Denverette

Hey Ya'll! Denverette is at www.denverette.com

2010-11-20T06:17:00.001-07:00

Visit me now!

Taryn Fort Doyle is the original Denverette. She thinks, anyway. Read more and see if you agree.

From the MySpace archive: Hipster's eating hippos

2010-11-20T06:11:00.000-07:00

Ever go to Sonic and get yourself a blasted ocean water?

It makes you puke, right?

Tonight, as I breathe in the foul Brooklyn air, and the foul hipster shine is blinding me raw, I pray for the Sonic to eat itself and whip majorically into a new drinking bar. There is no Sonic in NYC, but boy howdy do we need one.

1st Avenue was totally crawling with creeps tonight! And Bedford, well if I prayed or cared to pray I might for the hipsters. They try so hard.

I am tiring of this week, and tiring of the sun. Tiring of the humidity, and tiring of my long runs. It keeps me in shape, b/c my cocktails involve drinks. I feel sorta terrible, but eff it to fink. Excellent bagels at Dunkie's today, excellent beings feel around every way, but who really needs it when you're healthy and blase (insert accent mark). It's boring echoes and Dell-crapper moo's. Stupid artists and arTITs and artists and "oh I'm an artist", and, um, artists everywhere. Tell 'em to eat a tank while they chew, but then they eat your french fries and block real artists in their shoes. I feel excellently sorry for all my poor homeless, they trickle around and tonight's a full moon. The pool's full of hipsters, the sorry lot, they manage to pull through. They listen to music where kids used to swim and shoot gang members, too. They watch from the new condos, above soccer fields of poverty food.

Hipsters are so lame.

DENVERETTE has a new home: www.denverette.com

2010-01-22T10:29:00.008-07:00

That little surprise I discussed in a post or so ago???

Well, I've been giving Denverette a facelift, and now it's time for all of you to connect with my revamped home: www.denverette.com.

Bookmark www.denverette.com in your websites, blogs and everywhere else.

Hope you enjoy my new look!

Why cancer? Pink is so overdone...

2010-01-15T06:41:00.004-07:00

I have a tendency to overextend myself. It's a pro and con of my personal work ethic that I must consciously control or at least try to manage.

My latest endeavor is taking on the position of Co-Chair of Advocacy for the Washington Park Relay for Life Committee of the American Cancer Society. I put my volunteer hand up late last year and now I'm delighted to be in the midst of a pretty amazing committee of people comprised of cancer survivors and advocates like myself. After two cancer battles with both parents, respectively, in less than 5 years... I figure it's an ideal place for me to help. Plus, Relay's proceeds go to cancer research. Without research, my dad wouldn't have had the cyber knife save his life 5 years ago. With more research, perhaps my mother's recent cancer battle would've been less challenging (although I'll never complain about our experience now because her amazing surgeon and team of doctor's are the reason she is in remission).

My role on the Committee will be to recruit Relay attendees to join ACS' advocacy group, Cancer Action Network. I'm preparing for my first lobby day at the Capitol here in Denver in early February, and it's a new new arena for me philosophically and intellectually. I'll also be putting my journalism skills to use and identifying key survivors and translating their individual tales of experiencing cancer, treatment, recovery or simply how it felt to be sidelined up next to a loved one dying of cancer.

When I entered the healthcare communications industry many years ago, I never realized how my personal life would be effected by disease. I've often pondered a new direction... "why not try education?"... or, "why not open a bakery?"... or "why not shelve ambition and simply go work a thoughtless temp job?"

I can't do it. As frustrating as the healthcare industry is in this country, there are amazing stories and science happening right now that the public deserves to know about.

So my new volunteer role at ACS will be a solid challenge for me. As Heidi Montag said in this week's People Magazine about her astonishing 10 plastic surgeries in one day... "It was a personal choice. I did it for me."

She's kinda right. It's easy to face a challenge if you really believe in it.
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I have 7 minutes to write this post

2010-01-13T06:42:00.007-07:00

Before I run out the door, literally, for a quick jog and prepare to go drink yucky glucose test liquid that hopefully results in me not having developed gestational diabetes during the longest pregnancy of my life, I have 7 minutes to write this post.

Hubzo and I woke up super early this morning. We think our internal clocks are preparing us for a baby. So, while he catches up on Sports Center in bed, I'm catching up on marketing blogs and other stuff I barely have time for. I ran across Seth Godin's blog.

Seth Godin is one of the more interesting characters in the land of humanism and figuring out to infiltrate the humans of the world with messaging and branding and other effective things. He's a trend identifier and often makes predictions.

He's wickedly touting two new big ideas (that ironically sneak in three ideas) for the new decade: 1) reign all the madness and attention-grabbing newfangledness into something manageable (control you iPhone apps, people) and 2) we're now entering the Frustration Decade. I'm sort relieved to see them, because I was starting to feel so overwhelmed over the past two years of rapidly spreading new media thoughts, coercions, mashups, new software, new technology, new way to communicate... my God, communications and marketing are totally in a new REALM. It's so fascinating.

First off, Seth is tired of all the maddening madness of everything in our life: so many blogs to read, tweets to follow, posts to catch-up on. And, next week all the new social media and marketing mania slips into a new alley with a new trend running through its sidewalks. So hard to keep up! It's time to bring it home and focus on only a few really important daily information meanderings. Read more about this in his free e-book, What Matters Now.

A for the Decade of Frustration, this is taken verbatim from one of Seth's recent blog posts (sorry, 7 minutes isn't enough time to paraphrase and I credit well):

Change: The infrastructure of massive connection is now real. People around the world have cell phones. The first internet generation is old enough to spend money, go to work and build companies. Industries are being built every day (and old ones are fading). The revolution is in full swing, and an entire generation is eager to change everything because of it. Hint: it won't look like the last one with a few bells and whistles added.

Frustration: Baby boomers are getting old. Dreams are fading, and so is health. Boomers love to whine and we love to imagine that we'll live forever and accomplish everything. This is the decade that reality kicks in. And, to top it off, savings are thin and resource availability isn't what it used to be. A lot of people ate their emergency rations during the last decade. Look for this frustration to be acted out in public, and often.

Enjoy, loves!

Linen and lavender and velveteen

2010-01-12T18:03:00.004-07:00

I promise to come back to life, to be full of airy condensation that falls and settles as creative juice upon my laptop, to tend to my neglected little kitty, Denverette... but not until this baby is out.

As my friend Brooke kindly reminded me on NYE: there is a thing living off of my body. She's a little piggie, too. In comparison to my own ridiculous need for constant food, water and pressure being applied to my lower back in the form of massage, my creative energy is at a standstill.

Henceforth, for the next 80-some days, I will likely continue to neglect my sweet bloggy and devoted readers who still somehow check back regularly for posts.

I got a new idea cookin' in my little head for ya'll. Changes are a'comin...

Hint: I'm tired of getting my wrist slapped for effort, so I'll be slapping my own wrist before anyone else can, but with yards of fine linen ribbon and velveteen tips. With lavender blooming around me! Hahahahahahahahahahaaaaaaaaa... my insanity will return!

End of Year Flummox Sale

2009-12-30T05:10:00.005-07:00

Here I am, with my pathetic monthly post! Hi! Hi! Hi!

It's December 30th and we're on the cusp of closing out a year of flummox. Yay!

Two years ago today I was planning my last NYE dinner in NYC (as a hostess, that is) and preparing for a long night of dancing with M.I.A. at Hugs in Williamsburg. Yes, I was cool. Ha ha.

Two years later, I'm officially a Denver transplant and six months preggers with a crazy baby girlzo who likes to wake me up at night. (One year ago I lounged through NYE in a one-piece funky jumper with Heidi braids taking more than a dozen tequila shots with my friend Alejandra... it was cold outside and I woke up the next day with my only concern focused on how to get pizza in belly.)

Oh, as all the goofy news stations in Denver put it, what a year can bring!

The challenges of this year, namely my mother's illness, have prepared me (once again) for other challenges and I'm intent on treating our experiences positively. We are so lucky -- despite the fantasy notion that many Fort's refer to as "the Fort Factor" -- because our lives have been blessed with chance encounters and guidance from somewhere that allows us to move forward.

And... we are getting a little surprise baby girlzo to salivate over 4-ever.

I cannot express how excited my little eyeballs are to see her. Hubzo thinks she'll look like Gollum at first, but that we'll get over it. I'm just so stoked to get her out and start insanity of another level I've not yet experienced! If only I can get through the last few months with my smile on straight and learn how to sleep again.

Much of the stress of being pregnant appears to stem from what I'll term as "cracked" and "rabid" societal pressures associated with bring a child into the American existence.

Not only are babies BIG ASS business, but there are more rules than I ever imagined. I ran away from rules almost ten years ago and made my own. I lived. So... I'm struggling with so much outside stimuli associated with pregnancy and babies that sometimes I forget that Americans have a nack for making something "challenging" into a platform for rules. We Americans love nothing more than to blame someone out of the box for doing something out of the box. So, a bunch of rules are made and trends develop and everyone buys into it.

Further, the relentless media feed our need for hooks and every hook is tied to a product, which is tied to our wallets, which is tied to Hollywood and Wall Street, which control the way our entire country operates.

Between the "blame game" and baby mania splashed across the tabloids of our nation, I've stepped into a pool of alligators and I must look like a silly little dodo. Sometimes, it feels like people want to eat me alive if I don't accept their notions of how to progress as a pregnant human. Other times, it feels like people just want to make me think there is one highway through babyville and my car is in the ditch. And then other times, there are a few people who actually make me feel like it's all going to be "OK" and I like those people best.

There are two big trends I've noticed with a baby on board: a) The business of babies is monstrously overblown yet everyone gets sucked in, and b) everyone who's ever touched a baby, which is practically everyone in the world, has advice and opinions and stories to share about pregnancy, labor, newborns, pregnancy pains, pregnancy cravings, OBs, pediatricians, daycare, working as a new mom, how to eat right, how much weight to gain, when to travel with a baby, how to travel with a baby, car seats, how to get a car seat installed properly, how to feed your baby, why breastfeeding matters, why it's OK to have a glass of wine, why it's not OK to have a glass of wine, why you shouldn't jog, why you should jog, how some people jog when preggers, dogs and babies, vaccines, how to teach a baby to read (just kidding), and the list goes on and on.

See? OVERWHELMING.

It's not that I don't appreciate tips. I do. I need answers to basic questions and truly know nothing about babies or how to have one. I didn't even know what "swaddling" was until last week -- NO LIE. I'd heard the term, but had no clue about what it meant.

Anyway, I'm about to enter my third trimester and feeling pretty good with little to no knowledge about what's happening inside of me. You probably think I'm dumb, but I do reach out to reliable sources for knowledge: I rely on my midwife, my upcoming "baby classes", my mom, a good friend who is an OB nurse, and a few trusted coworkers who know their stuff. I'm reading one book about babies and that's it. Hubzo is educating himself and thankfully knows more than me. Plus, babies like his beard and glasses and he's learning calming techniques.

Otherwise, the saturation is too much and has paved a path to insomnia, which I'm curing without Ambien.

But, seriously, can you believe I'm attempting to be a mommy? I can't. Wow.

Ninety-two days to go until I'm officially due on April Fool's Day 2010.

I guess someone decided to let me in on the joke.

Don't care so much about Santa, but the concept is great

2009-12-14T19:04:00.004-07:00

Today at work several of us were discussing when we found out Santa wasn't real. I don't remember ever having a conversation about it or having any type of realization or dumbfounding moment of feeling cheated by life. My bond with the art of having a good time sure could have wiped out those memories, but I think I'd remember something that negative.

Apparently, lots of folks get gypped with the Santa story. I don't remember every believing in Santa. I suppose I did. I came from a relatively normal family with a relatively normal background.

What I DO enjoy is Christmas lights. The glowy, ambient feel of a lit-up Christmas tree in a cozy, warm room are so nice. My mom has three trees, sometimes more. This year she has three trees yet again: one on the back deck, one downstairs and one upstairs in the main front room.

Anyway, pregnancy brain has misdirected my thought. I'm lucky to have thoughts long enough to produce a blog post, to be honest. I can't get out of bed early enough to write anymore, because I'm obsessed with getting to the gym on my one guaranteed non-work outing of the day. The gym has turned into Mecca for me. I don't fret about mileage anymore and simply enjoy exercising. It's wonderful. It eats into my traditional writing time tremendously. And, yet again, I have departed from the original paragraphical thought.

Back to Santa.

Yesterday in Denver United Airlines flew a bunch of sick kids to the "North Pole" to meet Santa. Truthfully, the kids were flown to some random hangar a short flight away and Mrs and Santa Claus fell from the hangar sky to greet the kids. For many of the children, it was the first time on a plane or first time away from the parents. For the joy they felt, I get the concept behind such a move. For the logic, I don't get it. It totally fills kids with false hope. The way news spreads on Earth these days, how can anyone that can read truly miss the fact that Santa is fake? Tiger Woods can't keep his girlz under wraps and he has more money than God. If his publicists can't control his image, how the hell can a fake person's nonexistent publicist keep Santa real?

Santa has lots of good, mushy positiveness glowing out of his fat belly. He represents something very good, very true, very simple, very old, very jolly, very inspiring. If kids hear that Santa is fake, then they can decide for themselves if they believe in Santa. I guess. I mean, I have a kid on the way and I know she'll believe in Santa for awhile until I break the news to her.

The one thing I'll be able to say is that no matter how many awful things can happen to a person, gifts come to each of us in mysterious ways. My wish list was delivered and read. No matter the delivery mechanism, someone out of this world brought me three great gifts this year: cancer remission for my momma, a baby girlzo for me and hubzo and a new $80-each-way Southwest Airlines route from Denver to Boston.

If these indescribable presents came by way of a fat man in a red suit with a white beard, I'll take it.

ThanksToday4Lots

2009-11-26T08:57:00.002-07:00

A fixie masterpiece

2009-11-21T07:55:00.006-07:00

Hubzo has been super busy lately. My nook is scattered with bike tools, grease and all sorts of weirdly named bike pieces I don't understand.

Yes, yet another bike has entered our life here in Denver.

This is hubzo's third bike since we left NYC and the best so far (IMO). It's sparkly blue and he built it himself. I'm pretty impressed that he can build a bike from other bike parts. I'm even more impressed that it's safe and gets him to-and-from work everyday.

The only really new parts are the frame and seat... he built from those and added the other pieces (wheels and things named things I don't remember) from his old bike. Since we now have a variety of handlebars stored in storage, he resurrected one previously retired and shuttered it with some new tape.

Downtown Denver (well, technically we're in Capitol Hill, which is downtownish) is very conducive to street biking. There's also the Cherry Creek bike path that runs a block or so from our apartment... Plus, there are dirt paths all over the place. www.bikedenver.org has tons of downloadable bike maps, if you're interested.

But hubzo's into fixed gear bikes, so dirt is a no-no.

Anyway, back to the bike. He's very happy with it, and although he still needs to buy protectant for his new white seat, he's been riding it for a few days.

Now we just need to attach that baby thingie to the back and he'll be set to ride the baby around. I think the Carrababy from England looks about right (kidding!).

P.S. Before hubzo, the only thing I knew about bikes was confined to Miss Gulch.

A sundae of snow topped with prego musings

2009-11-14T07:35:00.008-07:00

We made it to NYC, but that was two weeks ago already! It was great fun, one of the best weekend trips we've ever taken. Halloween passed. We stayed in Hell's Kitchen, which is now Hellsea, per my beloved Jimmy. I saw lots of drunken gay men emerging from the clubs at 8 AM on Sunday morning in their Halloweenie outfits and heightened temperaments. I mistakenly took them for marathon runners running a bit late for that morning's NYC marathon. Wrong. I miss those moments.

All my amazing peeps came out for visits and we spent Saturday in the old hood of Brooklyn. It's changed a lot. New apartment buildings spreading like spilled milk all over Kent and Berry Streets north into Greenpoint. Krisp and I saw a truly terrifying 8-foot killer rabbit walking the streets on Halloween night. He waved at me. Even in daylight, I wanted to run away.

I walked probably 5 miles each day and my feet emerged swollen little lumps off the plane back in Denver on Sunday night. I hobbled around the airport waiting for them to regain shape and fit back into my ballet flats. My final diagnosis: a combo of deyhdration from flying, being in the air, having walked more than usual for 3 days straight and being knocked up. They still hurt on Monday, but they resumed a regular shape soon after.

I'm pretty lame if all I can talk about is swollen feet. It's only happened once!

Two weeks later, we await yet another snow storm and a less than enthused atmosphere of gray sky. I suppose if I wasn't preggers, I'd be entertaining the thought of a yearly ski pass and booting it up for the day. Instead, I'm adopting preggers-girl activities, like baking my first turkey and pondering baby room decor... Treehouse? Fairy forest?

Oh yeah -- the baby is a girl! Did I tell you?

I'm already projecting my idealism on the kid, not letting choice be a part of her very early life. I'm choosing the scary walls that will surround her when she wakes me up five times a night. I'm choosing her clothes and searching for hip stuff that easily allows diaper transition. I'm choosing the books she'll hear. I've chosen her daddy who talks to her in such a thick Boston accent that I'm sure she'll know him first out of everyone. I'm also choosing, with hubzo's help, how she will be referred to the rest of her life. I guess all parents do that though.

As you can see, I am, after some time of conversion, very much enjoying preggersness.

Psychologically, I'm less freaked. Physically, I'm good. I'm still running, albeit much less, but I'm supplementing with as much other activity as possible. Yoga is helping with the strains of running with extra poundage. My energy is fairly good and I'm not sleeping as much. My dreams are bridges to insanity and while I love to sleep and nap, I wake up terrified and often need hubzo to bring me back to reality.

Anyway, we're stoked that the baby appears to be healthy and developing in a normal manner. I'm not feeling her too much yet, although she was squirming all over the place during the ultrasound this week. She's also slated to arrive a bit earlier than we though, due on March 24 now.

At least she'll be an Aries. Mother and daughter should never be the same sign, especially the watery, dreamy, complicated Pisces.

We adapt well, but our minds are forever stuck in fantasy.

Williamsburg vs Capitol Hill

2009-10-29T08:27:00.004-06:00

Who knew my old Brooklyn 'nabe, Williamsburg/Greenpoint, resembled my new Denver 'nabe, Capitol Hill? Of course, the people look very different, but structurally, it's similar. Check out these pics I took from morning of the Denver marathon.

I nearly weeped when I found Mile 12 a mere block from our apartment... For those that don't know, we used to live on the corner of Bedford and Lorimer streets, right on the cut-off street between Williamsburg and Greenpoint. It was also the Mile 12 marker of the NYC marathon and paved the path for years of tremendously fun marathon parties. Sniff.

October snowstormies

2009-10-29T08:15:00.002-06:00

The snowstorming elves seriously went into overproduction this week in Denver. It's been snowing heavily for a full 24 hours at this point and mostly everything is closed down today. Hubzo and I are scheduled to fly out to NYC late this afternoon for the birthday celebration weekend, so I'm being as calm as possible about our chances of getting out. Because I'm so Type A, I want to control this situation, but I've already explored the possibilities and limits are in place.

My mantra is to stay cool (in the head), warm (in body) and safe (no weather-related accidents). I have to remember it's not all about me anymore. According to my weekly Baby Center email this morning, the little tyke is rapidly growing and the size of a bell pepper. Its genitals are formed, too, which totally freaks me out.

Here's a quick video I shot this morning:

It's that time

2009-10-26T07:12:00.003-06:00

Do you feel it?

The air is crisp and chilly, sometimes snowy.

Leaves cover the ground and make it slippery when I run on sidewalks.

It's nearly dark when I get home and even darker when I wake up.

Safe inside the apartment, my bones are covered in layers and my eyeballs settle easier into books (because I don't feel guilty about frolicking in the sunshine versus reading in my nook).

We've had a BeAuTiFuL autumn in Denver this year. Our neighborhood is older than our last, covered in leaves and frozen mornings that take a bit longer to wake up. I drive home down Logan Street through red, gold and orange trees. I jog up into Governor's Park, a steep and odd little park just around the bend, and it's covered in leaves that don't cover dog poop. People usually pick it up here. I take late afternoon and Sunday morning walks down Poet's Row and up to Cheeseman Park where I view and long for an English cottage for sale and way too above my price range. Capitol Hill has a tremendous creepiness about it, with traditional London lighting near the parks and into the quiet, Tudor-style mushroomed streets. Last week, as hubzo and I crawled through the alleys to watch the Denver marathon, we were struck by how similar the area is to parts of Brooklyn, very like Park Slope and Cobble Hill. It's just so pleasant.

But this week I'm returning to my young adult roots, back to NYC for a birthday celebration and to re-energize my soul. I do so wonder how it will compare with the loveliness of Denver in the fall. But I suspect my curious thoughts will quickly be replaced with people watching and hurting feet.

Must remember to buy those cushiony jelly things for my shoes.

Around the world in mere weeks

2009-10-19T06:42:00.009-06:00

When I first began my foray into journalism, it began with a simple column I wrote about being a closet bookworm for most of my life. That column was my "coming out" moment, and it well defined both my yearning for reading as a hobby and my disappointment in the public school system I grew up in. It wasn't cool to read in my school. We never even read Hamlet, the teacher opting instead to show us the Mel Gibson film. Book clubs didn't exist. I couldn't be caught dead in the school or community library, although I'd spent hordes of time there as a child and pre-adolescent.

But this post isn't about my sad, somewhat self-deserved curse of not allowing myself to be cool with reading. The gist of that tale is I broke through to the other side. I kick-started my journalism career and embraced myself for who I am and stopped aligning myself with the coolness of it all. Ha.

My first years in New York City were spent without TV, so reading became my outlet. To be accurate, we had a TV the first six months when I lived in the West Village, but once we hit Brooklyn, we went without. Books overflowed out of our apartment.

Anyway, I've been reading a lot these days. Since my happy hour days and nights are on hold, I have more time on my hands. Last night I considered the books I've read recently, and realized my yearning to travel must be subconsciously tugging at me. For, I've been to Limerick, Provence, Baghdad, the mountains of Afghanistan, Syria, Jordan, Kenya, New York City, and Kansas. You might enjoy a few of these yourselves:

A Year in Provence, by Peter MayleThis book literally documents one year of living in Provence and it’s mostly about food, but also delves into reconstruction of a country home and experiencing the locals. It will make you want to drink tons of wine and lie in a pool. It will make you want to eat foie gras and cheese with every meal. It will make you curious about the howling “mistral” that flies in from the Rhone Valley. It will make you wonder why the recession had to hit and destroy all hopes of retirement for my generation. This is non-fiction and it’s very entertaining. A quick read.

In the Woods, by Tana French
A debut novel, the book opens with three children mysteriously disappearing from their Dublin neighborhood. One returns home alive with no memory of the disappearance while sporting slash marks through his t-shirt and blood-filled shoes. The other two children remain missing. Flash forward 25 years or so and the little boy who returned home is now an adult detective investigating the murder of a 12-year old girl found near the same woods where the detective disappeared years earlier. This book is not like other mysteries I’ve read… it’s not flat or boring, and full of really interesting turns. The book kept me up several nights because I couldn’t stop reading. And, the best part: I couldn’t have predicted the end.

East to the Dawn: The Life of Amelia Earhart, by Susan Butler
Few people know that Amelia Earhart had a love affair with Gore Vidal’s father. She also wasn’t terribly keen on doing things for anyone but herself, but thankfully her star power and apparent charisma fought through to make her an American darling. I’d always heard of Amelia, as a girl from Kansas… not unlike me. But Amelia actually lived all the over the country as a child and teenager. From what little bits of research I’ve done about Amelia, there are a hundred biographical books about her life. This book is supposed to be the best one, the most recent one, that presents a true accounting of Amelia. Parts of it get long-winded with details about her female flying rivals, about her foray into fashion, but the descriptions of her many flights, particularly the first trans-Atlantic crossing are fascinating.

A Hundred and One Days, by Asne Seierstad
Again… a non-fiction tale documenting 101 days prior to and during the 2003 invasion of Iraq. Seierstad is a Norwegian journalist who achieved not only continued permission to remain in Baghdad from January to April 2003 (we invaded on March 19), but also survived. This is seriously one of the best books I’ve read in a long time. It documents meticulously her efforts to constantly get out and find a “real” story in the war-preparing Baghdad and surrounding cities. The travails of remaining in Iraq, by way of permission surreptitiously granted by the French-cheese loving Uday, are so bizarre and fragmented, I’m shocked anyone received news during this time at all. In some ways, her descriptions of the city and her Sadaam-loyal translator prior to the invasion are more riveting than after the bombs start dropping. I loved this book so much that I ran out and found Seierstad’s other war accountings, and I’m currently reading A Bookseller in Kabul, which she is most famous for. War turns me off in film and theory, but this book enlightened me. Big plus: it’s not written from an American perspective.

Wildflower, by Mark SealNarrative nonfiction at it’s best… I’d never heard of Joan Root, her famous documentarian ex-husband Alan Root and certainly not her tragic murder in Kenya in 2006. Joan and Alan are super ridiculously famous for pioneering safari-style film documentaries of animals all over Africa. They even flew a hot air balloon over Mount Everest and filmed it. Those Nature shows you see on PBS… well, these two are responsible for making that type of filmmaking trendy with public. Most of the book discusses their early relationship and ongoing marriage as partners and filmmakers. When Alan leaves Joan for a despicable, cancer-stricken husband stealer, the story picks up on solely on Joan’s life as an advocate for protecting Kenyan wildlife and Lake Naivasha. Her tragic and seriously creepy murder in 2006 is wildly theorized and discussed by the author, and he reveals strange relationships Joan had with local poachers that may have led to her death. I didn’t care for the post-marriage part of this book so much, but only because it’s very sad. The best parts are describing the filmmaking process, documenting African wildlife for the first time on film: king cobras and baby elephants. The book also delves into the history of Kenya itself, from the “Happy Valley” times of the 1920s when British ruled to today’s seemingly apparent fragile lifestyle.

‘Tis: A Memoir, by Frank McCourt
How I got away in life thus far and didn’t read this book is beyond me. Angela’s Ashes is searingly sad. ‘Tis is sad, too, but the documentation of McCourt’s move from Limerick to NYC in his very early 20s until his success as a high school English teacher is fascinating and compelling. My thoughts couldn’t help but go to that of my dear hubzo, who also moved to NYC alone and lived in less than wonderful surroundings in Spanish Harlem. Of course, McCourt was starving through much of his early time in NYC, living destitute with his terrible red eyes. The days of licking the grease from his uncle’s fish and chips paper are gone in this book because McCourt more often than not lucks out. I loved this book much more than Angela’s Ashes… perhaps because it’s a story of success. Nevertheless, McCourt’s easy writing style, basic descriptions and harrowing chapter tales are so easy to read you don’t even realize you’ve plowed through the book before it’s over and you want more.

The Secret History, by Donna Tartt

I'd heard about this book for years... finally picked it up. The story was tremendously thrilling, and totally not what I expected. A college-age boy relocates from a tepid California household to a small New England college in Vermont where he specializes in Greek and meets five bizarre, binge-drinking friends. The entire story of that year of school and wastedom is quite good. It's full of literary allusions, mostly through dialogue of the students who are supposedly brilliant. I constantly felt like Harry Potter-esque magic would surface at times, but it never does. It's just a good old-fashioned murder story/thriller told in the first person. I felt strangely sad when I finished the book, mostly because it was just over.

No baby blogs pour moi

2009-10-06T19:21:00.004-06:00

I lie in bed a lot these days.

I neglect Denverette. I don't do laundry very often. I forget to buy groceries and rarely cook anymore. My hair was sprouting gray until I threw some dye on it the other morning, but even that was half-assed; I only left it on for 15 minutes.

It sounds, I'm sure, like depression. But I'm not a depressive.

And, I'm not sad.

And, I've given up trying to control my emotions.

Today I got up two hours before work to work. Not regular work, but freelance work. I've got a case of the babies, so my bank account needs to be prepared. Tonight, I work still.

I'm not unhappy. At least, I don't feel unhappy. I feel stress, but even that has decelerated into a mocking joke. I think I'm just... done. Overspent. The roller coaster is ridden and even though I keep moving up and down on the track, I kinda don't feel it.

This year has been insane. Today, it really struck me, as I sat discussing things with a coworker, how absolutely unpredictable things are. My world has been unglued on so many levels, starting with my move from NYC into a grown-up world I still barely understand. My body has been roller skating on any fumes it can find through the past 11 months. I guess I'm ready for a stagnant meal. I'm not starving for fresh, roasted garlic. I'll take the minced stuff waiting in my fridge, requiring only a spoon to make it useful. I don't need movies that inspire me. I can barely read anything fictionalized unless it's a Nancy Drew book I can start and finish in the nearly tepid baths I'm required to take (no hot baths with a case of the babies).

The fact that I can actually have a new focus, a real responsibility, is frightening beyond belief. But, the unleashing of supreme comfort I feel when stretching out on a fresh feather bed and clean sheets after an exhausting day is nothing to the comfort my mind secures on when I think of a fresh soul that only requires a walk to the park.

Yes, I know I'll be tired, but I'm oh-so-ready for an experience thwarting at least one person close to me into a world where I can remember how to be silly again.

Newlyweds to be

2009-09-27T14:35:00.004-06:00

My baby brother Thayne got engaged to Jennie last night at 4:14 PM Mountain Time. I'm so proud of his classy ways and vehement awesomeness.

Congratulations to the happy couple! This pair of Fort siblings clearly have a "thing" for Bostonites. Thank you, East Coast!

This ain't no joke

2009-09-22T05:48:00.004-06:00

Somedays you wake up and drink coffee and lollygag around and post on Facebook, read a book, go to work, take meetings, hit happy hour.

Other days, you wake up and find a baby is gonna be chilling next to me and Matty D on the sofa in mere months.

Now we just have to make sure the little person is appropriately dressed and fed and sleeping well and understands who the Red Sox are.

Preggers until further notice (or, as the doctor might say, April Fools Day).

2009-09-11T10:13:00.000-06:00

Let's beat the crap out of cancer next week

2009-09-10T12:05:00.006-06:00

It's always a nice and unexpected flurry of fun to reconnect with a good childhood friend.

Now that I'm out of the crazy den of NYC, I'm finding that it's easier to do that. Surprisingly, the burden of cancer has reopened doors and closed wounds on many relationships that I'd either neglected or simply been unable to keep up with. This summer, a close friend of mine from childhood, Amy, reconnected with me through Facebook. We caught up on life, but we primarily shared the main topic on our minds: our mothers' cancer experiences. While my mom was in the throes of cancer confusion, not battling anything yet, her mom had already been at war for two years -- she continues to stand on the battlefield. In fact, it's her third fight since 2007, when Amy's mom was diagnosed with breast cancer.

I'm taking the liberty of using her Facebook posting in the following text, as she best describes what happened after that: "Then, can you believe it?... Metastatic colon cancer (stage 4) in 2008 and a recurrence in 2009. She has experienced miracle after miracle and has inspired me. I'm running 13.1 miles to raise money for the American Cancer Society (ACS). Please, if you know anyone who has been affected by cancer, consider donating."

Her last statement is weighted. There aren't many of us who don't know someone who has been affected by cancer. My thought is, why not make next week a brief moment in time where you donate to a cause that helps all of those people and also helps Amy's mom continue to inspire her and the rest of her family? It's easy, even in this "economy", to swap out tonight's pizza dinner or happy hour cocktails or seeing a movie or a drive-by Target trip or a million other little things that cost 20 bucks. Donate that money to Amy's race instead. Here's why it'll make you feel good to forgo a little extra fun for one day this week:

Amy has overseen her mother's care alongside her family throughout the experience and readily discusses medical issues resulting from cancer with the rapidity and confidence of an oncologist. She is a true caregiver, traveling back and forth many miles to be with her mother during good and bad times. You get the gist: there are many, many things Amy is doing. They are just too numerous to list.
The funds from her race will benefit the ACS, an unbelievable resource for cancer patients across the country. I have become active with the local Denver chapter, where I've learned that they often pay tremendous amounts of expenses related to those patients who must travel extensively to receive treatment.
The ACS funds Hope Lodges across the U.S. where chemotherapy patients can stay for free during treatment. When I toured the Rochester Hope Lodge with my mother, as we analyzed what we thought might be her future temporary home, I have never been more impressed with the capacity for giving and reliability of an organization.
The ACS has patient liaisons in hospitals across the country that help cancer patients and their families identify housing possibilities when traveling for treatment, they function as laymen when discussing or translating medical information, and they also assist with insurance issues and navigating the always perplexing healthcare system.
The ACS funds a myriad of programs and provides patient information about all types of cancer (even the rare ones) and educational initiatives that are truly assistive to those dealing with cancer.
The bottom line: cancer affects everyone's bottom line -- Fortune 500 companies down to itty bitty babies being born right now. The real bottom line is that cancer sucks, and the more awareness and fundraising that surrounds it, the better.

Donate now by visiting this link.

Snail's pace

2009-09-09T07:08:00.005-06:00

Whew! August was rough, yo!

According to my horoscope September will be even worse. Mercury went into retrograde on Monday, and my fellow Pisceans won't be dismissed of its effects until October 1. We get an extended retrograde-dom this year. So lucky!

Well, a lot happened at the end of this summer that led to my absence on Denverette. I got tired, and that tiredness was all enveloping so I couldn't write. Now that August -- one of my least favorite month's of the year -- is over, I'm feeling normal again. I often wonder if I'd dislike August if I lived in Europe and went on vacation the entire month to my little cottage on the French riviera.

Really, there isn't much going on. Things and projects continue. We have sidelined the documentary until we can shoot in early October again. I get the extra treat of visiting the east coast three times in the next four months -- DC, NYC, and Boston. Mom got good news from her doctor and is in the clear another three months (I thought it was six, but more blood tests in November to hunt for those fervid little cancer cells). I'm terrified of swine flu and wash my hands like a mad woman. I'm growing some new chives presented to me over the weekend by my Aunt Deb. My other plants nearly died over Labor Day weekend because I forgot to give them extra water. I tried to watch The Reader but it was too much for me. I read several books, including the new Agatha Christie biography and a new bio on Flannery O'Connor. The latter was good, the former... not so much. (Note to self: "unauthorized" is a key word to keep in mind when book shopping.)

While Turkey wakes up to severe flooding (the worst ever in known history) this morning, and the Beatles find themselves remastered (and with several new products to market), I'm sitting in my hovel in Capitol Hill feeling high enough in the air to see the mountains and chilly in the Autumn morning.

Very nice indeed, but very, very boring.

Living Between Gen X and Y

2009-08-08T08:08:00.010-06:00

I remember, long, long ago in the late 1990s, reading Douglas Coupland's Generation X: Tales from an Accelerated Culture, which both coined the term "Gen X" and defined why the people in that generation were so raucous, uncheeky, nontraditional marriage folks, rowdy, drunk and NOT like their baby boomer parents.

So Gen X supposedly triggered strange pop culture phenomenon's like grunge and swiftly became a marketing tool in the 90s that relentlessly overturned the term until it eventually ate itself dry and died. Now, Gen X is emerging as another popular trend because they're a revitalized target market for almost everyone.

I was fascinated with Coupland's book, because I read it at such a young age and was influenced by everything from cookbooks to Nancy Drew. Silly me.

But I'm not really part of Gen X. I'm allegedly part of "Generation Y", having been born in 1977, the mostly official cut-off date for being the first-year peeps of Gen Y. Yeah, so instead of being known for flannel (which I participated in, BTW, at age 14), I'm in the generation that brought back pop music. I'm supposedly really technologically with it, part of the electronic and digital age. I don't have a very long attention span.

In 1993, Ad Age wrote an article that coined "Generation Y" (although "coined" isn't really the appropriate word because all they did was create a new market for ads and companies to target). At that time, they defined Generation Y folks as those born in 1977 through the early 90s. Apparently, somewhere along the way, that age range slightly shifted from 1981 through the early 90s.

Where, I ask, does that leave me and all my late twentysomething, early thirtysomething peers? I mean, I want to BE a vast marketing opportunity! It seems like nobody consistently defines those latter years of the 1970s or early years of the 1980s in their generational definitions.

All of this age range bologna is of course circumspect, because anybody can say anything on the Internet. But it brings up a bigger concern of mine, one that I've had since the age of 26, that nobody -- the healthcare system, the government and education system, the insurance industry, corporate marketing, pop culture hubs -- cares or thinks about that small slice of us who doesn't fit in Gen X or Y anymore. In fact, they don't are about Gen X or Y either.

MTV doesn't care -- they have shifted back to tween-focused programming and fake lives documented via The Hills and The City. I just want to stare at something mindlessly, and I can't even do it anymore while watching MTV. It's so discouraging and saddens me like my recall of early days of Nickelodeon and Saturday morning cartoons. Instead of watching fake blue cartoon people or muppets, I get to watch boring rich people who live in high rises in Gramercy Park and tote Dom Perignon to rooftop dinners. I used to take the cheapest magnum of red wine to a rooftop BBQ and call it a successful night if there was a blanket on the blacktop roof. (Oh wait, I still do this.)

Insurance doesn't care. They're too focused on Boomers being target markets. Silly! A recent study showed that Gen Xers (of whom I may or may not belong) are concerned about providing for both young children and aging parents, making adequate insurance coverage extremely important. "They want to keep themselves and their dependants healthy, but they also need to know their families will be provided for if they aren’t around.” Fifty-three percent of us KNOW we'll be taking care of our kids and our parents at the same time, so we KNOW it's important to stay healthy but also have insurance coverage in case something goes wrong.

Healthcare doesn't care -- it's still hard to get a job that immediately grants health insurance and I don't recall the FDA approving drugs or devices that help treat or prevent things beyond depression and anxiety that afflict our age group. Guess what? We get chronic disease, too! All the big baddies, cancer, stroke and heart disease are effecting us, especially women. But my insurance tells me I don't have to get a mammogram until I'm 34. I know two women who have had breast cancer by the age of 32.

Financial industry doesn't care -- a few days I went to get my new vehicle registration. The reality is, and I can't believe I'm admitting this, I didn't even know or think I had to get new stickers for my tags. No idea. Had no clue. I also don't know how to buy a house. I don't know how to even start except I hear lots of people get downpayments from their Boomer parents. According to an August 5 Wall Street Journal article, "almost half - 47% - of Americans born between 1977 and 1994, also known as Generation Y (another discrepancy), are below average when it comes to financial literacy, with little understanding of how to budget and save efficiently." I only know how to save because I lived in NYC for so long, and I know for a fact the majority of my friends live paycheck-to-paycheck with torrential amounts of debt due to student loans and that increasingly superficial need for higher learning.

Business don't care (or just don't get it): Most managers and businesses don't know how to handle Gen Y because of our work ethic and technological acumen. A July 31 article from the San Jose Times describes businesses as "untangling the Gen Y knot". Huh? I guess Gen Y is used to being, as the article notes, constantly supervised and juggling multiple technologies and gadgets and getting positive feedback from mentors and supervisors. This is true. And confusion about how to properly manage this need breed will continue until one of us gets in the main chair and enlightens everyone else. That's a far-off event.

Despite these concerns, I can only chalk it up to the notion of generation gap that won't begin closing for years to come. Many of us, at least in large part my extensive group of friends and colleagues from small towns to big cities, are lagging behind our predecessors in growing up and making families and becoming established as people traditionally do. We go about our business non-traditionally. We communicate differently than older generations. We have more tolerance and fewer walls up against change.

I am hopeful given the success of the Obama campaign (campaign, not administration), because it lets me know some smart folks between Gen X-Gen Y are alive and well out there. Maybe we'll all mush together someday.

Or, maybe we, those few of us born between 1977 and 1981, should be termed "Generation H". We need help! But my advertising mind says no because it rings too similarly to "Preparation H", which again, is a product that few of us lost souls need at this point in our lives.

A campy smell

2009-07-25T08:00:00.009-06:00

Today I woke up and went outside and camping was on my doorstep.

Rather, camping was wafting through the air, greeting each Coloradan nose, begging us to leave the city and drive to a tented area of the Rockies and spend the evening.

It was overcast, unusual for a July morning in Denver. In fact, it's sunny here more than 300 days of the year... a full rainy day is unusual. The air was cool. The evergreens that surround us had clearly gained some weight overnight--their arms heavy with mist.

Shortly after I began writing this, hubzo got up and immediately began grilling chicken rosemary and apple sausage on the grill outside my nook. I write still, with fiery grilling smells all around. My legs are covered in blankets dug up from the recesses of winter.

I think I'll stay here all day, viewing the hyper green outdoors of my beloved new neighborhood. Later, I'll take a run out to the Cherry Creek and flavor my eyeballs with a nice view of the snowy mountains. Sometimes, it's just as fetching as my old view of the Manhattan skyline. Except that view came while walking alongside old decrepit tennis courts and men slumbering on the ground after too many sips of vodka.

It's quite nice, I must say.

The After Hours

2009-07-22T19:07:00.014-06:00

Hi guys, here's a lil' bitty short story barely based on a real story...

SUMMER

The big blue house resided on Kearney Street, near the edge of campus. Six of us lived there.

The collegiate grounds nearby were lined with four-foot limestone fencing. It was perfect for a leg dangle and ass-perching that kept us locked into the neighborhood on sweltering nights. The limestone fence was a gossip just like us. It would watch cars and ridiculous people fly by on their way to the bars.

The big blue house was haunted.

We knew it, too. It was clear that things were amiss from the beginning, when the six of us gathered to sign the rental lease in an awful Chinese food joint in the south part of town. Our tiny hands clutched tiny pens and signed our tiny signatures on the dotted lines.

There was a feeling of commitment each time I signed my name on the lease. I chalked it up to the fact that I only had two years of college left. Two years until the real world bared its bum in my face – I suppose I was mentally preparing.

It might have also been that the lease was pure bullshit, spread thick with rotten legalese. The landlords hovered while we contemplated page after page. "Sign, sign," they would command over and over.

Laced with landlord protection layers, it became obvious they required nothing but money from us: “this is not our responsibility”, “we do not take responsibility”, and “neither do we take responsibility nor do we have responsibility for etcetera, etcetera, or etcetera”.

We all signed ourselves silly until the legal papers appeared to edge around the cheap restaurant table like thin pancake batter spreading across a skillet.

Indeed, if it had been a pancake, the lease was nothing short of a wormy, old goat cheese flavor.

Clearly, the landlords of the big blue house were despicable in their dealings. Mere months later the lady landlord would notoriously fire a sharp fork through the air while we stood in her restaurant waiting to pay our monthly rent.

They were always out to kill us.

Unfortunately, the landlords thought us immature students, incapable of serious legal action, unaware of our rights as students and American citizens or the power of lawsuits, without access to lawyerly fathers or lawyerly friends.

We were not dumb, though.

Agnes was a feisty future accountant with naziesque breath that heaved from her chest.

Brent was Agnes' beastly boyfriend who used to be nice. They met two years prior on New Years Eve and gave it all up. Bent was also a faultless hacker (hard to dig up in the late 90’s) known for finding toxic delight in destroying personal credit histories and patiently corroding neighborly relationships by making repeated false delivery orders from each home on our block nearly every night of the week.

Kellie Jo, an innocent, possessed unparalleled governmental journalistic talent and could comprehend Black’s Law Dictionary faster than I could read a cereal box cover. Then, she'd write a 1000-word article about it.

Crystal, a peaceful, was very skilled with deducing the simple items that each of us overlooked.

Angel was a political activist and a member of several major minority student governmental and political groups – a person with friends in high places.

I was nobody, confused at my present skill-set. It turned out that I was usually freewheeling with my checkbook and would fund enterprising events. I also had access to a very good lawyer.

The big blue house was truly fiendish. She was the awkward, shy girl with hygiene problems and a love for the football hero. She was three stories high, sporting two kitchens, a large deck, a grisly basement with semi-exposed holes where we later found bones, and one staircase that simply went… nowhere.

She was also cheap.

But, nevermind the silly lease. It was nearly time for school to begin. The semester undressed herself like a tart with the help of jello shots and suntanned legs. Early on, she fed on wee-hour gatherings and the substance of socializing. She danced her legs tired and wrecked straight into Mondays while Tuesday innocently lurked, ready to pounce.

AUTUMN

When the year began dating October, things became grim. Division was sprayed onto the big blue house courtesy of a skunky Halloween party. At least 200 people joined in on the costuming fanfare. A séance was held in my room. I cut and pasted white butterflies all over my bedroom windows in attempt to garner the spirits. We called on Jim Morrison and a few grandparents. Half-way through the event, a clown stole someone’s Stevie Nick’s wig and ran through the house like a wicked, yelping banshee. Nobody knew who he was. Somebody locked him in the staircase that went nowhere and he wailed like a sobbing cat for hours upon hours on deaf ears. The music was too loud for anyone to hear.

The incident set off a fiery argument between everyone. Nobody confessed. We went spidery, each pointing overgrown arms at another as we stood in a glaring circle.

I suspected Brent and Aggie. They had begun to reveal deceit in recent days. Things disappeared. Stashed cash went astray. A small group meeting revealed that were the likely culprits who stole dishes and pans and our shared stock of macaroni and cheese. Soon it got worse. Checkbooks went missing. Toilet paper vanished. A recliner disappeared. Gas siphoning tools were found among the stored bikes in the basement.

The Halloween argument concluded with no resolution. Everyone went to bed angry. The house became very silent after that.

WINTER

December opened his curtains with a solemn tundra-like climate, dropping loads of heavy snow nearly every day. We trudged to-and-from class in thigh-high boots and our heads wrapped in yarn.

Brent and Aggie continued in their suspect ways, leaving the house during early mornings and after hours, in a huddle and never speaking to anyone else. I would spy them entering the house from my bedroom window. Nearly unrecognizable bundles in winter gear, they often returned with what appeared to be large mysterious bags of food.

One day, I found a bag of nails on a snow drift near their car.

And, then, the rent debacle reared its head.

It turned out that Brent and Aggie didn’t pay their owed December rent. The rest of us found out while delivering our handwritten checks to the Chinese food restaurant. I was dripping in joy balls at the prospect of Christmas vacation. My thoughts were far from human troubles. That was the day of the fork incident.

Gravity pulled the hurling fork to the ground, and my balls of joy swiftly melted away.

I knew more problems were rapily planning flight our way. I sat at a stoplight on my way home, and suddenly felt sick. I quickly opened the door and vomited a candy-striped smile onto the snow-covered road. As I drove off, I glanced into the rear view mirror. My eyes caught what appeared to be a large hole opening in the snow where I’d just gotten sick. I could only imagine it to be the mouth of a giant snow monster with great Jabba lips, sucking away happiness and joy from humanity.

On the Monday after, I awoke to more howling snow winds. Nothing unusual had occurred over the weekend, and I was grateful for it.

As I lay in the covers trying to muster strength for a shower, my bed suddenly shook violently. In fact, my entire room was shaking and I heard glass breaking in the distance.

boom. Boom. BOOM. BOOM. BOOM! BOOM!

It sounded like steady and terrifyingly loud footsteps. They were getting closer. I jumped off the bed and fled to the kitchen where Angel and Crystal were shrieking, peering out the back door. Pots and pans had fallen all over the kitchen floor. A jar broke and shattered. I ran back to my room for my shoes before joining the girls at the back window.

The sky was grey and pouring snow all over everything. The snow was wet and heavy, making the already living snow drifts appear droopy and slippery.

I first glimpsed them out of my peripheral vision – a giant blur, which swiftly and clearly revealed two absolutely horrendous looking enormous humans stomping about the neighborhood. There were two of them. They towered above the snow-heavy trees.

They were giants. And, they weren't wearing pants. Instead, they sported what appeared to be enormous diapers or something of the kind.

One of them appeared to be looking for something, brushing roofs away from other homes in attempt to move trees and other pesky building out of view. They did not speak, but seemed confused and lost.

Suddenly, a giant eyeball focused on the three of us peeking through the back window. The eyeball narrowed in on our teeny faces. The eyebrow raised tremendously, and then we knew.

The landlords came barreling across the alley, overgrown humans topping out around 20 stories tall. I screamed and the three of us recoiled quickly and ran to my room, locking the door, terrified. I couldn’t resist looking out my bedroom window that watched out over the back parking lot. I saw a leg.

And with that, the giant landlords unmistakably sat on the big blue house with their giant asses. They rocked back-and-forth, settling in and applying pressure. The crushing sound of the house’s rooftop shifted under the great weight. Screams came from the top floor. The others were still up there. It was as if we were the great nest, with giant landlords forcing incubation.

This continued all day. They moved often, surely getting antsy and uncomfortable from sitting on a house in the dead of winter. The three of us sat paralyzed in my room. I could see two gigantic leg silhouettes shifting back-and-forth through the drawn curtains. Nobody came down from the upper levels. I thought maybe they were dead. Loud sounds and crashes continued to hurl themselves from the upstairs area. The snow piled up in the back driveway. Nobody came to shovel. Our cars didn’t move, and the snow became heavier.

We were trapped in the big blue house. Between the terrifying giant legs, swaying like unsafe, spider-veined columns outside our windows, and the quickly accumulating drifts outside our doors and windows, we each shrank further into my bed hoping to escape the nightmare.

I cautiously peered out the window as grey daylight faded and the snow piled high against the windowpane. The constant lull of the human rocking chairs on the roof made me tired. My view eventually became white.

I awoke with a jump. The house was quiet. My room was dark. I rolled to the left and flipped on my bedside lamp. It flickered and the bulb abruptly gave way to death. My clock read 8:30 PM. I heard nobody in the house.

Suddenly, I was terrified that I’d been abandoned. That everyone had escaped and run off to a local gas station or somewhere with lighting and heat. I sat up.

But, then I saw the other two girls dozing, one huddled in blankets and the other on my floor.

I woke Angel quietly. She opened her eyes wide, and softly asked, “are they… er, here?”

“No idea,” I said, turning away. I slowly creeped off the bed to the floor where Crystal lay asleep. I woke her, too. The three of us swiftly hatched a plan to leave the house.

I softly tip-toed to my windows and peered out, looking for the giant, terrifying columns of human flesh. “How could they be outside with no pants on,” I wondered.

Then I remembered that somehow I’d entered an alternate zone of humanity, a new dimension, perhaps proving the much-debated concept of string theory.

The house creaked. We jumped. We freaked. Angel immediately slapped her hand on Crystal's mouth, muffling her scream.

The creaking stopped. It was an old house, after all. Maybe the giants were sleeping.

We quickly assembled and dressed ourselves in warm clothing as quietly as possible. The house continued to creak, but not in the same terrible way as before.

I still had no idea what happened to the others upstairs. I convinced myself it was useless to care.

Angel, Crystal and I gathered in the foyer and quietly discussed our plan to bolt out the front door, across the yard and down to the French teacher’s home. Surely, we could telephone the police there. It appeared as though the giants were perched more on the back end of the house, so the front door was safest.

"Ready?" Crystal mouthed silently, in question.

"Just. Talk. OUT LOUD!" I snarled, terrified and ready to run.

With a quick glare, she said, "FINE. OKAY. HERE. GOES."

She breathed deeply. "One… two…” Crystal counted down slowly. I opened the door at a snail’s pace, megaphoning my ears out for any warning sounds.

“Three!” she shrieked!

And we ran. And ran. And ran.

We ran until the white enveloped us, until I lost the girls and their bodies flew off in varying directions, until I heard no further sounds, until my head and arms and legs shuffled and dismantled and finally shook free to a stop, deep in the ground.

Can one miss the alphabet?

2009-07-16T17:52:00.004-06:00

These days, I'm missing a lot of my pals. I miss you all SO MUCH! Even those that live nearby, I rarely see, and boy... I miss you. I miss my work colleagues, too, because I rarely get to catch up on their personal lives. Please consider yourselves named by your respective initial letter.

So here it is, the Alphabet of Missingness*, as proposed by Taryn:

A: Aly (duh) and the Ambers (Vernon and Fort: they both like to dance)

B: Boston

C: Christy and her fantabulous writing

D: Dana and Darcy and the Doyle's

E: Excellent sushi

F: Eff that

G: Greenpoint

H: Harems of people in Koreatown for karaoke

I: In-depth discussions at the Village Tavern

J: Jess and Jimmy and Jai (and Marc)

K: the Kelly(i)'s and Katie and Krisp!

L: Love from my old project managers and Lisa H, new bride

M: Marisa and my momma (they both serve in that role for me) and a bunch of other M friends

N: NO timeouts, NO matter what... and NEW friends

O: Old-time movies with hubzo

P: Peter, my ex-boss

Q: quarrels on the corner of Bedford and North 7th

R: Ray

S: Skyler Kaye, phenom runner, and Shafer

T: Tom English

U: Ulysses

V: Vicars in Miss Marple episodes

W: Work colleagues

X: Xavier, my future son (don't steal my name, gurlz!)

Y: Your mom and mine, too

Z: Zipping home in the cab from Amy Vandevender's parties

*The Alphabet of Missingness will never nor should it ever fully convey the missing stars in Taryn's life. Taryn hearts so many peeps that her heart spills over into her muffin top sometimes. Please forgive my forgetful mind and disgraceful use of double voice and terrible grammar. :)

Attention Denverites: Today Only!

2009-07-11T07:08:00.004-06:00

Last night as hubzo and I left Denver for Kansas, we drove by the Esquire Theater in our neighborhood. Normally, I would've passed and said "damn, we need to go see Clockwork Orange at midnight one of these days..."

And, then we'd never go.

But when my eyes caught sight of the three words that, as a child (and adult), have brought me more fright and delight than Space Mountain, I was truly saddened to miss this exclusive event.

I'll let you all check out the YouTube video below for a taste of WHY you must immediately go online and buy a ticket for today's midnight showing!

New documentary blog

2009-07-08T07:18:00.006-06:00

Here ya go... it's still a work in process as far as formatting goes, but I took a dive into WordPress and am still learning.

Enjoy -- we will shoot again this coming weekend in Kansas.

WollastonFilm Productions Blog: www.wollastonfilm.wordpress.com

Docu-what?

2009-07-03T07:49:00.006-06:00

I'm very, very good at making myself nuts.

My coworker Jill just laughed her tail off at me the other day when I told her that hubzo and I were officially launching our new project this weekend. You know... because I have so much time for a new thing in my life that requires babysitting.

Nope, not preggers. Just bonkers!

So I'm officially one day into my new role as a producer of a documentary that Matt and I have been cooking up for the past year or so. It's tentatively titled "Last American Farmer", and the storyline will take a historical look at how agriculture has impacted southwestern Kansas, particularly the town I grew up in.

Most people don't realize how technology has changed the agricultural industry, how it's financially on the lines of heavy investment banking, how crop seed exists as a periodic tables of elements and literally has its own code, how simple weather patterns can refocus the grain trade. Moreover, it's fascinating to examine how small communities that primarily existed as farming "towns" during the 60s and 70s and early 80s have been whittled down to large embankments of corporate farms. There are few mom and pop shops left. Farming has become gentrified in this entirely bizarre fashion that only those involved in it can fully convey.

Plus, I desperately want to capture the frighteningly beautiful landscape of southwest Kansas during the summer.

Where did this idea come from? Well, cocktails bore it. I stand by my theory that some of the greatest decisions ever made have been done so by blue-sky thinking that often accompanies several glasses of wine.

Because hubzo is a filmmaker and I like to tell stories, some random late evening discussion turned into talk of a documentary, PBS-style, about my own family's turn with farming. Then, it grew and grew into an entire community's story. We've been letting it simmer a long while. It was decided that I would craft the story and serve as producer. Matt will shoot and edit.

Our original plans to begin shooting were delayed. I've been reading Producer 101 like a madwoman (and thankfully hubzo has been a very tolerant camera-man and pushing me in the direction I don't know about yet).

The entire storyline is still vastly unknown. I plan to let the people stories reveal that for us.

In the meantime, we'll shoot all summer, if not longer. I'm in the beginning stages of seeking grant funding for post-production needs. (My heart would be so happy if I could bring some of hubzo's amazing work colleagues from NYC and Denver out to help shooting, but it's hard with a small budget.)

We had a very good first day "on set", if that's appropriate. We shot late in the day out with my dad and a few others' guiding us. Matt shot from inside a combine and interviewed the driver. We shot landscape, in potato fields, digging potatoes (that we later ate and OMG they were fabulous), an irrigation motor being fixed (the Romans weren't dumb; water is the heart of everything), and much more. Matt was more excited than I've ever seen him. I mean that -- he was beside himself and very professional and efficient. Despite shooting an hour of film, we only got mere minutes that will be useable. Such is my intro into filmmaking. Ha.

But we reviewed footage last night and Matt is very happy -- many shots are gorgeous, particularly those of harvest, with dust kicking up all over -- it looked almost ethereal.

I had a brief meeting with the local museum director and discussed the need to shoot inside the museum, in particular, the massive archive photography exhibit that will open tomorrow to celebrate the Centennial of Ulysses. She was very kind and we scoped out the location. We shoot there today. And, tonight we do a first formal sit-down interview.

I've created a new blog to monitor progress on shoots, and it will launch by later today or tomorrow. Stay posted!

Two years old

2009-06-30T06:18:00.005-06:00

Boy, marriage sneaks up on you.

Hubzo and I are two years old today!

We're actually very close to being five years old, but as a legally bound duo, it was two years ago today that we were married in the mountains. Our wedding was earthy and fun -- it was small and the entire family contributed to the event.

Those mountains played an integral part in unplugging from our exciting life in New York City to a slower pace in Colorado. A year ago, we were sauntering around an empty and hot apartment in Brooklyn, readying to send me off on a jet plane to jump start a new career and lifestyle in Colorado.

Matt and I met exactly three years to the day that I moved to New York City. The Red Sox were beginning their bloody and victorious streak in baseball history. Many of our first would-be date nights resulted in repeated text messages from him to me as he stank it up at various Red Sox bars across the city.

The first night we met it took several hours for me to understand basic words he was pronouncing. It wasn't until after he and his friends' departures that Krispy and I were like, "where in the hell are those guys from?" "England?"

No, it turns out he's from the South Shore, Boston.

Our relationship was pretty good right from the start and we had few bumps. He asked me to be his girlfriend, in the old fashioned way, at a Pretty Girls Make Graves show at the Delancey on the Lower East Side. We were banned from the roof that night because we just really wanted to hang out with the cool kids.

He met Thayne on Halloween, which happens to be Matt's birthday, too. He's a Halloweenie baby -- how cute. We went to a black and blue party to celebrate Shafer's birthday. What's a black and blue party? Well, of course it's dressing up to appear as though someone's beat the shit out of you! We delightfully painted black eyes and purple bruises on each other before heading out. Thayne and hubzo hit it off.

I brought him to Colorado to meet the parents shortly thereafter. Then I went to Boston to meet his family. Then we moved in together. Then he got new glasses. Then we thought perhaps it was time to hitch up. Then we presented me with a big lovely blue ring on 1st Avenue and East Houston streets -- the site of our first date, across the street from the Sunshine Theater where he took me to an "art film". The film was none other than Vincent Gallo's latest, Brown Bunny. I still have the theater stub.

Then a year later, boom! We displaced ourselves from NYC to legally marry ourselves near Breckenridge, Colorado. And, now we live near enough that location to drive up every weekend.

Will we stay here forever? Who knows. Will we ever go back to NYC? Maybe. Will we ever relocate to Boston? Possibly. Will we have kids? Yup. Are we ready to grow up together yet?

I think so.

New pad+Where's Taryn?

2009-06-25T19:29:00.013-06:00

I finally walked through the looking glass and bought a camera.

I'm notorious for losing, destroying and invalidating the livelihood of cameras. My beautiful SLR -- a gift for college graduation -- was sent 6 feet under by United Airlines. I drop cameras. I lose memory cards. I leave cameras at karaoke joints in Koreatown. My last camera lost its life in a single pint of beer at Scruffy Murphy's here in Denver. Joe and Krispy witnessed the death.

Anyway, check out the new pad! It's fantabulous and in the beautiful and original neighborhood of Capitol Hill.

The most important part of our new place is my nook. It's my own little private space where I can upload Miss Marple audiobooks to my iPod and watch Twilight (on my mini-laptop) and rip off Edward Gorey illustrations and buy wine by the box and look over the little fenced-in area down at hubzo watching golf or the Red Sox and be inches from my back door and a blooming herb garden and call Marisa and Dana and Krispy and Aly and Amber and all my other peep girls to chat about life and apartment therapy and call my mummy to chat while relaxing without fear of everyone hearing my conversation.

In a nutshell, the nook is my nutshell and if I could put a little mushroom top on it, I would. I'm still developing its look, which is most important. It must be a cross between Amelie kitchen curtains, modern wood floors that don't require cleaning, my beloved iBook, files and books and NO TV.

It's also sporting a nice and comfy red love seat where I can take naps.

Don't any of you be fearful of visiting us now, because we have an extra bedroom and an extra half bath. No more sharing, folks.

And no need to keep quiet.

Get a Denverette Widget

2009-06-18T15:23:00.001-06:00

Hey ya'll! Get a free Denverette widget to place on your Web site, Facebook or Myspace pages or anywhere else that accepts html code. Just click on the "Get Widget" tab at the left-side bottom of the widget for code.

Denverettegreat free widgetsWidgetbox

I should know better

2009-06-16T05:54:00.002-06:00

... than to post something like yesterday. I removed it now because I was a bit too giddy about mom's recovery, about moving into our new placed, about everything.

I know better than to assume things are on the right path.

My 11th obsession

2009-06-09T13:13:00.006-06:00

Quite a few lovely slices of night and evening have crashed themselves into me since moving to Denver. Many a night, I've been fortunate enough tp include bite-size pieces of creative bliss, including one of my new favorite bloggers, Christy (aka, Panuelo Girl).

Aside from working together, Christy helped me into my lamborghini of fun during a most memorable post-twilight blip involving a stuffy sweater party crash at Forest Room Five. Christy, in a nutshell, is an exquisitely talented writer. She's also now moved onto D.C. and bigger and better things, so I only get sweet little treats through her blog and other communications.

Please treat this as an intro to her intoxicating blog entries on www.panuelogirl.blogspot.com that channel and discuss her real-life experience as a scarf girl. Here's your tease...

What Does My Hair Say About Me? Apparently, That I'm a Pirate

Growing up, my hair said I was a follower. I had a short Twiggy shag and a Farrah Fawcett feathery flip, Madonna's teased hair and a Molly Ringwald poodle perm bob - always well after the trend had caught on.

The pattern stops at The Rachel, the bouncy, long, layered hairstyle introduced and popularized by Jennifer Aniston in the first season of Friends. That was the year I transitioned from late majority follower to trendsetter. I use the term loosely, because I was not setting trends that generated followers: the oddly placed barrette, the female combover, the office beret, the synthetic strip of bangs velcroed to a baseball cap.

Let's be clear: I did not want to separate myself from the crowd. I was dragged away kicking and screaming. For some of us, that's the only way to cross the chasm from one way of thinking to another.

If my hair hadn't fallen out, I probably wouldn't have adopted a style of my own, especially one that sends such mixed messages. Today, I am Pañuelo Girl, the girl who wears scarves. It means different things to different people, and I'm okay with that.

Sean said he thought I was a motorcycle chick.

Jane said she thought I was stylish.

Click here to read more of this addictive writing.

New shiz about me

2009-06-05T19:04:00.009-06:00

I've been gone awhile, tending to my mummy and trying to keep my life sewn together.

But, my brain still works! And, I still have my obsessive personality to deal with.

Here are 10 new things I'm really curious about or just totally diehard, wickedly, disgustingly INTO:

1) My friend Marisa's grad school project, which she created in iLife. I'm obsessed. I must have iLife. I must. Must. Must. But she's mastered it, no pun intended. (I would link to it, but not sure if that's kosher.)

2) Twilight: This goes without saying... I stayed away as long as I possibly could, but one fateful night I was bored and watched the movie. Tonight, I'm digging my eyeballs into the final book in the series. Yup. Faster than lightning!

3) Phoenix: a band outta the Paris suburbs that hubzo turned me

onto. (MGMT + the Strokes + Wolf Parade = L.O.V.E.)

4) R Pattz: seriously, if you don't know who this is or what it's all about, er... you're dumb.

5) V-necks: really back into V-neck t-shirts for girls. Love love love them, with skinnies or skirtsies or leggings.

6) I'm not INTO this, but curious about it: no pants. In NYC right now, girls aren't wearing pants. They wear these dresses with their bums hanging out. What is this all about and why hasn't NY Magazine written an article about it yet?

7) Seattle: I went a few weeks ago and the lush green madness is my vacation destination of this year. I want to go back more than I wanna go to Paris (mostly b/c I won't be getting on a plane, especially an Air France plane, across the pond for a long time until my anxiety lessens).

8) A purty prayer shawl that my friend Carrie made for my mom. I've been stealing it while my mom's in the hospital, and it's a good sleeping friend.

9) Yellow: it's good to be golden. Dude: the sun isn't yellow for NO reason.

10) Kickin' cancer out of this place, this earth, our bodies and everywhere else it decides to live.

I scrubbed myself with NYC last week

2009-06-05T09:03:00.006-06:00

My Memorial Day venture back into the old Brooklyn hood and the rest of NYC came with drippings off a silly candle.

I ate Anna Maria's and fell into the old blue sofa to watch minutes of Twilight before drifting off to sleep each night.

I morphed back into a fun person for a couple days, trying not to dread my mom's impending surgery and all that it could mean.

My friends -- my dear, dear and lovely friends -- took care of me, shuttling left and right and over bridges to meet my silly face.

I walked my old streets, missing hubzo desperately, disbelieving that he wasn't over on a couch watching the Red Sox on Lorimer Street. Greenpoint is flourishing. It's different. There are babies everywhere in Williamsburg. They hang in their strollers wearing hipster baby gear while mummy and daddy drink beers outside cafes.

NYC is dirty as ever. The cabs and buses smell and wear slips of grime.

The sidewalks make you maneuver your steps, as always.

SoHo greeted me with a pair of rainbow sandals.

Kristi and I ventured up to Murray Hill for Jimmy and Liz's rooftop BBQ.

The amazing Joe photographed our day, which you see here now. We ate hot dogs, burgers and guzzled everything. We talked vampires, L.A. film shoots, and gossiped our heads off. Marisa and Dana came into the city bearing beers and a magnum of red wine.

We caught up, sitting on blankets, on the warm black rooftop and watched the city turn into a glitzy night before heading back to Brooklyn and my bed. Photos: Joe Pasciscia.

I'm coming back

2009-06-02T06:38:00.002-06:00

I promise... almost there. Inching toward you, full of peanut butter stories and creative jelly. Soon, soon.

Bear with me.

Little neglected shirling

2009-05-21T19:01:00.002-06:00

I'm sorry, Denverette. I've been neglecting you.

But I'm back for awhile and boy do I have a great read about my favorite heroine in all of literature: Miss Marple.

I often lie in my bed after drinking wine and perilous days of work and life and settle into a really good hearty Miss Marple mystery. I can't say how many times she brings me back to life.

Not only are the recent Acorn Media-produced Miss Marple mysteries on DVD the best of the best, but the original Agatha Christie books are solid reads.

Oh, to live in a small English village full of murderous widows or to vacation on the English beachside and finds lesbian dancers who've plotted murder extravagance only known better by Mariah Carey.

And so, I must recommend that we all begin loving Miss Marple and raising her popularity because unless we do -- PBS' Mystery will kick the show off into the purple heavens and our beloved Miss Marple will exist only on DVD in dying off Virgin Records'.

Read more here about Miss Marple's importance and please realize I'm not a great fool. I'm simply a great nerd.

On High School

2009-05-04T19:38:00.005-06:00

This weekend was weighty.

Not only am I tizzying and fizzying around with my head lodged inside a big apple core of cancer insanity, but my weekends have fattened themselves up with events that produce high school reunions.

Yes, High. School. Reunions.

OK, so my life is very weird right now. Weird events, weird timing, weird weather, weird dreams, weird appetizers and menu items I keep ordering, weird mornings of driving in my car instead of taking the train. Weird stuff.

Anyway. Each night, I cover myself in bed with a patch-work quilt of surreal moments of time. I curl up in and munch on a small bowl of chocolate chips. I'm listen to Miss Marple audiobooks. I watch Antiques Roadshow.

I had a large group of girlfriends in high school. We were bad. We had fun. We had big hair. We were very tight and pretty damn good to each other. Many of us had been bonded since toddler-hood. Few rolled in late in the game. We liked our bond as it was.

When August 1995 hiked its little skirt up and it was time to graduate into further oblivion (aka, college), we all split into small slivers of groups, peppering Kansas with our farming mentalities and tan skin. As our freshman, sophomore and junior years came to a close, fewer and fewer of us logged time as a group. None of us got married, but we all moved into the next phases of our lives. Then, slowly, one hitcheroo'ed in Vegas. Another in Chicago. Another in Kansas. A baby or two came along.

I moved to the East coast and spent night after night watching bands at the Bowery Ballroom. I wrote about developments in heart disease. I schmoozed. I had a hard time staying in touch with the girls.

But, then, Thayne and I started our famous holiday party, and it was easy to reunite again on an annual basis. The party meant that I always saw most of the ladies... Engagement rings were admired. Relationships began. Burritos were eaten. Mom would make margaritas.

As the years went on, even those holiday parties fell to the side. And fewer and fewer moments came when the girls were all in the same room. It became hard to know where everyone lived. Brunches or quick cocktails were exchanged if one was in town or I dropped into their hoods.

So, in the midst of all the carcinogenic turmoil, how ironic for me to find myself back in the hands of so many ladies I love and had fallen out of touch with. Thank heavens for my friends Jai and Marc for having met each other and decided to host a massive wedding in our small hometown in Kansas. For most of us, it was only a matter of finding our lunch table in the middle of that big room that became our high school commons area all over again. For a few, it took some time to talk like we'd used to. I came out of it with a renewed friendship with a dear friend I have missed for way too many years. I met a new baby, a darling to the eye. I reconnected with all these crazy peeps and their families that I never see often enough.

The amazing thing is that each of them has a connection to my mother in a way that I had forgotten. So, it's hard for them to see what's happening to her, too. She was their mom at least one night out of their lives.

If only we could still roar off into the night in my pink bug. Into the simple.

Should I be frightened?

2009-04-16T22:13:00.004-06:00

No, I think not. This, pure and simple, is the first of a series of movies called "Denver's Own".

Enjoy:

White jeans pour moi

2009-04-16T18:44:00.003-06:00

Every three years I have a mental breakdown.

White jeans seem to play an integral part in my mental deterioration.

It's par for the course. Graduate from college. Become journalist. Flee from terrible ex-boyfriends. Move to NYC. Drink excessively. Become editorial assistant. Move to Brooklyn. Buy white jeans. Wear a few times but delay their life in a gutter outside of that French restaurant next to the Abbey. They flee into the trash. Fall for stupid drummer guy who loves Fugazi.

Breakdown.

Find place in adult life. Fall for a guy who lives in an actual junkyard in south Williamsburg. Enjoy my career. Get promoted. Become associate editor. Fall for science. Apply to Columbia J School. Forget to send transcripts. Rejection!

Breakdown.

Remain in Brooklyn while sleeping in loft. Experience earthquake. Date terrible men. Enjoy some fun men. Get promoted. Become managing editor. Love science even more than ever. Go to press briefings and serve as science reporter all over again. Hang out in the West Village and meet Shafer Hall and large group of wonderful friends. Buy white jeans. Travel.

Breakdown.

Dad has cancer. Move parents to NYC. Get treatment. Take Uncle Jon to Little Italy. Begin hating subway. Get concerned b/c subway is necessary for entry to Manhattan. Meet hubzo at random. Fall in love. Bury white jeans. Transition to advertising and sign first-born children over for quick layouts from CAD.

Breakdown.

Get hitched. Ready to move. Miss parents and sick of the subway. Advertising sucking life from body yet not even that skinny. Hatch plot to move to Denver. Move to Denver. Feel bad about missing NYC. Like new job. Excessively try to learn everything so I can to do it right. Get through Christmas. Get through birthday. Mum has cancer.

Breakdown.

Buy white jeans as Easter gift to self. Feel better already. These jeans will stay alive.

Excited about...

2009-04-10T10:28:00.002-06:00

Grey Gardens... the new rendition, that is, soon to appear on HBO. The original 1975 Grey Gardens documentary is heartbreaking and stunningly fascinating. Now, Drew Barrymore and Jessica Lange star in the new version of this little film.

Read more twisty little things about how Little Edie finally sold Grey Gardens in 1979 for a mere $220,000.

I'm not a very good blogger

2009-04-03T06:23:00.003-06:00

I've nearly abandoned Denverette! Sheesh.

So, I'm preparing a big ole public health campaign launch at work (very exciting and it includes Yahoo! ads) and, well, my mum is sick and we think it might be cancer. I've started a new blog to update on her condition and it's called www.aboutourmomma.blogspot.com.

I also cut my hair in the bathroom sink last night.

I'm also very excited to go to a student film night for the University of Colorado film students that hubzo is working with! We are finally sewing ourselves into a community!

And, hubzo's dad, John, got a brand new awesomely cool electric wheelchair and I can't wait to go on some spins with him out on the Cape very soon.

I'm temporarily relocating for several days to Rochester, Minnesota, and the Mayo Clinic. I can only hope that we have some decent news there because... we need it.

Aspen

2009-03-28T07:56:00.007-06:00

Aspen after it put on some eye makeup.

A bit of wine, considering ending its life by jumping off the edge. Just kidding. That's morbid.

Jess and myself playing it up for the paps!

My girls all the way from the big town.

All Photos by Colin Dempsey.

Snow storms

2009-03-27T20:01:00.003-06:00

I'm not very happy with all the snow storm dragged in. No, I'm not.

I knew it would suck from days ahead. And, I prepared for it.

Snowstorms will never be the same to me, just as humidity will never ring Brooklyn true.

Eff you, snowstorms and all your venom and terribleness. Eff YOU. I'm not scared. I'm ready to take you on.

My flight is already booked, asshole.

Where The Wild Things Are

2009-03-25T18:46:00.003-06:00

My birthday week was as peculiar as ever.

Here's the story. I fell outta my mom during the third week of March. She might say she was in labor with me for a week. Besides St Patrick's Day, that week is most well known for spring break. Often, I received trips in exchange for promises of decent behavior and hopes of ethereal days of cultural education and keeping my passport intact. There's not one trip that's more frighteningly worth discussing than my 18th birthday, which I spent at a college in Vermont with several of my best girls. My friend Cat was in her freshman year and kindly allowed several of us to stay in her dorm. I held many trash cans under faces. I had my first anxiety attack. I ate bagels amongst the ivy leaguers. I went to a green beer party. I became a wanderer.

Last week once again entailed a series of spooky and emotional days ranging from sadness to stress to joy at seeing my ladies again to missing hubzo to exhaustion and back to happiness and finally settling on not really understanding if 4 was an even number.

I entered Monday with exhaustion, fear, annoyance and an unprecedented amount of work to do. I haven't run in a week and it doesn't even matter because I forget to eat during the day and slog home to bed at night while stuffing a few tortilla chips in my mouth. Sometimes I eat a few of Jess' leftover Doritos.

It seems like everyone is in the midst of moving away from their current city into a new one. Several friends and colleagues have left their lives for a new one in a new place. Aly is sitting in Chicago tonight on her air mattress, waiting for the furniture delivery. Another is heading to D.C. Another is heading to Austin. And, yet another, is trotting down to Tennessee. My nights have been laced with dreams of faces and times I don't remember or those that morph into beings I know quite well and who link back many years. I think often of my friend and loss. I think of sickness and fear of sickness and the fact that my health insurance doesn't kick back in until next week. I miss my brother who moved into a new neighborhood. I see spring, around the corner, shaving her legs and spray tanning. I forget to drink coffee, which surely contributes to my haze. I keep watching Woody Allen films.

Another season has exited the stage and Denver is beautiful. I am so happy that I live here.

In the pink

2009-03-18T07:45:00.003-06:00

I'm turning my blog pink the rest of this week to celebrate Emmy Groce's life! Today is her memorial and although I cannot be there to send this beautiful little girl off, I hope each of you will send your positive thoughts that fly on their little pink carpets through the air and land smack in the dab of south Denver where her family is beginning their healing process.

Donate to www.louberrypie.com this week

2009-03-16T09:19:00.008-06:00

This week, I'll be turning 32 years old. For each of you wonderful readers, I'd like to pose a challenge that helps me honor something else much more important that my ragged old birthday. Instead of sending me a Facebook notification, an email or text message this week, please reconsider your time and make a donation to www.louberrypie.com. Here's why...

My first day of work here in Denver was scary. I was new in the city, new to my job, new to the staff. A variety of unknowns launched at me that morning as I drove into the parking lot and walked through the door. I was greeted by a friendly young woman who was chatting with our finance director near the lobby. I'd met her before, during the interview process. I'd actually thought to myself then that we had a connection. We talked and thought on a similar plane. Little did I know she would turn into a most valued and loved confidante, friend and work colleague.

When I approached her in the lobby that August morning, she was talking about getting her girls ready for school a few hours earlier. I was surprised she had children, because she looked so young. Silly me. It was only days later when I had my first introduction to her wonderful family and their warmth and special personalities. After we met, her daughters would regularly wander in and out of my office, momentarily stopping to watch a YouTube video or ask what I was working on. I spent Mondays catching up on their weekend activities, hearing about their sports endeavors and birthday parties, watching them grow into beautiful young things.

Last Friday, during the warm, sunny morning, Carrie, her husband Jay, and their daughter Alex had part of their wonderful circle taken away. The very lovely and unique Emmy left all of us in a very unexpected way.

To honor the joy and smiles that Emmy shared with so many people, contributions in her memory are being accepted at www.louberrypie.com. All monies will be used to support the family and to help establish a memorial library at Mammoth Heights Elementary School in Parker, Colorado.

The coward

2009-03-13T06:52:00.008-06:00

My desk is piled with medical articles and lists. It always is. My blank computer full of blank pharmaceutical muck stared at my coworkers rushing by, on their way to meetings, to discuss the next symposium, the faculty commitments, the cardiologist who won't present without his Mac.

I have no meetings or deadlines today -- a miracle. My inbox gains weight by the minute as 9:30 AM rolls in. Did I drink coffee today? Tea?

My stomach churns and feels full of birds or something more terrible (I hate birds). More people walk by, some stopping to chat. Eyeing a nearby journal, I grab it and sink forward into my cube, hoping for invisibility.

My cell phone is on vibrate.

10:30 AM slips in, wearing a really annoying jumpsuit of pretend New York fashion. I tap on my keyboard and work on a completely nonsensical article about infectious disease, flipping repeatedly back-and-forth between email and the Yahoo! homepage news. I answer questions when people call me. I imagine that anesthesia is taking effect.

Two more hours pass. I skip lunch. I don't leave the building. My guilt is almost like its own atmosphere surrounding Earth. I even have my own guilt satellite, beaming down onto 68th and York, smack on the very right edge of the city. I hate that block.

Another hour drips out of the fear faucet. My boss - a kind woman - finds me at my cube and questions my presence. Why am I there, in the office, on such a day? She eyes my dress. I am wearing a casual 50s cocktail dress with black hoodie zipped to the top, covering the bulk of my upper regions and serving as some type of coward shield. Why in God's name am I wearing a cocktail dress today? I'm not planning on happy hour or a lovely dinner outside in the West Village.

How do I say that proximity keeps fear at bay? That facing the cyclical hourly rate of wait is somehow reduced between neighborhoods of the city? That the farther away I am, the less real it is? That I am the cowardly version of Eeyore, without enough courage to even pin my tail back on?

I don't say any of it. It seems my non-response answers for me.

Handbag slung, cell in hand, I step out onto Madison Avenue and 42nd Street. I ponder my commute as Citibank looms on the corner, gulping cash and checks like a hungry dog. Midtown engulfs me and my silly cocktail dress and I feel suddenly like an insect in a Jetsons cartoon with space cars and vehicles speeding by in the air, on the ground, through every crevice of air.

Taking the 6 train will be much too fast. Plus, I despise the subway system. It's a terribly malfunctioning large intestine of a very gluttonous pop singer you can't stay away from. Every kind of clogging malady occurs on a daily basis and it's rarely something controllable. I decide against taking the chance of encountering constipation and opt for an uptown 1 bus sitting feet away.

Perched inside, the local bus crawls like a crab, awkwardly transitioning between lane and stop on every block. I hop off at 68th Street and walk through Hunter College campus.

It's very hot and I suddenly become very dizzy because I've not eaten. An apple from a corner fruit vendor will suffice. I eat around the rotten side and try not to puke.

My phone is silent.

Aged apartment buildings with tiny window eyes peer out at me as I walk through a neighborhood that is perilously unfamiliar to me. I pass a park where swimsuit-clad children run around a spouting fountain. Their nannies sit on benches, chatting, rolling a myriad of babies in their strollers back-and-forth.

There are so many babies.

I turn a corner and see a very large forest-like block full of Evergreens and strange slope of grass that is oddly out of place. Manhattan is very strange and intoxicating in this way. You can suddenly walk onto a block of garden, of green space that is seemingly impossible. Sometimes, you can enter the space and become enclosed in a small, lively forest in the middle of screaming cabs and sirens. It's easy to not hear those sounds, though, after a while.

Across from the forest sits the giantess, my destination. It's a homely building, taupe and boring.

It's 3:30 PM. Inside, my daddy's cancer is being cut out. A surgeon -- a brilliant surgeon -- is cutting a tumor away just as I might carefully cut a paper doll from a book.

I stand across the street, thinking about how to go inside, wondering what is happening, fearful because I have not spoken to my family in hours, knowing that anything can happen, terrified and cowardly at avoiding the morning of this day, ashamed of locking myself into a cube instead of supporting my very calm and reasonable and wonderful mother who wasn't very calm or reasonable that day, wanting to know the angry fucked up cells inside my daddy were gone forever, aching to let myself be where I want to be: Inside.

A note: Thankfully, this story has a happy ending and I write about it today because it taught me a very valuable lesson about the implications of not facing terror and fear, no matter what the outcome may be.

I smell it

2009-03-07T11:29:00.005-07:00

Hubzo, licking his lips like he just entered a big bucket of fresh PFC.

It's green. It's a monster.

Nothing quite like Yawkey Way. Yelling is more genuine. Sunburns accepted readily as Master Card. Beer is a side note.

Only a few weeks to go.

Their First Murder

2009-03-06T19:45:00.024-07:00

Another brief short story for you all...

Their First Murder

Chapter 1

The little boy hiked around the front yard in his camouflage dungarees. His blond hair hung in his eyes. A 5-year old girl, his sister, came bounding out of the front door, slamming it without concern. They began to play around the yard, eventually settling in the large dirt driveway.

Their house sat, solitary, on the Kansas prairie.

Little by little, they dug a large hole in the dirt driveway as the afternoon sun pressed down on them. Their mother came in-and-out of the house all afternoon, chatting with the children, tending to her flowers and mint and strawberry patches.

Her car on the right side of the driveway hid the hole that was growing a life on the left. The mother assumed the children were playing toy wars, warning them periodically to stay in the yard. Their house sat amidst wheat and soybean fields, free of human neighbors for miles. The afternoon passed and sunset began dressing for its evening out. By twilight, the children sat in their newly dug hole, dirty and waiting for their father to come home.

The boy and girl often played alone as a pair. They flew the prairie on their solo imaginations, far from cities, cars and worrisome characters looking for trouble. Fear and concern were cartoon characters. Town was a 20-minute car ride away. Their summer world was made of blue sky, early morning cartoons and hot afternoons in the sprinkler.

The girl pulled herself out of the dirt hole and stood at its edge, observing it. “This can be our fortress, like our castle,” she said to the boy, scrunching her nose while wiping away dust from her eyes. She paused. “We can trap things and put them in our dungeon.”

The boy sat, silent in the hole. His hands were filthy and lips outlined with Kool-Aid. In his three years on earth, his only friends had been the girl and cousins he saw on weekends. He was shy and good. “I don’t want to trap anything,” he said defiantly.

The girl puffed out her chest at his disapproval. She looked up at the fields surrounding their yard. “Do you think mommy tells us to stay in the yard because we’ll get lost?”

“No,” the boy replied nonchalantly as he scraped more dirt off the hole walls with a rock. “Snakes. They come out in summer.”

“Snakes chase when you see them,” the girl added, kneeling back down to pick up a mini-shovel. “They’re mean.”

She tossed the shovel into the hole.

“Nuh uh,” the boy said, avoiding her eyes. “Daddy says they don’t like us and stay in the fields.”

The girl kneeled down eye-to-eye with the boy. “But what if they’re all around us now, hiding and watching us… waiting to get us,” she taunted, “in a den with their little baby snakes, teaching them how to get us…”

“Nuh uh!” he said furiously, recoiling from her face.

“…to get you!” she continued, yelling louder has he moved away.

The boy crawled out of the hole and stood. “Don’ say that stuff. Not nice.” He turned on his heel with his arms crossed and stared at the large farmhouse staring back at him. The farmhouse had six window-like eyes.

The girl went silent and stepped back into the hole. “Calm down,” she said coldly, looking down and fumbling with her small bracelet. “I’m only kidding."

Chapter 2

Suddenly, a grounding motor sound sliced through the air. A blue truck emerged on the hill half a mile down the road. It drove slowly, kicking up dirt. A large dog sat perched in the back of the truck, its ears blowing backward in the wind. The truck came to a halt half-way into the driveway.

“Well, what have you two done here?” the father asked, leaning out his window.

The children beamed at their achievement. “We made a castle, daddy!” the little girl said, jumping up and down in the hole and beaming at his smile. “It’s a dungeon to keep prisoners!”

“It’s to trap… to trap the snakes from tha fields!!” exclaimed the little boy, excitedly talking and stumbling over his words.

The father chuckled, ducked his head back inside the truck. He slowly pulled up a few more feet and parked. The dog leaped from the back of the truck as the father got out. They walked together, partners.

The father was covered in dirt, with roughed up cowboy boots and dark curly hair wildly blown out, Einstein-style. The boy ran toward him and the father picked him up. “Well,” the father said, “snakes, eh? That’s pretty silly… there aren’t any around here."

He walked over to the children, ruffling the boy's hair. "Plus, they’re afraid of us, so they stay away. Leave ‘em alone and they leave you alone.” He stopped by the hole, where the girl still sat, eyeing him with skepticism.

“What’re you doing in there, goof ball?” he laughed, looking down at her.

“I don’t believe you,” she remarked emphatically. “Snakes are around here and they’re mean!! They bite!”

“C’mon, now” he said, leaning down to pick up the dirty little boy. He extended his tanned arm to her. “Where’s your mother? Has she seen what you’ve done?

The little girl finally cracked a smile and grabbed his arm.

They went inside the big farmhouse that watched with its large eyes over the yard and to the fields, observing back-and-forth as a lighthouse scans the sea for troubled ships.

Chapter 3
The next day was grey and rainy. The children woke up and kissed their father goodbye. They watched their morning cartoons and then mussed the kitchen while their mother baked cookies.

“You two need to go out and play,” the mother said, peering out the kitchen window. “The rain has stopped.”

The phone suddenly rang.

She turned to the children, who sat on the floor looking up at her. “No more holes, though. Got it?” she commanded firmly, picking up the phone.

The little girl looked at the boy. “Wanna go look for snakes?” she teased.

He wrinkled his nose. “Noooo,” he moaned, leaning back onto the floor. “They’re scary,” he said softly.

“Don’t be dumb. Let’s go,” the little girl said. She stood and tugged at his arms, trying to pull him off the linoleum floor. He slowly let her pull until he stood.

His arm sockets hurt.

Chapter 4
They stepped out onto the wet grass. The hole in the driveway was full of water. Everything was muddy. The front yard was surrounded on each side with white fencing. One side had large yellow and pink rose bushes. Two evergreen trees framed the front door. The house watched as they played.

The children amused themselves outside until late morning. Their mother came out to tell them lunch was ready. The children would go with their mother to deliver lunch in the fields to their father and his brothers.

“Think we should take your daddy something special for dessert?” she asked the children, before stepping back inside to finish packing the food.

Chapter 5

The children climbed into their mother’s car and they set off for lunch. Fidgety, the little girl asked lots of questions about the impending school year while their mother drove. The car kicked up dirt behind them. The mother turned onto yet another dirt road surrounded by wheat fields.

“There’s daddy!! Daddy!” the boy exclaimed, excitedly pointing to the father who was – at a distance – climbing out of a semi-truck with wild hair. His dog was already running toward their car.

The mother stopped and parked the car. The children tore off their seatbelts, hopped out and ran toward the father.

“Dadeeeeeeeeeeeeee!!!” both children screamed. He leaned down onto his knees and hugged them both. The little girl visibly shoved the little boy aside for a larger embrace, but the father pulled the boy in anyway.

“What’re you guys doin’ today?” he asked.

The mother was hunched over the open car trunk, pulling out food and a cooler of iced tea.

“We watched cartoons. It was raining for-EH-ver!” the little girl said, twirling around.

“Are you able to cut?” the mother asked, walking up with sandwiches in hand.

“On a break right now. It’s still wet. Might take the afternoon to dry out.”

“Come home with us, dadeeeee!” the little girl exclaimed, before taking a big bite of sandwich.

The lunch was hearty – sandwiches and corn bread with cookies for dessert. The family sat on back of the father’s truck and ate.

“You’ll never guess what I heard today,” the father said. “You know that Koby kid, the youngest one, Shane?”

The mother stopped chewing for a few seconds. “Hmmm. He rides the bus with the children. Why?” she asked.

“Seventeen rattler bites all up and down his left arm. Can you believe it? He’s in ICU in Wichita. Don’t know if he’ll make it. The son of a bitch kept striking—“

“OK—enough,” the mother said curtly. “They don’t need to hear.”

“But, mommy…” questioned the little girl, “what happened?”

Nobody replied. The boy chewed his sandwich silently, staring off into the fields.

“Who wants watermelon?” the mother asked.

Chapter 6
Dirt flew up behind the car as they drove back to the main road. The boy sat in the backseat staring out the window silently, flicking the lock switch back and forth.

The mother and girl sung along to the radio up front. The sun was bright and beat onto the beige console of the car. As the mother drover nearer their home the boy asked if they might go swimming in town the next day.

“Sure,” she said. “Maybe we need an afternoon out. We can meet your cousins.”

The mother silently pulled into the right-side of the driveway. Had it been paved, it would’ve been large as a basketball court. The large hole set silent and water-filled on the left. Sun glared off the house windows and momentarily blocked their vision.

“That hole has got to be filled when it dries up,” the mother said, blindly placing the car in park. She pushed her sunglasses onto her head. The girl hopped out.

The boy tried to open the door, but he’d locked it.

“Mommy, it’s locked.”

She turned back and flipped the lock up. “You’re set,” she said and turned around. She fumbled with the console, trying to find room to place the sunglasses.

The house watched with heat of the sun beating into its eyes. The boy opened the door and stepped out only to unleash a bloodcurdling cry.

The mother immediately dropped the sunglasses, opened the door and leaped out. The little boy was at a standstill – screaming, with his face to the sky. The little girl ran to the other side of the car and was standing, staring at the ground. Their dead, coiled bodies lay before her.

© 2009 Taryn Fort Doyle

Wanna live on my old street in Brooklyn?

2009-03-06T11:58:00.001-07:00

Well, why not just give it a shot? Here's a listing for a fabulous apartment with equally fabulous landlords:

http://newyork.craigslist.org/brk/abo/1060954397.html

If you're in the hood and need new space, this is a recommended deal.

Thanks, Krisp!

In Paris, it's 42 degrees

2009-03-06T06:43:00.006-07:00

Baby brother is in Paris with his girl this week. While I would prefer he do some guest blogging about Paris for me, I'm not sure he'll have time. It may have to be post-hoc Paris blogging. Guess I gotta pick up the slack.

But it got me thinking... How does one even see Paris? That is, how does one do it as a tourist these days? Like everything else in the world, there is so much information online now... so many online tools for finding things... we have iphones and blackberries that work across the pond and provide GPS and a variety of apps (find the best toilet around!). We have the explosion of Food Network and the Travel Channel with Bourdain taking us to every non-tourist nook and cranny of cities far and wide. Does all of this mean that traveling is more convenient now? And easier?I travel like this: Enter European city at early morning hour, shuffle around on the metro and see famous stuff until it's early enough to enter a bar and then go fall into a bed somewhere. I haven't been to Paris (and I will go, damnit!), but there are some fabulous travel deals out there right now, so alongside a passport renewal, I started investigating some travel 2.0.

With the newfangled Google Latitude, I can see where Thayne is right now. (Cue a terrified brother who is hopefully not believing any of my babblings.) But, it's true that you can check on people's status and location if they allow you.

You can view Paris and all of its gooey sites and traffic -- LIVE -- and check weather, time, etc, at www.paris-live.com

Visit www.theparisblog.com for lots of ways to save (right now you can learn about having a cheap wedding in Paris).

Looking for inspiring images (I think it must be challenging to take a bad photo in Paris) for you know where? Visit www.parisdailyphoto.com. The author blogs almost daily and his pics are super pretty.

Make friends, do some international social networking with those who love drinks even before you hit Paris and then schedule some time for a Meet-up (one of my favorite real-life networking options) through the Paris Social Networking Cocktail Meet-up Group. (Their next meet-up is scheduled March 11.)

Want to meet people in Paris? Then drop in on the 'godfather of social networking', Jim Hayne's weekly open-house supperclub dinners on Sunday nights. Everyone's welcome! To put your name on the list for a Sunday dinner call 0033 1 43 27 17 67 or visit jim-haynes.com.

Need to save some dough? Join the Discount Paris Social Network and receive our latest offers and network with other members before you travel.

Yes, it's 70 degrees outside

2009-03-03T06:17:00.003-07:00

We are enjoying ever-pleasant weather here in Denver. The sign is my choice in jacket. Yesterday, 'twas a thin raincoat (and I gotta walk 20 minutes back and forth from work to the train).

Perched on my ugly lightrail seat, I flipped through a magazine and discovered Jessica Hische, llustrator, Brooklynite and star of lettering and typography. She works for Louise Fili in Manhattan.

Check Jessica Hische out.

Note: all images © Jessica Hische.

It's her birthday

2009-03-02T06:30:00.000-07:00

Just wanted to send my beloved G-ma a wickedly flurrious (confetti, not snow) spell of birthday greetings and love! She's the rockin' out best! Happy birthday!

Photo: G-ma in Times Square, by me.

Sit on the porch and swing with her

2009-02-23T20:34:00.006-07:00

A little short story for you all about a sweet peep... (That's me to the left, Onion Head Monster Barzilla courtesy of Paul Friedrich, running to the door, many years ago.)

Amy Van’s Parties
Amy Van tooshied into my life on New Years Eve 2004. She wore a silver glittery dress and silver heels – very ballsy with her raven black hair and red lips. Her bangs hung in her eyes very prettily. I first noticed her in my kitchen much after the midnight celebrations and much too near the looming breakfast time. That holiday season was decorated with parties until dawn, parties in the afternoon. That evening started at Kaelea’s, way down Nassau Avenue in Greenpoint. We hopped back down south to Pete’s Candy Store and marooned ourselves in the backyard island. No matter the snow and cold. We parked.

The Brits were in town. There was a legion of them, fetching and so un-American. They bathed in our sofas, laughing with you, cheerily waiting for the party to always start, perfectly on time for the perfect adventure – it was rare to see them in daylight, very cute and beautiful, licorice-sounding British bats…

Later that night we found ourselves in a car. We had a brief accident in that car. No police came, it was a minor fender bender. No matter the car. We left it somewhere. It swallowed my phone until the next day. I think that car was a bit hungry and maybe needed some love while we trotted onto a stairwell party somewhere or another in somewhere or another Brooklyn. You never went to Manhattan when the Brits were in town. What was the point?

Amy Van came to my after-hours party with Shafer, the orange tabby of our lives. We had no furniture at 920 Lorimer Street – only square footage of break dancing tiles where a rug wasn’t cut, but shredded. Amy Van and I perched on the sofa corner, instant. She told me about Will and Conor Oberst.

Tomorrow is brunch at Teddy’s.

It's tomorrow. There are gallons of mimosas and cigarettes on every triangle between Havemeyer and Berry. The Brits’ time is escaping us and I’m in love with one of them, kinda. Tom is there, as are Alexa and Kristi and Kaelea.

The hours flushed away and a short jaunt at Matchless leaves Joan with light bulbs on her tits and feet on the bar. She cracks her tooth on the sidewalk outside as we head back to Pete’s. We head. Amy Van will be there, training it from her apartment on Orchard Street. Her insane roommate Darcy accompanies her, hawking around at every male eyeball. We have taken over the entire front area, sloshing beer and scarves around our heads. The Brits continue and flavor us like bacon – we love them so. Shafer has been wearing my green feather boa for 48 hours. My dad bought that for me in San Diego on St Patrick’s day the year before. Orange tabby later does push-ups in the middle of Lorimer Street. Will Oldham makes a surprise appearance and it is suddenly one of those New York evenings that flows like a shift dress on a fat girl: it makes her look skinny and filled with someone else's dollar bills.

Two days later the Brits are gone. I head to London two weeks later for a Modest Mouse show at the Scala. I see the Brit and he takes me to Trafalgar Square very late, after a much-needed meal of Indian food. I fly back to New York a day later. It is fun, but over.

The first party I went to at Amy Van’s was awesome. Once people move to Brooklyn and get space, the parties are indecently mad. Her apartment was tall and big with lots of great retro furniture. The guests were eclectic, they were everyone: artists, comic book inkers, poets, musicians, guys who smoked Viagra in Tee-Pees, broadcast journalists, photographers, professors, fashion designers, A&R girls, event planners, bartenders.

Everyone got very drunk at Amy Van’s parties. People kissed. We sat on the long black sofas and fragmented and jogged through fun, through each conversation, through the leather and tequila. Ears and shoes blew into rooms and out of hands and blanketed everyone until the black sedans shipped us home to our respective Brooklyn pockets.

Protocol was to gift with booze and to smoke out the window. Later, when Amy moved to Bed-Stuy, we went to the roof. Our relationship flourished. We had Easter on a freezing cold afternoon with frozen margaritas at McCarren park. Birthdays came, jobs went. We greeted the Four Faced Liar and it melted on us like butter. Decisions were made and we let ourselves be captured in butterfly nets of reality. I walked the aisle and fed myself happiness. I still like to gorge on it. We divorced the tricks and walked on the sidewalk, danced on tiles and sidewalks and wood and plushy, cushy cotton. This continued, on and on, until I didn’t live there anymore. Until the clock struck and the cocoon opened up.

Be sorry if you miss it

2009-02-22T20:04:00.008-07:00

I'm soooooooOOOooooOooo happy that the best and sweetest little short film ever won an Oscar tonight: La Maison en Petits Cubes! It's hard to see this film right now, but try try try:

You can download it here.

Ahead of the game?

2009-02-22T11:04:00.002-07:00

Interesting piece in the New York Times last week about the joys of Denver... (thanks, Dana!)

I Dream of Denver
You may not know it to look at them, but urban planners are human and have dreams. One dream many share is that Americans will give up their love affair with suburban sprawl and will rediscover denser, more environmentally friendly, less auto-dependent ways of living.Those dreams have been aroused over the past few months. The economic crisis has devastated the fast-growing developments on the far suburban fringe. Americans now taste the bitter fruit of their overconsumption.

The time has finally come, some writers are predicting, when Americans will finally repent. They’ll move back to the urban core. They will ride more bicycles, have smaller homes and tinier fridges and rediscover the joys of dense community — and maybe even superior beer.

America will, in short, finally begin to look a little more like Amsterdam.

Well, Amsterdam is a wonderful city, but Americans never seem to want to live there. And even now, in this moment of chastening pain, they don’t seem to want the Dutch option.

The Pew Research Center just finished a study about where Americans would like to live and what sort of lifestyle they would like to have. The first thing they found is that even in dark times, Americans are still looking over the next horizon. Nearly half of those surveyed said they would rather live in a different type of community from the one they are living in at present.

Second, Americans still want to move outward. City dwellers are least happy with where they live, and cities are one of the least popular places to live. Only 52 percent of urbanites rate their communities “excellent” or “very good,” compared with 68 percent of suburbanites and 71 percent of the people who live in rural America.

Cities remain attractive to the young. Forty-five percent of Americans between the ages of 18 and 34 would like to live in New York City. But cities are profoundly unattractive to people with families and to the elderly. Only 14 percent of Americans 35 and older are interested in living in New York City. Only 8 percent of people over 65 are drawn to Los Angeles. We’ve all heard stories about retirees who move back into cities once their children are grown, but that is more anecdote than trend.

Third, Americans still want to go west. The researchers at Pew asked Americans what metro areas they would like to live in. Seven of the top 10 were in the West: Denver, San Diego, Seattle, San Francisco, Phoenix, Portland and Sacramento. The other three were in the South: Orlando, Tampa and San Antonio. Eastern cities were down the list and Midwestern cities were at the bottom.

Finish reading the article here...

I feel like a space kitty

2009-02-22T09:05:00.003-07:00

As you might have guessed, I really, really love Japanese anime and prints, so I stumbled onto Strangekiss and ran across a limited edition print of Space Kitty. It caught my eye because I both feel like the astronaut kitty randomly flying through the air, sorta helpless, and I also feel like the supplanted space kitty calmly sleeping on the planet. If only I could merge the two for a meshed space kitty, but that might be kinda sick.

Space Kitty
Designer: David Lanham
Dimensions: 20 x 24
Medium: Print Giclee
Special Info: 2-3 week delivery time.
Price: $149.99

Note: you can also get limited edition dunny's from Kid Robot at Strangekiss.

Hearts from a slacker

2009-02-21T18:50:00.006-07:00

I'm feeling better after my mournful Saturday morning post and the fact is that this blog ain't all about me. I'm wicked like that sometimes. Blame it on depression! Or, misunderstood performance-enhancing drug use -- that's another good one. (How is it that more and more Yankees keep coming out of the woodwork with the knowledge that they've used performance-enhancing drugs for years but had no idea what they were? Hmmm. So odd. To shout-out to my favorite and much more naturally-enhanced BoSox, I've engaged use of their lovely font in the image to your right.)

I digress. Several of my favorite peeps have recently had reason to celebrate, be grateful, or simply deserve a shout-out and it's time to dole it:

Hubzo's dad, John, is better again and we're all so relieved! I know he reads this blog and wanted to let him know that we fully expect a few photos of him in his dapper hat.

Tom English might not have any reason to celebrate, but I've been out of touch and wanted to mention that in the company of all of you! Tom should try to stay away from baking chickens. Hopefully, I'll be back in NYC soon for a cocktail.

And, my two favorite Tiffs in the world have reasons to celebrate:

Tiff and AJ welcomed Finley Van on February 11 and he weighed ten whopping pounds!

Tiff and Tim just got engaged in New Orleans and I wish them all the best!

Our bestest pals Krispy and Joe are headed to Denver from Brooklyn this week for a long awaited reunion. Safe travels!

Aly will be finished with the Illinois bar by Wednesday night so everyone needs to send positive energy vibes to her over the next couple days as she successfully completes what will be her third consecutive passing of a state bar.

Happy Sunday!

Spread love, it's the Brooklyn way

2009-02-21T09:44:00.004-07:00

My wings are a little bit slathered with bug juice, but I'm finally home. Long week in San Diego and it didn't include a trolley ride to Mexico.

I've been busy. Yes, I know you know: I'm always busy. It's my mantra. I'm busy in my arms and legs and busy in my head. I'm always busy worrying about things and fearing the worst and busy moving around and busy laundering my looks and busy putting contacts in my eyeballs. I'm busy making breakfast and spilling my guts online. I'm busy being the oldest child and planning birthday parties and brushing the vodka from my hair. My busy index fingers are busy taking snapshots and my busy little hands are gripping Celtics tickets at the Pepsi Center. My busy little body is busy with bruises from knocking myself out with heavy luggage. My gosh, my busy little feet are busy while asleep. Right now, I'm busy listening to hubzo request coffee and breakfast food while thinking about Brooklyn and my favorite busy little corner of Driggs and Manhattan Avenue where Enid's sits perched like a nice little girl and Matchless gossips like a slutty teenager.

Maybe it was spurred by my travels this week or our expected guests next week, but I'm busy missing Brooklyn again. It's been seven months since I left and I still can't believe it. I walk outside daily and breathe in fresh Rocky Mountain air, but my lungs remain clogged with that nasty syrupy smell of Greenpoint. I recall the treads over the Pulaski bridge to Long Island City more than yesterday's run on the treadmill. I've seen more frat boys in these few months than I did in a whole year of college. There is no fashion or need for fashion. I can't fly to Dublin with Krispy on the cheap. I never see paparazzi or exciting sidewalk arguments or people walking down the street flipping everyone off. My pizza dough sucks beyond belief. On the other hand, I leave work at a respectable time and don't log 80 hours a week. I can drive a few hours and eat my mom's burritos. I have real furniture and own a car. I no longer experience humidity. I can leave food out on the kitchen counter. My anxiety attacks have virtually disappeared. Hubzo and I don't have a terrorist attack plan (although we should) for Denver. I have some new friends that I really love. I don't have drunken Polish men in my hallway. I've lost weight.

Although I can't believe my feet would ever go permanently back to Brooklyn, I wonder if my guts will ever leave. Is it the time thing again?? Is time the only way to forget? I guess life experiences and periods of time are a lot like relationships that you experience, move through, and then slowly forget. It makes me wonder if anyone can ever really move on, though. Nobody ever totally forget the relationships that meant something. Do you forget seven years of marriage? I'm inclined to think not, given Jennifer Aniston's petty state.

Even now I look out my windows onto a snow-encrusted and beautiful little area that I call home now and it still doesn't feel like it should. It's convenient and pretty. I have good friends here. But I don't have myself here. Hubzo and his humor are always a little misplaced. Are we so Brooklynian that this piece isn't gonna fit our puzzle?

I guess this is my own fault. Well, it IS my fault. I wanted to move, to unplug, to re-file my taxes with life. And, most days I'm happy to be here, but my feet miss the dirtier ground. I suppose a strong dose of getting over it and accepting things for what they are is in order. But I can't help wondering what kick-ass dress I'm missing out on because I'm not heading into Soho today.

Biggie said it best: And if you don't know, now ya know.

Valiant decor

2009-02-16T08:41:00.003-07:00

These little peeps sleep in a bookshelf in our living room. Many hail from the Soho Kid Robot store, but others are from my grandma's vintage salt n'pepper collection.

And the stress just flies away

2009-02-16T08:23:00.003-07:00

Mum and paps came into town to celebrate Valentine's Day and evening with all of us randomites. We made a feast of salmon, mahi mahi, red meat, and grilled veggies -- we were so tuckered out after feeding that we fell to the sofas and watched bad television.Here is mum, seasoning maven.

The boys are relaxing and occasionally taking out the trash.

The baby doggie -- he's so little and nonthreatening with his ears down -- lazed around much of the night. Yesterday morning we took him out into the wildlife of downtown Denver where he badgered some squirrels and fought Canadian Geese.

Hubzo and I thought a Valentine's pic together would be nice. It's our fourth one, after all.

Saturday meanderings

2009-02-14T12:13:00.001-07:00

It's all about the wine

2009-02-06T07:24:00.003-07:00

Yes, I found a lovely new wine bar in the Uptown area (I guess it's a 'hood) -- Caveau Wine Bar. It's not that cheap, but the atmosphere rules. They have a dope happy hour (that I missed due to work), but also have regular wine tastings. I don't know what it is about Denver, but every wine bar around here has really awesome wine tastings, complete with food. Parking was a slight issue at Caveau, but now I know they have a free parking AREA between 16th and 17th on Pennsylvania.

For the variety of those coming out to visit us very soon, perhaps we'll take a seat.

So, Rockefeller Center at 5 am IS important

2009-02-02T09:22:00.002-07:00

Check out this interesting tidbit on free advertising opportunities within the insane morning crowds at the Today Show:

NEW YORK (AdAge.com) -- Most marketers looking to get their messages out by using NBC's popular morning-news program, "Today," figure they'll need to spend tens of thousands of dollars for a 30-second spot. And yet Taylor Larouche and her pals were able to snag much more time than that -- for free.

Ms. Larouche, a 20-year-old Penn State student, and a "street team" of other college students lined the plaza in Manhattan's Rockefeller Center at 5:15 a.m. on a cold Monday morning in mid-January. Their intent was to hold signs during the broadcast of "Today" calling attention to thon.org, a website devoted to raising money to thwart childhood cancer. But they got a lucky break. At about 8 a.m., no less than host Meredith Vieira approached the group, talked to them and took note of their sign -- all with the cameras rolling. "We made our signs real glittery and big, and we just really wanted to get our message across," said Ms. Larouche.
The college students discovered what some savvy marketers with limited ad budgets already know. In this age of branded entertainment and sponsored integrations, NBC is inadvertently giving away tens of thousands of dollars in commercial time on its flagship morning program.

Read more here.

My new t-shirts

2009-02-01T13:35:00.001-07:00

Visit www.snorgtees.com for more.

Officially insane

2009-01-31T16:15:00.004-07:00

Thayne made me do it.

So, yeah, thus far today I've committed myself to another half-marathon (read all about my last one here) and bought an extra large slow cooker (on sale at Target for $30). Marisa inspired the latter, because she's such a good cook and you should really go check out what she's working on today over at www.treadsoftlyny.blogspot.com.

Registration Confirmation for:

7th Annual Platte River 1/2 Marathon and Buckhorn Exchange Relay

Dear Insane Person,

Congratulations! You are now registered for something you are completely unprepared to engage in: the 7th Annual Platte River 1/2 Marathon and Buckhorn Exchange Relay. Please check the event's official website for updates and to remind yourself of how much the next two months will suck because you have to get up and do a new long run every Sunday morning: http://www.platteriverhalf.com.

Final race instructions and a plaque of regret with your face on it will be posted on the website during race week. See you on April 5th for torrential bathroom breaks and broken knee caps!

Registration Details
Confirmation #: URTOTALLYINSANE
Location: Downtown Littleton to the Buckhorn Exchange Restaurant (Map)
Purchased at: 01/31/09
Category: Platte River 1/2 Marathon
Name: Denverette

PS: I haven't run more than 4 miles since December. I think I might relocate to the Death Star. Perhaps Denver's port-a-potties won't be as dirty as those in Central Park. Perhaps.

Pizza late at night

2009-01-31T10:55:00.006-07:00

It's the best, best, best, best, best.

So, there's this new phenom on Facebook where everyone writes 25 random notes about themselves. At first I ignored it. Not because it's not interesting to read, but for sake of time. Now, I'm catching up, So, here are 25 random things about me and my family:

1. On the last day of 4th grade, our dog Pete tore the head off of our inherited kitty called Calico. Januea was with me and she screamed so loud that people in Japan must've heard her. It was traumatic. Two weeks later, Pete was instantly killed when he jumped out of the back of my father's truck while driving on the highway. I got a new kitty two days later and he was my baby for the next 10 years.

2. When I was 20, my parents, Thayne, and I drove from Kansas to L.A. to visit my Uncle Chris for two weeks. On the way home we drove through the desert to Las Vegas, which I hated. We also drove to the Grand Canyon.

3. One winter night, in Brooklyn, Kristi and I walked to south Williamsburg to hang out with these two guys. They lived in a loft surrounded by a junk yard. The guy had a dog, which was later stolen and never returned. We left the loft very late at night and my turquoise ring flew off my hand, never to be found. We were lucky to have not been kidnapped and killed ourselves. That part of Brooklyn was not safe back in 2003.

4. My dad lived in Saudi Arabia in the early 1980s and learned to speak Arabic. He brought back traditional Muslim clothing for us and came to my grade school class and gave a talk about the culture he'd lived in. He brought the whole class a bunch of Snickers and everyone loved him. They still do.

5. My Grandma Esther had a seriously awesome vintage salt n' pepper shaker collection, which is now my mother's.

6. I had a Pakistani "brother" (aka, family friend) who lived with my family when I was in grade school. His name is Tariq and he used to send me postcards from New York City when he traveled back to Pakistan. I have not seen him or talked to him since I was in fifth grade.

7. I met hubzo when I was 27. He turned up at my local bar, The Abbey. It had rained that day and I'd visited Shafer at the Four Faced Liar in the West Village before returning to Brooklyn. I went up to hubzo first and that's how we met. I could barely understand him, because his accent is so thick. The rest is history.

8. I am extremely claustrophobic and am terrified of being trapped in subway cars.

9. I first traveled to Europe at age 23. I flew to Munich alone and then traveled by train to Vienna where I met my friends Tim and Dave. We then traveled to Salzburg and stayed overnight at a B&B where we ate frankfurters and drank beer. The next day I bought food at a farmer's market and we went back to Germany and picked up my friend Tiff. Then, we stayed in Munich for a while. It was very strange and very, very fun.

10. My great-grandfather Fisher came to America from Russia when he was 5 years old.

11. Nobody in my family fought in the Vietnam War.

12. In 1979, my dad and several friends drove tractors to Washington D.C. to participate in the American Agricultural Farm Strike. They converged on the D.C. mall where Obama was inaugurated.

13. I love macaroni and cheese.

14. My mom makes really good cookies and lots of other food. When I was in high school, I was a baseball manager. She would make a big tin of cookies for the team when we traveled to away games. They would pass the tin up and down the bus and gorge on cookies. She was a very loved mum. She still is.

15. I saw the second plane fly through the WTC by accident. I glanced out the window as I was walking into the bedroom to wake up Lori and tell her about the first plane. That day and several days after, Kristi wore a handkerchief over her face because of the terrible dust that came in through our AC. She wore it so long that she acquired the nickname, Country Kristi. It's not a fond nickname.

16. I moved to New York City when I was 24.

17. I drove a cranberry 1974 VW bug as a teenager. My dad cut the top of it when I was in college and eventually made it into a dune buggy.

18. The latest I've ever stayed at work to finish a job is 4 am.

19. Hubzo played third base and was really good at it.

20. I love photography. It's my favorite art medium. I'm actually borderline obsessed.

21. I'm a book hog. I'm also a reading pig.

22. All of my wedding china is mismatched and was bought at thrift stores. The table settings are similar to that of the Mad Hatter's tea party in Alice in Wonderland. I think mismatched china is the most perfectly interesting idea in the world.

23. My wedding dress was insanely discounted. So much so that I bought two dresses, both of which I still have.

24. My favorite pizza is from Anna Maria's on Bedford and North 7th in Williamsburg, Brooklyn.

25. My favorite children's show of all time is Pinwheel. I constantly scavenge ebay and youtube for video clips.

Tell me a few random things about yourself.

Rough grapes

2009-01-30T06:43:00.004-07:00

January is nearly over and I couldn't be more pleased. I'm not a fan of January or February, but this February brings my dear friends to town (that includes Modest Mouse) and I'm beside myself with excitement for skiing, seeing, talking, cocktailing, sledding, warming by the fire, biking, counting down to various weddings, counting down to a very exciting trip in March, and continuing to adhere to AMA style within this blog.

This week I have been trying to sew together gaps in this massive quilt of my life. Yes, I'm a sewer. I'm not a very good sewer, but I'm into creative problem-solving. We've been faced with many interesting and difficult issues as of late, and hubzo and I are charging forward, trying to keep it together (the gaps, that is). Then, there are those little holes on the professional end that require tending. Nevertheless. I'm re-inspired by reacquired health, taking the later train, and those many creative peeps on my professional side of the river.

My camera is packed, so stay tuned for new photos and new video. Prepare for an unleashing of cheese bombs, because my head is feeling more clear and mischievous!

A shout out to Orleans, MA: get well soon!

Quilted Fine art image courtesy of: Mariana Barnes, PhD

10 Social Media Blogs You Can't Miss

2009-01-27T16:23:00.003-07:00

Seriously, I know many of you love Chris Brogan as much as I do. He deserves a number #1 spot:

1 C Brogan http://www.chrisbrogan.com
2 S Godin http://sethgodin.typepad.com
3 S Rubel http://www.micropersuasion.com
4 J Owyang http://www.web-strategist.com/blog
5 D Rowse http://www.problogger.net
6 R Scobleizer http://www.scobleizer.com
7 G Kawasaki http://blog.guykawasaki.com
8 B Solis http://www.briansolis.com
9 Lee Odden http://www.toprankblog.com
10 http://www.lifehacker.com

Happy Inauguration Day!

2009-01-20T06:33:00.001-07:00

Cheers, we're already starting to again!

Animal print adventure

2009-01-18T17:30:00.005-07:00

This weekend pounced in beautifully dressed and ready to shake her tail. She smelled good. Her good-natured demeanor was sorely needed. Her breath was minty and clean. She rolled in with sunshine handbags and blue-sky eye makeup.

After an impromptu happy hour with Januea and Marc on Friday night, Saturday was all about being outside. Hubzo and I ventured out onto the streets for a bike adventure that lasted well into the evening. Pure and simple, Denver is glorious when it's sunny out. It's the best-kept secret, the weather, and it's really worth it.

We rode to Cheeseman Park and explored the grounds. That park is very funereal. I run it when I hit the Irish Snug running club Thursday night 5k, but it's usually dark and I don't see much. We rode to the Irish Snug for a mid-afternoon lunch. The outdoor area of the lovely and legendary pub was filled with people enjoying beers and chat. My food wasn't great, but the atmosphere was! We set back off and took the long way back downtown, cruising the uptown area for a bit.

Our currently favorite cheap bar is called Illegal Pete's, so we rode to the downtown location and parked it for a couple beers. After scouring The Onion and West Word for a live show worth any money (plus, they were playing the Pixies and both hubzo and I felt we needed to fill our brains), we headed back home for showers, animal and tropical print gear, and a brief cocktail/appetizer hour at Forest Room 5, where we ate a super yummy cheese platter alongside our drinks. Then, we headed home but not before hitting My Brother's Bar, another legendary writer hang-out just a couple blocks from home. I guess we kinda went on a pub crawl. We signed off the night with more of The Tudors, Season 2. My, it was a lovely day.

Some of the images are from last week's outing. I went looking for small shells on the beachy area of the Platte River. That's the river, which I nearly cut myself to bits in this past Summer in the infamous tubing exercise. Super cool, I know.

Spiked Tea and Rainbow Strumpets

2009-01-17T11:15:00.006-07:00

My favorite lady and soon-to-be Denver visitor, Krispy, is always on the look-out for fun little items that her former roommate might love. She often gifts me with funky glitter earrings, small mirrors, pink chochkies, Josef Frank print tips, etc. This week, her latest discovery is a doozie and presented me with inspiration for creating more rainbow-flavored Denverette banners.

Drum roll please.

Might I present the newly minted Rainbow cake?

This is like a newly updated version of the rainbow cake of my many birthdays growing up. My cakes were decorated with rainbows made from extra large sugar crystals (that my mum has an unbelievable gift of always having on-hand). Now that the whole cake can BE a rainbow... Well... I don't know what to think except this is something I must get my hands on as soon as possible.

I think it's clear that my personal brand is emerging, however misconstruing those colors might be.

Images from: Omnomicon at www.omnomicon.blogspot.com.

When the lights go down in the city

2009-01-10T09:32:00.006-07:00

Today has been good. I visited a few of my favorite blogs and got a cheapo subscription to The New Yorker in the mail.

My old friend Kaelea Ann finds all kind of jewels online and her latest is Poladroid. It's like an interactive Polaroid right on your desktop! You download the app and drag and drop your pics into this big ass Polaroid icon. Cha-ching, it spits 'em out and they develop before you eyes. So, I've added a few of my favorites for your viewing pleasure, including one of our beautimous wedding space in the Rocky Mountains and a shot of hubzo, me, and his best and very tall buddy, Willis. There are also a couple of us here in D and I couldn't resist a recent snow-covered shot of my old neighborhood in Williamsburg/Greenpoint, taken by Bon Bon.

It's cold outside right now, but supposed to top out in the 50s later today. Were going to Sloans Lake for my Saturday run and for hubzo's bike ride. Then, taking a light rail ride to downtown Littleton for investigations and a beer. Fa la la la la...

A theme emerges...

2009-01-08T06:22:00.002-07:00

As much as everyone searches for who they really are, humans are pretty lame about finding that info. I say that without negativity, because it's not our fault. The search is this never-triumphant maze of emotions, experiences, people, luck, money, guesses, and decisions. So, it's not easy.

But, things are happening. Things are being revealed and will continue to do so as long as we pay attention. Figuring out who you are doesn't just happen. It's hard work, like training for a marathon or even reading a book -- you have to actually do something for a result.

I really admire all of my friends on the search for themselves. Some of them are making serious progress and I'm not only happy for them, but feel their freedom as that gasp for air turns into a calm breath. I can only hope to make such a discovery, where I understand my teensy little spot here in our world. I'm sure it's possible, as an ex-New Yorker with anxieties to top the best, to take a look inside and find that little space my friend Dana always refers to.

Now, to get started...

Image copyright 2009 married to the sea.

2009 means grow up

2009-01-04T17:22:00.003-07:00

I'm wickedly sick of myself and my petty ways. As 2008 closed out, I was faltering at my daily writing, drinking too many holiday cocktails, feeling winter depression, still reluctant about living in Denver and missing the East Coast. I was whiney. I'm whining right now. I mean, everyone whines! Stupid whiner. It sucks, but I'm human, right? Typically, as I feel myself slipping into one depression pool or perhaps only the hot tub, I desperately try to pull myself out by laying out near the pool instead of diving in. So, that's what I've been doing and I think things are getting better. Like, I'm totally leaving the pool area in general.

One thing I'm getting better at is not procrastinating and simply focusing on a goal, making a plan for it (kinda like I do with marketing), and then carrying the plan out. I know I can do it. I strategically organize my closet. My money. My mornings and afternoons. My relocations. I'm currently in what I like to call Phase Two of life (Phase One was spending my 20s in New York): spending my 30s somewhere else.

Now that I'm married and trying to focus on more grown-up moves, I realize I've still got many waves to surf before that "grown-up" thing will happen. My problem is I am just not ready yet for all of this personal grown-upedness. I'm grown up as a professional, yes. I enjoy my career and striving for more within it, expanding my knowledge and experience. As a person, I want to spend my weekend afternoons on the running path or on the river, listening to Lady GaGa and drinking sangria. I don't want to do grown-up things like go to brunch and talk about art. Nuh-uh. I'll go to brunch and talk about The Hills, though.

I don't typically set New Year resolutions. I think they're silly and one can make blank slate decisions any day of the year. Last year, I did set a goal to run a half-marathon, but it was just an excuse to start blogging. However, somewhere along the training way, I found myself enjoying the pressure. I'm a journalist at heart, always drooling over a deadline. Why didn't I figure this out earlier? Why don't I set up a strategic life plan as if I were a product? Now, 31 years later, I'm finally figuring out the simple equation. Goal set with two-fold benefit (ex, better health and reason to write) to self is clearly strategic where other goals in my life are concerned. See? When I went back to preview and proofread this post, it occurred to me that having this revelation, no matter how late in life, is kinda grown-up.

So, 2009 is perfect for a few smaller goals that can help me re-focus myself professionally and personally:

1) More freelance writing, more topics, more challenging. (Grown-up)
2) Less drinking. Less drinking. Less drinking. (Grown-up)
3) Stop shopping several times a week and try to make do with current closet. (Grown-up)
4) Learn Final Cut Pro. (Grown-up)
5) Learn WordPress. (Grown-up)
6) Get better at HTML. (Grown-up)
7) Rule out advertising forever (or not). Either way, decide. (Grown-up)
8) Visit my parents at least once a month. (Grown-up)
9) Take advantage of the mountains right outside the window. (Healthy)
10) Go to SXSW in Austin. (Definitely not grown up)

I started the year a bit slow

2009-01-02T06:25:00.009-07:00

I think the culprit is a flutter of a teensy cold that keeps wanting to attack my system. I'm sure, as my mums would say, it's from running out of the house with wet hair half the week. I fled into this au natural mode near end of the year, but I fear the manifestation of that is pure laziness. I needed some time off to vacation my mind. A week, alas, is never enough. (That's Wollaston Beach in South Boston, near hubzo's house.)

Christmas started early for us this year. (That's Manhattan from the Triborough [RFK] Bridge.) My parents came to Denver for some presents. Then, we flew to Boston in that disastrous haze of Tylenol. We spent a busy week in Quincy, Mass, and part-time on the Cape, where hubzo's dad just moved due to illness. He is a very positive, wonderful man who is getting all the care he needs. Hubzo and I spent a day in the city walking on ice, literally. We had a great Christmas Day dinner and I read most of the day. Lately, I'm really into the Duchess of Devonshire. Then, Marisa got me my very newest obsession: Eleanor of Aquitaine. I also received several other fabulous books: one on Paris; another about traveling and finding myself (much needed, from Dana); Raymond Carver stories; and a third and fourth from hubzo, a special edition on Marcello Mastroianni and poster-size Edward Gorey coffee table madness. Needless to say, I've spent many happy mornings and evening buried in my books.

I traveled to NYC on Friday after Christmas. (That pic is a delicious bakery in Astoria. There are bakeries everywhere in that nabe.) I was late, which drives me insane. I hate being late. But, the traffic in Connecticut and into Manhattan was crazy. I arrived much later than I'd hoped. Jumped the train and headed to Queens, where I spent the majority of the weekend with the ladies. It kinda felt like I'd never left. Except, I missed seeing some of my other besties, who were out of town. NYC was yucky and muggy on Sunday morning when I shot back to my bus and traveled back to Boston. I was happy to get back to Denver on Monday night. It was a shocking reaction.

I have yet to face my anxieties and am starting 2009 without a major goal like I had last year, when I launched my first blog: www.runnage.blogspot.com. Instead, my new year resolutions are multiple: to face these anxieties of mine head-on, continue writing and finding my professional spirit, and settle us into a home. Denver still doesn't feel like my final landing spot, but I've only been here a few months. Only we can navigate the next year. I just hope we finally land on the right lily pad.

Happy new year from hubzo and I!

P.S. I'm really into braids right now.

Sidewalk treads to 2009

2008-12-30T21:25:00.010-07:00

Almost happy new year! It's nice to be back in Denver and readying for a brand new year. I'm hoping for new developments and new graduations into a better and brighter areas of my life. For now, I'll settle for a few days off with hubzo to reflect on the insanity of 2008. Wowee.

Happy Christmas!

2008-12-26T07:25:00.001-07:00

more animals

We're off!

2008-12-23T07:09:00.003-07:00

Last week was long. Work was long with lots of difficult situations occurring, passing and being solved. It was satisfying to close a few books, but challenging to make decisions. I had a holiday party. I watched the Celtics with hubzo. I shopped for lingering gift items. Friday arrived with a big red bow and my parents cruised in for an early Christmas weekend. Friday, mums and I went to the Kristchindel Market downtown and took our big black dog to the German beer garden. I made several deals that evening, which allowed the dog to accompany us wherever we went.

Saturday, we felt sick from Friday night's veggie pizza, but it didn't stop us from hitting the stores. We shopped for many hours. My dad and hubzo stayed home and watched TV. My mums bought a really comfy fleece outerwear outfit. She also bought me a jean dress. Then, we bought lots of gifts for everyone else. We went to a very, very large beverage outlet and bought several bottles (cases) of wine. Our intention was not to buy wine, but Yuengling for hubzo. Alas, that type of beverage cannot be imported by state, so we left disappointed but secretly overjoyed by the loads of wine to accompany our dinner that evening. We finally made it home. On the way, I spied snow still remaining on the small mountain near my home. We cruised by it and scored the coveted parking spot near our building.

As if they'd read my mind, Thayne and Jennie arrived at our apartment a short time later with a large gift wrapped in newspaper. It was a sled and the rest of our afternoon plans were settled. We went to the small mountain. I wore dad's old honeymoon ski pants and the dog came, too. Jennie was still woozy from having a wisdom tooth cut out, but I admired her for joining us. The sled turned out to be a godsend and the small mountain was abandoned, free of dog mess or big rocks. We sledded 43 times. My paps went twice and nearly went the farthest of everyone. At first, we sledded as singles. But, then mums and I paired up and soon people were sledding in twos. The dog sledded, too. That night we made chicken noodle soup and mashed potatoes - mums' standard Christmas Eve dinner. We opened a few gifts. It was a very enjoyable evening.

Sunday we popped right up and the parents' left for home. I ate leftovers and settled into a strange place. I was a little homesick with their departure and with a sudden onset of fear for my upcoming sidetrip to New York. I wasn't nervous about Boston, but going back to New York filled me with scared feelings. I brushed it aside and packed. We stayed inside and away from the chilly day. I booked our SuperShuttle ride and went to sleep relatively early.

At 4 am we got up and went outside for the SuperShuttle. It was very cold. We only saw two homeless people. The Shuttle was late, but finally showed. An annoying couple sat in the Shuttle already. The Shuttle picks up groups and charges way less than it would be to park at the scary airport for a week. We drove all over Capitol Hill and picked up one old lady and a few phantoms, as they never emerged when the driver honked his horn several times. The driver was a maniac, reminiscent of an NYC cabbie. He weaved I-70 like a machine and I shut my eyes to pretend things were fine. The airport was under control, but my emotions were not. I hate flying with every cent in my bank account. I took one Tylenol nighttime pill to knock me out and take all the scary feelings away. Our flight was on time. We got on the plane and I was still freaking out, so I finished the dose and took a second sleeping pill. Soon, my breathing was shallow and I felt weird. We took off. There was a big burned up airplane on the runway below us. I was glad our plane seemed to be churning through the air just fine, but it was very bumpy, which I hate. As my mind settled into a very strange place, I nodded off and felt weird bumps and scary thoughts, but they were floating in the air, in a strange fog. I finally woke, though not fully, about 30 minutes prior to landing. Our flight attendant came by for a final drink offer and made a very racist joke to us. It was offensive. We neared Boston and flew over the ocean for what seemed way too long to me. I became filled with fear that something was wrong. We were circling. The bay was below us. I couldn't see land. My thoughts were racing. How will I ever go to Europe again if I can't fly over this thin slice of the ocean? Then, the little girl in front of us barfed all over her seat. It was very unpleasant. She continued to barf and then we landed and taxied for a while. There were two babies in front of the barf girl. Both seemed to sense the barf and started wailing. It became more unpleasant as they turned the air off, but weren't quite at the gate yet. I couldn't quite sew my thoughts together, either, because it appeared I was very stoned from the Tylenol nighttime. The amount of babies around us was sheer insanity. Was I with child, too? It must be a sign. Baby vomit. Baby cries. Baby mommas everywhere with that look of "don't mess with me." Baby daddies everywhere with that look of "OMG, our baby is the loudest!" As the little girl in front of us barfed yet again and her foreign father pushed his way through the aisle of people waiting to deplane, I shut my eyes and imagined the Cherry Creek running path. I imagined wheeling my bike down to the river and then getting on and riding away. I imagined it was sunny and warm and the library was my destination. I imagined my work worries were gone and that hubzo was with me.

Finally, we deplaned. I was very confused in Logan International Airport. It looks just like La Guardia. Was I going to Brooklyn? I had flashes of the drive home to our old apartment. "My God", I thought, "I didn't fight in the war. What's with these flashbacks of clownness?" As we made our way through, I wasn't quite walking, but floating on people's coats and hubzo's feet to the baggage claim. "My God," I thought, "SO MANY PEOPLE. Don't know what to do. So many people." Although my feet didn't yet work, I suddenly remembered how to push my way through crowds without feeling remorse. So, I pushed my way through people without feeling remorse. We finally arrived at the baggage claim. It was confusing. Clearly, I wasn't over this bizarre Tylenol-induced emotional breakdown trip yet. I was suddenly comforted in the chaos by a smell. Hubzo was bag-naziing over with the other hundreds of bag nazis. I held back and sniffed around like a dog, telling him I'd wait to the side. He was clearly concerned about my mental state, but let me stand aside. I didn't stand though. I started walking. The bag nazis and swarms of people talking about driving through the big dig was too much. I continued to be confused about where I was. New York or Boston? Suddenly, I saw it. The Dunkin' Donuts was there, a few feet away. I ran to it and got on line. I couldn't stop my mind racing between regular coffee or a latte? Or, a bagel with cream cheese AND a coffee? Just coffee? Fuck. A latte will taste much better. I calmly ordered a coffee and suddenly remembered it had been a long time since I'd been over at the baggage claim. The Dunkin' Donuts lady brought my coffee to the counter just as I was about to split, fearing hubzo would be freaking out. I ran through the people with no remorse. Hubzo was standing at the baggage claim. No bags yet. It seemed not much time had passed. I leaned on a pole and wondered how we'd get home, to south Boston. The train? Bus? Cab? Our bags arrived and we strapped them on and walked out the doors. It was very, very cold and several feet of snow was on the ground. Handy for my bizarre Tylenol trip, the sun was out, making everything blindingly white.

I followed hubzo, but still didn't feel to be walking. We jumped in a cab. Directions were told. We jumped on the highway. I saw the city as we drove to Quincy. We came to the ocean and drove two blocks to hubzo's childhood home. The street was thick with ice and I was wearing ballet flats. The cab came to a stop. We got out, retrieved our bags, greeted hubzo's mom and went inside to warm. I couldn't talk very well. My thoughts were dead. Quickly, hubzo assembled our room and put me to bed. I immediately slept for several hours. I awoke and it was nighttime. Where were people? I was confused and not sure where I was. I sat up and still felt weird. I stood up and still couldn't feel the ground. My trip was not over. I walked out into the kitchen, but nobody was around. I opened a cabinet and got a glass out. I put water in it and drank it. My ears were clouded, but I could see. "Mah lul schpase kudeht". Someone had talked to me or said something. I turned and walked into the living room where hubzo was standing, laughing at me. He opened his arms. "My little space cadet," he repeated. "Come here."

I drove myself into his arms for a hug and then we sat on the sofa. Everyone was at the market, it seemed. It was nighttime. I'd missed dinner and snacks. He made me a roast beef sandwich and I settled into the pillows.

Later, as hubzo sifted through old photos of himself at various ages riding on various bikes, I watched the season finale of The Hills and began to feel like myself again. Hours, time zones and scary flights later, I realized I was in Boston. Really and truly. New York is on the horizon, down farther south. I will go there later this week. For now, I chatted with my sister-in-law and we plotted plans for shopping today. I smelled the fresh greenness of the Christmas tree in the corner. I finally remembered my password and checked several voicemails on the phone. I'd finally remembered where my phone was. I had an appetite. I realized I was wearing a very strange outfit of pajama pants and my long pajama t-shirt with rainbow socks and a sweater. My hair was a mess. My contacts were forever lost, somewhere in the bedroom.

But, I'd made it back east for the first time since abruptly leaving on July 2. Through a bizarre trip induced by Tylenolic powers, I was back, to my other home, to celebrate a second Christmas with my second family. Stay tuned... we're watching the Celtics tonight!

More sleds, a hot tub, and big snow boots

2008-12-15T18:01:00.005-07:00

Taking on the hill

2008-12-15T06:24:00.004-07:00

Yesterday we had a snowstorm, so once things cleared up, hubzo and I headed out to the local sledding hill at Riverfront Park. I didn't have a sled and it was too icy to drive anywhere and buy one, so I resurrected the trash bag method. It worked quite well. BTW, it's -13 degrees in Denver right now and it's 6:25 am!

No turntable, no microphone

2008-12-14T14:44:00.004-07:00

But, I do have a homemade sled. It's a trash bag and it sails me down the hills just as good as plastic discs.

Yes, it's freezing cold and snowy here in the Denver's winter wonderland. Today, the degree measurement device hasn't risen above one, even with sun. However, hubzo and I are delighting in the snow and staying close to the fire place. Thank heavens we had cable installed last weekend. I'd be a mess without a steady run of The Hills and old episodes of Dateline. I only had to fight off one dude last night at the gym, too -- a relief because the gym in my building is a war zone of gymsters hoping to get in the door seconds before you so they can get the one treadmill with a working television. We prepared accordingly for the snow, so no driving would be necessary today. It's nice. We went out early today to work out our new snow boots and observe the slow-moving downtown. However, it was very, very cold, even bundled up, so we were back by 11 am and I made pizzas. Oh yeah, I found a bubble tea shop on 16th street, which I'm very excited about.

I'm slow on feeling creative and hoping you'll soon have something worthy of reading. One more week of budgets and proposals until we fly off to Boston. Then, I'll have my weekend in New York and Sixth Avenue pedicures. Pray for me to be inspired, because this blog is getting pathetic! To make up for my boringness, here are a few links to interesting eyeball bits from this week:

A fabulous new fashion magazine, Love, is soon to be launched via Conde Nast by the very fabulous editor-in-chief Katie Grand. To build suspense and mystery around what is rumored to be the next, best high fashion mag, Grand has started a secret Love blog. The Gossip's Beth Ditto (a new redhead) will inaugurate the magazine's first cover.

Women are drinking a lot, probably more than men. According to New York Magazine, this is "likely one form of gender equality we shouldn't be wishing for."

Even Karl Lagerfeld is paring down and calling his Vermont home "very Emily Dickinson". I guess that means there are few furnishings and perhaps he only has two dresses in his closet. I'm not sure I believe any of this, as he still has three Humvees, which I find disgusting. But he's Karl and he's a genius. Read about his newly slimmed down life in a new interview from Karl in the German weekly de Zeitgeist.

For those mother's and daddies that care about the value of primary, collegiate, and higher education, Malcolm Gladwell's newest New Yorker article delves into the value adds/misses of good and bad teachers and how it paves the path for career success later. It also reviews studies examining the value-add of a master's degree in teaching (not much; you must have "withitness" to really be an effective teacher. Degrees don't matter). From the article: Eric Hanushek, an economist at Stanford, estimates that the students of a very bad teacher will learn, on average, half a year’s worth of material in one school year. The students in the class of a very good teacher will learn a year and a half’s worth of material. That difference amounts to a year’s worth of learning in a single year. Teacher effects dwarf school effects: your child is actually better off in a “bad” school with an excellent teacher than in an excellent school with a bad teacher. Wow, that explains my struggle with math, then.

Remember TomorrowLand, the creepy side neighborhood in Disney World that seemed very, well, Jetson-like and out-of-date (even in 1982)? Well, the house of mouse has opened a newly updated House of Future in TomorrowLand. PJ O'Rourke reviews this very odd child space and its up-to-date look at domesticity for Atlantic Monthly; read it here. Good thing for PR, because when the writer arrived with family in-tow, the ride was shut-down in a very Griswoldian style.

Hubzo's work to be on PBS this weekend

2008-12-11T18:30:00.004-07:00

If you live in the 'hood, please check out some of his work this weekend when the first of three one-hour University of Denver television specials will air on Rocky Mountain PBS Dec. 14 at 2 p.m (Mountain time). The specials will focus on the 2008–09 Bridges to the Future theme, “A Nation Still at Risk: The Future of Education.” Sunday’s program will feature author, educator and activist Parker Palmer, who spoke to a crowd of nearly 1,400 at the Ritchie Center Sept. 23. Hubzo shot all the footage of Palmer in HD.

DU created the Bridges to the Future programming in 2002 as a way to engage Coloradans in an exploration of American history, values and expectations in a post-Sept. 11 world. The PBS specials aim to spark conversations about education throughout the state, Berscheidt says.

Public television rocks.

Denverette's recommended holiday gifts

2008-12-10T16:11:00.012-07:00

I can really only recommend books and shiny things and drinky things, so here goes:

Never Cry Woof by Shafer Hall.
I'll admit: Shafer is a good friend of mine and although I haven't seen him since June, my im party with him this morning revealed Tuesday night air still floating around his person. His readings are famous and fanatical. His booming voice and Southern blanketing will serve you well. His book is such a gem. A vagrant bartender and Texan to the core, you can spot him on Sixth Avenue and West Fourth all the way from Harlem. His red hair flying in the wind as he bikes to and from Brooklyn, you feel lucky if Shafer greets you while he “loosed into the world / a tremendous wink.”"

Have You No Shame?: And Other Regrettable Stories by Rachel Shukert.
Rachel is funny. Super funny and very, very pretty. She's a fabulous, wonderful writer and I follow her stories like a hawk. This book is worth the dough. According to Amazon, "in this hilarious, mordant, and moving memoir, Rachel Shukert tackles topics as diverse and weighty as life, death, love, Jewish paranoia, and errant feminine hygiene products with a fresh and irresistible mixture of humor, brains, and candor, proving that having no shame can sometimes be a very good thing indeed."

Silent Pictures, by Pat Graham.
Graham is one of my favorite photographer's ever. Quite famous as an underground music photog, Graham often travels and lives with bands to document their lives. Silent Pictures is a compilation of music and photography, including exclusive access to my favorite rock star, Issac Brock of Modest Mouse and Ugly Casanova fame (he recently played with the Broken Social Scene in Canada, too), Fugazi, and Bikini Kill. He shot Elliot Smith before his untimely suicide. And he covered the Riot Grrrls back in the day.

Onto the pretties...

Bon Bon Oiseau is simply and purely an Alice in Wonderland dream of a designer. Her beautiful and unique jewelry and hair pieces often trail behind a short tale. With a story behind the eyeballs, everything is more interesting. Her latest Fall and Winter collection bellows in what she calls "Nature Studies", which evoke the simple beauty of the first leaves quietly falling or a meditation by a snowy field on a winter's late afternoon. Per her website, "The collection is inspired by Walt Whitman's book of poems, Leaves of Grass and the beautiful glass I found in my travels. These delicate and striking vignettes celebrate the relationship between woman and nature and conjure the untouched American landscapes of the past: pheasants run along the edge of a wood, snowgeese take flight above a glistening bay, wolves and bison wander an endless prairie." Getting hitched? She does special orders for brides, and my God are the results beautiful. Trust me: her stuff is wildly fabulous.

Juxtapose Designs is more pretties, with cups full of custom-made rings and earrings and necklaces and anything you might wish for. This lovely, witty designer can make you a little gold on the spot or search endlessly for special, vintage Chanel buttons to craft into a ring. She made my wedding gift ring from my mother and matched it to my blue vintage hair piece from my grandma... Her stuff is also wildly fabulous and raucously wearable, should you need to feel tres chic immediately.

And, the Drinkies...

Little Raven Vineyards, which sits mere feet from my comfy little apartment, has a special offer out right now: The Grape Escape. Basically, this is their answer to wine of the month club, but it's better. Customize monthly deliveries of wine (6 bottle or 12 bottles a month) by price range ($10-$14 a bottle, $15-$18 a bottle, $19-$23 a bottle) and mix reds and white, prices, and have unlimited access to Little Raven's sommelier. Love the offer? Stop by the winery in LoDo near the corner of 15th and Little Raven Street, right at the Millennium Bridge.

PS to hubzo: I really need this yellow party dress. I'll exchange it for a ski ticket. I also like Ashley Goldberg prints, like this one called "Holding On". Goldberg mainly illustrates little girls and monsters: my favorite!

Read this now

2008-12-10T16:00:00.005-07:00

Rachel Shukert's troubling essay, "Unsanitary Pad" has been named one of Nerve's 25 best of 2008. If you wanna read it (you should) and you really love it (you will), please vote for her. If she wins, she'll be launched into a "world of joy".

Read it and vote as soon as possible!

Karl's tiny waist grips my heart

2008-12-05T11:39:00.002-07:00

I love Karl Lagerfeld. I really do. Why? He's weird. He's eccentric. I love his designs for Chanel AND H&M. And, he's most certainly got a snazzily dressed buzzard circling in his brain. You be the judge. Glimpse skinny man from this 2007 New Yorker article excerpt:

Finally, Lagerfeld stopped talking and agreed to give a tour of the house. After warning, “You will think I’m a madman,” he led the way up a grand curving marble staircase. The second floor is composed of huge rooms with soaring ceilings, ornate plasterwork, wood panelling, and fifteen-foot-high mirrors. The furniture, a mixture of antique and modernist pieces, was almost impossible to see, hidden under hundreds of magazines, CDs, photographs, promotional brochures, and books, which lay in heaps spilling on every surface, including the floors. Scattered through the rooms were dozens of iPod nanos of every hue. Each one was loaded with songs that Lagerfeld listens to when designing his collections, which he does, he says, usually in the mornings, while dressed in a long white smock. Surveying the scene through his black glasses, Lagerfeld said serenely, “Normal people think I’m insane.”

He spends most of his time in a thousand-square-foot room, at the center of which sat a modern fourposter bed. The posts were made of fluorescent bulbs, and a sable bedspread was strewn with paperbacks and magazines and more iPods. Lagerfeld says that he sleeps seven hours a night in this bed; he also spends considerable time lounging on it during his waking hours, reading and drawing. There was a large desk a few feet away, piled with papers, sketchbooks, magazines, books, newspapers, and art supplies. Lagerfeld complains that his desk kept getting “buried.” To deal with the problem, he recently bought four more desks. They got buried, too. A Mac G5 computer was visible among the messy stacks of books and papers on a long table at the foot of his bed, but Lagerfeld insists that he rarely uses it and does not surf the Internet—partly because he is fearful of how it might compromise his privacy. “I don’t want to be on the Internet,” he said. “I hardly use a credit card—everything where you can be fixed. I’m floating. Nobody can catch me, mmm?”

Enjoy? Sure you did. Well, now, today, in this very moment, skinny man is continuing on a path of crossing tulle-ridden boundaries and plopping hearts right outta chests. He recently directed a short silent film about Coco Chanel, and debuted it before his pre-fall Chanel show in Paris. A forever-fiend for silent movies himself, Lagerfeld told WWD, "Everybody this year has decided to make a movie about Chanel, and you know their historical worth is not always too exact.”

Included in the film are his best peeps including his bodyguard, his favorite male model, and his current muse Amanda Harlech and her daughter, Tallulah. No extras for him; they "don’t know how to touch the clothes." The full movie is available on the Chanel website tomorrow.

Photograph by François-Marie Banier.

The walrus awakens

2008-12-05T06:28:00.007-07:00

The week began lowly and dark. My skin has been tight and dry, like an emotion-sucker came and stole my energy. Even the glee often spurred by a bottle of wine or a Miss Marple episode was gone. Hubzo has been accomodating, bringing me frozen cookie dough to munch on when I climb into the blankets at 7 pm. A winter storm came and went, leaving chilly air and lots of vehicle crashes on the highways. Another nasty unemployment report came out this morning. Harrumph! I've been sauntering around and sliding on the snow like Eeyore or a walrus. But, now that I've made it through another trek on icy sidewalks, it's finally Friday in my mind.

Perhaps I received a small burst of energy last night from a certain Netflix delivery that enabled me to continue an ongoing fake affair with my new favorite: Marcello Mastroianni (I'm currently engaged in Divorce, Italian Style). But I know better. I made headway on a variety of projects this week and I read about a new study this morning from a British medical journal that concludes happiness is contagious. The results also say people pass on their good cheer even to everyone, including complete strangers. The happiest little peeps were found to be the center of social networks and accompanied by many happy friends. The especially happy participants had siblings living nearby -- a plus for me! Apparently, happiness can be a vicious cycle, spreading like malaria all over the place.

So, I suppose my recent venture into the doldrums is sparked by something other than true depression, because I do feel happier today. Sweet! MARCHELLLLLOOO!!

That tryptophan knocked me out

2008-12-03T06:13:00.012-07:00

I've been sleepy since returning from the holiday. I barely get up in the morning, barely make it to the gym (and that's down to 3x a week during the week), slugglishly shower, and hoove it to the train where I wish for my bed the entire ride to Dry Creek Station. Hubzo has to fill up my drinking bottle for me every night before he tucks me into bed at 8:30 pm. I seem to have physiologically regressed to the body of a small child barely able to skip naptime when he enters full school days. I think... I'm tired. Or, I have seasonal disorder. Or, I'm depressed. Or, I'm getting sick. Or... I'm too exhausted to think about it anymore.

Thanksgiving was awesome. We ate nearly every hour of the day and put our work lives on the shelves. Mum cooked her tail off and paps actually took some naps. Aly came over and I also visited her parents' and saw their new retro home. I took a few runs with Thayne, but our lungs weren't working right - clogged with beer thistles, I think.

My friends and a few neighborhood unknowns came over for a lil' party on Friday night. Someone remember the chamber of secrets in my old bedroom -- a closet full of graffiti documenting our high school and college years of loves and hates and silly, but important notes. Soon enough, the four of us -- Jai, Lisa, Cat, and me -- were launching off each other's shoulders and graffitiing the very top of the closet. It seems there was little space left. It was fun.

Sunday rolled around way too fast. We said goodbye to everyone, including my Uncle Brad and all his jokes (stay posted for a lil' video) and headed back. We avoided snow on the drive home, but driving back to Denver was another story, as the evil Limon warlocks tried to get us again (three years ago they rolled us twice into a snowy embankment; as you see, we hold a grudge). Damn them.
Now, I gotta do my Christmas shopping, which I'm extraordinarily bad at, and figure out how to split them across the country again. I guess that's gonna be a yearly thing.

Time for turkey overload

2008-11-27T08:00:00.003-07:00

Follow the yellow...

2008-11-26T05:22:00.002-07:00

I was clicking my heels all day yesterday at work, but it never got me anywhere beyond the office. Today, however, is a different story.

Turkey Day on the way

2008-11-25T06:15:00.002-07:00

Hubzo and I often ponder about how old we're getting. However, as I make my way home to Kansas for my first Thanksgiving at my parents' house since moving to New York 7 years ago, I intend to let my mum take care of me. In fact, now that I have a husband, she gets to take care of him, too. I think she secretly revels in this, though, b/c she's a mom and a damn good one. Her menu is already planned for each day we're in town. Although we won't take off until early tomorrow morning (hubzo says 8 hours and counting, but he's only referring to work), our early morning clocks will have us driving in relatively early. I hope to run in the mornings with Thayne, watch the Macy's Day parade, and enjoy margaritas in the jacuzzi at night. Aside from all of my never-ending complaining about PTSD resulting from the move, I'm very, very pleased to be a drive away from my old home and the fam. I get to see my best gal, Aly, this week, too, and we're planning exciting activities that prompt brain activity: absorbing appetizers and discussing lawyer TV in the basement cave. And, although hubzo is bummed about leaving his bike in Denver, it'll be for the best b/c nobody goes to Kansas to ride bikes unless it's a Harley.

Continuing in the vomiting fashion of the week...

2008-11-24T18:31:00.001-07:00

The most important news is that I was struck by a bizarro stomach thing over the weekend. I feel better now - it's a lame lead.

The secondary news is that Heidi and Spencer eloped to Mexico and are now enjoying cabbage-patch marital bliss. Ew!

Ebay my materialistic heart

2008-11-23T07:42:00.007-07:00

I've spent the last hour searching ebay for vintage perfume bottles and Chanel and Vivienne Westwood.

The perfume bottle search stems from a dream I had last night. My Grandma Esther and I were shopping in a thrift store. I was looking for unique vintage bottles. She often had small curiosities like old perfume bottles and powder puffs. In the dream, we found a few more bottles and some bizarre humpty-dumpty porcelain figures. The dream ended with me check-outing out with the dumpties and her disappearing into thin air.

She also had an immense vintage salt-n-pepper collection, which I've been digging through every time I visit home now. Funky stuff.

Instead of heading to my dreadful long run (7 miles today), I put it off a bit longer for ebay. I never buy things on ebay. But, I scour it all the time. I have this odd tie to toys from my 80s childhood, and regularly search for vintage Strawberry Shortcake dolls. I also look for vintage clothes, old perfume (not just bottles) and vintage Larry Bird jerseys. Lately, I've been thinking I need a mannequin, because it's silly not to have one. I found quite a few perfume bottles that looked eerily similar to those I'd find in my Grandma's house. I also found a really, really, really gorgeous Chanel jacket from the 1960s... Considering the handbag prices, the jacket was very reasonable. Alas, I think not this is my grand Chanel purchase. I think I at least need to "feel" it before investing.

The VW, however, was something I might set up a charity fund for. I found a white Fichu blouse that appears worth the green -- very a la Gwen Stefani. Alas, I think my ebay paranoia remains. When it comes down to it, I can't buy things without trying them on. Quite a turn I've made, eh, mum?

Onto theatre

2008-11-22T14:54:00.004-07:00

I think I made myself sick from the last post. It was like eating Taco Bell again after no fast food for eight years. It sounds good in theory, but results in sausage fingers and Alka-Seltzer.

Anyway, I was lucky enough this past Thursday night to see my first play here in D, The Miracle Worker. A colleague of mine extended the invite and I was happy for a night out. The cast was mostly local theatre actors, and they were good. Really good. The Denver Center for Performing Arts has several theatres and typically has multiple plays and/or musicals showing year-round -- ours was in the Space Theatre, which is cylinder-like. The stage is in the middle of the theatre and the audience surrounds each side. There are moments when the actors are literally inches from the audience. Daria LeGrand put on a stupendous peformance as Helen and Kate Hurster was brilliant as Annie Sullivan. Ms Hurster reminded me of someone, but I never placed her. The play was, I thought, violent. I was surprised at how physically rough the actors were, particularly with Ms LeGrand. I very much enjoyed it.

The Miracle Worker

* When and where: Through Dec. 20 in the Space Theatre, Denver Center for the Performing Arts

* Cost: $11 and up

* Information: 303-893-4100
No children 6 and under allowed in the theatre.

Image: Helen Keller and Annie Sullivan.

Does Tom Cruise really suck that much?

2008-11-22T09:30:00.002-07:00

Tom Cruise has really taken some bullets the past three years. Everyone hates him. He's weird. Scientology is weird. His wife is weird. His daughter is weird.

But does he really suck so much as an actor? Hmmmmmmmm.

Before the Leo and Zack Morris cupid elves stabbed arrows threw my heart (the Leo arrow is still clogging my arteries), I actually loved Tom Cruise. I did. I had a poster of him in my fourth grade locker. Lisa Harbour and I flashed his images on our folders and Trapper Keepers. I watched Top Gun a zillion times. I went to the danger zone. My mom loved Tom Cruise, too. Until it recently burned down, we ALWAYS visited Kansas City BBQ in San Diego where the famous last scene of Top Gun was filmed. (I've been there twice as an adult.)

Hubzo and I were discussing Stanley Kubrick the other night. Hubzo hearts Kubrick. He worships 2001: A Space Odyssey. Even now, as I write this, he's watching Spiderman cartoons and yelping: "dunnnn, Duuuuuun, DUUuuuuuun, DUUUuuuuuuuuun, DUH DUUUUUUN!!!!!" I had to try five times, literally, to make it through that film without sleeping. However, I'm off course. The Kubrick conversation turned to Eyes Wide Shut, and then we turned to Tom. (Hubzo now wishes he were the voice for the Spiderman cartoon.) And, we started thinking that even though everyone hates Tom Cruise as a person, he's a pretty good fucking actor. At least, he was in the 80s and 90s. Rain Man? The Color of Money? Cocktail? Risky Business? Magnolia? The Outsiders? Mission Impossible? (Hubzo just announced that if you aren't watching commercials, you steal television.) He's never won an Oscar, but then what's an Oscar in the 21st century? A big fat money-bags studio ad. Reese Witherspoon sucked and won. Catherine Zeta Jones sucked and won preggers. Nicole Kidman sucked and won. She should've won for Moulin Rouge. Long ago, people won Oscars for films like Butterfield 8. People like Liz Taylor, my most favorite actress of all time. I love that film. And, this is my blog so I can say whatever I want.

But, I'm off course again. Even though Tom is short and sappy and a PR yuck, he doesn't seem like a terrible actor. He hasn't made anything good in awhile, but maybe all of these bullets will make a better movie slither out of him. Krispy is gonna kill me for writing this (blame it on the high altitude), but I think Tom Cruise is perched on the edge of a come-back. I think so. He's on the edge of the comeback plate ... getting ready to dive into some green beans and ham ... and I think he might please us again.

Disclaimer: these are my opinions. Think I'm a fool or argue with me after Thanksgiving. I'm going home to eat.

This one's for John J Doyle

2008-11-20T06:31:00.003-07:00

John "Jack" Charlton, is a well-known and loved figure in Ireland. A a former football player and manager, he played 35 times for Leeds United from the 1950s to the 1970s. Later in life, he was manager of both domestic and international sides, and is most well-known for his role as manager of Republic of Ireland.

After quitting a job in a coal mine, Charlton applied to join the police, but was then offered a trial by Leeds United after they had spotted him playing as a central defender in an amateur match. The trial game clashed with his police interview, and Charlton chose to play in the game. He impressed enough to be offered an apprenticeship with Leeds, and then signed professional terms in 1952.

Charlton played in the Leeds senior team for the first time in April 1953 and within two years, played as a regular. For most of the 50, Leeds were a second division side, with the side built around Welsh legend John Charles. Under Raich Carter, Leeds won promotion to the First Division in 1957, before suffering relegation again two years later. Carter was replaced by Don Revie as manager in 1961. Charlton feared for his future at Leeds after Revie's appointment, as the two had disagreed as players. At one point Revie agreed to sell him, but interested clubs - including Liverpool and Manchester United - couldn't match Leeds' asking price. Ultimately, they settled their differences, and Revie built the Leeds defence around Charlton. He was joined at centre back in 1962 by Norman Hunter, a product of the youth policy. Other youth team players such as Peter Lorimer, Paul Reaney and Billy Bremner also came into the side and Leeds won promotion back to the First Division in 1964. Leeds made an immediate impact on their first season back in the top flight; they were runners up in the league, losing the title to Manchester United on goal difference, and were beaten 2-1 by Liverpool in the FA Cup final. Charlton, operating as an emergency striker, set up Bremner's goal for Leeds.

He now concentrates on dinner engagements and being the finest sporting raconteur in Ireland. IOW, he's still rockin' out!

What's a straphanger to do?

2008-11-19T13:02:00.003-07:00

Wow. It really IS really real that everyone is getting cut. Now, the MTA is possibly proposing major cuts on -- what are, in my mind, -- major lines, including the G (no projected cuts in Brooklyn, only Queens), J and Z. Per the NYDN, here's the deal:

• W and Z lines shut down completely.
• No more express J-train service, makes all local stops.
• G line nearly halved with the northern terminal being Court Square, Long Island City, Queens, at all times. No more service from Court Square to Forest Hills.
• M line halved, making stops only between Metropolitan Ave., Queens, and Broad St., Manhattan.
• B line trains arrive every 10 minutes weekends, up from 8 minutes.
• Scheduled gaps between all trains running between 2 a.m. and 5 a.m. increased to 30 minutes from 20 minutes.
• Less frequent trains from 9:30 a.m. to 3:30 p.m. — system-wide so that trains carry more passengers: 125% of the seating capacity, up from current guideline of 100%.

Oh, wait -- I don't live in NYC anymore, so why should I care? Well, if my Coloradan life fails and I move back -- I'm headed to East Williamsburg and the JMZ line will help me breathe. Further, according to my stats, a whole boatload of my readers are in the 5 boroughs and I love and care about each one of you. If I come visit you, though, we're cabbing it the whole way. Tee hee.

The video says it all

2008-11-19T09:39:00.000-07:00

I talk to dogs now. Yes, I do.

A shot of Kansas to the arm

2008-11-17T18:14:00.009-07:00

It was time for a solo road trip this past weekend. After a very long week of meetings, I needed to try out my new SUV and allow hubzo to work on a project in peace. Despite heavy winds on the ride home Friday night, the weather was very nice all weekend and I temporarily went back to my Kansan roots and helped my dad out on a bit of weekend work, riding in the combine and watching for prairie rattlers. I hung with the dog and jacuzzied with my mum and her margaritas. In all, a much needed relaxvacation.

P.S. I'll be heading down to NYC from Boston for ONE DAY at the end of December. Stay posted!
P.S.S. Mum: I left a book about Paris lying around somewhere... have you found it?