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From Summer 2008

Dave and I had a rare night out this weekend, with Grandmom and Grandad in town and happy to babysit. It was 35 degrees outside so we thought, “Let’s ride our bikes to The Fox to see Spring Creek!” We have fond and hazy memories of Spring Creek from the Keystone Beer and Bluegrass Festival, and every time they play around town we are very sad to learn that we missed it, or that I was too lazy to go. Like I said, I don’t get out much. This may have been what prompted a certain Purse Girl to say, after I stopped by her house for a drink along my bike ride to The Fox, “Wow, this is going to be a big night for you, MetaMegan. You know, going out, staying out late.” I’ll have you know, I used to do that 5 nights a week. I had skillz. Skillz that I was looking to test at The Fox. Oh, also Spring Creek was opening for the Emmitt-Nershi Band, which is a side project for some members of The String Cheese Incident. I don’t know why I am explaining that because I think people are like, “Who?” or “OMG!!!!! STRIIIIING CHEEEEEESE.” I am actually sort of in the former column, which is weird because I have heard of them, probably been to a show or two, and I was still like, “Who did you say is on after SPRING CREEEEEEEK?”

So, we stopped for drinks, biked to The Fox in 35 degree weather, locked our beautiful, beautiful bikes up out front and went in for more drinks and to find a spot to watch the show. Beers in hand, we found a great spot with a ledge for your drink on the side, etc, etc, that Dave claims in the best location. We were chatting and enjoying our date, but whenever there was a lull in the conversation, I was unable to block the conversation of the people in the area just above us which was, “One Thousand and One Pet Deaths.” After a while I said, “I can’t take another one. Are you listening to 1001 pet deaths?” So we moved, inexplicably, to an area that was very roomy, the very back of the room, below the sound board. The band came on, they were awesome, and immediately a very tall and wide man stood right in front of me. Dave said that we were in the tall person section and it was too bad we gave up our prime location. Reminder: Pet Death One-Upsmanship is nothing I want to be near. But the tall guy moved and we were happy. Then an even taller guy appeared, and I couldn’t help but laugh. Laugh and laugh and laugh. Dave said, “Gigantism must be in the water.” I said, “I thought at first he had a wooden leg, but I think that’s how he dances. OMG, he is dancing a jig! It must be hard to dance when your limbs end so darn far away from your brain.” Just then, he turned around, spread his arms (wingspan 10 feet at least) and said, “WHERE ARE ALL MY FRIENDS?”

We headed back to the bar and decided the following:

Mad Blue Grass Dancing Skillz: Rusty
Ability to Stay Up Later than 11:00 pm doing something other than spooning Lucy and watching Weeds (and/or working): Untested
Ability to Snidely Critique Random Strangers: Never Sharper

We got our drinks, gave up on the tall section and headed to the dance floor down in front. There, we were surrounded by a guy wearing a panda hat, Father Time, and a guy in a tuque dancing the robot. And a guy with a pretty good voice who seemed to really wish he had his own bluegrass band. Snidegasm.

When Emmit-Nershi came on, a few other members of String Cheese joined him for a few songs, and people were dying from the excitement. Panda was asked if he thought they’d play some song and he said, “THAT WOULD BE MY DREAM.” I asked Dave, “What’s your dream song? Something with words? Can I yell SPRING CREEEEK?” He pretended he couldn’t hear me. Later I thought maybe I was being annoying, but he said I wasn’t and that maybe it’s good for me to get out of the house and make fun of strangers for a change.

Emmit-Nershi et all, was v. awesome though. They played a Blue Grass cover of Just Like Heaven which was amazing. Oddly, he dedicated it to those born in the 80’s instead of those in high school in the 80’s who were sitting at home instead of going to homecoming. Also odd? I think they had played one note when Dave had identified it as a Cure song.

It was a great night.

>I usually do a lot of Christmas shopping before Thanksgiving, and then devote December to making thousands of cookies. But so far I have purchased this many presents:0. I just made a frownie face as I typed that. I haven’t even updated my excel spreadsheet with columns for each person, gift ideas, final selection, wrapped (Y/N) and shipped (Y/N). I haven’t even started sewing plaid shorts for Eric in the mellow make-a-gift exchange. I decided this would be the year that I don’t stress about gifts and instead of thinking really hard about what individual gift card to get for what teacher, I would just get everyone the same thing! One stop! That is as far as I have gotten. So I guess my carefree attitude has backfired because last night I dreamed it was Christmas day, and I hadn’t purchased gifts for anyone. And I had to go online and order a Crabtree and Evenlyn gift basket for all 100 people on my list. Then I made up some excuses about why the gifts were late, and why lotions are really not lame and impersonal AT ALL. (This is the dream talking, not me.) I woke up groggy and upset, but that’s because it was midnight and someone from work was calling me.

So I got down to business and IM’d my sister and brother and asked for gift ideas. Oddly, they suggested lotion. I guess my nightmares are telling me something.

Are you on my list, and not interested in lotion? Better comment with some ideas!

>I know I have been a bit of a debbie downer these days, so I am working on feeling more grateful for all the things in my life that are awesome.

At bedtime with the boys I ask them to list 3 things they liked about their day. Luke is usually stumped unless we had hamburgers for dinner, but Jack goes on and on. He’s thankful that I am putting him to bed, that he got to go to daycare that day, that we read stories, that he got to play. He usually gives Luke and I a lot of ideas.

The other thing I have been doing is to try to write down 5 things a day that make me happy. Coffee shows up on that list a lot. I write it in my work notebook, so it’s interesting to be looking for a note and reading something like this:

Make log files bigger than 500M?
coffee, sweet puppy, pear tea, halloween candy, bacon
netstat -an | grep EST | grep 1521 | wc -l

I am writing this in advance, because I have a crazy idea that I am going to take 4 days off from the computer. (I already asked Dave to plan to be available to google things for me if necessary.)

So I am hoping to be thankful on Thanksgiving that Jack isn’t throwing up all day, like last year! Regardless, I am so thankful for my family and friends, and even my job.

Happy Day Everyone!

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When looking back on summer/fall 2010 and wondering where all the photos are, remember that you lost your memory card, and then you bought a new one, but you broke your camera the next day, then you found your old memory card, but iphoto somehow stopped working, and would only allow you to look at one picture at a time. But, when you are too lazy to write all those great posts you have had in your head all day, you can just bang your head against the computer until one photo appears and then write a quick sentence about that. Behold: Halloween.

>A few years ago, I had a subscription to Shape magazine, and every month Dave would say something about the airbrushed picture on the cover. I never really believed that the pictures were airbrushed, and I always thought that if I just worked out for 4 hours a day and cut out carbs that I could look like that too. Once, Dave pointed out how a person’s abs in a picture inside the magazine looked nothing like the abs on the cover, and I started to see the light.

Then I started reading jezebel.com and their Photoshop of Horrors feature. But it got really fun when I started discussing photoshop with Laura, because she was able to do what 30 minutes of exercise a few times a week, and a diet of halloween candy could never accomplish. Behold, my snowboarding bod:

>Did you ever wonder what goes into my consistently cheesy smile? Never before seen on MetaMegan, I bring you the feature: Behind The Smile

You can see that Jack i starting to pick it up, but he isn’t quite there yet.

>My good friend Laura has a birthday today, and I am blogging in advance because as you read this I am ripping it up at Loveland to celebrate. Laura likes to celebrate at Loveland so much, she even got married there. I didn’t get to see the actual event because it was exactly 2 weeks before Luke was born and I was afraid to ride a snowmobile to the top for the event. Dave was there, and he had a good time. I celebrated in the lodge afterwards. I wore black maternity overalls, which were actually adorable, but I can’t even believe I thought that was fashionable at the time. And I could still zip up my winter coat at the beginning of the day. I think my coat was too small after the wedding cake though.

Speaking of cake… I stopped in Kim and Jake’s Cakes today to get cupcakes for the birthday breakfast. I have been trying to go there forever, but for some reason, it’s never open when I want it to be. Now I know the hours though, and I suspect I will be back. I tried a sample of a cake, and I don’t know what I was anticipating, but it turned out to be a corn, jalepeno jelly, something or other combo. It was amazing. Truly spectacular. I don’t think the flavor is something the kids would object to, but if they don’t like it, that’s fine too! More for me. I was thinking about it as I ran the next 4 errands on my list and I thought about going back to get the name straight. But I am so lazy, and I assumed I would be able to find it on their website. I am pretty happy that I have an excuse to go back, in the name of research.

Happy Birthday Laura – my present to you is a new cupcake field trip destination.

>I should have saved the outtakes for today! Redacted: Long boring thing about my job sucking the life out of me.

Here is a picture from our vacation stop at Black Canyon of the Gunnison, for perspective only. Not because I am imagining tossing my laptop down there at all.

From vacation2010

>I’m writing this a day in advance because I want to turn off my computer and be work and internet free for an entire day. Sunday I am very happy to be going to a baby shower for a friend, and maybe I’ll sneak in some shopping on my way home. I’m also thinking I’ll pay off some big fines at the library (Damn you The Inheritance of Loss and your terrible boringness!) I’m also thinking I might do something crafty. And something in the kitchen. Maybe start off the day with pancakes and then take Lucy for a walk? Hmm, it’s starting to sound like my plan for Sunday is to cram everything I have felt like doing for months all into one day. I’ll report back on Monday to let you know how it went.

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We had a perfect fall hike today at Chautauqua Park. It was about 75 degrees and sunny. Almost unbelievably nice.