Last week the time just flew by. Wednesday night Boulder had some high winds and field/forest fires burning. Some of our friends had their fence and tree catch on fire, but luckily their house survived the ordeal. A large portion of our western horizon was lit up with flames. It was quite a sight.

I was afraid that all the time off would make it hard to put in a full week. Before I knew it, it was Friday, and time for another weekend.


Friday night we tried grilling in the fireplace, using the propane grill Jason and Becky gave us for Christmas a year ago. It fit perfectly, and it seemed to work well. Kristen made some excellent Cheese & Bacon grits to accompany the grilled beef, and we ate ourselves silly.


We got up early on Saturday and headed over the Lafayette Oatmeal Festival. We watched three friends run the race. We'd forgotten about the race, and were in no shape to run it, but still had fun watching our friends put themselves through hell. We'll have to be careful about being spectators instead of runners, it was a little too easy to do.

In the related Oatmeal cooking contest, Matt ended up winning first place in the Dessert category for his upside down pear/oatmeal cake. He also took home the grand overall prize for his honey-oatmeal bread. He's done well in the past, but was obviously really tickled with his performance this year.

Kristen and I did a little furniture browsing afterward, more for fun than anything. We're simply out of room for more furniture. It's always fun to look though. We then grabbed some lunch, and then had a staggering 2 hour nap. Where did the day go? We groggily arose, then headed downtown for dinner with Morrissey and Sharon.

Sunday morning I got up early, and headed up to Copper Mountain with Morrissey for a crazy day of snowboarding. We logged in 45 miles, 31,000 vertical feat of descent, 18 runs, all in five and a half hours of riding.

We jumped off a few cornices, which was definitely the highlight of the day. Even though the drop was only 3 or 4 feet, if you had any speed when you left the lip, you'd drop about 10 feet before hitting the slope. It was quite a rush. I had one good face plant, and several bigger-than-normal crashes. I'm more sore today then I've been in years. Kristen points out that every year I hurt a little more afterward. Hmm.