Sunday, October 26, 2008

Business Travel

I'm at Denver International Airport (DIA) using their free "device charging station" and free wifi! I've check out my favorite new sites as well as all y'all's blogs! That's me, staying on top of the action. Thank heavens for our modern world, I'm able to charge my cell phone and dispatch useless crap into the "blogosphere" (I'm not really sure what I think of that word yet...).

Anyway, being that I work for a public agency, my work usually involves no travel outside of my commute to and from work (and some occasional trips to other agencies' or consultants' offices). So, this is something of a special occasion. I'm being flown (on United - bleh) to RailVolution in San Francisco! I'm such at TV-deprived dork that I'm especially looking forward to staying at the Hyatt Embarcadero - I never stay at nice hotels. We usually stay at hostels, which are nice but not nice (if you know what I mean). Another reason we avoid bona fide hotels is precisely because they have TVs (poor Sandy has a hell of a time tearing me away).

Well, more to come - I'll be connected!

Sunday, October 19, 2008

Wedding #5

Yesterday, I attended my fifth wedding - the wedding of Scott and Kara. My first wedding was the renewal of my parents' vows at age 4. The others are (in order): my wedding to Sandy, Jen (my sister in law) and Jeff's wedding, and Dennis Lima's wedding (we were on the board of BikeDenver together for a while).

Yesterday we traveled to Mary's Lake Lodge in Estes Park and attended their wedding and reception. We had a pretty good time so you can imagine how horrible I've been feeling all day. The wedding began at 4:00 pm and when we arrived back in the room around 11:00pm we immediately ordered a pizza. Then the channel surfing began...

We tried to take some good pictures and got a few. These are the ones I've chosen to share:

There were these "poppers" or whatever that contained chocolate and paper crowns, Sandy and I had a good time wearing them:



This is the bride and groom cutting their cake. It was a small cake on a tower of cupcakes! Such good taste - the cupcakes were really, really tasty.




We met Eric and Trisha and were seated with them - this is the four of us at the end of the evening - not sure why I'm hunched over, perhaps I thought I needed to scrunch down to get in the picture (?!).

Sunday has been unremarkable for me. I noticed it was a beautiful day outside but I was sleeping for most of it. I have gotten through a good bit of On Chesil Beach by Ian McEwan and am going to try to finish it now. Good night.

Sunday, October 12, 2008

Domo Kun

A co-worker forwarded this to me about 4 years ago - just before the last election. I hung it in my office. This was the first time I saw the Domo Kun.

At least one of you out there has heard of this adorable brown guy - Domo Kun. It (I say "it" because there is clearly no gender associated with Domo Kun - but I've always had the feeling it was male...) is one of those things that I find myself liking although I'm not sure why. Kind of like the ugly dolls.

This short youtube selection provides a flavor of what I think is a Japanese tv show:



A friend of mine sent this next video to me sometime ago. It combines the Domo Kun with a song that is played at the end of the Donnie Darko movie (it's originally a Tears for Fears song I believe).

Domo Darko:





That's all for now, just wanted share. I just finished making some flourless peanut butter chocolate chunk cookies and now I'm just putter around on the internet.

think of the kittens...

Monday, October 6, 2008

knitting

I have just spent about an hour knitting and listening to podcasts. As a 30-something, white, female with glasses, this is about as close to heaven as you can get. Oh! And I was drinking a yummy Layer Cake Malbec!

I've come across (or been sent) several interesting knitting-related items as of late and thought I'd share them with the virtual world.

This is an astute comment from a really out there artist, Natalie Dee. For you non-knitter this comes across as pretty flat. To the knitter, this rings true.

Now this is from a truly creative, if twisted, knitter who is actually somewhat inspiring:

This little cutie appealed to me:Knitting can be utilitarian too! Who doesn't need a cable warmer?
Anyhow, I could go on about the wondrous products of knitting but that's what google is for.

Sunday, October 5, 2008

I was an invisible cyclist today!

Today, I rode my bike to a friend's house and back - something like a total of 5 miles or so. I had three disturbing incidents!

The first one is extremely disturbing. I'm in the left lane on Clarkson (at Colfax and Clarkson) waiting for the light to change (I'm in the left lane because I'm going to take a left onto 16th - one block up). The light turns green and this car pulls up pretty darn close to me - it's a white car, a police car. The policeman driver says "I'm gonna hit you." This statement is followed by a call for me to "get on the sidewalk" from the policewoman in the passenger seat!! I don't even know what to say about this except that it was pretty terrifying.

The next two are not uncommon. While riding on 16th Ave a car crossing at Pearl pretty much ignored my presence and decided to cross 16th while I was right in his path. I slowed and looked at the guy and he sort of hurriedly waved his hand for me to get out of the way. Later I was riding back home on 16th Ave and the light turned green as I approached the intersection. I was just beside the 2nd car in line (I was going straight) when it turned right - no turn signal and no acknowledgement of my presence.

This all seems completely outrageous because I was just in Portland, Or, where cars stop for peds in crosswalks where there is neither a stop sign nor a traffic signal and that bikes are given some level of deference.