It's the little things ...

... sleeping in on the weekends.

... watching a movie first thing on a Sunday morning.

... pizza for lunch.

... public transportation. cheap & I don't have to drive.

... walking around the city.

... free sangria & cheesecake on a wednesday night.

... beer at a baseball game.

... watching puppies play.

... live bands.

... walking my dog.

... the first cool day ... many more to come.

... 3 day weekends.

... getting packages in the mail.

... birthday presents.

... happy hour on a friday afternoon.

... kitties sitting in the window.

My wussy dog

Yeah, I said it, my dog's a wuss. Not always, but sometimes. There are things he does without thinking twice:

carry his own food and water on a backpacking trip. and getting as dirty as possible before sleeping in our tent.

Tell this guy what's up. Read: scare the shit out of him.

Jump in any body of water. The dirtier the better.

Climb 14,000 ft. mountains, while harassing wildlife and other hikers for their food. (No one said he was well behaved.)

Chase wild geese, and coyotes, and cows, and horses ... pretty much anything that moves. The bigger the better.

But he HATES to get his feet wet. In the morning when the grass is all dewey, he flat out refuses to walk on it. And I actually have to pick him up and put him in the grass. And then once he's there, he prances around on 3 legs and looks at me like this:

And he's also completely freaked out by his water bowl and refuses to drink out of it. It's big and scary that thing, much scarier than a pack of coyotes.

*Disclaimer: I realize that one of these pictures isn't exactly rated PG13. I just didn't feel like editing it out.*

Dear Rox,

I realize that we got off to a rocky (haha) start this year. Me hating you because it was too flipping cold for baseball, also you steal my husband from me for a good 6-7 months out of the year. However, our relationship has grown over the last few months from acceptance to actual love. That's right, love. But, if you don't win the next game that I go to I will have refuse to actually pay for a ticket & beer to support you. A side benefit of this would be that I'll never have to hear another girl behind me ask, "why did he get to go to the base if he didn't hit the ball?".

But really, I don't want to abandon you .... all I ask is that you pull off one of those awesome wins the next time I'm sitting way up in the upper deck.

xxoo, yours truly

Tuesday Randomness ...

... I painted the wall this weekend. I ended up going with a completely different color because those paint chips look nothing like they do on the computer. It was a pain in the butt & but I'm glad it's over. Charlie's not too fond of the color. He calls it "storm cloud" aka gloomy & depressing. It came out darker than I had thought but I still like it and I'm not about to repaint it.

... Um, did anyone stay up for all 14 innings of the Rockies game last night? It was pretty awesome.

... I'm seriously worried about this engineering class this semester. What was I thinking? My math skills are pretty awesome when it comes to adding, subtracting, & multiplying. Dividing, not so much. As far as calculus goes, I forgot everything the second the final was over.

... I'm debating about selling my car. Charlie's car is still being "fixed" and we won't get that back for probably a month or so. We've been sharing mine & taking the bus. Selling my car would save us a lot of dollars each month ... we'll see.

... I cannot wait for my birthday & fall. Apple pie, anyone?

Yarmouth vs. Whipple

So, the wall that I want to paint. Actually that might have turned into 3 walls now, but we'll see. Charlie and I can't agree on the color so I thought I'd get some other people's opinions.

So, here's our "living area" front to back.

Here are the walls that I'm thinking of painting:

This one is definitely getting painted.

Moving the t.v. wasn't an option. Unfortunately. I wanted the room set up slightly differently but Charlie won out on this one. I'm taking Emily's suggestion and painting behind the t.v.. I also have something to hang towards the top so that the space doesn't look so strange.

I'm thinking of painting the wall where the windows are as well. Although, this is the space I'm not too sure about. My plan is to hang white curtains so I thought the color might be a good contrast.

Now for the color choices. For the first time I actually want something a little more mellow than Charlie. We're trying to decide between B.M. Whipple Blue (Charlie's choice) and Yarmouth Blue (my choice). Now I've seen both of these colors on the wall and I will say that they look a lot brighter on the wall than on a paint chip.

Here are the color options:

Whipple Blue

and ...

and if it helps, here's a tiny picture of a wall that was painted Yarmouth Blue.

So, which should I go with? Should I paint the wall with the windows or just stick to the other 2 areas? And if you have any more suggestions let me know. Things could get ugly once I get a paint brush in my hands.

sugar = flour ...

... yeah, not so much. I have class at night this semester which means a lot less home cooked meals. [Oh, who am I kidding? It means an excuse not to cook.] Anyway, tonight I came home to Charlie slaving over the stove. He had made his famous tuna casserole (recipe via Rachel Ray).

Now I mentioned that since we moved our new kitchen is a lot smaller than our previous one, which means waaay less storage space. So one of the things I did to save space was put all of our flour and sugar into jars and store them on top of the cabinets.

Well the recipe calls for flour & Charlie couldn't tell which one to use, so he guessed. When I got home he was like "it's the one in the small jar, right?" and I just started laughing. The small jar happens to be confectionary sugar. That tuna casserole was nice and sweet. Almost like a 2 for 1 dessert and dinner. Poor guy, I hope he keeps on cooking. :)

How to get a car stuck on a mountain

So I figured I should explain the last post a bit. Our plan for last weekend was to hike Gray's & Torrey's Peak on Saturday and camp that night and then drive back to Denver on Saturday. We actually woke up at freaking 5 am on Saturday to get there and when we got there at 7:30 it was like Disneyland. Seriously, cars, people, dogs, kids, everywhere. The road up to the trailhead is about 2.5 miles and is a disaster. It's dirt, steep, and filled with huge ditches and bumps. It takes a 4wd vehicle and some serious menuvering to make it up there. On Saturday the road was so crowded that we ditched the car and hiked up the road. However, the weather was so bad that we had to turn back after about 5 miles.

Hiking up the road to the trailhead. That's Gray's Peak between the trees.

We decided not to camp that night since we were already soaking wet and instead to drive back up really early Sunday morning to do the hike. I realize that sounds crazy, but I really wanted to hike a 14er this year and August is pretty much the last good month to do that before the weather makes it nearly impossible.

So Sunday we woke up at 4 am. Yes, 4 am. When we got to the nasty road there weren't a lot of people there. Charlie has a manual Jeep Patriot. It's not trail rated but it does have 4wd. As we started up the road there were some pretty tricky spots, we were going so slow that even in 1st gear he had to use the clutch. Basically, we got to the top (barely) & Charlie's clutch smelled awful.

Gray's on the left and Torrey's on the right.

Then came the good part. We had great weather on Sunday. We hiked up to the summit of Gray's in about 3 hours. I will say that after about 12,500 feet I definitely noticed the lack of oxygen. Once we got to the summit, I ate a granola bar and about 5 minutes later lost all feeling in my hands. My fingers were completely white and I couldn't feel anything. A friend mentioned the fact that it was probably just that I ate something. Basically, my body took the blood from my hands and sent it to my stomach. Stupid granola bar. Anyway, that scared the crap out of me and we decided to hike back down instead of doing Torrey's. I got feeling back in my hands at about 12,000 feet.

Switchbacks on the way up. They went on FOREVER. Dunkin was waiting for me. :)

Henry at the summit. He's standing on the tallest mountain on the Western Continental Divide, 14,270 ft.

Us. I love how Henry's ears are blowing in the wind.

View from the other side.

Henry loves anything he can chase. These squirrel/chipmunk dudes were taunting him. Really, they would sit at a safe distance and scream at him. It drove him nuts.

You can see our car in this picture. Only at this point we had no idea it wasn't planning on starting.

We got back to the car and ..... it wouldn't start in gear. Basically we burnt out the clutch. We were 2.5 miles from anywhere with a cell signal, and had our car stuck on a road that I couldn't imagine a tow truck making it up. We hitched rides down to the bottom & started calling tow truck companies. Basically, we have Geico & we have roadside towing with our plan. However, they refused to pay for the tow down the mountain. We'll see about that. I was not happy with them & I'm definitely going to fight that. I was also annoyed because I was trying to have them get us a rental car and they told me they couldn't help me since it was Sunday. I hung up on them.

Waiting for a tow for 6.5 hours. We all got a little bored.

We finally found a towing company that said the could get the car off the mountain. They showed up 6.5 hours after we had finished hiking with a tow truck and an off-road Trailblazer that they said somehow they were going to push/pull our car down the road. Something I didn't want to watch. One of our friends came and picked us all up and drove us home. I think Charlie's planning on repaying him with a few rounds of golf.

things I learned this weekend ...

... check the forecast before waking up at 5 am, driving an hour and a half, and braving rain and sleet for 5 miles before you realize you'd be an idiot to go any further.

... "road not maintained for low clearance vehicles" really means "badass Jeeps and trucks only".

... when you lose all feeling in your hands and your fingers turn white, it doesn't necessarily mean you have frostbite.

... always have a credit card with you.

... always have a cell phone with you.

... geico sucks. seriously.

... always take extra food, water, and t.p..

... never attempt to stop a 75 lb. german shepherd from leaping out of a vehicle by putting your arm in front of him.

... be nice to your friends. you might need them to brave i-70 traffic to come get you in the middle of nowhere.

... policemen are not all that concerned about your safety.

... oh, and always wear sunscreen.

Yesterday was a very, very long day. But worth it in the end.

Colorado Home #2

I just have not felt like blogging recently. But seeing as school starts in a few days I'm sure I'm back for good. Blogging is the best distraction/procrastination.

I mentioned that we moved and that things went well. In all honesty if we hadn't had such good (and strong) friends to help us move we would have been screwed. Moving day was a mess, as they usually are. I was up at 5 am that morning to take a test. I thought it was a two hour test but when I got there I found out it was 4.5 hours. Oops. The truck I rented wasn't nearly big enough and we had to take two trips, not such a big deal, but I definitely underestimated the amount of crap that we have. Luckily, the pizza and beer that I had bought as a bribe helped & made me feel slightly less bad.

This is our 2nd story balcony & Henry's butt. We had to lift our mattress from the ground up over this because we couldn't fit it through the front door. Did I mention it was a good thing we have strong friends?

One of the few things I finished is the photo gallery that I said I was planning on doing above our couch. Honestly, I'm just relieved to have something done.

... and a close up.

Our kitchen is teeny-tiny. As in there is no room for food. I'm slowly trying to remedy that, but it's taking a while. We ordered a wine rack from C&B which should help free up some space (and be a good excuse to buy massive amounts of wine).

Tiny but cute. All those wine glasses will have a home in 7-10 days.

Our t.v. is a hot mess right now. Whoever designed these places left a huge alcove above the fireplace. Why? I have no idea. We put our t.v. up there, but any suggestions about how to make it look less like a college dorm area are welcome. I can't think of anything to do (aside from move the wires).

I also mentioned that I want to paint an accent well. This is it:

And when we get that wine rack in it's going to go right by that cable outlet.

The guest bedroom is also doubling as where I study. So excited not to be studying in the same room that Charlie works in.

Bed.

Messy desk.

Bookshelf.

You can consider these all before pictures & if you have any suggestions they're greatly appreciated. Overall I really like it here & I think Henry does too:

Beer is good ...

I have been MIA. We moved & things are a little chaotic, but in a good way. Love. No, LOVE the new place.

Right now I'm enjoying my one true love: beer. Just discovered this one:

New Belgium, you rock.