The stretch of vitality

Had a fun weekend last weekend even though Michale was visiting Seattle. Saturday I had some yummy tamales and wood fired pizza at the Boulder Farmer’s Market. Then I holed up in The Cup for some mind mapping and planning stuff over a giant mocha milkshake. Then I headed up Flagstaff Road and did the Meyers Homestead trail on my mountain bike. In the evening I joined Stephanie and some friends for Top Gun at Boulder Outdoor Cinema, with some game-playing beforehand. Sunday I did some computer work at home in the morning and then road Dowdy Draw/Spring Brook Loop with Erin. Then off to Denver to see a live performance of Hedwig and the Angry Inch at the Avenue Theatre. It was overall very well-performed and enjoyable. Afterward we got dinner at Steubens.

Uck. Last night was my worst performance at Climb Fit class yet. I’m not sure what happened. I did OK on the first 2 laps then faded very quickly and by the fifth lap I was “pumped out of my tree” as the instructor likes to say. The tops of my forearms are sore these days from computer RSI all day. After class the bottoms of my forearms were aching relentlessly. I’m not sure what that’s about but it was frustrating.

Tonight Michale came home and we went to the first half of Ignite Denver which was some good people/hipster watching combined with some so-so presentations. Tomorrow I’m off to Vermont for vacation and reunion with the Lyons side of the family!

OK, so it’s been three weeks or so since I posted. Over July 4th weekend we had a nice dinner at the Pizzis with some of Elise’s soccer friends who were fun. The following Tuesday was a great Boulder Denver New Tech Meetup. They had a whole bunch of local non-profit groups present for two minutes about what they do and what technology problems they have. Then they spread out to different classrooms and the tech community went and helped them out. It was a really great event. I hooked up with Boulder Community Computers and have been volunteering there a little bit in the past few weeks.

Two weekends ago I got Michale a used mountain bike and surprised her at breakfast on Saturday. We took it to the bike shop since it turned out to have a bent front wheel, and then we went on a long ride out to Lafayette and back along a nice bike path. We road under a flooded underpass and got our shoes wet though.

Last week on Thursday my Eigenharp Tau finally arrived. I ordered it on the very first day it was available and it took a month to arrive. I’m excited about the possibilities but I’m still just working on figuring out the basics. It doesn’t come with much documentation at all, so its a bit mystifying, especially considering the interface consists of mostly 95 unlabeled buttons. We’ll see how it goes. So far I’ve figured out how to change sounds and scales and I can play Happy Birthday with unintented pitch bends.

This past weekend Michale and I did a fairly spontaneous camping trip up to Frisco to escape the heat. We headed up to the mountains after I finished setting up a network build system for Boulder Community Computers. We were able to find a decent car camping site and secure a space close to Dillon Reservoir. Then we took the bikes out and biked along the path between Frisco and Breckenridge. It was nice to be by the reservoir but I think it fostered a lot of mosquitos, so now we’re each nursing a dozen or so bites. We did “restaurant camping” as it were. I didn’t have the motivation (or equipment) to pack and cook our own food, so we just headed into downtown Frisco for dinner Saturday and breakfast Sunday. Sunday we biked about twenty miles round trip between Frisco and Keystone, which was a lot of fun and I’m pretty sure it’s the longest bike ride I’ve ever done. I think Michale really liked the experience overall, especially the bird watching.

Sunday evening back in Boulder I met up with some friends for a pot luck picnic and then we heard the Colorado Music Festival orchestra play some nice Brahms pieces. It was another really fun and varied weekend.

Tonight is my little “You Film Fest” party #3 where we’re going to watch some Ignite Boulder talks. Then Michale is off to Seattle to visit her peeps this weekend and next week I’m headed to Vermont to visit my peeps.

Photos from some of these events are here.

Last weekend was a blast. Friday night I hung out at Stephanie’s and watched the Blue Planet on her big projector. Saturday started with pancakes with Michale and then we headed to Boulder for the farmer’s market and tubing the creek. We borrowed one tube from Big Wave Lew and bought another one at the Conoco on Broadway and Arapahoe. We met up with five other folks from CHAOS by the library and walked up to Eben G. Fine park to put in. Overall, my takeaway from the experience was: don’t tube Boulder Creek. The water was cold but mostly that didn’t bother me, at least not until I got out. It was fun to cruise along on the fast smooth sections, but going over the little waterfalls while thrilling seems just too dangerous. Everyone got knocked out of their tube and into a big fountain of water holding you under the surface. You have to wait until the current brings you out from under the waterfall before you can get your head above water again, and that’s just very much a not fun “I’m drowning” type feeling that I’d rather leave out of my recreational experiences. There are lots of rocks around waiting to knock you unconcious or scratch you up a bit. Michale got a bit banged up. Of course, once you pull over to the side or get out, the fact that you are soaking in ice cold meltwater hits and I started shivering right away even though the air was 90 degrees.

Saturday we had a very yummy sirloin for dinner, which marks only the second time I’ve grilled steak here. Michale whipped up some blueberry vinagrette dressing for a nice salad with jicama (that’s a new one for me) and walnuts. Sunday after breakfast we lost power so we went over to Dragonfly Coffee Shop and hung out on our laptops for a while. I got to show off my fancy new MackBook Pro. In the afternoon, we went to the Rec center and then ate some broiled salmon with garlic butter for dinner. It was a very fun and relaxing weekend.

In other news, three n00bs tried to walk into the Chris Wall level 2 group fitness class “Cry in the dojo” on Tuesday. The regulars looked around and started placing quiet bets on how quickly they would bail. This is not a “try it and see if you like it” type of class. Surprisingly, they made it through the whole first round, about thirty minutes worth of vigorous Tabata intervals before they excused themselves and bailed.

I just had the privilege of seeing a small-room show by Erin McKeown and Janet Feder in Boulder at Immersive Studios. I’m a big fan of Erin. I hadn’t heard Janet before but from what I can gather she’s sort of a classical guitarist gone rogue and she’s great if you are into interesting noisy and dissonant but songful acoustic guitar instrumentals. Erin blends a good mix of early jazz, blues, folk, and rock with a solid voice and great songwriting chops. Her guitar sound is a really rich and slightly brash hollow body electric. I am mostly familiar with a live record of her’s called Lafayette, and on that record her guitar sound on “Blackbirds” is my absolute all time favorite.

So Janet played mostly instrumental on a “prepared” acoustic guitar. “Prepared” is the term used in conservatories for when pianists put stuff onto the strings and otherwise futz with it under the hood. Janet had some really cool effects with hooking small metal bands onto the strings as well as tying a loose guitar string around one of the strung strings and then dragging the loose string along the regular string. She played in a bunch of unusual tunings and her songs had lots of nice crunchy harmonies while still being tuneful and sonically very interesting. It was also cool to watch how relaxed her left hand was and how lightly she pressed the strings to the frets. Definitely an unexpected pleasure especially since I’m primarily listening to melodic pop bands these days. It reminded me of my days at Oberlin.

The space is a small 60-seat theater in a recording studio, so it was very intimate and the sound was terrific. This reminded me of when I got to hear Charlie Hunter upstairs at Mo Pitkins in NYC. The audience was quiet and attentive with the one exception of one very young girl who was there at the beginning for a few songs before her parents’ delusions about this being an appropriate place for a five-year-old finally wore off and they carried her out.

In other news I went code complete on a major release as well as a subsequent patch release this week so there’s a good ten months of work or so that is done and done. Now it’s on to the next big project full steam ahead as always. Got some fun plans for the weekend as well. I was glad to be back to climbing and exercising this week as well after lounging around eating Oreos on vacation last week. Chris Wall turned it up on notch on his Group Fitness 2 class on Tuesday and made us do 12 sets of each exercise instead of the usual 9. I’m still a bit sore in the thighs and shoulders from that. I also did some lead climbing on Wednesday and tried out my new rope. Just need to wait for my backordered carabiners and I’ll be fully equiped for outdoor sport climbing.

Last Friday night I went to the Ogden Theatre in Denver for an Imogen Heap show with Erica, a new friend. Imogen was singing in full force and it was a really great show with a nice long set list. Her band sounded really good as well, particularly the drummer. She did an improvised song for a local charity, and audience-participation renditions of Just For Now and Hide and Seek. We got soaked in thick rain going back to the car, but it was overall really fun.

I went straight from the show to Bill and Leslie’s house. I showed up at 1am, rested a few hours, and then we left for the airport at 3:30am. We just had a lovely week on Hilton Head Island, South Carolina for our family reunion. This is our third year in a row. It’s lots of golf and tennis plus some swimming both in the ocean and in the pool and a bit of bicycling as well. There was lots of good food this year, which is featured prominently in the photos. It was a very fun age for Will. He can’t really say much of anything yet but he is happy and fun. He knows High Five and is good at walking around, carrying tennis raquets, and hiding in cabinets.

My sleep patterns were pretty disrupted so I spent two dawns out on the beach watching heat lightning and sunrise. The weather overall was pretty oppressively hot. We got a bit of a break this afternoon with some clouds and a cool breeze, but most of the week it was low to mid nineties, sunny, and humid. Of course we watched a lot of World Cup matches as well, all slunked in along a big wrap around couch and alternating not paying attention, with most people browsing the web on their laptops, with intense vocalization at the interesting parts of the match.

Photos from the trip are here.

I also bought a bunch of new toys! I got a set of my own climbing gear (a rope and some quickdraws) finally. I had been watching prices and got the REI outlt deal of the day – a 60 meter rope for less than $90 (normally they are in the $225 ballpark). Then, after about 12 years of using Linux on PCs as my primary operating system, I bought a MacBook Pro. However, this is mostly triggered by the fact that the EigenD software that accompanies the (hopefully) awesome Eigenharp Tau only runs on Mac OS X. So now shipping to me is an Eigenharp, an electronic instrument designed for live performance, which I have been lusting over for many months since they were first announced, and a tricked out MacBook Pro loaded with RAM and a 256 GB solid state disk drive. I’m hoping the conversion to Mac will be mostly smooth, and I think it probably will, but I’ll miss the awesomeness of the Debian package format and associated tools infrastructure and a bunch of other things. I’ll probably write a post about that on My Professional Blog in a few weeks.

Just a quick update on what I’ve been up to. Finally got over to The Spot last Thursday to boulder on their newly-added wall. It’s a nice addition. Friday I lifted weights at BRC, which made me still a bit sore for climbing outdoors on Saturday. We went up Boulder Canyon with a fairly large group to Avalon. I got to cross the creek doing my first Tyrolean Traverse, which was mildly thrilling (?). We did a bunch of climbing and I think I climbed my favorite outdoor route so far.

After climbing I met up with Michale and her friend Cecilia who was in town. We wondered around the Pearl St mall a bit and eventually headed home for a nice meal with broiled salmon and some good veggies. Of course we played some Guitar Hero as well.

Sunday we had a big pancake breakfast and then had a lovely drive out to Golden to hit the Heritage Square Alpine Slide. It was pretty fun, you get a really nice view of the whole surrounding area from the ski lift that takes you to the top, and it’s just $7, so overall worthwhile if you’re passing through. Then we headed back to Boulder, grabbed some loaner bicycles and some eats, and then headed over to Scott Carpenter Park for the B360 Bike Ride. We had fun riding all around Boulder with a big crowd and lots of free yummies from vendors at the end.

Finally got back to the Level 2 Group Fitness class at BRC last night and then rested for an hour before my climbing partner arrived for another ninety plus minutes of climbing. Next up is a highly anticipated Imogen Heap concert on Friday in Denver, and then Saturday morning it’s off to Hilton Head for the Pizzi family reunion!

Chris and Tina came out for a Colorado vacation visit! They arrived last Saturday in the morning. Michale and I took them to The Huckleberry for lunch. Then we took a nap since their flight was stoopid early. We went in to Boulder and strolled around the Pearl St Mall. There were some good street performers out that day.

Sunday we all attended the now semi-annual Uncle Eddie breakfast at Lucille’s. It was delicious and fun. Then Chris, Michale, and I went up to Idaho Springs for some white water rafting! We got a brief safety lecture, put on wet suits, booties, splash jackets, PFDs and helmets, and then headed downstream with five clients and one guide in our raft. We did the “intermediate” level trip and it was a lot of fun. The guide makes it a bit overly dramattic, barking out rapid fire rowing instructions that seem not entirely necessary, but it was a really fun outing and not exhorbitantly priced. We went over rapids, got splashed a bunch, huddled down in the center of the raft going over falls, and Michale even got to drag one of our dim-witted companions from another group back into the raft when he tumbled out!

Afterward we hooked back up with Tina and walked into downtown Louisville to dine at the Empire Lounge.

Monday morning Chris, Tina, and I drove down to Colorado Springs for a visit. We first took the Cog Railway to the top of Pike’s Peak. It was cool views going up the mountain. The weather was severely windy and cold at the summit. It was 17 degrees with wind chill to -10 and winds initially running 60 mph or so. We couldn’t make it even from the train to any of the peripheral view points because it was so cold and little dirt and rock particles were pelting us in the face. After only about 10 minutes, the wind hit 90 mph, which we were told is hurricane levels, and everyone had to immediately reboard the train so we could head down and back to safety. At this point decent size hunks of rock were being hurled through the air as everyone covered their faces and made a mad dash for the train. It was pretty thrilling and a big relief to get out of there. The wind was so strong that it took down a tree further down the mountain, and the tree crashed on some power lines which fell across the cog railway tracks. So we ended up stuck in the train waiting for the power company to clear the downed lines for an hour or so.

We ate at Adam’s Mountain Cafe and checked out the big arcade next door full of old arcade games. Then we went to the Garden of the Gods park. That was really nice. The weather was gorgeous and we frollicked around looking at the amazing rock formations. We had dinner in Colorado Springs that night with some yummy guacamole prepared table side.

After we checked into our motel, I had to go scouting for suitable wifi access somewhere as I was planning to work remotely while Chris and Tina went sight seeing on Tuesday. I tried the Manitou Springs library. They had working wifi and a sort of OK table for me to sit at, but my VPN software was blocked by their firewall. Grr. On to the second library. This one was closed for RFID conversion. Grr. Third library was OK though. Ended up at the Sand Creek branch and they had free wifi with decent speed and even though the used the same service provider as the Manitou Springs library, for some reason my VPN worked OK. This whole search took two hours, which is pretty typical. I missed my amazing home office.

So I worked from there Tuesday while Tina and Chris went to the Cave of the Winds. It was a bit challenging working from there and there was no good lunch available, so I fell back to my lifesaver – my trusty Chocolate Chip Peanut Crunch Clif Bar. At the end of the day Chris and Tina came back in the car and we hit the Manitou Cliff Dwellings, which was interesting but just a little. We still had some daylight so we went over to the famous fancy hotel The Broadmoor and snooped around a bit, which was actually a lot of fun. Then we stopped at the Ritz in Colorado Springs for dinner before getting on the road back home to Louisville.

I was working the rest of the week, so they borrowed my car and did a few local attractions: the Denver Zoo, the Botanical Gardens, the Celestial Seasons factory tour, and the Silver Plume steam train. Thursday Tina cooked us some delicious apricot-and-mint-glazed lamb skewers, and Friday I did some rotisserie chicken.

The rest of the photos from Chris and Tina’s visit are here.

I took them to the airport stoopid early Saturday and then met up with Michale for the Boulder Creek Festival. It’s really fun. We love watching the little kids in the giant rubber band kid launchers (they had 2 or 3 of them spread around). On Saturday I got two compliments on my trusty “plain text” white T-shirt. Then a big rainstorm hit just as we came upon Lewis and Nancy by chance. So we hunkered down under the library overpass waiting out the worst of the rain. It did last a good long while despite Lewis’s frequent mentions that it would pass in half an hour.

Today we ended up having a big yummy pancakes and bacon breakfast and then again spending most of the day at the Boulder Creek Festival. It was nice and sunny and warm today and we walked and walked and walked all over the place, laughing and eating and chit chatting.

(In case you missed it, there’s a dude on a rope swing in that photo)

The rest of the Boulder Creek Festival photos are here.

As a side note we’ve been watching season 3 of The Office on netflix instant. They’ve really hit their stride now and the episodes are hysterical.

Had a really fun extended trip to California. It was a work trip but I tacked on both the weekend before and after to hang out in San Francisco. I flew out early on Saturday morning (April 24), grabbed my rental car, and met up with Pat to hang out. It was a very groovy and enjoyable experience as I was in a very much “take it as it comes” kind of mood and just enjoying the novelty of San Francisco. Throughout the day, Pat would suggest something and I would say “absolutely, that sounds perfect”. We got Salvadorian lunch, looked at a funny pawn shop, took a nap, rode the bus to the Apple Store and played with all the latest gear, and went over to Japantown for some yummy sushi. After sushi we walked around a bit and saw a funny scene. A pair of drunken college goofballs were stumbling their way across a big overpass and got engaged in a conversation with the group of homeless people under the overpass. This ended with the goofball dropping a small bottle of booze down to the the homeless folks, who then broke out into a rendition of “The Lion Sleeps Tonight” and were clearly delighted. It was pretty funny.

After sushi we went and got ice cream. I was under the mistaken impression that I am lactose intolerant for the past 18 months. I recently got officially tested and learned that in fact, I am not lactose intolerant. There was much rejoicing. This was an official dairy-fast-breaking celebration and I got a big ice cream sundea (as it was spelled in the store) and it was great. We took a very crowded bus back to Pat’s neighborhood, or so we thought. Something got screwed up and we ended up a few blocks into an area Pat had heard was not safe. So we nervously made our way back into calmer waters, hung out on the roof a bit, then called it a night.

Sunday I packed up my stuff in the car and drove over to Golden Gate park for a nice run. Afterward I met up with my cousin Ed for brunch nearby. Then back to meet up with Pat before heading over to Dani’s house to hang out in her lushly overgrown back yard, chat with some Freedom Community folks, and learn knife throwing. As it usually happens, eventually additional members of “the family” as they say appeared and we discussed what to eat for dinner for about 45 minutes before finally deciding upon Peruvian food. So we all rolled to The Mission and had a big long meal with lots of good chatting (albeit much of the chatting was not entirely appropriate for a restaurant filled with families).

I tried to meet up with Ed again for Classical Revolution, but dinner ran late and all was finished by the time I arrived. And I arrived at the wrong address by a lot anyway, so I just drove down to Cupertino and checked into my hotel.

It was not a good work week to have a sore throat as I had to give two presentations, both of which were being recorded. It was pretty annoying and I really sounded strange. Other highlights included no less than four sushi meals included some served on a little boat and one all you can eat lunch. Friday it was back up to San Francisco to hang at Pat’s where a little party was happening.

Saturday Michale arrived (yay!) and we checked into our hotel and headed over to the Embarcadero to look at the yummies at the farmer’s market. We wondered around along the waterfront up to the wharf. I got a crab cake that I had been jonesing for. We also paid hommage to Pope Joe at Trader Joes so Michale could get her favorite hummus. Pat joined us later for seafood lunch and then napping in a nearby park near Ghirardelli square. Then we got some ice cream before heading back to the hotel. Michale and I took a “nap” from 6pm to 8:30pm and then just decided to give up on going out of the hotel again that night. I ordered room service and then we went back to sleep. Yay for mini-vacations.

Sunday we had excellent breakfast at the diner across the street, walked around a local farmer’s market fair, and then rode the bus out to the ocean. We walked along the beach a ways and then took a long walk through Golden Gate Park. We tried to make our way to Cafe Gratitude for some raw food yummies, and after a few address mistakes, we finally arrived to find it closed due to a power outage. Bummer! So we grabbed some pizza on Castro instead and then took the bus out to Diamond Heights for a party at Marcia’s.

The party was a lot of fun and Michale fit in with that crowd swimmingly, as I knew she would. It was good. There was ice cream cake and swiss cheese and lounging and talking and hot tubbing.

I commuted to work with my boss Monday morning and then back in the evening. I met up with Rebecca and Brian for rock climbing at Mission Cliffs a bit. It’s always fun to visit new climbing gyms. Then it was back to the hotel for early sleep. Tuesday morning Michale and I headed into the BART just as it was opening at 4am only to realize the first train to SFO wasn’t until nearly 5am, which was too late for our flight. So we had to fall back and take a cab to the airport.

Photos from the trip are here.

I’m reading and enjoying Pragmatic Thinking and Learning by Andy Hunt. I’ve got a new project starting and some other exciting changes happening at work, so I was pretty restless last night. I finally gave in at four AM and just got out of bed and started drawing mind maps for a few projects. I did eventually get back to sleep after fully draining and redraining all my RSS feeds and facebook updates. I slept late and feel pretty rested.

This morning I cooked a delicious breakfast. An omlette with grilled chicken, baby swiss cheese, and red potatoes. I had Ani DiFranco and Chick Corea in my Sonos/Rhapsody playlist and I experienced a strong moment of contentment and gratitude. Today I’m going to bike from Louisville to Boulder (for the first time, it’s shameful, I know) and hit the BRC for some weights and climbing. Tomorrow will be another great breakfast at Watercourse with Michale and her Seattle friend Monika who is visiting Denver this weekend.

I am happy. This is all I want out of life. Any improvement above this is just gravy.

Oh, it’s such a lovely spring day today. A bit windy but otherwise delightful. This morning my new assistant arrived with an electrician and a handyman for some long needed home improvements. Finally my promiscuous garage door opener that opened when neighbors both in front and behind me used their remotes has been replaced. I got a bunch of light switches fixed up properly and some new hooks in the exercise room for my gymnastic rings. All this happened while Michale and I made banana chocolate chip pancakes and played bananagrams. Also, my dog run got its first real use. The electrician Dave had a big German Shepherd named Deuce in his truck. So I offered to put Deuce in the dog run. Michale and I went and played fetch with him for a while in the back yard. He escaped the dog run a few times by pulling the door open, but eventually Dave tied it shut with some electrical wire and all was well. Deuce also got to meet my neighbor’s Golden Retriever puppy Bella.

Then we went to the Boulder Farmer’s market and for a walk and picnic up Boulder Canyon. Then we came home and took a long nap until Michale kicked me out because I was done napping and fidgeting too much – thus I’m blogging our day so far. Oh and the Ice Cream Truck just came down my street, which is what motivated this post. The Ice Cream Truck rules. Michale didn’t hear it so I’m going to surprise her later with an Oreo pop. Oh and on that note, for the last 15 months or so I’ve been under the impression that I was lactose intolerant, which is a major downer, but now that has come under suspicion after some trips to the doctor. So I had some baby swiss cheese on my sandwich today, which they gave me for free since I bought so much turkey. I haven’t had swiss cheese in a really long time and it was probably in the top three of my all time favorite foods, so there was much rejoicing.

Oh yeah, and last night we went to a friend’s house for game night featuring Outburst from 1988 and Egyptian Rat Screw. And Michale made me a hat!