May 2007 Archives

Well, we made it.

Yesterday two people, two cars, two bikes, two guinea pigs, one dog, several house plants, and and all the clothes and food and other goodies necessary to sustain all of the above arrived in our their new home. It was a long drive across all of Kansas and half of Colorado with noone to talk to the but the mutt. She's a good listener but doesn't really have much to add to the conversation.

Anywho, we rolled into town last night and checked out the place in the waning daylight. Beautiful. Absolutely beautiful. I kept thinking to myself "I can't believe we live here now!". We aren't just on vacation this time.

We hung around Superior today, did a little shopping, checked out the apartment, and then headed to the dog park. The hound is quite a trooper and we wanted to reward her with a good romp. A woman at a pet store directed us to the nearest dog park which happened to be a pretty nice place. Maddie was impressed.

From there we had lunch in Louisville, which seems like a nice little town and then headed up to Boulder. We hung around at the Boulder Creek Festival, met some people, listened to some music, explained to the rude dog food vendor guy that our dog was in fact not too skinny, and then headed back to the hotel. Yes, we are living in a hotel for a few days ... can't WAIT to get into the apartment!

This evening we went for a little drive and somehow ended up at one of the open space parks. We walked around (Maddie was on leash due to the fact that she doesn't have a license yet and there is some sort of nesting bird thing going on at the moment) and I smiled as I saw runners and mountain bikers and dogs and looked at the mountains and remembered I was home.

Hanging out in Boulder reminded me of one very very unfortunate fact - I am extremely out of shape. Boulderites are a bunch of skinny folks and at the moment, I am not. That is the bad news. The good news is that there is just something about this place that makes me really want to get out and play. J and I both have our tri bikes with us but unfortunately we decided to take them on the car (as opposed to packing them in the moving truck) after the rest of our bike goodies had been packed away. We have bikes but we have no shoes or helmets so the riding will have to wait. I'm gonna try to go for a run tomorrow ... and for once, I can't wait!

My dad did a pretty good job of scoping out a place for us to live. The area where we will be living is a little too full of mega stores and chain restauraunts for my taste but it seems like the nearby outdoor recreation oppurtunities are fantastic and the views are absolutely stunning. J is all excited about the proximity to lots and lots and lots of tech companies just in case he decides to leave the current gig. I'm excited that we are only eight miles from Boulder for when the suburban-ness of where we will be living starts to feel a little stifling. The apartments look GREAT and there are tons and tons of dogs for Maddie to play with, and after all, it is all about Maddie.

It has been a crazy couple weeks ... finals, and my dad's cancer diagnosis, and graduation, and moving ... but things are going really pretty well on all fronts. I'm almost to the place where I can exhale.

I almost started bawling this evening when the fiance pointed out the fact that I have been trying to ignore all day: tonight is my second to last night in Lawrence. The movers come on Thursday and we will be spending Thursday and possibly Friday night at my parents' place in KC and then we head out.

Don't get me wrong, I am thrilled about this move. We are moving to a part of the country where I have wanted to live for as long as I can remember. I am so exicted about this ... but still incredibly sad about what I am leaving behind.

We left Florida when I was a senior in high school and for a long time I felt sort of ... displaced. Florida was home but my family wasn't there anymore and it wasn't where I spent my summers in college. My high school friends all scattered to go to school and I lost touch. Kansas City was where my parents lived, but that was where the connection ended. I would go home for the summers and be in a place that was still largely foreign to me, without many friends. Lawrence was great but I was only here for nine months at a time. I loved the town but it seemed like I was always coming or going ... until I moved here full time.

I've lived here in some capacity for the last nine years. For the last five years I have been here exclusively. For the first time in forever I feel like I am home. I know that Free State has the best beer and La Prima Tazza has the best coffee. I know that if you want to blow your paycheck on the snazziest food in town you go to Pachamama's and that if you want a slightly less pricey and pretentious meal you go to Teller's. I know that the best place to watch the sun set is from the rocks by the dam at Clinton Lake and that the best place to watch it rise is on your bike, headed out of town. I fell in love with biking again at the river trails and learned to run long on the streets south and west of town. I know that the guys with the "honk for hemp!" signs have been rallying for their cause for over ten years, and that on nice Saturday evenings there will almost always be a guy playing a sax on the corner of 8th and Mass. I know that you have to watch out for the guy with the socks on his hands ... he frequently steps out into traffic. And I know that the guy who dresses like a pirate might seem a little strange but he is actually harmless and very very friendly. I know about the fights to keep Walmart and Starbucks out and about the now twenty year long controversy over the proposed highway through the wetlands.

I came here as a bright eyed and slightly wreckless freshman. I went out a lot. I drank a lot. I made out with a lot of random guys. I had my first serious relationship and found myself walking the streets of Lawrence at 4 a.m. when my heart was completely and utterly broken and it was all I could do to maintain sanity. I calmed down over the years. I funnelled all that energy into mountain biking and then triathlons. I met the man with whom I will spend the rest of my life. I decided to go to law school and smiled when I found out I would get to call this place home for three more years. People and relationships have come and gone (and some have stayed) but the one constant was the backdrop. The strange and silly place that I called home.

And now its time to leave. We are moving to the mountains, to the place we have always wanted to live, but this crazy quirky town will always hold a very special place in my heart. I can't imagine what is going to feel like to point the car west, as we have done so many times in the past, and know that we are not coming back. I have always said that I could live the rest of my life here, and I still believe that's true. I still believe that this town is one of the country's secret gems. A vibrant place full of character and charm and so many people who make it so very special.

I'm ready for new experiences and places and people. But its so very hard to say goodbye.

I have a stalker. And this isn't any garden variety stalker. This is a stalker with a wetsuit fetish. Weird.

J just stormed into the living room saying "holy crap! some guy just favorited a bunch of your pictures!". And he was right. Some random guy on flickr had marked five or six of my pictures from Ironman CDA this summer as 'favorites'. He has no pictures of his own and I had NO idea who he was based on his screen name. So we looked to see what else he has 'favorited'.

ALL OF HIS FAVORITES WERE GIRLS IN WETSUITS!

Triathletes, surfers, scuba chicks.

It's pretty creepy isn't it? I mean, there are all sorts of situations in which I look reasonably attractive. But in a wetsuit?! Noone looks good in those things ... ESPECIALLY not me.

*shudders*

I very rarely ever get sick. Sure, I get lots of sinus headaches and allergy related sniffles and stomach aches from eating way too much ice cream, but when it comes to knock down drag out sickyness, I'm usually pretty lucky. So why oh why did I have to come down with the illness from hell during the last week of my last round of law school finals??

I have spent a good chunk of the last three days in bed. Not laying in bed studying, but laying in bed coughing and sneezing and wheezing. I've got a sore throat and a fever and a head so stuffed up I can barely see straight. Oh, and I have a final tomorrow and two take homes due later in the week.

I have barely studied for tomorrow's final and even if I had, unless I feel significantly better all the studying in the world is not going to help me. Right now, three hours seems like a long time to be upright and awake PERIOD, let alone trying to focus. And of course, this being, oh, seven days before I graduate, I need to get all of my finals taken (and passed!) this week. Even if I could somehow get a few extra days to study before the final I'm supposed to take tomorrow it would just screw up the finals I have left.

This is really not good ... I just need to pass ....

Well, we are a go for Colorado. If things go as planned we will have secured a place to live in the next few days and in just two and a half short weeks our dog will officially be Mountain Maddie.

Technically, she'll be more like Foothill Maddie as we are looking at places in Golden. Its hard to do this from so far away. My dad travels to Denver for work a lot and is out there right now checking out places for us. He and I sort of have different ideas on what we like (he likes shiny and new areas ... I like older ones) so this is going to be tough but I keep telling myself this is temporary housing. He has found one place that he has pretty much sold me on, even if it wasn't exactly what we had in mind. The mailing address is Golden but on the map it looks more like Denver. I wasn't happy until I realized that it is just five short miles to old Golden from there and i can handle it. He said there are great places to walk the mutt ... up into the hills and that he saw a mountain biker zoom by on a bike trail. I asked if said trail was paved or dirt and he said "dirt ... about a foot wide." = singletrack. I'm sold. Tomorrow he's gonna head up to Boulder and look around a bit. We'll see.

I'm overwhelmed by how much work there is to do between then and now. It'll get done tho. And being so busy is making the time FLY by. Two and a half weeks. Two and a half weeks and we will be Colorado residents. Can't WAIT!

I know one thing! Maddie is all ready to go!

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I know some of you are waiting very anxiously for a race report from last weekend's mountain bike race (!!!) but you are just going to have to sit tight a little while longer. Long story short: it was tough, it was hot, it was FUN. I'm hooked.

After several weeks of waiting I found out today that currentplaceofemployment is not going to have a position for me, at least not anytime in the near future. No funding means no job which means I am back to square one. At first I was absolutely devestated. This was the dream job and I had pretty much relied on the fact that it was going to happen back when I was making decisions about where to take the bar. My panic quickly dissipated when I realized that its not too late to take the bar in Colorado. I have until the end of the month to get my application in, which is plenty of time. So we're back to plan B.

What is SO exciting about that is that it means we could be in Colorado by the end of the month! What is SO scary about that is that it means we could be in Colorado by the end of the month?! There is a LOT to get done if we are going to move in three or four weeks ... oh, and I have finals coming up. Yikes.

So the job search has begun anew. I am broadening the scope of the kinds of gigs I am looking for. I would still LOVE to do environmental law but I'm open to all kinds of public interest type stuff. I just sent off an application for a position with the Public Defender's office in Denver - which is something that has interested me for a while now. Unfortunately pretty much all of my experiences and coursework and whatnot are in enviromental law, so I'm not sure how marketable I am, but its worth a try.

I REALLY need to buckle down and start studying for my final on Saturday but ALL I can think about is these recent developments and how very very different our lives could look in a very short time. Its exciting. And terrifying. And very very exhausting.

Stay tuned.