My high school friend Katy Covino got married last month! This afternoon I got a link to her wedding pictures. Gorgeous!
Ben’s gone to the land of Dunkin’ Donuts today, so the boys and I are alone again :( Until Wednesday — then Ben comes home and I head to Seattle for the rest of the week. Bad timing, but when I return Friday evening, we have a three day weekend! Hooray! AND I found out that A1 might come visit in October! Double yay!
After a beautiful summer in the high country, Ben and I finally reached the Continental Divide yesterday! We left from the 4th of July trailhead and hiked about 3 miles to Arapahoe Pass. It was gorgeous!
Today was a little more subdued. We enjoyed church in town, then headed to REI and a ski store (Ben’s picks) in Boulder. By then I was pretty tired so I watched some more Law and Order. Ah, satellite TV :)
Again, sorry for the lack of updates! This past week was my second week of work, and it was complicated by Ben’s absence. He was back in San Mateo last week finishing up his training.
That left me and the boys at home all by our lonesomes! Moreover, Bonzo is not yet big enough (meaning his BLADDER is not yet big enough) to stay home alone. I found a very nice animal hospital in Boulder with a doggie day care program, so every morning Bonzo and I drove to the other side of Boulder to go to day care before I headed in to the office.
The folks at Arapahoe Animal Hospital are delightful and attentive to the pups. I was given a progress report everyday; Bonzo started out shy with the other puppies (”Probably because he’s used to beating on big dogs like his brother,” they explained) but blossomed throughout the week. By Friday, he was in the wading pool with the other dogs! I asked more about that because Bonzo has been a little reluctant to swim with Chaco, so the technician explained that, well, actually, Bonzo was more just sort of sitting in the water dish. “Oh,” I said. “He does that a lot at home. We’re not big fans.”
Ben and I had a joyful reunion last night, accompanied by gifts — Ben brought a little bit of In N Out home for me, and I had some chocolate lava cakes in the works to celebrate. Today we hiked up to Arapahoe Pass, but I haven’t edited those pictures yet so I’ll save that entry for tomorrow. For now, here are the latest puppy pictures.
It’s been a while since I wrote. It’s also sort of a moot point because apparantly WordPress, for whatever reason, significantly delays posting my images to computers other than my own … that’s still a mystery to me. Anyway, whenever it is you read this, accept my apologies for not providing consistent procrastination fodder for you :)
As you know, last week was my first week of work. Adjusting to the commute and the workday left me pretty tired — hence the lack of posts! I have to get up pretty early and I conk out around 10 or 10:30, which makes me feel like an old fart. However, it has some advantages — my body likes being on a rigid sleep schedule, for one, and for another, this weekend I woke up raring to go at 7:15 so I went running. I like running early in the morning as long as I’m already up.
Ben is in San Mateo again this week, and the week after he’ll be in Connecticut until Wednesday and I leave Wednesday to go to Seattle, so this weekend felt like a bit of a “goodbye for a while” weekend! :( On top of that, Ben looked as his Palm Pilot this morning as we pulled out of the driveway for church and said, “Gosh, I hope it’s short sermon — my plane leaves three hours earlier than I thought!” Oopsie! He made it but we didn’t get to hang out a whole lot before he took off.
The highlight of my weekend was Konrad Kono’s piano concert at the church this afternoon. WOW!!! He is amazing. He played a little classical, a lot of showtunes/swing, and some original improvisions. The church’s piano is big news in Nederland — it’s the first of its kind in town — and to hear a professional play it was amazing. Plus, Konrad is hilarious; it was as much comedy club as concert. Perhaps they’ll entice him to come back next year.
The weather is starting to cool down here. We had some beautiful clouds this morning and some substantial rain this afternoon. I’m not yet tired of looking at the clouds here; this was my view coming home from the concert:
My folks left today. I was sad to see them go, but I suspect that they secretly longed to return to a pee-free zone. Yesterday, on the eve of their departure, Bonzo peed inside sixteen — count ‘em, SIXTEEN — times. And three indoor poos. I hope it’s just a really bad phase and he doesn’t have diabetes or something. He drinks an awful lot.
My job is good! These first days feel like Christmas — I got a new desktop, a new laptop, and my very own office. I’m not thrilled about the security at the federal campus (I can’t be an administrator on my own XP machine, I had to fill about about two hours of paperwork detailing everywhere I’ve ever lived and contacts at every address, etc.) but the rest of the job is great. I’m looking forward to transitioning to real work soon as I start to learn about tsunami warning systems in the next couple days.
I start my job tomorrow! I’ve enjoyed my two months off. We’ve adopted a second puppy, and although he still pees all over the place, he sits, goes down, leaves it, and [sometimes] rings the bell when he needs to go out. We’ve moved halfway across the country and gotten our house in order; it feels like home and we love it. I’ve been hiking, backpacking, and extreme tubing. I’ve watched enough Law and Order to earn a detective degree, and I’ve learned to bake both chocolate souffle and chocolate lava cakes.
I hope that life in the working world is this good!
My family is here! We’re having a great time hiking despite the rain. I’ve put up a gallery that I’ll continue to update throughout the week. More to come!
I won all the marbles in our family poker tournament tonight. I should, however, admit that part of my victory is due to my dad’s inability to find replacement hearing aid batteries out here in the boonies. He thought I said “I call” when I actually said “All in” with three sixes and that pretty much was the end of him.
