waiting for magic...

It seems as though the weekend is the thing to write about these days (well at least in my happy little world). I can’t really blog about work and the weekends are so awesome that I like spending time recounting them.

My Friday night started off at a bar for Boot Camp Happy Hour. Yes, sadly (or not sadly, I haven’t decided yet), boot camp is over. However an awesome highlight: we did testing during the first and last weeks of camp and guess who was most improved? That’s, right, yours truly! I celebrated my awesomeness with a few beers before meeting up with Eric. We walked over to the Denver Center for Performing Arts (a little village of buildings home to anything from ballet to opera to theater performances) for a showing of the play Our House. Although interesting, I found the message a little heavy-handed and the comedic parts too few and far between. After the theater, we grabbed some dinner at a funky little diner with tasty breakfast burritos (still walking) and awesome French toast (which I didn’t order, but had no problem mooching). The evening finished off with a walk back to the car. At this point my feet were dying in their heels so I took them off (I pretty much had to jog to keep my feet from resting on the pavement for too long).

On Saturday morning Eric and I headed to breakfast at the Bump and Grind Café for their Petticoat Bruncheon (the waiters dress in drag) before hopping on the freeway up to Fort Collins to visit…New Belgium Brewery. For those of you who don’t know New Belgium is a local Colorado brewery (perhaps its most famous) with delicious beer (I love the Fat Tire and the Mothership Wit, an all organic beer). Although we arrived too late for tour tickets, we did get to wander around and enjoy 4 free tasters. I left with a nice buzz (glad Dana the lightweight wasn’t driving) and some presents for myself (a shirt and some beer (duh!)).

I’m happy to report that using “city” as an adjective has finally caught on (as in my lovely phrase, “That’s so city!”). Sarah and I were driving around Denver on Sunday, looking for a place to park (we were going to go see a movie), when suddenly she exclaims, “I just had a city moment…with the tall buildings and the snow swirling and the cab right in front of us. So city!” It may have been so city, but I’m ready for winter to be over. We’ve had quite a few nicely tantalizing days, ones that beckon torturously, promising spring’s around the corner, before tossing me back into grey skies and snow flurries…I’m so spoiled.

After our movie, the sisters headed to the parents’ for more movie watching (I love lazy Sundays), chili relleno eating, and peach cobbler gobbling. I headed home around 9:00 and my weekend finished off with a visit from Eric and…more movie watching :)

Posted by Dana at 11:11 AM | Permalink | Comments

Ah, winter in Colorado. I can’t do enough to sing its praises. Those of you who’ve been with me for a while know that I wasn’t too keen on the Iowa winters. Cold, windy, and NO reprieve. Yesterday on my drive home from work Sydney (my car) informed me that it was 66 degrees outside. And it felt like it. I had my window rolled down, the sun was setting, absolutely gorgeous. Eric made me salmon for dinner and the windows in his house were wide open. We played some Wii sports (so addicting), walked to the convenience store for movie snacks, and fell asleep watching the Simpson’s Movie (in my defense, he fell asleep before I did).

This morning at 5 a.m. I walked out to my car to go to boot camp and found 2 inches of snow on it. I’ve cleaned off my car 3 times this morning. 1) going to boot camp 2) going home to shower after boot camp 3) going to work. The slopes are going to be crowded and powdery this weekend!

Posted by Dana at 8:44 AM | Permalink | Comments

Well dear readers, my weekend didn’t turn out nearly as bad/boring as my Friday post might have led you to believe. Eric came back into town at around 9 or 10 and we went out for late dinner at Jerusalem, a great Mediterranean restaurant in Denver. Eric has been living in Denver for pretty much his whole life so he knows a lot of tasty and interesting food places, which is good because with someone as indecisive as me, I need someone who can throw out suggestions like that.

On Saturday Shaw picked me up (because I was still sans car) and we grabbed brunch (mmm, breakfast burritos) and went shoe/glove shopping. He was looking for running shoes; I was looking for better ski gloves (ones with huge cuffs so my dainty little wrists don’t get cold). I finally got a call from the car place (actually, I harassed them a couple of times) and found out that I not only needed a new tire, but I also needed my alignment redone (and I’d just did that in January!). Oh well…that’ll teach me to attack a curb. Shaw was kind enough to drop me off at the car place and when I got home I parked a foot and half away from the curb (not kidding).

Eric came back from an exhausting day of skiing on Saturday night, so we stayed in and watched a movie. Although we’d talked about hitting the slopes on Sunday, he didn’t feel like making the drive again and I was fully amenable to sleeping in. After some breakfast at Handlebar (a bar 4 blocks from his house with yummy mimosas…hey, it was 5:00 somewhere), we did a little shopping (I finally got my settings corrected on iTunes on my new computer thanks to the geniuses at the Apple store), and finished off the afternoon with some Frisbee and catch in the park (turns out I don’t throw THAT bad and I blame the wind for a lot of things).

Since Sundays are often my days to hang out with Sar, I rushed home so we’d actually have time to do something. We ended up shopping at Whole Foods, making chili and cinnamon rolls back at my place (well I did most of it, but she did add a secret ingredient into the chili…cayenne pepper! We girls like it spicy), and finishing off the evening with Superbad (yeah, all you that told be before were right…hilarious! HI-LARIOUS).

A grand weekend all around, aside from the car troubles (thank goodness that didn’t happen during the week…again). Tonight I’m making dinner for Eric…hopefully I haven’t grossly over-exaggerated my cooking skills :)

Posted by Dana at 3:01 PM | Permalink | Comments

Today is Friday, one of my more favorite days of the week. I should be out and about, trolling around town, perhaps on a hot date. Instead, I’m at home in my apartment without a mode of transportation and my evening driving somewhere between here and Pueblo (about 2 hours away).

I left work around 3, giddy at the prospect of the weekend ahead of me; actually, I had a headache and felt a little ill, but I was still excited to go home. Visions of taking a nap danced in my head. As I was pulling up to my apartment, I nudged the curb with my tire. Those of you who have driven with me (at all) will know that I do on occasion attack poor defenseless curbs. But this was no ordinary curb, oh no. This curb attacked back. I got out of my car nonchalantly and heard the unmistakable hiss of air leaving the front passenger tire. Crap! (I’m pretty sure my expletive was a bit more colorful, you know, like “Shoot!” or “Oh drat!”)

Always the stubborn and resourceful gal, I called no one (never mind that Eric was on his way to Pueblo to help a friend move and Shaw was still at work). I calmly walked inside, put on more suitable clothes (no way was I going to attempt to change a tire in my high heels) and marched back out to Sydney (my Cougar). I pulled out the ingredients: tire iron, jack, spare tire. I popped the hubcap off. I placed the tire iron over the first lug nut. The foot-long tire iron I might add. I turned counterclockwise with all my might. Nothing happened (nothing other than my grunting and me imagining myself as Mr. T. “I piddy da fool who can’t break loose wheel lugs.” Turns out that fool is me). I stood on the darn lug nuts and…nada. No movement. Granted, I might have been more successful with a bigger/longer tire iron, but that was a moo point (you know, a cow’s opinion) seeing as how I wasn’t going to go driving to the nearest auto store to purchase one.

So, what did I do? I called a tow truck. I learned this lesson in December when I had a flat tire (during that venture my dad and I couldn’t get the lug nuts off, but we thought that was because they were rusted on…well they were…then). This was in the middle of a huge snowstorm and instead of wrestling with the car and further, we called a tow truck.

That magical solution seemed to work just fine for me tonight as well. They towed my car to the nearest tire place. Unfortunately, Firestone didn’t call me about it until around 6. Clearly they were not going to take a look at it tonight. The best I was going to get was for them to catch a looksey tomorrow a.m. So now I’m stuck at home with no Cougar and my Friday night plans (Eric) on his way back from Pueblo.

Blargh, Friday night boredom!

Posted by Dana at 7:58 PM | Permalink | Comments

Say goodbye to Dana the singleton. I've had a lot of fun the past few months as a singleton, exploring my city, making new friends, spending lots of time with old friends, visiting with my family. And, in point of fact, I really have no intention of giving up any of those things, but in the past few weeks, my life has changed a bit.

I've been spending quite a bit of my time in the company of Bachelor Number 3 (henceforth to be called Eric…because that's his name), my third fellow from eHarmony, and I have to say, dear readers, it has been a long time (LONG time) since I've been this happy. No, not just happy. Giddy. Those of you that have known me over the years, know what I mean. I get sort of bouncy and giggly, and you can't get the smile off of my face or out of my voice.

So, how did I end up at this state of sublime happiness? Who knows. Throw in a few dates, great conversation, shared interests, and voila! This past weekend was one of the better ones I've had in a while. His mom has a condo just outside of Winter Park (a ski resort), which we drove up to on Friday night (great way to avoid the horror that is Saturday a.m. ski traffic). We got up late on Saturday morning and made breakfast (okay, he made breakfast while I watched and tried to be helpful…although I did insist on cooking my own bacon) before hitting the slopes. The skiing was awesome (lots of powder) and even though I fell a lot, I had a grand time. Eric's an amazing (AMAZING) skier and I found myself mesmerized more than once. While we were on the mountain we stopped at a lodge for lunch (it's on the middle of the mountain between lifts) and I realized as soon as I saw the lodge that my company built it (which I thought was pretty snazzy).

We decided to stay in town for the night rather than drive back home in lots of traffic. We went out to dinner, had a few beers, and flirted shamelessly with each other.

The rest of this week has been a little difficult…some working late combined with a side of not getting enough sleep, but I'm still too happy to care :)

I'm a new soul I came to this strange world hoping I could learn a bit about how to give and take.
But since I came here
Felt the joy and the fear
Finding myself making every possible mistake

Posted by Dana at 3:50 PM | Permalink | Comments