Man's Best Road Companion

Spotted outside the breakfast joint we hit up earlier this week:

In case you can't make it out, he was tied in with a leash. My guess is he loves the feel of the wind in his curly canine hair...

Someone screwed up but good

Spotted on the walk from the pool hall to the Mexican restaurant we went to afterward for dinner:



Not even advertising agents pitching their wares in huge font written on glass can seem to escape the it's/its trap. Nonetheless I ate my enchiladas with a heaping side of utter disdain. Tsk tsk...
(By the way "LoDo" is short for Lower Downtown.)

Almost a year to the day

Almost a year to the day that we first set foot in Wynkoop in Denver, we went back to the pool hall/brewery/comedy club (yeah, they have a good thing going) to celebrate another quarter of straight A's. I checked my phone's photos from last year and they were dated 3/20/08; we went this year on 3/23/09. That was probably the last time we played pool too. Steve and I split 2-2 (but admittedly only because he scratched on the 8 ball in the last game) but we were both quite aware of how rusty we were. Also the tables are utterly felt-less and thus totally fast, as we've become used to from pool halls. I can't imagine what it's like to play on a properly felted table any more!
I did indeed try chile flavored beer as you can see from the post below, and it was delicious. If you don't believe me, here's the blurb from the Wynkoop website: "Patty's Chile Beer: A light German-style beer made with Anaheim chiles and smoked Ancho peppers. A 2006 Great American Beer Festival Bronze Medal Winner in the Fruit and Vegetable Beer category and a Wynkoop specialty." You hear that? It won a medal. So there! It warms the belly and bites the tongue just a touch more than regular beer.
My first classes of the last quarter are on Thursday...10 more weeks and 4 more chances to rock the grades, and then summer...

Chile flavored beer is good - who knew?!

Oh, that smell...

Murphy's oil (for cleaning hardwood floors) smells exactly like saddle soap. The moment we opened the bottle I was shot back to days in the tack room learning how to take apart, polish, and reassemble saddles. Oh...yum.
I mopped today. I can't think of the last time I mopped...probably one of my apartments in SF, but who knows. So because I didn't have any strong mopping memories and the smell of the Murphy's Oil was ever-present, I remembered my days of sweeping the corridor in the stables, my riding boots clomping and stomping behind the broom's bristle, horses whickering and watching me with relaxed amusement.
I might just mop again soon for the sheer nostalgia it brought on.

Happy "Luck O' Th 'Irish T' You" Day

Right now on our stove a pot of corned beef is merrily boiling away. Parents of mine reading this will recognize the extraordinariness of this admission -- as a wee one, I loathed corned beef. I continued to loathe it, even after trying it again in my adulthood, until a year or two ago when that husband of mine decided he was going to make it himself to show me its delicious potential.
He was right. (I hate it when that happens. At least he was deliciously right!)
Why, oh why, is corned beef so often dry, salty, chewy and generally icky? S showed me it can be moist and even slightly sweet. I love his version of it. Throw in some cabbage and potatoes and I'm in hog heaven. Which is what we have planned for dinner tonight. I can't wait!
Lest we stray from the ethnic fare today, S. also cooked up some carne asada from flank steak this morning. It smelled so good I sat down with a fork and ate it plain, sans accoutrement. Oh the warm spicy happiness in my belly.
Now if only we were as creative and consistent about exercise as we are about cooking...
Cooking opportunity aside, today marks another very important event: the 7 year anniversary of one mom and one recently-upgraded-to-step-dad, or "3D" as Fred deemed him.

A long, long time ago in a Fish House far far away, two souls were blessed by the Luck o' th'Irish and have been divesting each other of creme brulee ever since.
Happy Anniversary Mom & Sabatini!!

Along with spring comes spider season. Let the squealing commence...