Big city, mega traffic, five inches of snow, and lots of family and friends time. What more could I want in a week? Well, less traffic and snow, to be honest. Still, to be inside, cozy and warm, for 24 hours of falling snow wasn’t an entirely bad thing – I got a lot of reading done and some photography work too. And a few cool pics 🙂
I had a great tour of downtown Denver and the pedestrian mall with my sister and her friend, who were good sports about posing with Flat Eliza.
I drove down to Colorado Springs to meet a long-time online friend from my running group. Tonia is amazing – a pancreatic cancer survivor who is rehabbing from hip surgery 5 weeks ago. You’d never know either of those things are true. She has a blog Dude, Where’s My Pancreas that gives you a hint of her sense of humor and also the rollicking lunch conversation we had.
Monday evening I had another treat: my Denver-based nephew took me out to a wonderful dinner, all grown up and making sure I had drink, appetizer, good entree, and dessert, while we had conversations about just about everything. It was special to me because when I was his age (mid-30s), I started taking him and his younger brother for a long weekend or a week to San Diego or once to San Francisco, to show them a bit of the world outside of their grandparents’ town (they were raised by my Mom and Dad from ages 10 and 7 onward). There was one particular dinner in San Francisco where they practiced table manners, making conversation, and ordering food from the waiter, and it was both funny and painful to watch them be so polite and make earnest conversational gambits. All these years later, I got the payoff at this Monday dinner and I loved it. This must be how proud parents feel when they’re sure their kids are finally grown up. Bob, it was the best night of the year as far as I’m concerned.
Tuesday found me visiting Wings Over the Rockies with my sister. It was a cool museum of astronauts and Da Vinci, old planes and Star Wars, and we had a really good time looking at all of it.
I moved today up north of Denver today to see more family for the week and perhaps get some better weather, who knows!? It snowed on me while I was hitching up, so I’m ready for some warmer weather for sure.
My cousin’s husband is a tinkerer of some renown and spent the afternoon under my Alto, replacing the wonky left side motor for the caravan mover. It’s shiny new now, we’ll see if it works better than the last one. After a good Mexican dinner with them and a short drive to settle in to my new place, I was just in time to watch the beautiful colors of a sunset.
If we had no winter, the spring would not be so pleasant.
Anne Bradstreet