Ilanarama!

Last night Britt and I went to hear Bob Baer speak - he's the former CIA agent who wrote See No Evil, the book that the movie Syriana was based on (and we bought it and got it signed - I'm about 3 chapters in), and he happens to live in Silverton, which is about 50 miles north of here. Totally excellent but kind of scary.

What he ended up doing was giving a brief outline of his life and work with the CIA, and then opening up to questions. The place (a small theater) was full, and most of the questions were thoughtful and informed - I have to say I am way proud of my community for having so many educated people who follow current events. The main things I came away from his talk with were:

( Cut tags are better than body armor! )

Therefore, I'm going skiing.

Politics report: getting whoa scary acrimonious on the local level. What do you do when two people you know socially run against each other in a primary?

Movie report: the Durango Independent Film Festival is so far a lot of fun. This afternoon I hope to sit in the theatre from 3 until 8 and watch my little eyeballs out.

Psotcrad report: tofty has beautiful small precision handwriting.

Remodeling report: I unpacked three boxes of books to put them on our new!!! bookshelves!!! today. The Ekornes chairs we ordered are supposed to come in on Wednesday.

Running report: eight miles yesterday, the longest I've run since I started getting knee problems in November. Felt pretty good.

Snow report: still none at all.

This morning Britt and I went down to the courthouse to hear Bill Ritter speak; for those of you who are non-Coloradoans, he is our most likely Democratic candidate for governor in the upcoming election. The big label that's always attached to his name is that he's a "conservative" Democrat, which is apparently media-speak for "he opposes abortion," because as far as we could tell none of his other positions are at all out of line with the general sentiment of state Democrats. And, in fact, the newspapers have all been tsk-tsking about how the Dems are uneasy about supporting him because of his opinion on abortion.

But after hearing him speak - and you can bet that the abortion issue was raised in the question-and-answer period - I am totally behind him (as is the rest of the local Dem party). He said that although he personally opposes abortion, he will not seek to change state abortion law, and that he opposes any effort to criminalize women or doctors involved in abortion. He stated that the common ground we all have is a desire to reduce unwanted pregnancies, and he supports responsible sex education (as opposed to abstinence-only programs), better access to health care for women (including emergency contraception, which really surprised me), and funding for family-planning programs.

His website has zero information on his positions on environmental and energy issues, but he answered all the questions to my satisfaction - he seems to be a strong environmentalist and an advocate for alternate energy (which are my big issues), and tonight at a fundraiser that we had dithered about but decided to attend after hearing him, I'll talk to him about putting these positions out there as well, because I think environmental protection is actually an issue with strong bipartisan support in Colorado.

Anyway, the half-dozen of you on my flist who are Colorado people ought to check him out and consider supporting him with your dollars and votes.

The nice thing about 1) living in Colorado, 2) working part-time, and 3) telecommuting is that nobody actually expects me to go to work the day after Purgatory gets 10 inches of snow.

So yay, I have finally broken in my weekday season pass. Now all it has to do is snow a bunch more and we might even break even on it.

By popular request! Oh, how exciting! Little pictures are links to bigger ones at flickr.



Our beautiful new stairs leading to the new upper floor. See the shiny pretty oak! We made the treads and kicks from oak boards and oak ply respectively, but bought the balusters and rails. Britt measured and cut and sanded everything, I stained and polyurethaned everything, and both of us assembled and glued it all in place. The side view shows that we still need to add trim. This room is our office space, by the way. My desk is on the far side of the stairs - you can see my green desk lamp. The door you see goes to the workshop (ex-garage). The built-in table under the stairs is tiled and holds the printer, dsl router and wireless hub. The futon couch is there because we're currently replacing the flooring in the living room.



Here's what our house looks like from the outside. The first picture is from the southwest and shows the front (south) of the house. The small arch between the sconces leads to a tiny porch and our front door; the larger arch next to it is a big arched window. You can just see the second floor roof at the upper left. The second picture shows the addition a little better - it's taken more from the west.

And by holiday I mean Thanksgiving. I finally got around to sorting the photos we took during our Thanksgiving jaunt to southeastern Utah. This was a not-very-planned mostly-impulse trip to the Blanding area, during which we did canyon hiking in some spectacular places filled with arches, stupendous natural bridges (as you might expect from a place called Natural Bridges National Monument), pre-Puebloan ruins (that is, ruins built by the ancestors of the current Pueblo tribes [Hopi, Zuni, etc.], who used to be called the Anasazi until it was determined that this was actually a Navajo name), and rock art. Here are a few of the thumbnails, and a link to the webpage where you can see all 24, with commentary.



Webpage with all photos from this trip, with captions.

Some of you know I'm involved in our local community theatre (which is, like, always spelled 'theatre' for reasons of pretentiousness, even though the word is 'theater' in the US, isn't it?). Last night was the opening night of our latest one-act, The Smell of the Kill, and I am the star, the star, I tell you! Yay we had 40 people in the audience! And a good review (with pictures, even!)

I just finished reading Ella Minnow Pea, a birthday prezzie from my parents. Hee, what fun, even though I recognized the ending coming. You should read it too, and by 'you' I mean nothings, zadcat, and all of you who partook in our t.b fifth-glyph lipogrammatic diversions.

I'm way behind on showing off hiking pictures, but here are a few from the weekend before last, when we went to the fairly-new Canyons of the Ancients National Monument, about an hour and a half west of here. Photos are links to bigger ones at my flickr page.


Escalante Pueblo, a restored Anasazi ruin. The water in the background is McPhee Reservoir, and the mountains are the LaPlatas.


Britt torturing playing with a small tarantula, and Sand Canyon with part of Sleeping Ute in the background.

By the way, driving out there I was reminded of just how rural an area we live in, as we had to stop twice for cattle being driven across the road, and once for sheep. Britt grumbled about the cowboys being mostly mounted on ATVs rather than on the traditional horses.

Ashes to ashes,
Dust to dust; the worms don't care
If you're black or white.