Update

Summer has proven to be fun, but unfortunately, winding down.  Dave's birthday was a huge success, we spent the day at a Brew Fest put together by one of the band members of String Cheese Incident.  For a small donation, we spent the day sampling amazing beers, listening to great music, and hanging out with great friends.  The unexpected part was that you could get three pints of beer as well as a meal with your donation, and it turns out that the Redstone Meadery had a booth.  I got sufficiently drunk off of a pint of mead plus several tasters of other mead and gluten free beer (New Planet).  Mead is honey wine and we actually make our own in our closet (water+honey+yeast+time=mead), but Redstone's is so super yummy.  Normally people don't drink a pint of mead and I was shocked they were serving it to me!  This helped the afternoon be extra enjoyable!

Dave also let me cut his hair into a nice mohawk for a day, then buzz cut!  (See previous post for motivation on why this was so important.)

I then had a week with Dave, remember he had been in New Jersey for two weeks, before heading to Wisconsin for a week where I spent fun time with 51 of my closest relatives on a lake boating, eating good food, and relaxing.  Last Saturday I spent about 16 hours traveling before finally getting home to my own bed.  I picked up Dave in Winter Park from a bike trip after my flight to Denver.  I forget how far he had gone, something like 150 miles in two days and a huge elevation gain (Boulder to Winter Park, plus all of the ups and downs in between).  Here's one of the beautiful photos from his touring trip.  The trip ended early with a knee injury, poor guy! 

A picture from Dave's 150 mile bike tour from Boulder to Winter Park.

This past week I was at a workshop at NCAR in Boulder learning about the latest and greatest weather data so I can be the professor with the most up to date, ground breaking materials in my courses.  It was a long week, but spent with great people and I learned quite a bit.

Friday was Dave's company picnic and then we finally got to catch up with friends we hadn't seen since Dave's birthday.  Yesterday we took a bike trip just a few miles from our house to South Boulder Creek to go fishing.  We caught zero fish!  I even killed a grasshopper and stuck him on my hook to see if fresh bait would help the situation.  Nothing.  The bike ride home has inspired me to start taking my old $100 Target special Schwinn bike to the Park N Ride to get to work instead of driving my gas guzzler the two miles before catching the bus to Denver.  Two miles seems like nothing, but there is a 400(?) ft elevation gain on the way home that keeps me from wanting to do it.  However, it will be a good way to get in shape and stay that way during the friendly-weather part of the semester. 

I could probably win an award for the cheapest bike in Boulder.

Dave fly fishing on South Boulder Creek

Trying to entertain myself after loosing my bait several times.

Finally, this week I have some odds and ends to do, the sorts of things I do to keep my life organized before entering a semester where I'll have zero days off until Thanksgiving, like getting a hair cut and fixing my car.  Then, I have to get ready for my semester of teaching four college classes at a time.  Two classes are easy as pie since I have taught them both several times.  One upper level course will be my second time around, but I have lots of room for improvement.  One course will be new, but based on a course I taught once, so I have slides, but I'm not sure how helpful they'll be.  I did spend my summer prepping for these courses, but it just never feels like I've done enough when the time comes to jump in.  I also have to write a paper explaining why I deserve my job for my annual review, due within the first few weeks of class.  Classes start in a week and I'm excited, nervous, and hoping I can keep my professional life to Monday through Friday so that summer doesn't have to end today.

Meanwhile, my CSA has been giving me some good veggies (cherry tomatoes, green beans, broccoli, peas) and some not so good (cabbage, turnips, collards, more kale and lettuce, too many beets to eat).  My garden looks amazing except that it is the hot and dry season right now, so I just water it every chance I get to keep it from wilting away before the tomatoes all finish up.  I'll take some pics and share those, but otherwise, I might be signing off for most of the semester and just try to blog when we take fun trips worth talking about.

I hope your summer is finishing off wonderfully!