The stretch of vitality

Just prior to Burning Man at the end of August, one of my super cheap-o set of computer speakers (small stereo pair plus sub woofer, “CA” brand) stopped working. I was packed pretty full, so I tossed the other speaker and sub woofer. Since then I haven’t had speakers. I have been using the tiny built-in speakers on my laptop or occasionally headphones.

When things finally stabilized enough to where “get new speakers” bubbled up to the top of the to-do list, I did some shopping online, tried to get some from the fancy high end audio store in town, but ended up ordering a pair of M-Audio Studiophile AV40s. They are not premium speakers – just about one notch better than the Logitec or Creative Labs stuff you can get in Best Buy.

Holy crap. My life is significantly better. It’s amazing. They sound great and I can feel the music in the air. Everything is so much more powerful this way. Man. It’s intense. I’ve been missing it. Now I just can’t wait unti I get my own house so I can buy the kick-ass home stereo of my dreams.

In other news, Rhapsody finally has some Tracy Chapman and some Nirvana. This week ikioi left on Monday morning and I’ve been working pretty hard these three days. The project is at the exciting phase where it’s starting to come together and be able to do real work, which is fun. And man, it’s nice to not be writing design documents.

Today it’s Turkey Fest at the Pizzis. Tomorrow climbing and backlog of errands.

Friday night aps101 arrived for a brief visit. We had some pretty extravagant Moroccan food in Denver complete with a belly dancer. This included a pastry thing filled with chick peas and chicken and covered in powdered sugar and cinnamon. Plus a huge tender lamb entree. Yum. Today (OK, well, I’ve been piecemailing this blog together for two weeks – this was Saturday Nov we walked through downtown Boulder and Andy got a sense of the vibe here.

In other news, I bought a new car! Allow me to introduce The Blue Machine. It’s a 2008 Nissan Rogue SL. I am very happy with it and really enjoying the fancy sound system and the ride. It’s a very different experience from being slow and low in my Sentra for so long.

Sunday Andrew and I went into Denver to cruise the 16th street mall and spent a good long time in the tattered cover book store.

Monday Colonel Power arrived to complete the roster for Operation Buffalo Pyramid. We went straight from the airport to the nearest open Taco Bell to quell his cravings and then it was bed time. On Tuesday ikioi treated us to some delicious beer bread made with wheat beer and his variation on spaghetti bolognese. We feasted. Then after dinner we played a “game” even though ikioi states “I don’t play games” in a very manner of fact voice. But this one involved numerous fascination philosophical questions and generated great conversation.

Wednesday A & P headed to Illegal Pete’s and I later joined them at the Boulder Cafe for some buffalo sliders and more good conversation.

Thursday we headed to Southern Sun and met up with my relatives. Afterward we went with Elise to Catacombs for cheap beers and trivia night. aps101‘s major contribution was the Beatles audio clip recognition while I did reasonably well on video game characters.

Friday aps101 took off and in the evening ikioi, Becky, and I got some delicious Cold Stone Creamery ice cream and watched Gattaca. Since it’s getting to be that holiday season, Cold Stone has their Dark Chocolate Peppermint ice cream in, which is, in my opinion, THE GREATEST ICE CREAM IN THE UNIVERSE. I stocked up.

To bring the visitor count up to four, Marc got stuck on a layover in Denver, so we made a late night run to the airport to get him. We brought him back, fed him some beer bread and beer, pointed him at the iron, and flopped him down on the pull-out sofa. But not for long because we had to leave for the airport again at four AM so he could make his flight and get to his 8:55 AM interview in California. He later reported that he miraculously made it there early despite flying to a different airport and thus screwing up his rental car reservation.

This week has been a bit more chill with just two of us here. Housing market is still pretty slow but I might go see some homes over the weekend. Been bouldering at The Spot some more and am two for eight on my current problem. But now I think I have the right beta and I will send it next time (dropping some climbing lingo on you there).

One last weekend with ikioi and then it’s back to solitude for me.

Ah, much fun in Boulder was had today! But I see now that the blog has gone for a few weeks with no update, so here’s a quick summary.

I put an offer on a house that I very much liked, but the sale was contingent on the seller getting a new job and relocation package, which fell through the same day I made my offer, so they withdrew the house from the market. Bummer. So it’s back to square one essentially since there are no other offer-worthy homes on the market right now.

This has had significant impact on my other late October logistics. I canceled my trip home, partly because my moving logistics would be at that same time and partly to be around in case any last-chance-before-the-holiday-trough listings came up. So that meant I had to find other temporary housing. The good news there was that there were at least a few fairly good matches for temporary furnished rentals on the market. I almost rented one place a mile from the Boulder Rock Club, but eventually had second thoughts when their rental application asked for my bank account numbers and credit card numbers and they wanted to run a criminal background check. So I ended up renting a very comfy tri-level home in Gunbarrel, which is an area on the north east outskirts of Boulder. Overall, it’s a pretty convenient location. Man, what a difference 3500 ft of elevation makes! It has been in the low seventies here in the afternoons all week. Much nicer than the howling wind and cold up in Coal Creek Canyon.

The other nice thing about this place is I can stay as long as through the end of April if the house hunt is a complete disaster. So very hopefully this will be the last (#8 in a year!) temporary rental home before I move into my own place.

Sadly Halloween this year was a complete flop. I got a sore throat Wednesday night that was fairly annoying Thursday and by after lunch Thursday I stopped eating. So on Halloween I had a terrible sore throat, didn’t eat anything, and felt sick and tired. I tried to work a bit in the morning, but around 10:30 we lost power, and it ended up staying out for over three hours. On top of that, I ran the dishwasher for the first time in the new house that morning and for reasons yet to be determined it leaked into the basement. So I’m here on my cell phone calling plumbers, with a sore throat and no power on Halloween. Major bummer. I eventually called in sick/powerless to work and slept most of the day. My costume and make-up went unused. I bought two big bags of candy anticipating a horde of trick-or-treaters, and left it out in a bowl for them to avoid spreading my sore throat, but only a handful (if any, I’m not sure), came, so now I have to find some way to get rid of this candy or otherwise ration it out over like six months.

Yesterday was a day of intense car shopping. I test drove a Nissan Rogue, a Honda CR-V, and a Subaru Forester. It’s a very close decision. I think the expertise of the Pizzi boys will need to be called in. I’ve been flip-flopping between the Rogue and the CR-V as my top choice.

Today was awesome excercise day! I biked 5.5 miles to The Spot Bouldering gym. Did a pretty long bouldering workout, then biked back.

Soon, visitors! ikioi and aps101 will both be here to visit this month, even with about 4 days overlap! Fun will be had for sure.