6 Months in Boulder

Dan is The King of the Road.

Hello Lovelies... long time, no see! We have so much catching up to do. As many of you know, we moved to Boulder, Colorado last October. Yes, Boulder is awesome. Yes, we love it. Yes, we are now organic gardening, table-scrap composting, dandelion wine brewing, barefoot in the dirt, hippie eco-freaks. Well, slightly more so than we already were anyway. It would take more than an afternoon to catch you up with all the details—so here's the highly abridged version.

~ Fall 2008 ~

Arrival
Drove from Jackson, Wyoming to Boulder Colorado just to "check it out." We liked it. We decided to stay.

The Circle House
We found our sweet little house and moved right in. We have an actual house with an actual yard, near the actual downtown, 2 blocks from an actual creek! Rent in Boulder is ridiculously expensive; we had about resigned ourselves to apartment living, like the normal people of Boulder (normal meaning that we haven't created some brilliant software program that we were able to sell to Google for millions of dollars, enabling us to spend $3000 a month to rent a fancy house, or a million or so to purchase one...yet). However, Kim's magical Housing Faerie (craigslist.org) stepped in, and scored us our sweet new home! It's a circle house because it doesn't have any hallways. Our pilot friends, Brent, Sarah and Brian also like to call it the Round House, and also the Chuck Norris House (since Chuck Norris apparently invented the round house kick. We're not sure if this is true, but we're going to run with it). You just walk from the living room to the bathroom to the spare room to the bedroom back into the living room over and over and over again until you get dizzy and have to throw up. We can give you some ginger or Dramamine to prevent the motion sickness if you come to visit.

Boulder Farmer's Market
Every Saturday we ride our bikes to this mecca of irresistible organic deliciousness where we spend more money than we do on rent. It's awesome. We have to ride our bikes there because it enforces us to only purchase as much stuff as we can carry home on our backs.

Halloween
It was awesome! We hung out with our friends Spencer and Holly. Kim was a faerie, Dan was... ummm... not really sure. He had an afro, big sunglasses, and coveralls. Spencer was a beekeeper, and Holly was Sarah Palin (she wore a sash that said "2nd place"). We had a good 'ole time. After the festivities, when Dan and Kim returned home, they realized they were seriously hungry, but it was already 2:00 am. Luckily, there is a pizza place not too far away that stays open late. Due to all the merriment of the evening, driving was not an option. Kim didn't have lights on her bike, so Kim and Dan hatched a plan to both ride on Dan's bike which did have lights so they could be street legal. Kim balanced precariously on the seat while Dan worked the pedals. Kim and Dan do not recommend drunken two-people-on-one-bike adventures. It's really hard. Luckily, they made it to the pizza place in one piece. Once home, Kim and Dan realized that they had accidentally taken Kim's bike with no lights, so it was all for naught.

Thanksgiving
We hosted a fantastic Thanksgiving with Spencer and Holly, Holly's mom, and one of their friends. Coincidentally, Holly is from Moscow, ID and used to work at MaryJanesFarm. It's a small world afterall.

~ Winter 2008-2009 ~

Sledding
One day it dumped a ton of snow, so we gathered up Spencer and Holly, found whatever would work as a sled (cardboard boxes, garbage bags, a frisbee), and headed to the sled hill at Tantra Park (yes, it is a very sexy park). The sledding was epic, and we sledded until our cardboard boxes were thrashed, our garbage bags ripped, and we were soaked to the bone and tired of running up the sled hill.



Christmas
Kim's parents came to visit for a whole wonderful week, during which we ate and ate and ate and ate. It was excellent. They bought us a fancy new flat-screen tv which pretty much takes up half our living room. Not that the tv is hugely large, just that our living room is hugely small. Oh, and a Costco membership. It supports our San Pellegrino sparkling water addiction and our ocular dependence on contact lens solution. We played Balderdash and Kim's mom Lynda kicked everyone's ass.

Kim Starts a Massage Business
Her shingle is officially up. Check out her pretty website: ThaiMassageBoulder.com. Kim's office is right downtown in a cute old house. She's specializing in Thai Massage, a style of massage practiced on a futon-like mat. Send all your friends in!

Peet Visits
Peet Hayes is a national treasure. We are currently planning to abduct him and make him be our next door neighbor forever (along with many others of you, dear readers). Peet flew in for a long weekend so we layered up the thermal underwear and drove out to Rocky Mountain National Park (only an hour away, by the way). We hiked in knee-deep snow. Peet and Dan danced (ok, slid around awkwardly) on the frozen lake. Peet even did an impromptu performance of Sweet Child 'O Mine. We drank liters of microbrewed beer. We did mental labor over Scrabble. We imitated characters in offensive YouTube videos. We used Brooklyn accents. We threw snowballs.

Sweat Lodge
We joined 25 strangers in varying states of undress, squeezed into a tiny hut, and sweated our brains out. For all the heat and nudity, it was a deliriously deep and inspiring experience.

Valentine's Day
We put on our fancy pants and dined at The Kitchen. Kim has been quoted saying, "I think it's pretty much the best restaurant ever." We had a four course prix fixe meal with wine pairings. We still aren't sure how to pronounce prix fixe. It was a slow and romantic sensory experience, but afterward we were so full and fat that all we could manage was to head straight home and fall asleep, swollen bellies pressing our blankets up like secret igloos.

~ Spring 2009 ~

Pilot friends stuck in a blizzard
In an unexpected visit, Brent, Sarah and Brian dropped by to say hi one afternoon. They fly around America in tiny planes, taking high resolution photos of the earth, and happened to be flying through the Denver area, marooned by a streak of wild weather. Soon, a brutal snowstorm swept through Boulder, stranding the hapless travelers in our circle house. We ate Kim's delicious food. We read magazines. Dan tried to work. We wore antique fur hats. We went sledding. Brent was soon wearing Kim's fuzzy robe, and soon the cabin fever began to take hold. Many bizarre photo sessions involving Kim's antique fur hat collection ensued. We hope they get stuck in Boulder again very soon. You can see some of Sarah's photos on her blog.

Passover
L'haim! Did we mention that Dan has relatives in Boulder? His second cousin Rozzy, her husband John, their three daughters Lisa, Emily and Naomi, and Emily's husband and three kids all live within a 10 mile radius of us. You'll often find us at their house on a Friday evening celebrating Shabbat, chewing some fresh challah bread and saying "holla!"; a pun that just doesn't seem to get old. Anyway, they had us and several of their closest friends over for a fun and tasty Passover Seder. We sang Hebrew songs (Dayenu!) and drank four glasses of blackberry Manechevitz. We ate cousin Rozzy's delicious matzoh ball soup, cringed with the fantastic bitterness of John's home grown horseradish, and oohed and ahhed at Kim's chocolate-covered caramelized matzoh crunch candy. Yum.

Christie visits
Christie is a High School friend of Dan's from Ramsey, New Jersey. Christie is awesome. Christie is thinking about attending Naropa University here in Boulder, so she flew in from Jersey for an interview with the admissions peeps. We hope she moves here so that we can hang out and eat juicy Larkburgers every day. Oh, and as Dan was picking Christie up at the airport, Kim got to see Mirah in concert which was awesome. The opening band (well, actually just one girl from France) was called Tender Forever , and she rocked Kim's world.

Dogsit Walt
Our friend Kyle was heading out of town, so we got to dogsit his dog, Walt. Kyle took 3 months off of work to raise Walt when he was a puppy (Walt, not Kyle). As a result, Walt is the most kick-ass, well-behaved, awesome and cute dog ever. He's a golden retriever. He doesn't bark, or jump on you, or hump your leg, or have bad breath, or any of that annoying typical dog behavior. He just hangs out and goes on hikes with you. Kim baked him some dog cookies because she loves him.

Start seedlings
Spring has finally sprung, and it's so lovely to see tulips popping up, and trees budding out, and being able to wear spaghetti-strap tanktops and short-shorts... although Kim thinks that Dan looks a bit skanky when he wears this getup around town. Anyway, we have Spring Fever, and bought a ton of seeds from Horizon Herbs and Seeds of Change. We made some little seedling cups out of newspaper, filled them with potting soil, and sprinkled seeds of hot chiles, holy basil, cantaloupe, beans, kale, Swiss chard, tomatoes, and cucumbers. We love to see them popping their sleepy heads out of the soil... it's really cute.

Sign year lease
Yay! We started as a month-to-month rental, but now we're officially committed for a year!

Break Ground on our "Right-of-way" Garden
This segues us into our most recent and most excellent project, our "Right-of-way" Garden. We're super-excited, so stay tuned for the further adventures.

Love,
Dan & Kim

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