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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. :)

…and still manages to blog the next day. Wow. I know, right?!

I went out last night after work with lovelypersons Amanda, Megan, and Scott. We started out at the Court Avenue Brewing Company, where I tried their IPA (pretty good!), hefeweizen (not as good), and a honey ale (nice!). We also shared some appetizers, since they were half off for happy hour and all. I had a couple of crab-stuffed mushrooms and a bready pretzel coated in the leftover grain from some brew, which was surprisingly tasty.

After a bit or two (it might have been three bits… I was feeling the alcy at that point) we headed to the Raccoon River brewery for a bit more beer (their IPA is more subtle, but I prefer the CABCo brew), a bit more food (I split a raccoon burger with Amanda (you could really taste the raccoon…)), and some pool. I sucked it up majorly at pool, so I guess there’s a reason I tend to stick to mass-produced domestics whenever I’m trying to play the game. :) After a while, I thought to check what time it was, only to realize it was already 11pm and I needed to head back to Ames. Sadness ensued. Well, ~I~ felt sad anyway. Can’t speak for anyone else.

So anyways, drove back up to Ames, texting with Dana every few minutes because her phone is broken (and texting while driving in traffic on the freeway is ~not~ easy. Or recommended, for that matter). I got back to A-town around 11:45 and hung out with Dana until 12:15ish, at which point I was fading in and out of consciousness, so I headed homeward.

When I got home, I was walking past my old apartment, when the door opened. I have new neighbors! Well, neighbor, at the moment. I’ve already forgotten her name, but I think it starts with an “M,” and she’s a friend of Robert, the guy who lives across the hall (he’s Robert, and I’m Rob, so that we don’t get confused). She seemed pretty cool, so I think I’m going to be okay with this whole “having to share the building again” thing. Her roommate will be moving up at a later date from Des Moines, so I’m hoping she’s equally cool. The best news about the new neighbor? She’s a fan of the bar and mini-fridge I left in there. :) She also took my excess barstools off my hands, which means I’m no longer cluttering the hallway with them. Score. She and Robert were talking about having a whole-floor party at some point, which sounds like a lot of fun. Yay, social neighbors!

So I sat around for a while, chatting with the new neighbor, the new neighbor’s friend (A-something, I think), and the old neighbor. They were drinking wine at the bar and offered me some, but I decided that probably wouldn’t be in my best interest. Around 1am, they decided to head down to Olde Main for some beer, and invited me along, but I decided 1am was really late for a work night and that three brewpups in one evening might be pushing it even for me. So, I headed to my apartment, praying they didn’t think me lame for skipping out on the fun.

And then, today, I went out to lunch with Amanda to the Drake Diner, adding yet another cool little restaurant to my burgeoning list of Places What Feed Me Well. So in other words, I’ve been nothing but a little social prostimatute for the last 24 hours or so. And I still have racquetball with Dwight left to look forward to yet this evening. Dana’s going to be spending the evening in Des Moines tonight, though, so I guess I’ll have to entertain myself after 9pm or so. Maybe that’d be a good time to start thinking about what I need to pack for Colorado, eh? EH?!?!

Two in a row! Can you handle the excitement?!

Dana and I watched The Notebook last night. It was my first time seeing it, though I get the feeling she’s seen it a few times. Oh em gee. Talk about a tear-jerker. I spent the last ten or fifteen minutes of the movie crying and trying to act like I wasn’t. I’m a little afraid to check, but I think I might be a woman now. For those of you who haven’t seen it yet: do. It was worth sprouting the girlie parts.

I forgot to mention in my last post that I’ll be spending all of next week, from 7/29 through 8/5, going to, coming from, or being in Colorado what to visit Dana’s friends and family. This will be my first trip to Colorado, so I’m pretty excited. :) ColoFriends (Debs, JJ, Kami, Klocke, Amber, etc): I will be in the Denver/Boulder area 7/31 - 8/4. If you’d like to see me (and let’s face it… who wouldn’t?), email/call me and I’ll try to set something up. Though, I hear tell Dana has us pretty booked already. Colorado’s her turf, so I’m letting her plan the events.

I ~also~ forgot to mention that my birthday is fast approaching on August 6th! You know what that means, right? Pretty much nothing. :) I’ll be turning 25 this year, despite my best efforts to prolong my early twenties indefinitely. I’d like to say that I’ll be spending my birthday partying like a 21 year old (though my 21st was pretty sedate), but in reality I’ll be recently back from our Colo-trip and I have work the next morning, so I don’t know how realistic that is. I think I accidentally grew up a little bit. :) In case you’re the buying-me-presents type (not likely), I’ll try to update my Amazon wishlist over the next couple of days.

Think I’m gonna give up on ever finding my camera’s battery charger. Time to start looking for a new charger. For the last two or so months, any photos I’ve posted (and they’ve been sparse, I’m sure you’ve noticed), were taken either by someone else or using someone else’s camera. This. Must. Stop. Too many fun times are going entirely undocumented, or at least undocumented by yours truly, and my friends don’t share their pictures with me nearly often enough. Even that picture I posted of Alicia and I was taken by her camera. She was just nice enough to send it my way and I was just rude enough to post it without permission. :)

I’ve written a couple of emails so far today, and in doing so I noticed that while I’m having no trouble coming up with thoughts and ideas, I’m really struggling at putting them together in any real order or ensuring they make any sense. I figured thus it was the perfect time to blog. ;) So have a random thought or two:

Friends are like condoms—they have an amazingly long shelf life and are superbly useful, so it’s good to always have a bunch around, because you never know when you’re going to need one. I bet you thought I was going to say something like “you use them once and throw them away.” Shows what kind of friend you are. Ass.

I went out to the bar with an old friend on Wednesday: Matt McCue, of Parallex fame (notoriety? Obscurity?). Though when I met him in 2000 he was just of 7320 Wallace Lancelot fame, which was also cool, but would not be a very good band name. We were joined by Josh Lizer of similar obscurity, and a woman who is a coworker of Josh’s, though I can’t quite be sure as to her name anymore (Kim, was it?). It was a really great time, though I didn’t get to bed until almost 2am, which made getting up the next morning slightly tougher than usual.

I’m currently reading book 5 of the Harry Potter saga, and I got to see movie 3 last night. Once I finish books 5 & 6, I’m planning to read the draft of M’ris’s latest novel, then I’m hoping to read Christopher Paolini’s Eragon, followed by either Eldest if I’m lovin’ the trilogy, or Susanna Clarke’s Jonathan Strange & Mr. Norrell if I want to try something (slightly) different. I also tracked down an mp3 audiobook version of William Gibson’s classic Neuromancer (read by the author, no less), which I’m hoping to start listening to soon, since it’s always bugged me I’ve never read it. Plus, I discovered a few days ago that Ysabeau Wilce had another novella published in the July 2006 issue of the Magazine of Fantasy & Science Fiction, but my subscription has expired [note to self: remedy] and I didn’t get it, so I ~neeeed~ to track a copy down. I love love love Wilce’s writing style. I’ve read “Metal More Attractive” a dozen times at least. I was supremely disappointed earlier this month when I went to check out Wilce’s novel on Amazon, which was originally due to be published this August, only to find it was no longer listed on Amazon, and a novel under a different title was instead scheduled for a January release. Still plan to buy it the second it comes out… but I was really looking forward to treating myself to a Califa-themed novel for my birthday (which is less than a month away… wow).

Yay geeky book rant! That might have been my first on this blog, and certainly the first in a long time regardless. I’m pretty much the worst English-degree(s)-holder ever.

I really hope I find the battery charger for my digital camera soon. I miss taking photos. And I’m sure some of you miss having different pics to snark towards on flickr every once in a while. I searched my apartment last weekend, but came up empty handed. Le sighs ensue. Much like condoms, digital camera battery chargers really cut down on the fun by their absence.

So it happened to me again on the drive to work today: I was on the freeway, merrily speeding along (or at least keeping pace with traffic, which is all one can really do), when I suddenly jumped, because I had no idea where I was, what I was doing, or where I was going. It took me a few seconds to remember that I was on my way to work, in Des Moines, and that I was not utterly lost, but rather right on track. Freaky when that happens. Good for an adrenaline rush, though.

I hope everyone had a good day of independence? Yes? Yes? Mine turned out quite a bit better than I expected, what for having no plans and all. The festivities really started on the evening of the 3rd. Dana was in Des Moines with Rhonda waiting for Steph to arrive home via aero-plane from Mexico (her plane was nastily delayed in Chicago), so I went out to the bar with Kate, Yusuf, Scott, Krystal, and Molly. There might have been someone else there at some point, but they’re not bothering to make themselves known in my memory, so not much I can do on that one. We started out at a small bar located at 212 Main named (and aptly so!) 212 Main. We had a pitcher or two of beer (I think two) before we got a touch bored and headed across the street to the Corner Pocket to play some pool. Kate, Yusuf, and I played for several hours, until we were sufficiently tuckered and decided to head home. Dana got back shortly after I arrived at my place of residence.

We woke up the next morning at tensomething o’clock, which was the perfect time for to go into the living room (having first put on pants this time), pull back the curtains (I’ve them hanged now!), open the window, and watch the parade pass beneath our feet. After the parade had finished (parading?), we headed to King Buffet to celebrate our victory over our British oppressors by oppressing our stomachs with nummy foreign fare. Then, Dana had to head back to Ankeny to ensure the cats weren’t left out of the whole eating part of the festivities, so I headed up to my roof to tan for an hour and a half or so. I say or so because I fell asleep and don’t really remember how long I was out there. I didn’t burn, though, so I suppose I wasn’t out there for, like, infinity, or anything. Also, I am writing this post, which equally helps negate the infinity theory.

After Dana returned from her cat-related adventures, we headed to the park to an English-grad-student-type barbeque. Seems I still qualify in some manner of speaking. I met several creative writers in the department I hadn’t met previously, most of whom were married, but after long and arduous deliberation I’ve decided not to hold that against them forever, but instead only for a bit longer. We ate (again), played Frisbee, drank a beer or four, and played sand volleyball for long enough that my feet are still a little raw. It was, in my estimation, a killer time. After we were volleyed out, a few of us headed to my place to watch fireworks from the roof, which would have been cooler had there been no streetlights in the parking lot. Ah, the best laid plans of mice…

So to recap: Yusuf doesn’t drink but he’s still fun to hang out with, there was only one clown in the parade despite what others might claim, King Buffet wasn’t that busy for all that it was a holiday, I like volleyball, Sara and Jenny are cool for all that they’re married, I do not own a gun what for shooting streetlights (but if I did…), and I haven’t been grocery shopping in over a month. Does that clarify?