First World Problems

A while back I posted on “yuppie problems,” which is a bit narrowly defined to a specific socio-economic and age range since a “yuppie” is a young, urban professional.  I recently discovered that a certain website has a feed devoted to “first world problems.”  This is far more encompassing of the kinds of issues that come up in the lives of a variety of Americans.  The website on which you can find this feed is Reddit.  More on Reddit in a future post.  There is a subsection of the site called "First World Problems".  Some selections from this section include:

• I can't find a Gmail theme I like
• I live in the New York City and I cannot find a Chik-fil-A anywhere
• The touch screen on my phone makes it hard for me to text while I drive
• reflection of palm trees on my laptop interferes with my work

I am finding that I have so many first world problems…that is to say, any type of complaint or observation that exits my mouth seems to be one of these.  For example, yesterday I made the following comments in the span of one 15-minute conversation.

• I’m so sleepy; I left my chai latte at the allergist’s office
• I was annoyed on Sunday because my gym class ran 45 minutes over
• I had the hardest time getting into a bottle of moscato wine on Saturday night

In this conversation we went on to talk about how I should document these regularly on my blog, which led to a first world problem about first world problems: how to effectively add the first world problems to my blog – just a tag or a sidebar or what?? I think I’m going with a tag, so I can just post my yuppie/first world problems at random. 

Beef

I’ve started eating  a variety of beef products again.  I’ve always cheated with beef jerky for hiking but have avoided steaks and burgers and so on.

I stopped many years ago during a 5 year vegetarian stint between 1995 and 2000.  After falling off the vegetarian wagon I resumed chicken and turkey consumption but not beef (or pork actually).  Not only had beef products become difficult for my body to process (I did try a steak early on at a fancy company dinner), but I knew that beef is environmentally unsound.  The amount of water and grain that goes into one pound of beef could feed families.  In addition, the waste from factory farms is toxic.

So why resume eating beef you ask?  I’m a pretty particular eater and at some restaurants beef is the only appetizing option.  Case in point – last Thursday night my friend and colleague, Pat, and I tried out the new restaurant Linger, which is a well-designed, hip place that is brilliantly reusing the old Olinger Mortuary building.  Here’s a photo from the back side of the restaurant.

As an aside, there was another beautiful sky as it briefly rained and clouds were moving through the windy evening:

Here’s Pat looking regal while we were waiting for our table:

Anyway, at Linger not only did we get the beef tacos but I got an amazing burger slider with some yellow sauce (not mustard) on a surprisingly tasty bun.  For some reason I look overly happy, but here I am below with said slider:

More beef ingestion: after my Memorial Day backpacking trip we decided to stop at Coney Island.  For the first time in 20 years I got a hot dog!  After two days of backpacking and eating snacks and ramen and so on, the hot dog was truly satisfying.  Here is evidence of my hot dog eating:

Sign spotting

Whereas in previous posts I was referring to sign spotting in the sense of keeping open to signs in a philosophical sense, this post is more about watching for signs in a literal sense.  I post most of these on Facebook, but here are some of the signs that I’ve captured in the past few months. 

My friend (and Archer-daddy), Josh, very appropriately commented that Darth Vader was finally killed by the gate in the sign below:

This one just made me chuckle. 

Snapped this little puppy (below) at National Airport in DC – snow globes are a serious threat to national safety:

This one was posted on the fence outside my condo building, and not by the HOA:

This one was supplied by Altan and tipped me off to an actual website that collects signs of all kinds – Sign Spotting!

The Sign Spotting site devotes itself to displaying signage of a humorous nature.  Here are some examples from the site:

If you love ridiculous signs the way I do, check out Sign Spotting.

Would I go on a date with you?

On of the dating sites I was on sent me an email a few weeks ago with a flowchart attached. The flowchart indicates if I would date you based on 20 of the questions I answered on the site. See below.

I’m not sure why they sent it to me.  I asked a few others I know on the site if they received something like this.  The answer was “no.” Perhaps they sent it to point out how particular and selective I am?  I am also a bit insulted by the bottom left bit – I would date someone I wasn’t quite 100% on if they paid! That’s not the way it works for me. 

Yurt weekend

My love affair with Colorado lives on and the flame isn’t close to going out.  A few weekends ago a friend and I ditched our thoughts of camping for a much more leisurely weekend – at Joyful Journey hot springs!
The weather was AMAZING.  Blue skies and pleasant clouds the entire drive down:

Although Joyful Journey has actual rooms, we opted for a yurt! You can see more beautiful weather and a yurt (far left) below.  This was the view from the doorway of the yurt. A yurt is like a hotel room but with no bathroom and no climate control (other than fans).  There is a skylight and a wood floor and a queen-sized bed and other hotel room amenities. Some nicer yurts actually have little kitchens but not here, which was fine.

Happily, there was nothing to do but eat, drink, sleep, read, and soak.  Here’s me, post-soak.

It wasn’t all candy and puppies though, there were little biting gnats that ate me up.  I got one (or more) trapped under my hair on the back of my neck and had a patch of red, itchy bites. That didn’t deter us from an outdoor breakfast though. 

Here’s my breakfast mate, Altan.

This is me, excited for breakfast:

Here’s the hazy sunrise from the door of our yurt:

Sunday we slowly made our way back north to Denver.  Stopped in Salida for breakfast and in South Park to check out its little old town area.
One of Salida’s many art galleries had a flock of needle-felted sheep in its window, which was so cute I had to document and, of course, share:

That is all.

Denver skies

In my movement about Denver lately, I've been treated to some beautiful sun and sky.  Denver has a lot of that and I'm struck by it time and time again.

Cloudy sunset photo taken from City Park:

Denver’s Millennium Bridge Friday at sunset:

Payne Creek

Just under an hour from my home in Denver is a trail leading into Pike National Forest and then the Lost Creek Wilderness.  That trail is the Payne Creek Trail.  This was my backpacking destination for Memorial Day weekend.

This was not only close to town but one place where I was fairly confident there would be no snow.  Yes, that’s right – snow.  This Memorial Day weekend snow conditions in the mountains were like March not May.  To make this point more clearly, let me tell you that some ski areas actually re-opened!

The Payne Creek Trail was joyfully free of snow.  The weather was pretty much perfect save a small bit of early evening rain on Saturday and some seriously strong winds on Sunday night.  Here’s a shot of a budding Aspen Tree in the mid-morning light Saturday.

Me in the tent during the Saturday evening rain.

I was accompanied by two friends: Charlie and Dylan.  Charlie is a super cute terrier (pictured immediately below) and Dylan is Charlie’s person (pictured below the picture immediately below).

We didn’t see much wildlife save for this mouse that tried to make a new home in Dylan’s shoes:

The weekend was goal-less and relaxing.  Just naps, yahtzee, reading, eating, naps, uno, and reading.  A perfect antidote to my current busy life.