got my walking shoes on

can i just tell you how much i enjoy living in a little downtown? it is absolutely great. today i took a short break from work and walked to whole foods just a few blocks away to purchase some much needed items for dinner tonight. i had my handmade (by a friend) grocery bag and my keen sneakers, i was ready to do some city shopping!

**it's a bit rainy today, so i quickly realized that i should invest in a cute umbrella to accompany me on days when i venture out in the rain. i am now on the look out for an umbrella. let me know if you find any spiffy ones.**

once inside whole foods, i realized that one should never brush her teeth right before embarking on a trip to whole foods, as they have numerous samples to choose from. (read this as: toothpaste does not go well with fresh pineapple) i was doing just fine, locating all my goods and storing them in my bag until i decided to get a bottle of red wine for dinner. here is where i came to indecision-ville. i believe it was the intersection of "don't know what i want blvd" and "i'm afraid i'll choose a bad wine avenue." just when i thought i had it narrowed down, i turned around only to find more racks of wine! what i was hoping for was a neon flashing arrow that would point to a bottle of red, reasonably priced, that would go nicely with beef stroganoff. but alas, whole foods has not yet installed this feature. so after much back and forth, i finally settled on this bottle of 1492 from mendoza, argentina. i guess we'll find out at dinner how i did. we're going to break in our new riedel wine glasses, given to us as a housewarming gift by dear friends in denver. they came in just about the coolest box in which wine glasses could come. it was hot pink on the inside! how nifty is that?! i'll let you know how it goes!

where frank began

we're finally here, home of frank lloyd wright's first studio. i'm surrounded by a plethora of flw homes. i can't hardly believe that his designs are just a few steps away, up and down the streets. someday soon i'm going to do the touristy thing and walk around, audio device in hand, listening to the narrative of each home, gawking like a fool and enjoying it immensely.

but for now there's still more cleaning and unpacking to do. i'll post pictures of the apartment soon, but it needs tidied up a bit before i do so.

are we there yet?

i'm in the home stretch, i can feel it. boxes have taken over the condo and invaded the garage downstairs. and they're multiplying.

i have learned many things while packing to move:
1. chipotle's tortilla boxes are a great size for packing and they get a shipment on monday mornings.
2. the old vine liquor store near us gets shipments on wednesdays, so boxes can be picked up thursday morning. wine boxes are a great size, as you cannot over pack them or make them too heavy to lift.
3. i could rattle off the delivery days of about 10 other shops around us, but i'll refrain.
4. when you've packed up all of your kitchen, it is possible to make a grilled cheese sandwich out of shredded cheese, using only the microwave (it's not quite grilled, but the cheese is melted).
5. salsa does not quite cut it as a replacement for spaghetti sauce.

i'm just ready to be on the road (even if it is heading through the "oh so exciting" highways of nebraska) and moving. i'm ready to get settled in my new home and learn things like where the post office is, and where the locals go for dinner. just a few more days.

colorado, i'm going to miss you. i really am.

slight compulsion

often, when i feel things are beyond my control (as many things are during a move across the country), i attempt to regain control in other areas of my life. yesterday this manifested itself into the weighing of boxes. yes, yes, i'm weighing boxes. do i need to do this? no. is it yet another way to organize my already tidy boxes, yes. so... i've taken every box i've packed so far and set it nicely on our scale, then after noting it's weight i write the designated amount in lbs on the top of the box, next to the contents of the box which are already listed out on masking tape. this way i figure when we go to pack the truck, we will know for sure whether or not we're stacking boxes correctly, heavy ones on the bottom. i think the movers that come to load us are going to wonder if i had a bit too much time on my hands while packing...

pop goes the weasel, or in this case: my tire

yes, folks, my ride home from the office today resulted in a surprise 2 hour adventure along the roadside.

just when i thought i'd started to get a handle on all the stress i've been feeling...

i headed home early from the office today because i had much work to do and wanted some peace and quiet. i was driving along 6th avenue (don't let it's name fool you, it's a 6 lane highway) when i heard a very large "POP!" My first thought was "what did i hit?" and I looked in my rear view mirror to see if any debris was lying in the road behind me, but it was not. Then I began to come to the realization that my car seemed a bit "off." It did not take me very long at all to come to the conclusion that I might very well have busted a tire on whatever it was I ran over. I quickly got to the right should of the road (thankfully I was at a point on the road where there was a decent sized dirt patch that I could pull off into, instead of cement walls that lined the rest of the road way). As I peeked out my door, with cars whizzing by, I saw that my back left tire was flat as a pancake. This was no small leak my friends, this was an instantaneous deflating of my tire. So there I was, on a warm afternoon, with a flat and no knowledge of how to change it. I'd learned it in driver's ed, my dad had taught me, and M had shown me as well, after we got married because I wanted to be one of those girls that could change a tire, but when I really needed it, I couldn't remember any of those instructions. Out came the AAA card and my cell phone. Thank goodness for AAA. About 40 mins later I was back on the road, coasting at a nice 40mph on a little weenie spare. Unfortunately, whatever I hit made a big enough hole that there's no sense in patching it. We're going to need a new tire (or possibly two depending on the wear on the tread of the tire on the opposite side - don't want to have uneven tread, ladies) I guess it's off to Costco tonight for a new tire. Just so we're clear, I'm plenty ready to be done with adventures, though I fear the next three weeks will just be one adventure after another. Maybe one of these days life will get boring again, in a good way.