The stretch of vitality

More photos of the new house are here.

Thursday night was the inaugural rotisserie chicken attempt. As I found in my real estate dealings, the instructions that were readily available were far from comprehensive. I managed to basically get the things on there OK, but I was soon facing large flare-ups in the grill such that I brought a fire extinguisher up from the basement. However, once I turned off the three middle burners, leaving only the side two, that seemed to quiet down. Sadly after about 20 minutes the spit had fallen out of the motor, but luckily I think I caught that within the first few minutes. Then later it seemed like the rotisserie sections were unscrewing and collapsing in the middle, which was going to be a big problem. However, it seemed to hold out and when I eventually disassembled it after it cooled there was still many turns to go before it fully disengaged. So in the end the chickens turned out quite tasty. However I made two whole chickens expecting around twenty people for the CHAOS pot luck, but only five showed up, so now I have tons of chicken. I brought a big container over to my neighbor’s house as well.

Today I went up to Fort Collins and did some fun mountain biking in Lory State Park and Horsetooth State Park with Jaz. The trails are nicely maintained and of moderate difficultly, which was a nice change from Sourdough. Jaz got a flat when we were pretty darned far from the trail head so we ended up pushing our bikes quite a while until the second tube donated by kind passing cyclists actually fit and worked and we were gleefully back in action. Then we had yummy sandwiches at the pickle barrel.

This evening I attempted some chocolate chip cookies but they came out pretty crappy. Not sure if it was the recipe or the altitude or what. They are still edible though.

Wow. Super fun weekend. Friday Erin and I met up with Elise’s crew at Lazy Dog for the tail end of Happy Hour. Then we grabbed some quick but tasty Tibet dumplings and scooted into the theater just in time for Public Enemies. Sadly it was crowded so we ended up forced to take the only pair of seats left in the front row. I thought the movie was a bit blah and too long. Hard to comment otherwise since we were mostly craning our necks to look at pores – the cinematography featured a lot of extreme close-ups of faces.

Saturday morning I met up with two folks from CHAOS and we drove up to Estes Park and climbed the Jurassic Park area. It is really, really gorgeous up there right now. Beautiful black water of the mountain lake, lush green pines, alien rock formations. My partners were wondering if the drive was worthwhile for me since I had to be back in Boulder just after lunch to make it to the music festival, but I was really pleased just to spend a bit of time there. I did get three climbs in and we were in the shade for two of them, which was nice.

Then I drove back home for a quick shower and meal before driving out to the Mile High Music Festival. I wasn’t sure I was gung ho about an all day affair, but it actually turned out to be really great. The vibe in the crowd was a lot of fun. It was really hot, and the headliners were hard core bands Tool and Widespread Panic, so it was lots of heavily tattooed and pierced girls in bikini tops and cut off denim booty shorts. The festival had a waterworks thing that was spraying the crowd with water, which was nice. I stopped and kicked a hacky sack for a while with a group. We were joined by a girl in a white bikini top, tons of big tattoos on her back, booty shorts just barely staying up, and converse. Her friend was in a long black dress which she hoisted up a bit to expose her converse sneakers when it was her time to hack. Their guy companion could hack impressively without spilling his completely full beer.

I only caught the tail end of Galactic, which I wanted to hear and sounded good, but it was just so much driving and I wanted to eat a big lunch at home so I wouldn’t need to buy much expensive food at the festival, so I missed most of it. I did hear some of Greyboy All Stars, who had two great songs and the rest so-so, G Love and Special Sauce, and Incubus. However, the surprise hit was Indie Arie. I have her “video”/queen song that I really like and it’s her big hit, but the show was great. After a terrible and delayed sound check, they finally got rolling and she spoke for about five solid minutes (of a 45 minute set) because she was upset and needed to get through it in order to put on a good show. She grew up in Colorado and went to school in Denver, so it was a home town crowd, but apparently she doesn’t gig much in the area. Anyway, her family was there to see her but she said her brother had gone out to the parking lot to get his cell phone charger and been arrested for scalping tickets, so her mother was at the police booth trying to get him discharged so they could make the show. She was pretty upset. So she wanted to sing a brand new song she wrote yesterday called “Life Is Good”. The musical director and keyboardist knew it, but the rest of the band didn’t. So the two of them quickly taught the gist of the song to the band and backup singers and then they immediately performed it. Pretty gutsy for a huge festival show! Anyway, that song was good and the audience joined in and then she did her big hit song as she was now feeling better. The crowd really liked the show and the authenticity of her performance. It was a nice and unexpected treat.

Then I moseyed over to the big stage to claim some ground for the Tool show. I haven’t seen them live and I had heard they put on a great show, and they didn’t disappoint. Of course I was pretty darned far back, but at least I didn’t need earplugs, although it was still super loud. The visuals were great and of course the crowd was totally into it. By now it was dark and the heat had given way to a perfect temperature. They played basically a “greatest hits” type set list, which was cool. Maynard James Keenan also had a funny comment after the first song. “Tonight’s performance is brought to you by the cool, refreshing taste of …” then a long pause. Is he doing an endorsement? Man I thought Tool was way above that stuff. “… boobies. …. Say what you will. Everybody likes boobies”.

Today I went and again biked Sourdough Trail, but this time with just Erin. It was again very challenging but fun. We went just a bit farther than last time. The plan was to go until the point at which I had turned back last week, but focusing on the trail I rode right past it without noticing, and only on the way back was I like, oh, here’s last week’s turnaround spot. We probably did an extra mile or so. Then we grabbed some yummy Snarf’s sandwiches back in Boulder and sat on the grass behind Boulder High and enjoyed them after pedaling up those monster hills all morning.

This afternoon I finally got a much needed nap. I have acclimated to another Colorado lifestyle aspect: I now get up earlier on weekends (6:30) then I do during the week, and I generally play longer days than I work (I was out “playing” from 8am to 11pm on Saturday). Anyway, the new mountain bike and the bike rack are working out great. I’m also loving the Rogue car. I’ve made great use of the extra space for bikes, furniture, people, tubes for Boulder Creek, shopping until the cart is full at Target, etc. Overall I’m really pleased with it.

More photos are here.

Louisville Colorado has again been named the best place to live according to Money Magazine. w00tz! Go go gadget real estate appreciation!

Saturday I rode with some CHAOS folks on Sourdough Trail up between Nederland and Ward. It was a pretty challenging ride, but I stayed on the bike about 85% of the way I’d say. I even cruised over two log jumps, although I chickened out of a third that looked more like a log wall than a log jump. The new bike worked well. I am just learning to use pedal clips so I toppled over at zero MPH twice trying unsuccessfully to get my feet out in time to arrest the fall. The group was nice and all good riders so it was a good time. I have some tentative plans for a second attempt next weekend.

This morning I did another highly successful yard sale tour and got a bunch of great stuff. I loaded a computer desk, night table, small shelf unit, and watering can into my Rogue and put a big five foot tall wooden shelf on the roof rack. The Rogue is proving really handy for the outdoor sports toys and household chores. I’m really liking it.

I also met some of my neighbors. They all seem really nice and so far are all of similar age to me. My direct neighbor to the north is another single computer dude who bought his house just a few weeks after I bought mine.

I filled out the day with tweaking my lawn sprinkler, climbing at BRC, swimming (check out this Tim Ferriss blog post on total immersion swimming), and finally caving in and joining teh facebooks. So look out for friend requests coming your way. Oh and yesterday I bought a grill! I hold grills as a somewhat sacred object and so it is with much joy that I shopped, purchased, transported, and assembled mine. Sadly removing the liquid propane connection to install the natural gas line has proven impossible for me due to a bolt that refuses to loosen, so I have to admit defeat and get a handyman to do it on Tuesday. In any case, a celebratory grilling will be done Tuesday. I may bust out the chicken rotisserie next Thursday for a pot luck. We’ll see.

Tuesday morning I climbed my personal best: a 5.11-. w00t!

Thursday night I bought my fancy 3-figure mountain bike (as distinguished from my 2-figure mountain bike that was stolen last month). It’s still pretty much the cheapest thing stores in Boulder will sell, but at least it has hydraulic disc brakes and a shock lock-out. I also got real mountain biking shoes with clips and everything. Hopefully all this gear doesn’t backfire on me tomorrow when I ride with some CHAOS folks on a trail that will probably be way too hard for me.

So after I got the bike Thursday night and tested it out a bit I quickly grabbed a pre-show burrito at Illegal Pete’s. We saw some petty thief clutching what was presumably a purse being chased on foot by a policeman, who we cheered on even though it was clear with his bulky uniform and equipment belt he wasn’t going to be catching up with the nimble thief. However, he was barking coordinates into his radio so hopefully teamwork and technology prevailed. Then I went to Boulder Theater and heard the band Albino. It was a dual CD release party with The Motet. Albino is a great ten-piece afrobeat group from the bay area. This band played a very memorable concert at Burning Man last year on Wednesday in the saddle amphitheater that was right behind the Freedom Community camp. They will always have a special place in my heart for that. The Boulder crowd was of course way into it, so it was a good show. They played “Thriller” as an MJ tribute which was really fun. The horn section even did the zombie dance. At intermission the horn section joined up with the local Batteria Allegria and jammed while walking around amongst the crowd, which was a nice touch. Sadly I forgot my earplugs and even though I tried one gas station in the final minutes before curtain, I didn’t have enough time to buy some, so I had to leave shortly after The Motet’s set began because it was just too loud.

Today I began the process of meeting my new neighbors. I met three so far and hopefully tomorrow more of them will be home when I go ringing doorbells. It’s looking to be a good weekend overall.

It’s 90 degrees here today and I’m still pretty comfortable. I _might_ bust out the A/C. It’s pretty nice. When it’s 90 in Jersey you are soaked in sweat in 10 minutes if you walk outside. Sadly some wrist pain is coming back again that I have gotten in the past when working at a desk that is too high. I’m taking some restorative measures, but I’ll still have to wait a while for my GeekDesk to arrive.

I bought some corn at the Boulder Farmer’s Market. I haven’t cooked this myself before, and I knew it was fairly self-explanatory, but I just wanted to do a quick google – just in case. I found this page. This could not be more exactly what I want. Picture by picture. Tiny text annotations. Not even full sentences. Informative but just tiny hints of personality. No ads. No terrible layout with big div tags of links everywhere. Old school. So good.

I worked a bit in the peace and quiet of the holiday on Friday, which was nice. In the evening Erin and I walked in to old town Louisville to meet up with weiskind and rayhawk for dinner and drinks. We had a few laughs at Empire diner with regard to accidentally making out with the bar tender.

Saturday was my personal economic stimulus plan. I hit four garage sales before 9am and scored some great patio furniture dirt cheap plus some other assorted sundries (free stapler!). Then I did a bunch more shopping all over the place for various little items for the house. In the evening I caught the last bit of a trivial pursuit game (25th Anniversary Edition) at the Pizzi’s then went with Erin to watch the fireworks at the CU football stadium. That ended up being a lot of fun. The crowd was throwing paper airplanes all over the place, and the fireworks were basically right in front of our faces. After that we tooled around town a bit on bikes and stopped at Haagen-Dazs for the first ice cream I have eaten since November. Mmm….coffee mocha chip.

Well, it’s really nice here. That’s what I have to say. The street is a quiet dead end cul-de-sac. This is similar to my beloved Crescent Pl where I grew up. It may be simple psychology at work, and that’s fine. I like it. Things are making improvements quickly. The lawn sprinkler has been repaired and is working, lawn has been mowed, a gas line for the stove and grill has been added, and new dual-fuel range has been installed, various electrical problems have been fixed or improved, a radon mitigation system has been installed, packages from home have arrived, the mystery of how to open the stopper on the downstairs bathroom sink drain has been solved (you push it down to make it pop up! who knew?), plates and some basic housewares have been purchased (square, blue & gold). I still haven’t been here a week! So in general I’m liking it quite a lot. I’m enjoying breakfast in the sun on the deck getting my sleep clock reset and some vitamin D. The handy man says it is easy to run speaker wire in the attic to any room upstairs. Score! I went downstairs and told the plumber that it smelled like gas when he left the new gas outlet in the kitchen open while he was installing it. House didn’t explode. Score! I even ventured slightly out of my programmer world of clean and pure digital abstractions to the brick and mortar world of home ownership by replacing all the locks myself and even changing some lightbulbs. Impressive, I know. I used the drill and everything.

Ownership feels nice. It’s control. There were a bunch of long and questionable extension cords strung around in the garage for the garage door opener and sprinkler. It’s my house. I had an electrician install power outlets next to each of them. That’s so cool! Louisville is pretty darn idyllic. I haven’t done much exploring yet, but I can tell I will really like it here.

Unfortunately the exit process of the last (last!) apartment hit some problems. My crappy bike and my landlord’s crappy bike got stolen from the back yard (behind a tall solid fence) on the day before move out. I even tried to put my bike on my bike rack and take it to the new place but it didn’t fit so I left it one more day and it got jacked. We also had the last of several plumbing backups we have had in that apartment, which created an annoyance and issue to be argued over with the landlords. Oh well.

I also just want to again note that Imogen Heap is just so adorable. Her new album Ellipse comes out August 24. Can’t wait.

Later tonight I will bust out the bari sax for the first time in a long time and wail downstairs. It will be loud. No one will care. Mission accomplished.