So, last weekend we headed to Snowmass Village to stay at Tina’s uncle’s house on the golf course.  Tina, her nephew, and her uncle all spent loads of time on various golf courses around the area.  I hung out and “relaxed” – in theory, anyway.  At least I was doing work in a different setting, right?

On Saturday, I headed into Aspen to wander around and check things out.  I learned, among other things, that I am still not cool enough or rich enough or skinny enough to hang out in Aspen.  BUT I DID IT ANYWAY!  HA!  Too bad John Denver isn’t still there – I think we could totally hang out and sing songs around the campfire.

I wandered the Saturday Markets on the streets of Aspen… lots of fun shopping booths.  I bought some delicious local honey with bee pollen in it.  Lots of people had their dogs out with them – fun!  I was walking behind a big gorgeous yellow lab who was walking behind his person, sniffing the baked goods at one of the booths… he found one he liked, got his mouth around it, then his person noticed what he was doing and gently pulled him away.  I started laughing out loud (which was apparently not the appropriate reaction).  The bakery people?  Looked at the dog, looked at the pastry… and left it there.  Eeww!  I decided not to buy anything from there.

I also wandered through a couple of consignment shops.  I figured… consignment shop in downtown Aspen?  They have to have some FABULOUS treasures, right?  In the designer room… some interesting things, including a few cute, but well-used bags.  In the “non-designer room”… I saw a very cute knit top from Target (yes, being a Target devotee, I recognize the brands!), but not one of their cool fancy “designer” collaboration brands – just their normal everyday inexpensive (but cute) brand.  Around $20 new (I love Target – have I mentioned that?).  But it’s used… so it must be cheaper, right?  No!  Here is what else I learned in Aspen… my used Target shirt is worth $28 there!  Sold!  Ok, not really, cause I didn’t have anything to sell (figured I should keep the clothes that I was wearing), but now that I know, I’m taking my entire Target wardrobe up there next time. 

Sunday I hung out around the condo, and spent some time outside reading.  I love to sit outside and read – such a simple pleasure!  Later in the afternoon, I rode around the Snowmass golf course with Tina and Josh while they played it – so beautiful!  There, I saw a baby fox that I truly believe would have come home with me and loved me, if only I’d had some chocolate or something to lure him with.  I was woefully unprepared.  He was SO cute.  And not timid at all.  LOVE!

Wow, I’m behind.  I meant to write this about a week and a half ago.  Slacker.

So, a couple of weekends ago, I volunteered to be a victim in a MASS CASUALTY INCIDENT!  Fortunately it was a big fake mass casualty incident.  Tina is taking an EMT course, and all the students had to bring volunteers so they could practice their skills. 

In the morning, my injuries included a gunshot wound to my arm, and an amputated leg.  Fun, huh?!  They had fake plastic injuries that we could strap on to ourselves, and that’s what I picked, at least for the first go-round.  There were somewhere between 20 and 30 people with varying degrees of “injury” and mental responsiveness, spread out on the upper and lower level of the health building at the community college.  I decided to be injured on the upper level so that all the EMT students could practice carrying a big girl down the stairs on a backboard.  During the first practice round, though, since I had “one good leg” (never mind the missing leg), that these 2 kids could just walk me down the stairs!!  (I say kids, even though their ages ranged from 21 to 60-something…)  The second round, I moved my arm injury to my “good leg”.  Ha!  No walking me down the stairs that time!  I was strapped onto a back board with about 14 people carrying me down the stairs.  Okay, maybe it was only 6 people.  But still. 

It was SCARY!  And FUN!  Like a fun scary carnival ride that is over way to quick, and accompanied by that fear that any second, the straps are going to break and you’re going to go crashing to the ground!  Especially when they’re all yelling at each other, “You’re going to drop her!” and “She’s sliding off!” and “Pick up her feet!”  All in all, I feel relatively certain that the fake mass casualty incident was way funner than a real one would be.  Plus I was able to pick up a few minutes here and there to read my book.

In the afternoon, I transitioned from traumatic injury to being a 66-year-old woman having a heart attack.  Did you know that heart attacks in women can present as back pain?  That’s just one of the good things I’ve learned while Tina’s been in this class.  I’ve also learned that you really should always wear clean underwear AND shave your legs, cause you never know what those medics are going to have to cut off of you in an emergency…

Last week, I went to South Carolina for the first time.  And North Carolina, actually… And Chicago.  All for the first time.

Jimmy has been at Fort Jackson for the past few months for his Army basic training, and I went with Tina to watch him graduate!  It was quite exciting!  It was wonderful to see Jimmy again, and fascinating to see how he’s been living and what he’s been learning for the past several weeks. 

After a short ceremony on Thursday morning showing us some of what they’ve been learning, we spent the rest of the day on base with him.  We shopped for candy and treats – all those things that Jimmy’s been without – and wandered through lots of PX shops and souvenir-type shops.  It was really cool to see that stuff!  We also ate food-court food for lunch.  During their basic training phase, there aren’t many places they can go, and definitely nothing to eat other than army-issue food, so I think he enjoyed that. 

Friday morning was the graduation ceremony.  We got to the arena EARLY – 6:30 AM early!  It was cold, but we got front row seats!  Before the ceremony started, they brought in a bus load of WWII vets.  It was so amazing to see the show of patriotism from the spectators – all standing and applauding our country’s heroes.  It was so cool!  And since we were in the front row, the veterans all walked right by us.  They were awesome – one gentleman gave everyone high-fives, many of them thanked US for our show of gratitude, and one gentleman told me, “I don’t know what the hell I did, but thank you for clapping!”  Very cool.  The ceremony was also cool – we were hoping to see all the soldiers in their dress uniforms, but during war-time, they wear their combat uniforms even for graduation.  I’m amazed at how many young (and old – a few older than ME!) people choose to serve our country.  Many of the soldiers in Jimmy’s battalion (over 1000 soldiers!!) were fresh out of high school, but so many of them had college degrees, civilian careers, and even graduate level degrees.  These folks (and their families) are much stronger and braver than I could ever imagine being.  Thank you, soldiers!!

After the graduation ceremony, all of the soldiers were given off-base passes.  We took the opportunity to do a bit of exploring around Columbia.  We found a cool restaurant downtown for lunch, hit the state museum (very cool stuff!), and ate some delicious Marble Slab ice cream.  We also went to a mall (super-exciting, I know).  Tina needed to pick up another suitcase to take home souvenirs and some of Jimmy’s extra stuff (more than you would imagine, for someone who’s been living in urban camouflage!), and we wanted to check out the Build-a-Bear Workshop for a cute Army teddy bear for Miss Maddy.  Found a good suitcase on clearance at Dillard’s, but the bears weren’t cute enough.  But… we did find something else quite fascinating at the mall!

A hurricane simulator.  Pay your money, hop inside, and experience 78 MPH winds.

Really?

Really???

Having walked to & from school in Wyoming every day for something like 18 years, I chose to save my dollars.

Reggie has lots of those cozy little donut-shaped dog beds shaped like this.   Possibly not this spendy, but you get the idea.  All of his beds are Mini Schnauzer sized, i.e. small.  My cattle dog, Miss Tillie, thinks that they are the perfect size for her though!  Whenever Tillie visits her Grandma and Grandpa, she is obsessive about dropping toys on my dad’s lap, and curling up into one of Reggie’s (too-small-for-her) beds.  Reggie’s visit to our house was no different.  What was different this time?  Miss “Oh-but-blue-heelers-are-so-smart” Tillie fell out of Reggie’s bed this time.  How, you ask, when the bed is no more than 3 inches off of the floor?  No idea.  She was curled up as cute as could be, we heard a thud, and there she was upside-down next to the bed.  Smart dog, indeed.

Grover also loved Reggie’s bed, when he could get to it before one of his best friends.

After Reggie went home, and I fed just my two dogs dinner, I kept feeling as though I was forgetting something!  I only filled up two bowls, instead of three, and there was no medication or eye-drops or pills or eye-drops…

We left yesterday morning to come to Fort Jackson, in Columbia, SC, for Tina’s son’s graduation from US Army basic training.  So, my dogs, cat, and turtle are on their own this week with our lovely neighbors from down the street taking care of them.  So, until Saturday, I only have to worry about feeding people, not critters.  More to come on that later (the graduation, not the feeding).

My lovely and amazing and wise and beautiful Grandma Hope passed away a couple of weeks ago.  I fully expected, with no doubts whatsoever, that she would be around for years to come.  Years.  But, she surprised me, along with lots of others!  I know that she is giddily happy to be with Grandpa John again, and they are giggling about how sneaky she was about it.  But, that doesn’t make me miss her any less.  And it doesn’t stop me from selfishly wanting her back.  Now. 

Grandma’s service was lovely.  Mother Michelle (the minister) did a lovely job, as did everyone else involved.  Mark and Randy gave us some wonderful, touching, heartbreaking, and funny family remembrances.  Cliff, as always, did a lovely job with music – he’s so talented.  The clergy was all wonderful, and made the service so personal, especially given the incredible devotion that Grandma showed to the church through so many years.  The ladies from the church served us a delicious luncheon following the service, and were all so kind.  And Grandma’s friend Herschel delivered a heartfelt, stunning and haunting a capella rendition of Steal Away to Jesus.  Truly amazing.

At the cemetery, Mom and Randy surprised us with a six-pack of bubbles.  Such a perfect tribute to Grandma from her family!  I can’t ever blow bubbles without thinking of visits to Grandma’s house.  I’m glad you thought of it!!

Grandma was such an absolute treasure to this world – not just to our family, but she touched so many lives and took care of so many people during her time on earth.  Now she’s a treasure to Heaven, and her influence and memory will be a treasure to me forever.  I can only hope (Hope!) to be half the lady that she was. 

Love to all, and be good to each other.

Here are some of the things I heard about my dogs in Breckenridge.

From a couple on the riverwalk: “Do their feet get cold?”  Well… I haven’t asked them, but I’m guessing with the snow and the below freezing temps… probably.  I know mine do.

From a gentleman walking down the street with his family: “Is that an Australian Cattle Dog?  Those are smart dogs!!”  From his wife: ”That can work against you though!”  Um, yes, it can!  Then again, neither of them showed too much brainpower getting leashes tangled up around trees and bushes…

From the clerk at the cute dog store on Main Street, about Grover: “That tail is so cute!  It’s like he’s trying to wag it, but there’s just not enough there to do anything with!”  Then she noticed his crooked ears.  That’s my little clown dog.

From a gentleman in Josh’s snowboard shot: “Is that a Blue Heeler?  Those are such great dogs!”  Then she tried to go with him.

From a 5-ish year old girl coming out of a shop on Main Street: “Oh, is that a Schneezer dog?!”  CUTE!!

And of course, lots of “Oh, puppies!  Can I pet them?”  Only if you want them to love you forever.

So, it’s been a busy couple of weeks!  After that lovely 2 week holiday shutdown, I went back to work.  And guess what!  It hasn’t slowed down.

Aside from work, I’ve been busy with some fun stuff too. 

A couple of weekends ago, I got a text message from Miss Kylah asking if I wanted to meet them for lunch in Denver.  Randy, Kylah, and Allison spent the night with Grandma Hope, and the next day I met them all for lunch and a little shopping.  Kylah brought me an awesome present!  She remembered me telling her how much I loved the awesome Cinnamon Crustos from Taco Time, so when she saw some cinnamon tortilla chips at the store, she got them for me (or, maybe, she talked her dad into getting them for me?)!  Thanks Ky!  They were super delicious!  Rhiannon was hanging out with Grandma & Grandpa that weekend, and Kelly was busy putting together a baby room, so I missed seeing them!  But it was great fun checking out Bass Pro Shop (we saw baby ducks!!), American Eagle, and Borders with them.  After leaving them to do more shopping, I headed west to visit Grandma Hope for a little while.  It’s always SO nice to see her!  Hi Grandma!  Love you much!!

Last weekend, after spending a day working on some horrendously overdue conference presentations, I went with Tina, Jimmy, and Madeline to spend a few hours at Dave & Buster’s.  Jimmy is getting ready to leave for Army boot camp, so they wanted to hit a golf course (even if it was a “virtual” golf course!) before he left.  I played a trivia game for a while and won LOTS of tickets (redeemable for fabulous prizes), but they didn’t have anything worth spending my tickets on.  Next time, maybe!

Tina was struggling at Christmas time to figure out what to give Jimmy.  With him leaving for boot camp soon (on Monday – January 25!), she didn’t want to get him stuff that he wouldn’t be able to take with him and use.  So, she ended up deciding to take him to the mountains for a snowboard trip!  So of course, I went along!  We spend Monday and Tuesday nights in Breckenridge.  Tina’s nephew Josh took a couple of days off work to give them lessons and try to keep them in an upright position.  It was only their second time on snowboards, but Josh rides pretty much every day, so it was great for them to be able to go with him.  I love Breck – fun town, fun shops, great restaurants, stunning landscapes… but not all fancy and expensive like some of Colorado’s other mountain towns.  Plus, I firmly believe that every town should have a crafty store of some sort, and Breck has at least three!  Aspen… one, and it’s open for like 2 hours a week.  Thanks to my awesome knees and other joints, I can’t ski or ride, so I hung out with the dogs in the condo the first day (still working on those presentations!) and watched it snow.  It was absolutely gorgeous.  Tillie and Grover spent the day staring out the window and guarding me against the skiers, boarders, and wildlife they saw outside.  Tillie growled at a fox – SO cute.  Wednesday the pups and I did a lot of walking and shopping and freezing!  I still haven’t found the perfect shoe for sightseeing…

Sunday will be (maybe) devoted to crafty stuff.  I have truckloads of baby stuff to make, 4 pairs of pants to hem (I’m so not good at hemming…), I’m working on a scarf for myself that I may finish sometime this year, and I haven’t had my beading stuff out since sometime last year.  Ooh, come to think of it… I haven’t sewn anything since last year either. 

It’s been an eventful couple of weeks!

Christmas in Greeley was relatively quiet and definitely white!!  (Think Colorado Christmas by Nitty Gritty Dirt Band… lovely!)  Tina’s sister and niece came up from Colorado Springs to visit on Christmas day (with tiny Jersey the chihuahua), and Lady (the giant St. Bernard) was here also, so we had quite the houseful of animals.  Tina whipped up a couple of magnificent meals – king crab legs on Christmas Eve, and ham, turkey, and all the stuff to go with them on Christmas Day.

My trip to Rock Springs was delayed by a day due to the closed highways in Wyoming, so I headed up there on Sunday morning.  I spent lots of time with the girls and mom and dad, and lots of time doing tech support on Rhiannon’s computer, Dad’s wireless network…  It was good to actually succeed at it though!!  I always like a good challenge.  Er… most of the time, anyway.  I had loads of delicious food – ham, lamb, pork, homemade chicken & noodle soup… I pretty much had to roll myself out to the car when I finally left.  I also got to play some Wii!  Which immediately convinced me that I simply must have one.  So on New Year’s Day after I got back from RS, I proceeded straight to Game Stop and got rid of the gift cards I’d been saving for a special occasion – got a Wii, Wii Fit Plus, and a couple of games.  Still need more though!  Oh yes, I said “need”.

Here are some pics of the Wii and dinner festivities at Randy’s house, and some of the girls and me at Mom’s.

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Also this year, I went out for New Year’s Eve for the first time since the Las Vegas Road Trip of December-January 1999-2000!  Tina and I went to the lovely and cool and classy Kress Cinema.  It is a gorgeous place that opened up in Greeley not too long ago – a remodel of an old downtown building into this wonderful intimate movie theater with a lounge and bar.  I’m SO not cool enough to hang out there, but I love the place anyway.  For New Year’s Eve, they had a swing band in the lounge, and showed When Harry met Sally in the theater.  Shockingly, I realized that I had never seen the whole movie!!  It was great and funny, with much better food than you can get at the local multiplex, and a terrific precursor to watching the ball drop on the big screen!  It was a nice low-key but festive New Year’s Eve, with a good excuse to get dressed up!  Here are some pics from that night:

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Happy 2010!!

• The subway there is crazy deep.  We rode some escalators that went for days… apparently, because of the soil, they had to go very deep underground to build it.
• Always carry a compass.  That might make it a bit easier to figure out which direction you’re going, as opposed to walking around until you find enough street signs to figure out where you are on the map.  As it turns out, I did have a compass in my backpack, which I realized as I was cleaning out the old backpack to transfer stuff to the new one.  So the addendum to “always carry a compass” would be “remember that you have a compass.”
• Don’t carry a bag that is easily opened!  Some people suck, and they will TAKE your stuff!  Course, some of those same sucky people are idiots, and will make attempts on several different cards to pull cash out of an ATM, without a PIN.  Ha ha, suckers!
• Nothing makes me more interested in history than visiting the actual historical places.
• I need better shoes.  Shoes that are super-comfy and good for walking, but don’t look orthopedic (and go nicely with skirts or jeans).  Any recommendations?
• All the touristy shops had those weasel ball things in the entrances.  I have no clue why.  I didn’t see them for sale anywhere, but saw dozens and dozens of them in the doorways.  Any thoughts on the significance of those?
• Always carry change in case you have to pay for the bathroom.
• It might be much easier to remember what you take pictures of if you take notes or something as you go.
• Public artwork can be hysterically funny and sometimes kinda dirty!  In a funny way.  (Those pics/videos weren’t included in the slideshow, but if you’d like to see them, let me know!)

I’m sure there’s lots more that I’m forgetting.  (Write things down, McConnell!)  All in all, a wonderful experience that I was lucky to have!

Wandering around the touristy places, we also had lots of street food.  There were stands and tiny restaurants all over the place with tons of sausages.  Being the Americans, we had our sausages on sandwiches with tasty buns, but we saw lots of people just ordering a sausage with a slice of bread.  I had one sandwich with about 5 small sausages instead of one giant one.  And by accident, I ordered one sandwich that turned out to be kind of a cheeseburger – a bun with a big deep fried cheese patty!!  Yum.  The fries were good too, but not quite as heavenly as the fried we had last year in Amsterdam – but how can you go wrong with a bucket of fries with ketchup, mayonnaise, and a tiny fork so you can eat it while you’re walking around?  (In some cases, just walking to the next fry stand…)  The mustard at these stands was delicious too… the packaging looks like it’s going to be like our French’s – and it says “yellow mustard” – Heinz, I think.  BUT – instead of being bright yellow, it’s light yellowish, and spicy, and delicious!

We also discovered the joy that is trdelnik.  We found these by accident too, walking through Lesser Town.  (And had to seek out this stand later, too!)  We had a few different types of these – some were coated with just cinnamon and sugar (they were SO awesome), some with powdered sugar and nuts, and some with cinnamon and sugar and what I think were chopped up apples inside!  Heavenly.  They were like this wonderful yeasty bread dough, crispy on the outside and doughy on the inside.

What else did we eat?  Meat – lots and lots of meat.  One meal was 4 different kinds of meat, 3 different kinds of dumplings, and some bread.  (I had to get my fill of fruit at the hotel’s breakfast buffet.)  Another meal was steak wrapped in prosciutto, and pasta covered in butter and prosciutto.  And a delicious bread basket.  (Noticing a theme?)

And… crêpes!  I love love love crêpes.  We had to stop at the same small little restaurant twice (again) because they had delicious crêpes, for meals and desserts!  Oh, I love food.