In the Mountains, with Elk

Part way up Deer Mounain, looking at Longs Peak

Fall is definitely my favorite season. It likely stems from those high school cross country days, when I felt totally in my element, running under the changing leaves at Stoney Creek and getting up way to early every Saturday morning to take the yellow school bus to yet another invitational. Or maybe its that now, as an adult, I find most holidays totally overblown, commercial endeavors (even though I love decorating for Christmas), and falls stands without major holiday (remember, I grew up in Michigan, where Thanksgiving was already winter, calendar be damned,) especially September. Any way you cut it, I love fall. And no matter the time of year, I love being outside.

So camping in Rocky Mountain National Park in fall? Yea, definitely that.

The Passing of Kinky Friedman

So, as I alluded to in my last post, the passing of Kinky Friedman is an ongoing saga. Most recently, it took a literal turn.

Say Nothing at All

In my last post, I talked about the Z Family visit to Colorado. There was one thing I didn't mention in that post. The entire week, there was a epic battle happening between the Zolman's and the Kelly's, a stand-off really, where nothing ever actually said out loud.

It was the battle of Kinky Friedman.

Latergram or How I Spent Someone Else's Summer Vacation

For a couple of months now, I have been threatening promising to share about the time this summer when the Zolman family came on summer vacation to visit us.

Background: The Z family lived down the street from us when we lived in our second house in Indiana. Eric and Chad coached together at Homestead High School, and Chris and I, along with the other coaches' wives, sat in the stands on Friday nights and attempted to watch the games while analyzing where on the happy/unhappy/somewhat nuclear scale our husbands were on at the moment and generally trying to ignore parents in the stands making unkind remarks about the coaches. Seriously, parents are awful. Take note, all parents of football players: with very, VERY few exceptions, your child is not a future D1 and/or professional football player. At 5 foot 3, 110 pounds soaking-wet with slippery fingers and a 5:1 40-time, your child does NOT meet the exception criteria. Shut up, be glad he's on the team, and stop complaining about playing time/your kid could do it better/if the coach would only x,y, or z. You're wrong, and yes, I can hear you in the stands. Also, your roots are showing.

What a Pisser

I got home last night to find...

Showing Oddities

All in all, the process of living in someone else's house that is for sale has not been horrible. We are fortunate that we are not inundated with showings - on average, one every other day, but considering that we sometimes have 2 or 3 showings on a weekend day, in reality it isn't that frequent. During the week showings are usually during the day, which doesn't bother me at all. They are a little more inconvenient for Eric, since he works mostly from home, but he's learning to manage, and pops over to a coffee shop, and has even come to my office a couple of times to get some work done on days when there are longer/multiple showings (and considering that my cube is surrounded by empties like the last beer in a six-pack right now, there's plenty of space for him to work.) For the few showings that we have in the evening, we generally time our workout/running schedule around them. Only once did I get stuck down in the meadow after a run when a showing ran over their allotted time. Lastly, keeping the house clean and picked up all the time to be in "show ready" condition has become part of our routine.

Smaller than a Dog

Since early on in our marriage, Eric and I have had a deal. Well, more like, Eric made the deal and decided that it was the deal. I somehow got sucked into it and well, that was that.

The deal is, if something shows up in our immediate vicinity and it is smaller than a dog, it's my responsibility to take care of. If like, a bear shows up, Eric will fight it. This did not become a real possibility until recently and yes, Eric used to use that as an example. He doesn't say that so much anymore. But hey, a deal's a deal.

I received a "smaller than a dog" call on Tuesday.

Hand Land

The radio silence on the blog you've been looking at for the past 14 days was a long-time-in-the-making trip back to Michigan, or, as I recently christened it, Hand Land. Oh, I know, its been known as the Mitten for longer than any of us can remember, but Eric is positive that no one before me has called it Hand Land. We're thinking about making t-shirts.