Greetings From Denver

Hello from the Mile High City! My, my, it's been a while, no? Quite honestly, it's been a while since I have been able to catch my breath. Life has been rolling along at full speed for the last month. I've moved to a new city, to a new house, acquired nine (yes, nine) new housemates, started breaking in two separate jobs in new fields, and...a million other things it seems.

As of tomorrow I will have been in Denver for a whole month. That's hard to believe mostly because it feels like it must have been at least 6 months.

In the midst of all this craziness I have been using just about every milligram of free time to sleep or silently stare at a wall to try to regain some strength. I've been doing a horrible job at keeping in touch with everyone, so, well, here we have it--a new blog! It's a bit impersonal, but I don't see myself having time for all the phone calls I'm behind on anytime soon. I'll see what I can do with reviving the Week in Review bit, but for now I'll throw in some tidbits from the past month. I haven't been doing a great job of taking pictures either (and they're all from my phone), but I'll share what I have. (Feel free to throw out questions in the comments if you're curious about anything.)

OK, a month in Denver in review!:

• My house is massive and laid out like a maze. I still forget where the stairs are that go up to the third floor sometimes. I think there are probably some secret passages lingering behind boxes in our basement. 
• A large chunk of my housemates are from the midwest. I'm already afraid of the things I'm going to start saying or how it will affect my accent. Hot dish anyone?
• Friday I learned how to harvest worms and how to put together a worm bin at work. (These are one of the gardening items we sell.) It's probably just as gross as you are imagining it.
• In the mornings I work at an organization called Earthlinks. If you want to learn a little more check it out here: Earthlinks-Colorado.org (You can also click over to the staff page to see their newest staff member!)
• In an effort to live a more sustainable life, to be in solidarity with the poor, and because, well, I am poor, I take the bus or walk everywhere I can. I take the bus in the morning half way to work and walk the rest of the way. At lunch I take two buses and walk a little bit to get to my second job, then I walk home at the end of the day. My attitude might change once it gets cold, but I love these times during the day. My morning walk is peaceful and full of gardens and snapshots of the skyscrapers and mountains. The bustle of downtown Denver at lunch hour is energizing. The walk home is stress relieving. 
• I've seen quite the characters on the bus, too. Sometimes these characters are people I know from work, so we chat for a while. (It's a nice feeling of connectedness.)
• Bus 44 frequently tries to ruin my day. 
• The weather has been fantastic. It got a bit cold for a day or two (high 40s in the morning/evening), but has been sunny and hovering in the 70s for the most part. 
• The sun really does shine constantly here. (Cue Ben Harper's She's Only Happy In the Sun)
• My room in the house came complete with a horrible painted mural. Since the room is pretty tiny it was dominating things. I don't have anywhere enough energy to paint the wall, so I got in a problem-solving mood and tacked up king sized sheets. Not beautiful, but satisfactory. 
• I have seen more rotten food in the last 3 weeks than in the rest of my life combined. (We get a lot of "day old" type donations at the house, and at Earthlinks we get food off a truck that comes by with expired or wilting food the grocery stores threw out. On top of that, many of us get random things from our worksites that they can't give out to their clients anymore (yes, we happily take the things they can't even give away to homeless people!). We try to use all this food on it's last leg, but, I'll be honest: a lot of it get's composted.)
• After this year, I will have cured myself of any desire to ever eat a bagel again. (Matter of fact, I'm pretty much there now.)
• We've actually been eating quite well. We rotate so that 2 different people out of the 10 of us cook and clean each weeknight. There's been a slight learning curve, but I'm pretty impressed with a lot of what we have come up with. 
• One of the perks I love about my afternoon job at the church is that I have an office. A real, downtown office. 
• I'm developing a healthy fear of the answering machine at work with all the sad and desperate stories I find there daily. 
• Monday afternoons at the church are exhausting--but the good kind of exhausting. The kind of exhausting where weekly we feed about 1,200 people in 4 hours. 
• Living between downtown and the huge city park is a great location with a lot of energy. It's also nice to head out to the foothills to the suburb where David lives once a week or so. It's amazing how much different it feels. 
• Actually, every 4 blocks or so Denver feels like a very different city. 

OK, that's plenty of bullet points. Some pictures to finish things up: 

My, um, interesting, whole wall, multilingual mural. Complete with mirrored flowers. Yeah. 

My solution. 

Our first day of work dinner. I helped cook this meal that turned out to be a bit overzealous, but delicious. (Seriously, cooking for 10 people mostly from scratch (because that's cheapest) can turn out to be like cooking a Thanksgiving-esque meal every night.)

Work in the morning

My afternoon office!

After a particularly long and heavy day (and week) I spotted this guy on the back of a wall. I figured no one was looking at it anyway, so I might as well take it...

During our first week or so of orientation we were subsisting on basically nothing but carbs: bagels, rice, pasta, bread.  We hadn't yet received our weekly batch of produce from the farmers market that gives us their unsellables, and we were longing for pretty much anything that came from the ground. That day our generally kind and well meaning director showed up at lunch with a peach. A peach that she ate in front of all of us. Waved it around a bit as she talked. (Oh man, we were all experiencing a range of emotions that were not the most generous!) After relaying this story to David, he showed up later with...giant peaches! Best. Peach. Ever.  

We also found a park throwing an end of summer festival--complete with a hot air balloon "glow" and fireworks. All for free! (It's true. We make poor look exciting.)

And finally, some shots from my morning commute:

Somebody forgot a few important things at the bus stop...

I'm not sure why, but I love this building.

My morning worksite is in a bit of an industrial area that is full of interesting artwork. 

Waiting for good ol' bus 15 (hotbed for interesting and/or homeless people) downtown at lunch. 

The End. 

A Light Week

If there was theme for the past week, it would be light.

Monday I stayed up late (powered by a coma-like evening nap) and watched the entire lunar eclipse and a bit of the meteor shower as well. I switched off the lights in our back yard and waited as the moon got darker and darker. I've never seen the stars so clearly in Fort Worth and I don't ever remember seeing a lunar eclipse like that. The breeze and 65 degree weather were perfect, too. I sat listening to a random playlist of songs including the words moon/stars/luna/estrellas, drinking hot tea and just generally letting the last year and my future sink in. I won't say I had an epiphany, but I will say that out of the fog some shapes are starting to form. Which feels like a nice place to be.

Tuesday I basked in the glory of our 85 degree weather (in the shade!) by taking it to the park. I threw on a sun dress (on December 21st!) and went to smell the roses. Smelling the roses resulted in me barely being able to breathe by the time the afternoon was over, but it was worth it. Fort Worth's Botanic Garden is one of my favorite places and sitting in the sun after three months of cold rain was pretty close to perfect. THEN I got to watch some stars of a different kind--Dallas Stars hockey! I used to be a huge fan, and even though I hadn't seen a game in probably years, it was a lot of fun to be in the arena and see the guys beat up on one of the original Canadian teams.

Wednesday I got to get together with the girls from church and go look at Christmas lights. After the warm weather and busy last weeks, it was great to sing Christmas carols, look at lights and just generally get in the Christmas spirit.

And finally, to wrap up the week, I got to celebrate the light in a different way--in the form of celebrating Jesus coming as the light of the world. Christmas is always a big holiday for me, and a time of reflection. I love Advent, the time in the Christian calendar leading up to Christmas, which centers on hope and waiting. As a person who always seems to be waiting for the dust to settle so that I can see where the next turn in the road will take me, I can resonate a lot with a season all about looking toward the future with anticipation. And today, Christmas, is and isn't the climax of the waiting--it's both the now and the not yet. It's the day on the calendar and it's the baby in the barn two thousand years ago and it's also the reminder, or the hope, that God still cares today. It's inbreaking of the light.  It's the thrill of hope for which the weary world rejoices. After all, yonder breaks a new and glorious morn. 


Merry Christmas. And may you all be able to see the light on the horizon.


(Also, Sufjan Steven's version of Joy to the World might be one of the most beautiful songs I've ever heard.)

Go West Young (Wo)Man

I never planned to actually go to Abilene, much less make it my home (on and off again) for six and a half years. I swore I would never go to college there and then once I was there I swore if I ever did grad school I would go far, far away. We all see how that turned out. I won't lie though, it wasn't all easy: I spent a large chunk of time hating the place, the Mesquite trees, red dirt and ridiculous wind. Eventually though, I came to like the place. I even miss it when I'm gone. 

This past week I drove out and was busy both catching up and saying goodbye. It's tough cramming a semester's worth of socializing into one week, but I think I was lucky enough to touch base with just about everyone--from classmates and professors to friends, old roommates and former students who are now speaking English and holding down jobs with the best of them. On top of that I got to take in a few Abilene institutions like La Popular for breakfast one morning and The Paramount for their Christmas showing of It's a Wonderful Life. It was good week, so good in fact it even had me considering staying and taking a job there. 

Abilene I tell ya, it sucks ya in. 

I thought it through though, and I know I can't stay. So finally I got to say goodbye to Abilene (maybe) for good. 

A few pictures from the week: 

Driving out I remembered just how amazing west Texas sunsets can be. 

My friends also threw me an "engagement" party.

Thaaanks, guys. 

It was also time for our second annual Christmas cookie decorating party. This year thankfully Krystal made sure Abby didn't steal any of my cookies.  

Krystal's

Mike's 

Mandi's 

Mine

Abby's 

And, Cody's. Which are always a little special.  

Yum! 

Krystal's airplane cookie 

I also found this guy hiding away in my master's hood (which, I wore all weekend by the way). He came into our possession when we all worked in the Williford/Ellis suite at Logsdon. Some undergrad made an extra-credit 3D map of Paul's journeys with this lovely little guy standing in as Paul. Somehow we decided it would be fun to hide it in each other's bags/gas caps/furniture/desks/etc. Apparently it was my turn, but friends beware: I found him before I left town, so there is no telling where he is!

I also got to spend a lot of time with this little lady. 

Overall, it was a great week (even if I didn't make it out before my allergies exploded!). A big thanks to the people who made this week (and the last 6.5 years) great!

Home

It's always good to be home after you have been gone for a while. There's all the things you have been missing, along with all the things you missed without ever realizing it. It was good to see family, especially my niece and nephew, and it was great to see my church family yesterday. It was good to bask in the sunshine (even if it wasn't 72 like I was hoping for). It was great to go without socks for the first time in 3 months. Nice to walk on carpet.

It was great to drive again, and to laugh with my best friend. And, of course, it was good to eat all the nice things Texas has to offer: a big salad with ranch dressing, fajitas still sizzling on the plate, and the traditional after church lunch of roast with all the fixings (Squash casserole? Fried okra? Oh yes.)

A few other things:

Dr. Pepper

Folgers!

With powdered creamer!

Mmm, and my mom even made homemade biscuits and sausage gravy. 

Needless to say, it is good to be home. Today I am headed out to Abilene to make sure everything is in order for graduation on Saturday. And of course, to take in even more of the things I have been missing!