Playing Tourist

We had a snowy commute to school Monday, a typically busy day, and then met Rachel and Fara for dinner at Ted's.  I couldn't convince Hannah to try bison, but we enjoyed a protein-rich meal and good company.

Today after school (Tuesday), we went on a bit of a photo scavenger hunt.  Fara mentioned a trail head nearby that had mountain lion warning signs.  Since I couldn't produce an actual mountain lion for Hannah (although we did almost hit two deer on the way to school Monday), the warning signs would have to do.

I followed Fara's directions and was surprised to discover that this is less than ten minutes from my house:

Sometimes I think living in Colorado is wasted on me.

We walked around the trail a little, took a lot of photos, then got back in the car to head to Dinosaur Ridge.  We arrived after the gates were closed, but parked at the base and walked up the hill to see:



Dinosaur footprints!



A lot of them!





And a couple of crocodile prints too:




The view was nice from the ridge as well:



After the photo shoot, we walked back to the car to meet Rachel and the boys for dinner at Cafe Rio.  Tomorrow's an all-day drama field trip.  Hannah's excited to see Denver in the daylight (we drove around a bit after MonkeyTown, but it'll be better tomorrow) and to ride on a yellow American school bus.  At least she's easy to please.  :)

MonkeyTown4

Denver's playing host to "The legendary New York City video cinema and dining experience" (as described on its website) known as MonkeyTown4.  I was charged by the trip coordinator, Dan, to find cultural experiences for Hannah.  We're just between touring shows at the DCPA, there aren't any good concerts in town this week, she isn't into skiing or outdoor stuff (Win!); but MonkeyTown4, despite not being a "typical Coloradan experience," sounded weird enough to provide some sort of culture.

The tickets are limited to 32 per show.  My attempt at rounding up a group to go Tuesday night was a circus of failure as after a flurry of emails and coordinating, everyone managed to get a ticket for that night except me and Hannah.

I just bought us tickets for Sunday's show instead.

We drove through the snow which, thankfully, was far less of a storm than predicted.  It was just enough for Hannah to marvel constantly at the fact that everyone was out and about driving and shopping and such in it ("Back home everything would be shut!  Positively shut!"), but not nearly enough for me to panic as the driver of the night.  We passed the building three times before finding this hardly-visible logo on a set of doors:

It's easier to see from the inside

Despite the snow and freezing wind, they didn't open up until 15 minutes prior to showtime.  Everyone huddled about outside until the host of the evening pulled up, dashed inside, turned on the heaters, and came back out to greet everyone with a glass of champagne.  I declined, but in just moments he came back out with a glass of strawberry hibiscus iced tea for me instead.

At 6:00, he greeted the group and ran over a few particulars including

1) Pointing out their front-page article in the Denver Post

2) Saying that photo are welcome, as is conversation at "appropriate levels"

3) Introducing the live "lecture" that would also be a part of the program, and

4) Explaining that because we're in Colorado, they could partner with a local bakery to offer edibles tonight.  He cautioned us that when they sampled the edibles earlier, they discovered that they were especially potent this time.  He suggested that "If you are not used to partaking in such things, maybe you should only have half of one to start.  Or maybe a quarter.  You know, enough to give you a good intellectual buzz."

Said edibles

I did not partake.  I did, however, embrace the photography allowance, and once we were allowed into the performance space, I was one of the first to explore the cube.

The entryway as seen from the exhibit

MonkeyTown consists of a large cube made of "floating" movie screens.  Several short "art films" (i.e. no discernible plots but some urinating and sexual play with USB plugs) are shown on the screen as the audience is served a multi-course dinner inside the cube.

I liked the first film, "Central Park Quilts" by Theo Angell.  The artist filmed Central Park through several seasons, then compiled the footage in a modge-podge of images, some inverted, with one season per screen.

Winter on the left, Fall on the right

Spring

You can see the table settings under the screen here

As the Central Park film came to an end, our host encouraged us to duck under the screen and take a seat at the table. After checking with each of us for allergies or dietary restrictions, he served us each the first course:

Crudo, fermented vegetables, citrus, dill 

And so it went - five courses, each with a wine pairing (which Hannah declared went from "pretty good" to "really good"), and 15 films.

"Unique Boutique" by Shana Moulton, which featured dancing bodiless clothes and a woman who
flew into a Native American pot and danced next to a rock

Green garlic soup, chicken gelee, spring onion, almond
served during a particularly dark movie

Housemade cottage cheese, spring roots, lemon balm, black pepper

Dim panoramic shot of one of the "geometric" films - Peter Burr's "Green | Red"

About this time Will Rahilly came out to perform "The Fertile Swipe."  It seemed to be a tongue-in-cheek PowerPoint about the connections between food and art that devolved into him trying to assist a woman's floating head find her missing baby.  After he ran around the area outside the cube with a "live" feed, he returned to her to suggest that she just make another one.  So she gave birth, somehow using a static-filled TV, a strange pair of oiled hands, and cut-outs of a fast-forward icon to do so.  Then a strand of pearls was pulled from her mouth.  Then hanging bags of liquid appeared and sprung leaks, which the performer played with while standing on the seat between two audience members.  Then he served each of us cookies, spun around, tumbled out of the cube, and died.

He lay there for about four minutes.

The cookies were good.

The lecture completed, back to "normal" programming:

"Cool" by Jeremy Couillard

Lamb, crushed fava, whey

"OM Rider" by Takeshi Murata.  It says something about the night that this was not the weirdest film.
It was the creepiest, and several minutes were spent watching this guy breathe.
When he wasn't breathing, we were watching a hipster wolf play a keyboard.

Preserved meyer lemon, yogurt, maple
(This was yummy)

With a final farewell from our host and his humble admission that the last film ("The Waxwing Slain Pt. 1") was his own, we gathered out coats and returned to the snowstorm.  Hannah declared the experience "the weirdest thing" she's ever done.  I don't think I can say that, but it definitely ranks pretty far up there.  And as with all such weird experiences, I'm glad I did it.

Meet Hannah

Remember way back to last year when I applied for a Fulbright Teacher Exchange, won the grant, and then the US Government took it away immediately afterwards because of the sequester?

Shortly after that, the Fulbright people contacted me to say that the UK Embassy was so annoyed by our government's financial incompetence (not their words), they are going to pay for the UK teachers to come visit their would-be US counterparts.

The UK teachers spent last week in Washington, D.C. learning about the U.S. educational system on the federal level and in Sacramento learning about it at the state level.  This morning I drove out to DIA to pick up my would-be counterpart, Hannah.  She'll be my houseguest and work companion for the next almost-week!

She's here to see the sites of Colorado as much as she is to learn about school systems on a local level, so we headed straight for Boulder.

I had planned on doing Boulder tomorrow, but I switched plans when I saw tomorrow's forecast (7-10 inches of snow!  What the what?!)

We were both starving, so we headed to that good Italian place on Pearl Street for lunch first, then strolled about enjoying the gorgeous weather and the always-entertaining people of Boulder.  The Farmer's Market was still going strong, although neither of us joined in on the Silent Disco Hula Hoop Party.

We did go into the Dushanbe Tea House and got a table right next to the koi pond to enjoy, as Hannah called it without irony, "a spot of tea."

Statuary in the koi pond

I tried the Boulder Tangerine tea - "a spicy blend of cinnamon and tangerine."

We headed towards my place after a bit more walking about and a quick stop at Boulder's Trader Joe's to get Hannah some groceries (and so I can officially check all three Trader Joe's in Colorado off my list!).  Home for a quick nap for Hannah, then out we went again, this time to the Alamo to see "Captain America.

It turned out to be appropriate for a foreigner's visit in more ways than I expected, since the movie takes place in DC and has quite a lot of scenic shots and sequences.  Hannah was tickled by how much she recognized after her brief time there earlier this week, and I got to enjoy my own smugness over how well I seem to know DC after my summers there.  "There's no buildings tall enough in that area to create that window's view," and such.

We were both pretty exhausted after the movie - me, from a late night at Rachel's and an even later night cleaning my apartment afterwards, Hannah from catching an early-morning flight after a travel-intensive week - so we're taking an early bedtime.  Tomorrow we have tickets to Monkey Town 4, but I'm a bit concerned about the 8-12 inches of snow predicted for the exact same time.  Hannah wants a true Colorado experience, though, and there's nothing like wondering whether a show will happen with a large snowstorm blowing in.

All is Right With the World Again

...because tonight Jason and I booked plane tickets for our summer trip!

It's official - we're going to:

Seoul,

Tokyo,

and Kyoto!

(All images courtesy of Wikipedia, by the way.)

And quite probably other sites in South Korea and Japan as well.  Suwon, perhaps?  Maybe Kanazawa?  At least Mt. Fuji's on the list so Jason can get his mountain-running checked off.  I'm hoping to find a craft/cooking/Bunraku class to take while he's frolicking in nature.  Plus, I can hang out with Buddhist monks again!

We tried our darndest to get into North Korea on this trip as well, but it turns out that there's no tourist transportation between two warring countries.  Go figure.  I'm still a little bitter about this. At book club tonight I mentioned that we tried to find a way to get to North Korea on this trip.  "North Korea?" the ladies exclaimed.  "You want to go to North Korea?  Why would you want to go there?  It's dangerous!"

Every time someone reacts that way, it just makes me want to go there even more.

Jason and I are discussing the DMZ, and we still may tack it on as a day trip; but right now we're weighing the value of taking an entire day to get a glimpse of North Korea through a fence in a barren landscape against having an extra day to explore Japan.  I told Jason I may be willing to let the DMZ go if we put a Hong Kong/China/North Korea trip in our plans in the next five years.  He was quick to agree.  We both may be more than a little driven by imaginary competition for passport cred against invisible fellow travelers.

He was also quick to agree to stripping down in public again when I pointed out that by going to Korea and Japan we have the chance to add two more countries to our naked bathing list.  I'm pretty sure that's exactly the kind of thing my Young Women's leaders had in mind when they gave all those lessons about setting goals.

Between that, Tokyo's reputation for Michelin restaurant stars, and the theater-viewing possibilities; this will be a fine summer trip indeed!

Snow Day... Eventually

The call for a delayed start came at 5:40.  I wasn't surprised - it had snowed most of the night, as forecasted and wasn't letting up.  I was annoyed, though.  I had already showered and was mid-hairdrying so instead of an extra hour of sweet, sweet sleep; I read for a while, expecting a call to cancel school to happen at any moment.

No such luck, though.  I met up with my carpool buddies at 7, and we started up the mountain.

The roads were awful.  About 15 miles in, we got stuck at one of the steep points and spent 10 minutes watching busses, semis, and passenger cars slide left and right in front of us:

The cars in front of us finally slide far enough to the sides that we could pass.  We found out later that about 3 minutes after we got through, they shut down that part of the highway completely.

After about 80 minutes of driving, our phones began ringing - school was cancelled.  We were 3/4 of the way there.

John pulled over at the next intersection, cleared off the ice buildup, and we began our slow descent down the mountain.

Just over two hours after we left for work we bade each other safe drives home and parted ways.  I headed to the gym (yay for working out when I'm not exhausted!), then home for a quick second-shower, and then met Fara for lunch.

She recommended a French cafe in Highlands Ranch that was absolutely delicious and had more than generous portions:

...which takes care of lunch (and breakfast!) tomorrow as well.  Naturellement, we had to sample their pastries as well.  I went with one with an unusual combination (pear, banana, and Nutella) that was overwhelmingly rich:

but Fara's blackberry puff pastry was delicious:

After Fara dropped me off home, I thought about all of the things I should do with the rest of my day - cleaning, essay-writing, student travel planning, lesson planning.  Then I thought of what I could do.  And I made the right choice.

I made myself a cup of hot chocolate, curled up under a fluffy blanket, pulled Natasha onto my lap, and read.  My outstanding decision-making continued when I woke up suddenly with one of those neck-snapping sleepy head drops and realized that I had drifted off.  I put the book down and took a nap.

A nap!  Me!  In the middle of a Thursday!

And that, my friends, is how you do a snow day.

The Shows

In addition to crafting, housekeeping, and generally Getting Things Done; I got to see three movies and a ballet during my spring break.

On Tuesday Lisa and I went to see Divergent, mostly because we wanted to see a movie.  I've read the series, and the movie lived up to my expectations.  It's fine, and many of my students saw it over the break as well, but I can't say I'd recommend it.

I would, however, gladly recommend The Lego Movie.  Lisa took her grandkids to see it Thursday and invited me to join her.  I promptly called up Rachel and invited Jack to join me so I could play the aunt for a morning.  Jack had seen it twice at this point and was quick to tell me all about which parts he was going to laugh at this time.  I had heard good things about the movie, and was pleased to find they were true - witty script, fun story, great animation.  It actually made my excited to go to LegoLand this summer, and I'm getting closer every day to getting "Everything is Awesome!" out of my head.

Friday night Fara, Dave, and I went to the Alamo to see The Grand Budapest Hotel.  It's everything I love about Wes Anderson movies with a charming Ralph Finnes to boot.  The Alamo had a photo booth display set up in their lobby:

and I hear rumors from Rachel that a bakery in town is recreating the Courtesan au Chocolate.  I may have to hunt them down this weekend.

Finally, Lisa invited me to take her spare ticket for Colorado Ballet's "Director's Choice" spring concert Saturday night.  She has season tickets with some fellow teachers from her school.  We had dinner at John Holly's Asian Bistro before heading to the Newman Center for the show.  The program involved three modern ballet pieces.  There were moments of loveliness in the execution and in the dancing, but the choreography as a whole was unremarkable.  The company was fun; and I was thrilled that I not only had the time this week to enjoy so much socializing, but I even had time to create purple curls for an evening out!

Soldering

Ah, Spring Break.  What a glorious thing you are.

Normally I run far, far away for the entire break.  I did flee the state for a few days to visit the aforementioned Rainbow Jesus with Fara.  But we returned to Colorado on Monday and I had almost a week of unplanned days stretched out in front of me.

As you may suspect, the "unplanned" part only lasted a few minutes.

Happily, as a fellow teacher, Lisa was also freed from most responsibilities that week.  We immediately made plans to play virtually every day.  Top on the agenda:  a craft.

Lisa offered to teach me how to solder.  We picked up lunch from Tommy's Subs, pulled out all of her supplies from her soldered past, and started melting metal.

There's something almost magical about the way liquid metal moves.  It was fascinating to manipulate and I loved watching it slink its way across the copper foil until I tried to attach the damn jump rings and then I burned myself, dropped my project on the floor, broke one of the pendants, and cursed the person who claimed that all you need to do is "melt a dab of silver then quickly tap the jump ring into place."

But by golly I finished it!

I went with a literary-themed set of pendants with green-and-coral paper on the back.  The long pendant is a quote from Jane Eyre, the larger square a passage from Little Women, and the smaller square is a tiny-font version of one of my favorite poems ("Westward wind, when wilt thou blow/the small rain down can rain/Christ, if my love were in my arms/And I in my bed again") which I learned from a Madeleine L'Engle novel.

Lisa's tutoring came in handy when I tackled my next craft project for the week.  My parents kindly brought me back a set of lamp covers from Morocco (since my own attempts at bargaining for such things were thwarted).  I went to a few hardware stores looking for the necessary wiring to hang them but couldn't find any that fit the lamps or that were long enough to run down the wall and across the floor.  An employee at Home Depot suggested I make my own lamp wires.  Done and done!

I bought plugs, 60' of white lamp wire, and three sockets; then set out to find and purchase my own set of soldering equipment.  Soon I was stripping wires and soldering them into place:

Success!  They're not even sparking!

The best chain I could find was a bright brassy-gold, so I bought some hammered-metal bronze-colored spray paint and matched the chain to the lamp shades before hooking them all together.  Here's the final results:

I love them.  It was definitely time to change out my former bedroom lamp (a set of paper cube lamps from Ikea), and I am a fan of the Moroccan look.  Now I'm ready to tackle a new project this summer:  curtains!

A Visitor

Guess who came to town for a quick weekend trip?

This guy!

(Insert picture of Jason here.)

I know what you're thinking.  You're thinking that a savvy blogger such as myself surely would have remembered to take a picture or two of an event such as this.  And you'd be correct.  I did, after all, document all of our meals:

Orange French Toast at Bang!

Ham and Swiss Melt at Bang!

Buffalo Burger at Ted's

Not Pictured:

- The peach cobbler a la mode at the Alamo 

- Jason

But that's okay.  You all know what he looks like by now, right?

It truly was a quick trip - we spent a Saturday afternoon seeing the sights of Denver and its surrounding neighborhoods, then met up with my friends.  Rachel, Fara, and Lisa joined us to see "Monuments Men" at the Alamo.  (Tammy came to dinner with us but had to skip the movie to chaperone a youth dance.)  As always, I enjoyed closing a gap between some of my circles of friends; and the consensus all around seems to be that Jason needs to come back for another visit soon.