Parental Visit

Last week Kristen and I ran the Rollinsville 5 mile race, along with our friend Mary.  It was fun being in the mountains in a tiny community.  The race had a healthy turnout, which is always good to see.

The parents were in town starting on Thursday.  We had a lot of fun during the visit, cramming a lot of stuff into two-and-a-half days.

Thursday evening we walked down to the mall, leaving Lena to watch over the cats.  Luckily they seemed to tolerate one another to some degree, so there weren't big moments of drama between the two camps.  Ma & Pa were pretty pooped from the drive, so we kept things pretty low-key.  We walked around the mall a little, then ended up at Juanita's for dinner.  There were a lot of musicians and buskers out and about, so there was plenty to look at.

Friday morning involved swinging by my office so the folks could check that out.  We walked there and back, so we all got a bit of exercise.  Later, Dad napped while Ma and I rounded up supplies for the BBQ.  We did as much prep work as possible food-wise, and Dad and I put together some of our new patio furniture.

The party went well, and it didn't rain on us, I didn't kill anyone with my grilling skills, and everyone seemed to enjoy themselves.  Unfortunately I didn't take any pictures, although I believe Ma did.  We did a bit of clean-up afterward then Ma located the camera, and we finished up the evening by viewing their photos from the farm stay.

Saturday morning had another early start.  The four of us biked down to the farmers market to check things out.  No one got hit on the road, and I think I heard Mom having fun jumping curbs behind us.

We then headed up to Nederland, taking a scenic back route.  Nederland was having an "Art Festival", which apparently meant a bunch of vendors selling reproduced art in booths.  We had some yummy Indian food for lunch, and hiked around a bit.

We swung by Allenspark and met up with Rick Debiase.  We checked his place out for a bit, I enjoyed climbing around his tree fort/structure, and am now considering putting a fire escape pole on the Indiana tree house.

Rick mentioned that Stith Bennett was having a "Poetry Jam", so the five us headed that way at the appropriate time.  Rick warned us with something along the lines of "These things are usually pretty weird, but fun."  That seemed to sum things up pretty well.  4 or 5 musicians would improvise music as poets recited some of their work.  People were dancing around, randomly grabbing instruments, and generally enjoying themselves.  Kristen and I both passed on the "brownies", suspecting they weren't of the normal variety.  Stith's studio had a lot of exposed beams that were sawn in the sawmill back in '79 or '80, it was a lot of fun looking at the structure of the building.

We got home fairly late, and all crashed.  The folks were gone by the time I got up, heading back to Cody.  Kristen and I both really enjoyed having them in town.

Progress

Things are moving forward fine on the new house.  Our inspection is on Monday morning, we're very curious to see what it turns up.  All the banking and realtor stuff seems to be going smoothly so far.

The weather has been amazing this week.  Kristen and I have enjoyed walking and biking around from our new centralized location.  I've driven my car once in the last two weeks, and walked to work today.

We're planning on having a barbecue this upcoming Friday.  Swing by if you happen to be in town!

We're starting to think about the Canada trip more and more.  A few friends have dropped out partially, we'll have to wait and see how many actually make it up there.  It's a win-win situation, we'd be tickled to be the only two up there, and it'd be a lot of fun to have a camp overflowing with new people.

Update

The closing on the condo went off without a hitch.  We also are under contract for the place in Heatherwood.  I drove a Porsche for the first time yesterday.  Heady times indeed.

If all goes according to plan, we should be in the new place on July 23rd.  That gives us plenty of time to move, and we should be set for the big Canada trip.

Here's the MLS listing for the new place:

http://www.coloproperty.com/Reports/index.cfm?&Action=DetailReport&MLSNumber=630834

No Internet

We aren't signing up for internet access at our rental place, so these blog postings will be few and far between.

We're moved into the Mapleton house.  It's interesting being downtown.  We can walk to just about everywhere we'd want to go.  We already were eating out too much, now it's that much easier.  On the other hand, we have a outside grill set up at the new place, so that makes it more fun to cook at home.

The cats are adapting well.  It took them probably about 5 days before they made it out of the bedroom comfortably.  They are enjoying the yard, and have started up a rivalry with the neighborhood squirrels.

I close on the Condo today, that's expected to go smoothly.  Kristen and I have put offers down on two houses, the first time they went under contract about an hour before we submitted our offer.  Our second offer is still active, we should hear back today from the owner.  It's a nice house in the Gunbarrel area, it's much less expensive then the other places we were looking at.  The dream of living in town may not happen this time around.

It's been very rainy/drizzly here, it should clear up tomorrow. 

Bolder Boulder 2010

Not much to report.  We've partially moved into our temporary housing, but are awaiting the movers to show up on Friday to really get moved in.  It's a pretty cool little place, I think we'll enjoy being here for a few months.

Our new temporary address is 2548 Mapleton Ave, Boulder, CO, 80304. We're still looking like crazy for the next permanent place, and are going to spend another week and a half looking.  At that point we'll probably narrow our options down to a few places, and then make some hard decisions. 

Our current flavors of options seem to be:

1. Great location, at the top of our price range, and needs a lot of work.
2. Mediocre location, near the top of our budget, but remodeled beautifully.
3. In the hills, near the top of our budget, not in great shape, septic and well adventures.

Any opinions?  I seem to migrate toward number 1, Kristen seems to like #2.  We're both not 100% we're ready for number 3.

Last Monday was the Bolder Boulder, and we once again ran it slower than we ever have before.  We had a lot of fun, we don't get to dress up and act like fools very often.  We were blessed with another year of no injuries, fights, or arrests, so we're counting it as a victory.  The weather was great.  Out of the 24,000 men who ran the race, only 5 were slower than we were.