Friday Faff: gelato edition

Faff time!

* Last night, I made chocolate pomegranate cluster thingies. Basically, I took the arils out of a pomegranate, rinsed and let dry. Then, I melted some chocolate chips and dumped the arils in. I stirred it a bit, then used a teaspoon measurement to drop spoonfuls onto a wax paper-covered cookie sheet. I froze them until they were solid, then rolled about half of them in a mixture of powdered sugar and cocoa powder.

* This morning, I had to buy a 9 volt battery from the hardware store at 7:45 AM so the automatic cat feeder would function. I was surprisingly more functional at that hour than I would have expected considering I probably didn’t fall asleep until after 1:30 AM.

* Today, after hitching a ride to the bus depot in Santa Rosa, I took a bus to San Rafael and then transferred to a different bus to get to the east bay. While I was waiting for the second bus, who should appear but my awesome cousin!!!! I hadn’t seen her since before she left on her big four-month adventure in Africa (she just got back a week ago) and it was totally off-the-wall random that we’d run into one another. I love small world things like that; plus we got to have a nice little catch up visit during the bus ride and the BART ride.

* The reason I came down is because tomorrow at 7 AM Dan and I are flying to San Diego. We’ll be attending my cousin’s wedding in a small town in the eastern foothills, for which I’ll be doing the flowers. Dan will be exploring Julian and eating apples and pie. On Sunday night, we get to spend some time with Oldest Friend in San Diego before flying back up to SFO on Monday morning.

* Today, once I dropped my stuff off at the house where we’re staying the night, and caught up on my internets, I walked to downtown Berkeley through my old stomping grounds just north of University. I basically walked most of the route I used to run when I lived above the Body Time shop at Shattuck and Berkeley Way. It’s fun walking through that area, because I always play the “which stores/restaurants are the same and which ones are different?” game, and I always have flashbacks to specific memories from specific spots. I got to try about 8 different flavors of gelato from my favorite gelateria (Gelateria Naia) and settled on small scoops of cassia cinnamon and pumpkin. Yum.

* Tonight, Dan and I got to have a date night for the first time in I don’t even know how long. We literally could not remember the last time just the two of us went out for dinner. We had really great Indian food at a place in Albany, and it was quite inexpensive for the amount of food we got. Two thumbs up.

* Holy crap, a 7 AM flight is going to SUCK.

The week of stuff

Big stuff and little stuff happened this week.

Big stuff:

Scarlett moved to town! She and her boyfriend arrived with the u-haul on Tuesday, just in time for a seriously spectacular smoky sunset, courtesy the fires in LA and Utah and western Colorado. Her new apartment is wicked awesome and only a half block away from us.

We went on a hike on Saturday and reached the summit, though it was only 11,700 feet and not 14K+. I keep forgetting to upload the photos.

Little stuff:

We got amazing pears and peaches at the farmer’s market, and I baked some peach cupcakes (adapted from this recipe). I frosted them with browned butter icing, which is super-tasty but also very, very rich. I gave half the cupcakes to Scarlett.

Our contribution to dinner with friends on Wednesday (game night!) was chocolate chip cookies, which means I baked twice in one week.

I gave blood yesterday and got my 1-gallon pin! I know I’ve donated more than that over the years but have officially given blood 8 times with this particular blood bank.

We watched Milk last night on DVD and it was fantastically good. It made me wonder: had it been released in October last year instead of December, would it have had any effect on the passage of prop H8 in California?

I finished a baby blanket for the person who teaches my classes at the gym, who is now 8 months along. I’ll take some photos before I give it to her next week.

Where I was

Last week, we had some friends over for dinner on Wednesday night who are moving from Colorado to California, and they brought their 2.5 year-old son who spent most of the evening chasing the kitties around, declaring “Kitty!” as the kitties ran away, confused about this small monster who smelled like and resembled a human but was surely way too small to be one. He liked the magnetic letters on our fridge and insisted on having a drink that looked just like the mojitos the adults were drinking, which I served him in the only plastic cup we have, which is covered in horse holograms from Churchill Downs in Louisville.

We enjoyed dinner, especially spending time with our friends, and bemused at their reactions to and apologies for their son’s behavior; he was actually very well-behaved and acted like I would expect a two-year-old to act, but I think since they knew we aren’t around little kids very much that it might be kind of weird for us. Luckily we like them and we like him and all went very well.

The next day, Scarlett came back to town in order to look for an apartment and get some last-minute things settled for her upcoming move to Denver for grad school. Her boyfriend joined her this time, and we spent the weekend showing them around and cheering when Scarlett found just the right place and signed the lease (only half a block from our place!) and eating pub food and ice cream. In the middle of their visit, I had to fly to Durango for work (flew down Sunday night, flew back Monday after a day-long training). The trip to Durango was short and relatively uneventful: I had breakfast at(and bought coffee beans for Dan from) Carver’s; I had dinner at a fantastic Himalayan (Indian/Nepali/Tibetan) restaurant. I stayed in the Strater Hotel though my room didn’t resemble a brothel but rather perhaps the vomit of a wedding cake. Our training was over in plenty of time for our afternoon flight, but something kept our plane overly long in Denver and it was really hot, so despite the plane being not even close to full there were some sort of weight restriction issues that I didn’t fully understand and we were told that five adults had to volunteer to take a bump to the next flight or the plane couldn’t take off. Since I live in Denver, I volunteered. I got a $200 flight voucher and got to sit in the airport for an extra few hours, which was OK once I got the free wireless to work. I got home a lot later than expected and didn’t get to spend as much time with Scar and Jason as I would have liked, but that evening we played a game Dan got for graduation called Zauber Cocktail which was super fun, and we all went to bed late, and I called in late for work on Tuesday.

Tuesday evening Dan drove up to Glenwood Springs with me for my Wednesday training, and we had more pub food and stayed at the Hotel Colorado, which (as I’ve mentioned before) is supposed to be haunted, but the only unusual thing we noticed was the lack of cool air in our room. Man, was it hot. We got up early so we could have breakfast at the place we like and on the way back up to our fourth floor room my neck suddenly took a giant crap, right before I had to start my training. After that was over, we drove back and got home at a reasonable hour, but my neck was still killing me and remains so.

I have one more training to do, which is tomorrow in Denver. The upside is that no travel is required. The downside is that there will be more than 60 people there. I’m used to training groups of 15-30, so 60+ is going to be a challenge. Wish me luck, internet.

Mountains, museum, no emergency room

My cousin Scarlett was visiting for this past week, ostensibly in town to attend an event at the school where she’ll be starting a graduate program in the fall, but also to spend some time hanging out with us (I love it that she visits us!) We were able to have some adventures on Saturday and Sunday, and yesterday I took the day off to enjoy one last adventure before she left.

Saturday, we drove up to Estes Park to show her a mountain town, because when she visited last year while headed up to Rocky Mountain National Park Dan ended up in the emergency room for several hours having a rusty roofing nail removed from his foot. Luckily, this year there was no need for a visit to a local hospital, so we drove on up to Estes and wandered around the touristy bit. I was able to check Jive Turkey’s twitter updates (knowing her water had broken) through Scarlett’s crackberry, so that was helpful. We watched the taffy pulling machine and admired the rocks in the rock shop and bought some fudge, and I was very disappointed to find that the glass shop was no longer there.

Taffy

Water wheel
After determining that Scarlett’s wallet was in the car (and therefore her ID), we drove down the canyon to Fort Collins and had some lunch in Lucky Eddie’s (it’s kind of like old-west saloon meets Irish pub, and they have a big barrel o’ peanuts at the front and you can grab as many as you like and throw the shells on the floor. So we did. I was bummed that I’d left the camera in the car, because there were some seriously impressive peanut shell piles on that floor.

The line on the back said, “Their old flames.” My knee, she has been slapped.

Our last stop of the day was at the O’Dells brewing company, where Scarlett wanted to do some beer tasting. Dan sipped a bit of each, but he was driving, and I tasted one or two of them but only found one (I think it was a light-colored wheat beer) that I didn’t find thoroughly disgusting. I took a shot of Dan with the beer for his brother, who loves O’Dells, checked the crackberry again to determine that JT had, in fact, had a bouncing baby Spats (hooray!), and we headed back down to Denver.

I drank some of the one on the far left.

He’s a beer man.
Sunday we all slept in really late and didn’t get going on our adventure until the afternoon. It was also steadily drizzling rain all day long. Even so, we walked to City Park and went to the Nature and Science Museum. I found some cool things to take photos of and really enjoyed the wet air, such a rarity in Colorado. On the way back, we stopped in at the Tattered Cover on Colfax and spent some time browsing. We tried to get ice cream at Lik’s but it was closed for Easter.

Rainy flower

This makes a roaring sound when you put a coin in it. Dan said every time he hears it he flashes back to being five years old.

Mined in Colorado

Hee. Nugget.

Aquamarines, also from Colorado.

Tri-lo-biiiiite!

I love so many of the things in the Prehistoric Journey exhibit.

Spine and shadows.

Tortuga!

This thing is enormous. How did they manage to hold their heads up?

Monday was gorgeous and warm, and Scarlett and I walked down to the commercial strip around first and Broadway. I’d heard a lot about the stores in the area (particularly Fancy Tiger) but had never been there other than to go to a movie at the Mayan. I also thought that Scarlett might be interested in some of the stores, and I was right. We ended up seeing all kinds of cool stuff in a shop called Decade (complete with a male cat named Stella, or Stella the Fella as the cashier called him) and having a fascinating conversation with a shop owner. On the way home, we stopped for lunch at the Spicy Pickle at 9th and Lincoln. When we got back to our house, Dan was home from class and eventually we returned to Lik’s and got ice cream, then popped into the pub next door for some beer (and girl beer for me; I call hard cider girl beer for those who might be interested).

Stuff is finally starting to put out leaves again.

It’s a candy store! and an appliance store? Floor wax and dessert topping?

It was a great long weekend and a great visit. Today I am still quite tired, and somehow with all the walking we did I appear to have hurt my leg again (same leg, different spot), but I’m glad we were able to have so much time to spend with my cousin. She rules.

Anticipation

Taken on Monday, 3 days after I took this photo.
Things I have been looking forward to that are nearly here:

The arrival of spring (it’s here! or nearly so)

The arrival of Spats Turkey (April 1, baby, come out then!)

A weekend at home to do around-the-house stuff and be lazy (I’ve been away every weekend in March so far!)

Getting started with practices for my work softball team (!)

Our first wedding anniversary (Sunday, Sunday, Sunday!)

My cousin coming for another visit (this time, to check out the city and the graduate school she’ll be attending this fall!)

Also, an update on Project Hott:

I have, thus far, successfully avoided eating any chocolate or other candy at work for over two weeks now. Perhaps a bit of my caloric deficit was offset by the consumption of chips and cookies this past weekend, but then again the FitLinxx machine at the gym said I burned over 2000 calories snowshoeing on Saturday, so it’s at least a wash there. I don’t know that I can really feel any difference in my clothes yet, but I’ve been making an effort to change up my gym activity, pushing myself harder on machines than I have in a while, and I think my stupid leg is finally better enough that I can start running outside more regularly. It’s only been ELEVEN MONTHS, geesh.

Things I learned on (or around) my Thanksgiving vacation

* Loki gets carsick (both ends), at least in the dark. Ugh. This is a recent development. But he doesn’t make a peep. (Petra peeps. Very loudly. The entire drive.)

* Sometimes when you are shopping for something in particular and having a difficult time finding it, if you make the decision to leave the store and then just decide to go back once around, just in case, you will find exactly the right thing. In my case, a coat at H&M.

* Shopping when I feel like I actually have enough money to buy something is far more fun than not, even if I don’t buy much.

* One’s perceptions about prices can change drastically depending on the setting. In a regular store, while buying yarn, I frequently decide a skein that costs over 5 bucks is too expensive. In ArtFibers, especially because everything in there was 10-30% off AND everything feels like it got shat out of an angel’s butt, $65 for enough to make one scarf suddently doesn’t seem so bad. (I didn’t actually buy anything, but I did spend an hour touching EVERYTHING).

* For some reason, airport security employees do their best to make life more difficult for people. There was almost nobody in the airport when we were there Saturday afternoon, no line at security – but the lady made me put my purse in an already overstuffed bag. Which I promptly removed on the other side of security. WTF?

* My mom’s boyfriend is the epitome of “Doesn’t understand the concept” when it comes to the game Taboo. Somehow, he just didn’t get that you CAN’T say any of the words on the card…or any derivation or root thereof.

* Some recipes I make in Denver take far more time in California. Is it my mom’s oven? Is it the frozen whole wheat flour? Is it the altitude difference, the additional humidity, or something else altogether? No matter, it turned out OK.

* You really can fit 11 adult-sized people around my mom’s table, but only if one of them actually doesn’t sit with everyone else because she has her annual Thanksgiving migraine (Sorry Lis.)

* Spending time with relatives who are also friends is highly underrated. 2 meals spent with awesome cousins plus their husband/boyfriend (respectively) = highlight of the trip for me.

* This was the first trip to the Bay Area in 2 years during which time we didn’t have to do anything for anyone’s wedding. It was awesome.

* Flying to CA for Thanksgiving (especially on off days, like we did) is infinitely preferable to taking the train for 2 days in each direction.

* My mom’s dog is weird. She has taken to obsessing over floor shadows, and entertains herself with them for hours on end.

* A Specialty’s cookie tastes even better when you have to wait months or years to eat one (and their sandwiches are just as good as I remembered).

* Wombat’s name is a highly guarded secret, and one which I don’t know despite subjecting his parents to Chinese water torture. OK, not really with the torture thing.

* Leah does late-term pregnancy with style and panache, and she looks like her pre-pregnant self with a basketball under her shirt. And she kindly let me maul her belly while Wombat did his limited gymnastics given the small amount of space he has to maneuver.

* Everyone in CA that we talked to about it wants us to move there after Dan graduates. We’ll see what happens.

All in all, a great trip. And I have photos, but the memory card is in Dan’s camera so they’ll have to wait for another day.

I don’t know what it’s called, but I like it.

One of the first cookbooks I ever used was called the Teddy Bear cookbook. Designed specifically for children, it taught the user how to follow a recipe, and how to make simple yet tasty things. When Scarlett would come for visits, we’d often choose to make something out of this cookbook – sometimes teddy bear pancakes, but more frequently apple pizzas.

Because they were pizzas! Covered in apples! What’s not to like? A sweet dough, with cinnamon/sugar apples, apple pizzas were the best, man. And really easy to make.

I flashed back to the apple pizzas this weekend when I thought to myself, “I want to make a pie” and realized it would be absolute torture to have to use the oven during the nasty heat. So I tried to think of some other way to combine fruit and crust without needing the oven. We got a bunch of summer fruit at the grocery store, and that evening I looked through the Joy of Cooking at pastry recipes, trying to decide what I could do.

Finally, it hit me. A galette-style dessert, a very rustic pastry with fruit, the dough brought up and around the sides of the fruit in the middle. I could make it in two batches and cook it in the toaster oven, rather than heating up the entire kitchen. And so I made things up as I went along, and we ate my creation for dessert with vanilla ice cream (just a bit). It doesn’t have a name, but boy was it tasty.

Summer fruit galette with cornmeal crust

Crust:
3/4 cup all purpose flour
1/2 cup cornmeal (we use the roughly ground stuff)
1/4 cup powdered sugar
1/2 tsp salt
4 tbsp (1/2 stick) butter
4 tsp butter flavored shortening
1/4 c ice water

Mix all dry ingredients, then cut in butter and shortening using pastry blender. Pour ice water over mixture and cut in using the side of a butter knife or rubber spatula until mixture forms ball of dough. Refrigerate for an hour or so.

Filling:
approximately 3-4 cups summer fruit (I used halved and pitted bing cherries, 2 medium size nectarines, and a handful of blackberries)
1 tsp sugar

After dough has cooled for an hour, separate into two balls. Roll out each ball on floured surface to about a 8-9 inch circle and place on cookie sheet (or on toaster oven tray). Put half the fruit mixture in the center of each rolled out pastry and bring the edges up and over the fruit so it is partly covered but exposed in the center. Bake at 375F for 20-25 minutes (I cooked mine separately because I could only fit one at a time and each of mine took 23 minutes) or until crust starts to brown just a bit on the top.

Serve warm with ice cream, whipped cream, or by its lonesome (so tasty!). Makes 4 very large or 6 medium-sized servings.

The whole rest of the time, and I drink Satan’s anal leakage

So my cousin Scarlett came for a long visit, the first visitor we’ve ever had from my family other than my mom. It was awesome.

She flew in on Wednesday night and we picked her and her tiny bag up at the airport. Scarlett is both vegetarian and currently on a cleanse (avoiding alcohol and certain foods, eating others) so I’d found out ahead of time what was OK and what wasn’t, and Dan and I planned out several OK-for-the-cleanse dinners. When we got home on Wednesday night it was pretty late, so we had a tasty stir fry with tofu over soba noodles (made from buckwheat).

Thursday I went to work and Scarlett went to the library, working on both her job (she can work from anywhere with an internet connection) and her upcoming paper, due the day after she returned home. That night we hung out and played Fluxx. Friday Dan had his last final, and Scarlett and I both stayed in bed until pretty late, and only ate some toast from homemade bread for breakfast. When Dan got back, we got dressed and headed west to Boulder.

Because it was Friday, we decided to go to Celestial Seasonings Tea Factory because the Factory was in session, and we made it just in time for the beginning of the 1 PM tour. It was very cool to see the factory in production mode (I’ve been on the tour many times, but usually on weekend days when they don’t have the machinery going). It’s a really cool tour, it’s free, you get to see how they do stuff, and your sinuses get all cleared out in the mint room. What’s not to love?

After we spent some time browsing in the gift shop, I realized I really really needed to eat, so we drove over to the middle of town and went to lunch at the Dushanbe Tea House. This is an amazing tea house built in Boulder’s sister city in Tajikistan that serves an international menu; something for everyone. We got some hummus with veggies and a tea salad as appetizers, since by that point I was completely starving, which took a really long time to come out. Dan and I shared a freshly-brewed iced chai, and I had an omelet with spinach, brie, carmelized pearl onions and walnuts. Dan had bangers and mash (the bangers made from pheasant). Scarlett had tofu and veggies over soba noodles in a tasty broth. After lunch, we strolled around the Pearl Street Mall, oohing over the gorgeous tulips, checking out the art at Art Mart, the kitchen equipment at Peppercorn, and toys at Into the Wind (three of our favorite stores). Then we went back to Denver and did a little grocery shopping. First, we stopped at Queen Soopers, where we procured some important things like fizzy water and Izze soda and ingredients for a few more meals. Then we went to Wild Oats. Except it isn’t Wild Oats anymore! It’s Whole Foods! When did that happen? Apparently, on Friday.

OK, so at the Tiniest Whole Foods Ever that is 3 blocks from our house, we bought some tasty things and tried some other tasty things (chips made from something that wasn’t potato, but still quite tasty), and Scarlett bought two flavors of kombucha (she’s big into beverages, apparently). She also bought two different non-dairy ice-cream like products, one a Rice Dream and one a Soy Delicious, I believe. Both turned out to be tasty.

Now, I’d forgotten the name of the product that Monkey wrote about in her post, but after I’d had a sip of the cranberry kombucha (I didn’t think it was that bad, but then I like really sour stuff; it reminded me of lambic-style beer) I wondered whether that was the stuff she’d written about. So I looked it up later, and it was. Anyhow, my cousin really likes it, and while I didn’t think it went super well with dinner (spanish tortilla, green beans) I thought it was still OK. I don’t think I’ll be buying it myself anytime soon at $3 a bottle (since I don’t really drink anything except water as I prefer to eat my calories) but I wouldn’t scream if it were made available again someday. Though later, I tried the guava flavor she bought, and I really didn’t like that one, so maybe it was just the fruit flavoring that made the difference.

I’ve already told you about Saturday and how wonderful it was. Saturday night, Scarlett wanted to rest and work on her paper, so Dan and I had a little date night at the movies. We drove to a theater rather than walking like we normally would (since he had just had a nail in his foot) and saw Iron Man. I liked it pretty well, for knowing absolutely nothing about the comic or its storyline. Though I was really disappointed by most of the previews. Do people still find Adam Sandler and Mike Myers to be that funny?

Sunday was another beautiful day, and Dan’s foot felt better, so we walked all over town. We walked to the Botanical Garden and took lots of excellent photographs (Dan started to show me how to use the new camera to take the kinds of shots I was interested in, which, sweet!). We walked over to the apothecary where I got a refill on my tasty tincture and Scarlett talked to the lady about a skin issue she was having and ended up getting some sort of cream that was supposed to help (and by the next day, it looked much better!) Then we walked allllll the way back over to the Tattered Cover. Dan and Scarlett browsed while I sat in the old orchestra pit and rested my leg, which at that point was very, very tired. And that’s when I noticed I’d gotten a sunburn on my shoulders and chest. Stupid, stupid. I hadn’t put on enough sunscreen or worn my hat. Usually I am really careful about such things, but that day was my first real skin-in-sun exposure since last fall and I just didn’t think about it. It still hurts.

So after they were finished, we walked home in the heat. A little while later, Scarlett and I walked to the new Whole Foods to pick up a few things for dinner (curried red lentils with whole wheat parathas). I made guacamole for an appetizer and Julie and Steve came over to have dinner with us. It was a lot of fun, but I felt bad; because of the events the day before, we’d forgotten to go to the liquor store, so we only had one bottle of wine and few other adult beverage choices. I guess it was OK; we don’t HAVE to have a lot of booze to entertain, but I still like people to have options.

Monday I worked a half day (and Scarlett worked on her paper), then we walked home together and Dan got home from his trip to campus and she packed up her stuff. We drove up to Lookout Mountain and visited Buffalo Bill’s grave, then explored the gift shop. Scarlett declared that, despite her cleanse, she had to have some Rowdy Root Beer and Dan and I shared a root beer float. We sat in some bizarre traffic on the way back east (turns out they’d closed our side of the freeway for a few minutes because of some escaped convict?) and then had smooth sailing all the way to the airport. We even got her there a little early. I discovered that sitting in the backseat of our car when it is warmer than 80F outside is Not Fun, because none of the vents are strong enough to get air back there, and I can’t hear a damn thing with the window down. So it was unpleasant. It’s good to know for future reference, too.

All in all, we had a great time. I was so glad to get to spend a lot of one-on-one time with Scarlett and we loved having a visitor. Hint to everyone who knows us IRL: Come visit! We have an extra bedroom! With inflatable mattresses! We have cute kitties! We have a lot of tea and a plethora of mugs! And we love houseguests. Especially ones who treat us to an awesome lunch at the Dushanbe Tea House and are able to write it off as a business expense.

Herd the Gorilla Bear

I am very excited, because we have a visitor! My cousin Scarlett is visiting from the Bay Area for the next few days. Other than for a day back in February when my mom flew in for my shower (and so did Oldest Friend), we haven’t had any visitors in a really long time, so when Scarlett said she wanted to come hang with us for a while I said GREAT!

Scarlett is the big sister I never had, someone who I consider a blood relation even though we share no drops of blood between us. Her mother was my mother’s best friend in college, who ended up in a relationship with my mom’s half brother (they didn’t actually marry until they’d been together for like 15 years!) Scarlett was the flower girl for my parents’ wedding and she remembers the day I was born. Though I am the oldest of three sisters, in many ways I have always felt like Scarlett was my big sister who only came for visits sometimes. When we were kids, she would sometimes stay at our house for a few days during winter break, usually before Christmas. Because of that, we developed quite a few family holiday traditions – we would make up plays (one called The Death of Abigail Root, which took place in Salem, Mass.) and perform them for our families, we slept under the Christmas tree two nights before Christmas, and we saved up the change we made from selling tickets to our plays to buy treats: special cookies, pistachio nuts.

Sometimes we’d do make-believe type games, like pretending to be babies living in an orphanage in Boston, or pretending to be executives at an advertising agency and making up ad campaigns (including slogans and jingles) for various products and services. Once Scarlett started to tell me a story, all about a princess and a man in black; it wasn’t until I saw the movie a few years later (on video) that I realized she was telling me the story of The Princess Bride. I have fond memories of us doing things together like teaching my little sister, at approximately two years old, the banana boat song (you know, Day-O! Day-O! Daylight come and I want to go home).

Scarlett is nearly four years older than I am, so I always looked up to her. She was the one who introduced me to Cyndi Lauper and Madonna, to the Eurythmics, to Prince’s purple rain. I looked up to her, looked forward for weeks to her visits, and was disconsolate for days after she’d go home. As we both got older and she was in high school, she no longer came for long visits, but we still saw each other at family holiday gatherings. I missed her when she went away to the East Coast to go to college, and was thrilled when she moved to the Bay Area after graduation, living just across town and then a few blocks away from me while I was in school at Berkeley. We hung out pretty frequently until she moved to the city, and even then made time to spend together.

Scarlett has done some amazing things in her adulthood. She’s still every bit as creative as she was when we were kids, and puts her creativity to good use in her writing and other projects. She and a group of her friends read a different book each month and get together to discuss it, also bringing food associated with the culture in which the book takes place (they call it Iron Rainbow, which is Iron Chef meets Reading Rainbow). She saved up for a couple of years, quit her job, and traveled in England, China, and Mongolia for six months. I am so happy to know her as an adult and as a friend, not just my older half step cousin*, subject of my early hero worship, but as someone who I genuinely like, respect, and enjoy spending time with. I am so glad she came to visit and hope she enjoys the Mile High City.

*Dan pointed out to her sometime around the wedding festivities that they were now half step cousins-in-law. Hee!