I do care about writing….
February 3, 2004
Now remember, just because I don’t write doesn’t mean I don’t care. In this case, I was sans Internet access for a period, so writing was impossible.
Last week was pretty standard for my weeks lately, full of liquids (Coke, water, beer with my sister) and games (still chugging away on Star Wars Galaxies) with little else, though I did start Michael Crichton’s The Great Train Robbery that I’ve only read once before since I finished The Kill Clause that my Mom gave me for my birthday. I was looking forward to starting The DaVinci Code that everyone and their mother has been reading lately, but since my sister stole our family’s copy I was without reading material. I dug through my bookshelf and pulled out four books that I have not yet read (three of which are from classes I took, ironically) and picked We Wish to Inform You That Tomorrow We Will Be Killed With Our Families, an uplifting tale about the horrendous genocide in Rwanda ten years ago. OK, not so uplifting, but tackling that subject matter is a tough one. I’ve been surprised about how much I remembered and already knew, but since that part of my African Conflict course was essentially taught from the book, I wasn’t missing anything in the class.
But I finished up the week by wrapping up my affairs for my online game persona so that I could leave things be for awhile (at this point in the game I’ve harvesting resources to craft medicines, and it requires work on four different planets, and you have to both power and maintain your harvesters, requiring a presence on four planets in sucession…but I digress) and I hopped a plane to Denver to go visit my friend Heather. It’s been three and a half years since I was last in Denver, and it was good to see Denver in a different season than “brown”. Well, from what I hear, though, Denver is brown for much of the year. Anyhow, it was good to take a vacation–and I don’t want to hear any guff about being unemployed for eight months. Yes, I can sleep in, yes, I can stay up late, but being at home due to unemployment isn’t a vacation. It was good to get a change of environment and see a good friend of mine.
I flew standby there on Saturday morning. Lovely 6 AM flight out of Portland, requiring me to rise at the pleasant hour of 3:30 AM in order to get out of the house by 4 AM. Unfortunately after going to sleep at 11, I woke up at 2 AM and couldn’t get back to sleep, so instead I just got up. Around 3:40 AM as I was packing everything up I went and asked my Dad where Cindy had left the standby companion tickets, but of course, he had assumed that Cindy had already given them to me. At this point, though, Cindy was in San Francisco, so there was no way to wake her up and get her to get me a couple. We did find her stash, though, but since all were unsigned by her it looked for a moment like I might not be able to fly to Denver.
At the risk of potentially invalidating the future usage of any companion tickets due to a United employee with the power to take them away from Cindy, I won’t tell you exactly how my Dad and I solved the problem of the unsigned tickets, but let’s just say that I was able to get on a plane in the end using her standby tickets.
Apparently flying standby, however, is one of the criteria that United is using the do the secondary screenings of their passengers, as I got the royal treatment of the dual-action checked baggage x-ray AND search as well as a full check on my carry-on and my person. The good thing about that, though, is that it’s almost a shorter trip through security that way if you go at a busy hour. Too bad it was 5 AM and there weren’t too many people waiting on security.
Flying standby also means you can list yourself in first class and take an available seat there, or if none are open, fall back to open seats in coach. First class is such a nice way to fly, even with the cutbacks that United and the other airlines have been making. I was fortunate enough to get into first class on the way out, so I got a crappy egg, cheese, and chive breakfast burrito thingie that United has been serving for years in the mornings. I mean, I was eating identical ones two years ago. Might have even been that old. I shouldn’t complain, though, because I don’t think coach got ANYTHING except coffee. I got plenty of that, though, since three hours of sleep takes its toll on me soon enough.
Anyhow, I arrived in Denver safe and sound. There wasn’t room for me at the storage place where Heather lives with her grandparents, so instead we went and stayed at an apartment that Heather’s Mom has so she can rent it out to others, but it was in an unfished condition. It had a small TV, a few chairs, a dining room table, stuff in the kitchen, and no carpet, so it was homey. I slept on an air mattress that seemed to have a slow leak, however, because after the first night I woke up and my butt was dragging on the hard ground. Actually my hip hurt all the next day because I slept on my side, apparently, and it pressed into the ground for a lot of the night.
Dinner the first night there was nice, though. We tried going grocery shopping Saturday afternoon and discovered that one of the stores near the apartment had a checkout line going literally from the front all the way around to the back of the store. Screw that, we thought, and decided to go after dinner later in the day. Nearby was an Old Chicago restaurant that my sister’s been trying to get me to go to forever due to the advertised 110 types of beer they serve, though I’m disappointed to report that most of those are in bottles and not draft. 110 types of beer, and how many people do you think go and order Bud or Coors? I tried a couple of nice Colorado beers (not Coors!) and finished a special one that Heather ordered, a mixture of Guinness and a rasberry-flavored beer. I normally don’t like the taste of Guinness, but mixed with this other beer it took the bite off it and I enjoyed it a lot. Makes me want to mix in McMenamins Ruby Ale and Guinness and see if I can sort of recreate it…. But I also had a good deep-dish pizza there, too, so my discovery of the mostly-bottled 110 beers wasn’t a total loss. I mean I could get most of those bottles at any store with a decent beer selection, though I was impressed that they offered one type of beer brewed by Leinenkugel’s from Wisconsin, one of the few things I genuinely miss. Prior to last Saturday night, the furthest West I’ve found any type of Leinie’s was in Wall, South Dakota on my trip back from Beloit last May.
But anyhow, I had a couple of new beers, so that made me happy. It was snowing fairly heavily when we came out of dinner, though, and after sliding around in a couple of places we made it to the grocery store and bought some food for the next few days. Thankfully there weren’t nearly as many people there. After my afore-mentioned night on the air-mattress, we met Heather’s Mom for brunch, but instead of going to the IHOP that was five minutes away, we drove all the way out to Evergreen and went to a hole-in-the-wall place that was apparently very popular with the locals. Great food. I had a–wait for it–DENVER ommlette–and it was probably the best one I’ve ever had. We then drove up to where Heather and her Mom used to live up in the mountains outside Evergreen, so I could see the area where Heather grew up. Absolutely beautiful up there. We also looked into the Little Bear Tavern in Evergreen, which I’m told is THE place to place in the Denver area, and I was regaled by some stories Heather’s Mom told about knowing Matt “Guitar” Murphy from The Blues Brothers and hanging out with him a few times in both barroom and social settings.
After that, Heather and I headed back to the apartment and watched the Super Bowl, which was excruciatingly boring both from a game and commercials standpoint until the last ten minutes of the 4th quarter. Actually, I stopped watching around halftime and didn’t even give it a look until about then, so apparently I missed Janet Jackson flashing 140 million people during her halftime show. I was making dinner at the time, and Heather said I missed a great show, though I had no idea when I jokingly asked if Janet had taken off her top that I was hitting pretty close to the mark. For those that don’t know the story (and I’m still playing catch-up from the last four days of news and the like), there was some breast exposure during the show, possibly intentional, possibly not. CBS probably isn’t happy about it nonetheless.
Monday was a pretty good day, though it had a few rough spots. Heather’s been car shopping recently so we did some driving between dealers around Denver trying to find a car that meets her grandfather’s strict conditions for a car he’d be willing to help her with (truck preferably, no Fords–only Chevys, under 30k miles, factory warranty intact, under $10,000), but we were largely unsuccessful. There was much griping from Heather about a wasted day due to her grandfather’s conditions and his eventual comment that the two of them would go later this week, but the day DID have its ups. I was happy to finally prove to Heather that I eat Mexican food the way I’m supposed to at her favorite Mexican place–a chain of restaurants, actually, Chipoltle, owned by McDonalds to which I offer endless teasing to Heather and her independent and anti-corporate stances. Now when I say “the way I’m supposed to”, it’s sort of a jab at myself given my pickiness with different ypes of foods, that while having gotten better in the last few years still prohibits me from eating sour cream and guacamole, both of which I’ve tried and still dislike. It’s Heather’s opinion, however, that you can’t truly be eating Mexican food if you don’t have all the trimmings, but it’s MY opinion that there are probably quite a few people in Mexico (to make a generalization) who dislike or don’t eat their food with either of those condiments, as well. Isn’t that like saying that you’re not really eating Chinese food if you don’t use soy sauce? Not to mention that Chinese food in the US is nothing like Chinese food in Asia.
Well anyhow, I had good Mexican food for lunch prior to our excursions around the city. Dinner was at a Chinese food buffet that Heather swore up and down was the best in the city, but sadly I found myself longing for Asia Buffet in Beloit, which everyone who has ever eaten there with me agrees is pretty bad. But still better than this place…Heather was quite apologetic. After that we went to the best place I’ve ever been.
Well not really, but I had a lot of fun. As you all know I enjoy video games, both in home and arcade formats, and three years ago when I was last in Denver Heather and I tried to go to a place next to a movie theater we’d just gotten out of called Dave & Buster’s. They wouldn’t let us in, though, because we weren’t both 21, so surprised at the strange turn of events we went somewhere else. Well this time we were both 21, and I was determined to find out what was in this place that kept us out years ago.
Turned out to be a huge building with a restaurant, several bars, around 25 pool tables, VR games, arcade games (with one of the bars right smack dab in the center of the arcade)…you name it, this place had it. There was even an employee standing there to let us in, give us a guide, open the door for us, etc. I got to check my coat…man, this way a great place. After buying a bunch of credits to use on games (via a swipeable card with a magnetic strip instead of tokens or coins), I eventually decided to check out their beer selection. I didn’t see any taps, but I thought I’d ask.
I found they had at least fifteen beers on tap, including several of my favorites. I was expecting just the basics like Bud, Bud Lite, Coors, etc, but they also stocked Fat Tire, Widmer Hefeweizen, Bass, and Newcastle Brown. I ended up with a couple pints of Bass.
Let me tell you again, this place was awesome. Good beer, great games, good value for your money in both aspects, nice environment. If there were ever a place like this in Portland that had the same setup, same beers, and served good pizza, I’d be in serious financial troubles by now. I’d never leave.
After games, we met Heather’s friend Rachel that I’ve been hearing about for four years in downtown Denver, and after a few games of pool we hung out at a coffee shop until about 1 AM. Yes, I’m starting to gloss over things because I’m headed for bed soon, but I’m trying to hit the high points. The coffee shop was kind of neat, full of people sitting around drinking coffee, browsing the web on their laptops, and smoking. Heather said this place was where she has always hung out, and I did enjoy both the coffee (Heather and I split a pitcher of coffee) and the food (a yummy toasted turkey sandwich) as well as meeting someone I’ve heard about for four years. The downside? All my clothes smelled like smoke. Good thing I had left my coat in the car, though that meant for a chilly walk.
Today…not so much fun. We were going to go see Lord of the Rings: Return of the King on an iMax screen (time #4 for me, time #1 for her) and then head over to Pepsi Center to watch the Colorado Avalanche play the Carolina Hurricanes in a hockey game that promised to be a lot of fun, but this morning her Mom told us that snow was expected this evening all the way until tomorrow morning, so the chances of my being able to gett out on time were significantly lowered. Long story short, I had to change my listing, fly back this afternoon, and take MAX downtown to meet my Dad to get home. I flew coach in a middle seat back…so it’s not everything that it could have been.
All in all, a good trip. It was good to see Heather, good to take some time as a “vacation”, and good to do a few new things. But three nights on an air mattress has taken its toll on me, so I’m a bit sleepy. I hope I haven’t missed anything important from my trip….
Sorry the updates have been so infrequent lately. I planned to update from Denver to avoid long updates exactly like this, but the phone line in the apartment wasn’t hooked up so my laptop essentially acted as a DVD player and nothing else. I’ll get to use my dial-up access one of these days, I know it. But not today.
Night, all.
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