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Just a few more days left on my bebox auction. Only one bid so far. It's a great deal on computer history. :) Tell anyone who might be interested:
Went out with some folks last night to go Jazz club hopping down in denver. Overall a pretty nice time. Lots of drinking and conversation. We only managed to hit 3 places:
The first place was El Chapultapec on the corner of 20th and Market. It was small, small, small. The music was quite good there and everyone seemed to be listening and having a good time. If we had managed to get there earlier and snag a booth or something I would have been happy to stay there, but as it was it was standing room only and we decided to mosey after the end of the set. It's also worth noting that I really need to get a Tv-Be-Gone. There was a TV right over the band that was playing commercials as far as I could tell. It was anoying and distracting.
Next we went over and checked out Herb's. The cover there was $5 a person and some of our party didn't really want to fork out that early in the evening. We looked around a bit and wandered on. I didn't get too much impression of the place, but it's probibly worth going back to sometime.
Next we ended up at Trios Enoteca. It was a pretty yuppy, tendy looking sort of place, but there was lots of room and drinks. The band was sort of backgroundy and after a while I didn't notice them much. They were a gypsy jazz band. The drinks varied in quality: The Lemondrop I had was pretty blah, but the "buttercup" martini was excellent ( vanilla vodka, butterscotch schnapps and bailys ). We basically hung out there until the place closed up shop.
To paraphrase M*A*S*H: "I bet I'm boring when I talk about my dogs?" "No, thats the only time you are interesting."
I took some pictures of merlin running around the yard like a maniac. It's pretty hard to get any kind of non blurry picture of him while he's running around like that. You just have to throw the tennis ball once and he runs around with it in his mouth for several minutes. A few of the pictures turned out kinda nice even though they were blurry, like this one:
Twyla often leaves her tounge sticking out when she's sleeping or lounging around.
Today I got a picture of her doing it in a particularly amusing manner:
Well, had a very good time today snowshoeing. Got up early and packed up and made it up to boulder to meet up with the group around 10am. Took a while to get all the things together that everyone needed and rent the snowshoes, but we were off from boulder around 11:30 or so. We went up to Brainard Lake. Pretty nice area. Often its crowded, but it wasn't all that bad today. It's interesting to walk in snowshoes. You have to make sure you put down the back of your foot first or else you catch the front/spikes on the snow and get all messed up. Turning around can also be a challenge (You don't want to step on the back of your other snowshoe).
It was a really warm day, probibly in the 50's up there. The trails were all hard packed down and it wasn't too hard to walk on. We did venture off the trails a few times and that was much harder. Probibly 4-5' deep or so. Brainard Lake itself was very pretty and frozen over. The road back was easier to walk on without the snowshoes, since it was so melted on the road.
It was a nice time. I would like to go again sometime just after a storm to get the fresh snow experence.
Here's a bunch of pictures from today: sunday snowshoeing trip
As a side note, I was worried about the dogs, they aren't usually left alone for all day. It was about 9.5 hours I was gone today. I was fearing there would be cleanup needed or something destroyed, but when I got home everything was just fine. They had no problems at all!
Another day, another netflix. This time another Disney movie: The Black Cauldron. I have a great fondness for the Lloyd Alexander Chronicles of Prydain books. I even went out and got a new set of them a few years ago when I couldn't find the ones I had read many times. They are still a great read. The Disney movie of the first 2 books isn't nearly as good as the books, but it's still fun, and pretty well done. I had a nice time watching it. If you can't spare the time to read the books (shame on you), you might still enjoy the movie.
Another netflix down: Big Fish this time. It had some really good parts, but for some reason it didn't grab me. It wasn't fantastic enough to be magical, and wasn't dramatic enough to be touching. Just sort of entertaining way to spend an hour and a half and thats about it. I would say if you have time to kill this one might be worth watching, otherwise stick with a movie thats better.
Mouse count as of this afternoon: One dead in the recycle bin, one in one of my mouse traps and one live (ran away when I went out there). I see that my neighbors have a mouse trap sitting in their front yard, so I suspect I am not the only one with mouse problems. The dead one in the recycle bin is a bit of a puzzle. Wonder if someone is poisioning them? Oh well, tomorrow I am going to work on cleaning out the table and last corner of the garage and that should hopefully finish evicting them from my garage.
I realized recently that I have been woefully neglecting my netflix movies. I had one that I hadn't watched in 4 months, one in 3, one in 2. I've resolved to do better and get my moneys worth from netflix. To that end, some movie reviews:
Anastasia was quite possibly the worst anamated disney movie I have every seen. I really didn't care about any of the main characters. The villan was really lame. The russian history co-opting was lame. The animation was lame. One to miss. There is no reason to see this one.
Russian Ark was one of those movies I was glad I had seen. It's a 90 minute continous take done in the russian history museum in St Petersburg. It was dull and boring in parts, and very pretty in other parts. The dancing at the end was great. It does make me want to someday go to the museum. You should see this if you are feeling artsy or like russian art.
Veronica Guerin was pretty well done. I realize it was based on a true story, but it was pretty predictable seeming. It's hard to say what it had to say more than any other of the 10million movies that talked about the drug trade. It did have some very brief greyhound racing tho. :) I guess I would reccomend this if you are in the mood for a irish drug lord movie.
Well, about 75-80% done with cleaning up the garage. Yesterday I surprised the mouse. He leaped off a shelf and into a pile of boxes. Didn't see him at all today however. I probibly flattened about 50 boxes. I tend to just toss boxes in there when I get something and they really pile up. I also found out why the mouse(es) are there. There was a 40lb bag of "fit-n-trim" dogfood in there that I probibly got with some foster dog and forgot about. The mice had burrowed a nice hole in the bottom and were enjoying nearly limitless dog food goodness. I put all that in the trash along with a ton of other junk. There was probibly all total about 3-4 cu ft of rat droppings. I swept up the bulk of that for the trash. Hopefully that will help the smell there. The mice had also found and old dog toy and made a nest in it. That got tossed. Next weekend I will try and finish up the job. There is a big table that needs all the junk on it cleaned up, and some more boxes to nuke.
Off to eco-cycle with a truck load of boxes.
Recap of the last week and a half:
Last Thursday through Saturday tkil and deliriumdreams were visiting. Not a bad visit, but too short. Lots of good food (Tosh's, Macaroni grill, etc) and good drinking. I got to spend a fair bit of time with K, the youngster. It was pretty fun, but I don't think I could handle that level of young child manic for more than a few days without collapsing.
Tuesday I got to go and have some of the walnut brewerys delightfull barleywine. It was a really good batch this year. Nice and smooth and flavorfull. Turns out it was good that I went and had it then, because they ran out the very next day. No more until December.
The GURPS game was back on on wednsday. We hadn't played for about 6 weeks due to the holidays and people traveling and so forth. It was a pretty good session. The players made a bit of progress. It's fun thinking up what evil will befall them next week.
Thursday was a BLUG meeting. I stupidly piped up on the mailing list that I could talk about Morphix so that was the talk. I managed to make up my slides eariler in the day and I think the talk went reasonably well. It was on the short side, but there were some good questions afterward and nice discussion about various morphix related items.
Friday I went back to the walnut with a group of friends (to find that the barleywine was out). They did have a 'sub-zero' ale that wasn't too bad. It was pretty amusing to see someone I know who works at southern sun there for dinner. Checking out the other brewpubs? :)
Which brings us up to today. I have a bit of work to do, and then I am going to takle my garage. It's really a mess in there (and has been for a while) and recently some mice or rats or the like have taken up residence. It's starting to smell bad and annoy me. The mice/rats are also eating anything out there thats at all food like. I put out some traps a few weeks ago, but they have totally ignored those. Not sure if the bait (peanut butter) isn't tasty enough or the traps otherwise don't work on these critters. I guess I will see about evicting them when I clean up the boxes and other junk in there.
The fight against entropy continues. Did a bunch of cleaning in prep for tkil and deliriumdreams visiting. I started out deciding I should clean out the window off the kitchen that the cat always hangs out in, and then from there decided I should clean off the top of the fridge, then on to the cabinet that has all the dog meds and treats and toys and food in it. Whew. Then off to vacuum the house, and start a bunch of laundry. Entropy is an inplacable foe.
Today was non warm in most every way. I did take the dogs for a walk anyhow because they were starting to get stir-crazy. Merlin was so happy to go for even a short walk in his coat. He kept stopping and spinning every few feet. It was probibly about 5 out when we went for the walk.
Tomorrow's hackingsociety up in boulder, then back home to greet out of towners. They are going to the VNV show friday night. I might wander along on a lark.
Hope everyone had a safe and enjoyable new years evening. I went up to boulder to a party and had a nice time. Lots of good food, good company. Wandered home around 1am or so and got to sleep by 1:30. Not too bad. Now it's off to petsmart to run the greyhound adoption table for a few hours. The pups will sure enjoy that.
I don't have any resolutions (I figure anything worth doing is worth doing for it's own sake, not because another arbitrary day rolled by), but I am going to have to go back hardcore on the diet. Been pigging out way too much this holiday season.
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