather stay out of her hair. I’m sure I’m going to prove an annoying distraction to her this semester, but I’d rather not be so from before week one. ;)

Did everyone check out my pretty Flickr pictures? I think the ones from the botanic gardens in particular turned out really well. Not bad for my beat-up old pocket Elph, anyways. I stuck my favorite of the botanice shots up top for your viewing pleasure. I’ll try and remember to post more pictures sometime today. Hopefully Flickr gets around to instating my Pro account sometime soon… I paid for it over two weeks ago, but still don’t have it. They must be custom-designing my little “Pro” logo or something.

Hehehe… pocket elph.

Worry not, my fine feathered friends… I made it back from the promised land well enough, though it wasn’t easy leaving. Ahh… Colorado: Where the beer flows like water, and the water smells like beer. :)

It was a really good trip, and I kept entertained the entire time. On top of all of the scheduled activities (which I’ll get to momentarily (or at least eventarily)), I also managed to read quite a bit: I read the second half of book 5 of the Harry Potter saga, all of book 6, and the first third or so of Jonathan Strange and Mr. Norrell, which was an early birthday present to myself. All in all, I managed over 1,000 pages of magical-type reading last week, which is pretty much the perfect icing for any relaxing week. Except that I’m now regularly on the lookout for ill-tempered magicians in my dreams, and sometimes also whilst waking.

So here’s a brief rundown of the Things What Were Done:

Saturday - Got up early-ish, dropped the Smaug-dor off in Des Moines, and drove to Colorado. I was in charge of the stretch of road called Nebraska. We got into town shortly after 6pm, with no small thanks due the changing of the time zone. Spent the rest of the night relaxing and growing acclimated to the altitude. I acclimated–my can of shaving cream did not, and so I spent a small portion of the evening cleaning foam out of my luggage.

Sunday - Went to the Colorado Renaissance Festival with Dana and her sister (Sarah). I ate roughly my weight in Renai-food, including a giant turkey leg, a steak on a stake, a giant pretzel, a pickle on a stick (pickle on a pike?), and a couple of servings of frozen stuff. And beer. Of course. I bought myself some Pan horns, a horn what for blowing, and a necklace.

Monday - Don’t remember what we did during the day. That might have been errand-day in Denver, when I bought my book and so forth. Shrug. In the evening, Dana, her parents (John and Debbie) and I played a couple rounds of miniature golf, which was pretty fun, though it turns out I’m just as bad at miniature golf as I am the regularly sized version.

Tuesday - The GF, the GF’rents, and I went to Rocky Mountain National Park so that I could more closely appreciate mountains. We hiked a couple-few miles (up, then down) and I took a ton of pictures that I’ll upload eventually. I ran into coworker Paige at the beginning of the trail. No, really. It was weird.

Wednesday - Spent the day at the Denver botanic gardens, and took another few trillion photos of flowers, and statues, and bees. Dana and I then drove to a little mountain town and ate at a really nice Italian restaurant where we drank too much wine waiting for her sister Sarah and friend Andrea. Once they made it, we went to the Red Rocks Amphitheater, which was a gorgeous natural amphitheater made of giant, umm… yeah. You’ll figure it out. There, we watched Ferris Bueller’s Day Off (which I’d never seen all the way through) on a giant screen. It fairly well rocked. Pun unavoidable.

Thursday - Thursday was zoo day, so we were again in Denver. I met Dana’s cousin, Seth, his girlfriend whose name I’ve forgotten, and their month-old baby Cade. I also met some peacocks, polar bears, gorillas, rhinos, and whatnots. That evening, after stopping home again for a few hours, we drove back to Denver, this time to downtown, and for to hang out with my long-time friend JJ and a few of his work friends, including his new femme of interest, Nell, who was lovely but I don’t have any photos or recordings of other sorts to back that up, so you’ll just have to trust me. We had sushi and beer, and also more beer.

Friday - Again, no recollection of the early daytime activities. Might well have been sitting around reading. In the afternoon, we drove to Boulder and toured the CU campus (Dana’s undergraduate alma mater). Then, we headed to her friends’ apartment, where I met six or so new friends and spent the next manyplus hours debauching in various horrible ways. There was barbequing while drinking, eating while swimming, swimming while drinking, drinking while drinking, and swimming while drunk. When it got too cold for outdoorsness, there was a lot of sitting, and standing, and talking, and dancing, and laughing. It was a lot of fun, and we didn’t get home until sunrise.

Saturday - Started the long and arduous drive back to Iowa. Again, I tackled Nebraska, but this time, time was against us and we didn’t get home until 12:30am Sunday

Sunday - Got to the bar at 12:35am to have a birthday drink. :) Tired of the bar by around 1:30, so we drove back to Dana’s place, where we were joined by Steph and Krystal, who brought me birthday beer. Drank some more, then slept mightily around 3:30am. Got up, showered, watched half of A Knight’s Tale, drove to Des Moines for Famous Dave’s and family time, drove home and watched half of Gangs of New York while drinking beer, then drank beer while chatting with friends, then drank beer and watched half of Galaxy Quest. Never finished a single damn movie, but it was still fun. :) Got to be around 1am.

It was hard to go to work on Monday. For lots of reasons. :) However, I still ended up having a surprisingly fantastic trip followed by a surprisingly fantastic birthday, so I’ve not many complaints. The birthday really was good, too. I’ve never before received so many “happy birthdays” in working memory. I had em in person, over the phone, via voicemail, commented on two websites, drunkenly texted, and emailed to three different addresses.

So here’s the scoop: I’ve a lot of pictures to post. And I’ll get around to posting most of them, but I’ll probably only do 5-6 a day. I bought myself a Flickr Pro account, but it hasn’t kicked in yet (though I bought it before I left *mutter*). So be sure to check my Flickr page this week for updates. :)