Advanced Beginner

OK, it's been a few weeks since I posted. On Halloween I went to a games night in Lafayette. The people there are more into games to me, to put it mildly. I think a bunch of them may be interesting folks, but I don't think I have enough enthusiasm for board games to go back. We'll see. I had breakfast at the new Snooze Restaurant in Boulder with Uncle Eddie, Elise, and Brenda. They have a pretty fierce pancake menu including a "sampler plate" kind of thing that is awesome. The Afronauts played at The Dickens Opera house in Longmont on November 5th and it was a fun show. It's great to play that room because they actually have proper theater wings and a green room. It's a big room with good sound and lighting. Tomorrow night Turtle Dove Rock will be there for our guitarist Matt's birthday jam, which should be fun.

Last Thursday my friend A.J. from the CHAOS hiking group led a short full moon pot luck hike out to the rock quarry above Chautauqua. I had a major Jonesing for some outdoor time, so it was just what I needed. CHAOS events can be quirky. This time there was some guy there who lives in the area but does not hike regularly. He had a cotton sweatshirt on with no jacket and new doc marten style boots that didn't fit and caused him to slip on the ice a bunch. He brightly suggested they add handrails on an exposed section. You don't hike much, I guess? I asked.

Last Friday I ate at Boulder Cork with Brenda and two of her friends. We had the "First Bite Boulder" prix fixe menu, which was way too much food, but still fun. Tonight we're hitting Empire Lounge in Louisville.

This past Monday I went to House of Genius "Neighborhood" at the Microsoft Bing office downtown. Sadly, the topics were not things I could help with so it ended up being frustrating and not productive. However, it meant I didn't embark on my return bike commute until after 9pm. It was pleasant riding with very few other people on the path and cars on the road.

The Afronauts played a good show last night with two other great bands: Mono Verde and Atomga Groove Alliance. We'd love to play with them both again. They were all large ensembles with great dancing grooves. The venue was a quirky community space called Unit E Gallery. It was not well marked and the entrance was up a back exterior set of stairs so it had a nice private party type of vibe. We stayed pretty late dancing to Atomga Groove Alliance.

My Aerial Fabric classes are progressing nicely. I've moved up to the "Advanced Beginner" class and am already learning some more involved tricks. I'm really enjoying it and I'm going to both of the weekly open workout sessions, so I'm getting 3 sessions in each week and hopefully what I'm learning and repeating through practice will stick. There's a student performance in February and I might try to have something together by then. I think I have myself a new hobby going pretty strong now.

Commuting by bike occasionally has been interesting. Little by little I'm tweaking my gear to make it incrementally better one step at a time. Friday I aimed to get fenders and a rack at Community Cycles, but ended up with just a rear fender, a front fender that won't fit my bike, and a rack that won't fit my bike. So far I've had two bad experiences there out of two attempts, but I'm not giving up hope yet. I also mounted my mirror in a better place on my helmet and mounted my handlebar headlight on my helmet as well (black electrical tape FTW!). Weather for next week looks good, so we'll see if things are working better.

Work recently has been interesting. I'm learning more Ruby on Rails stuff and the new asset pipeline. I am not very fulfilled with the work we've had to do recently, so I've been trying to do most of my routine (shower, etc) at night so I can get up early and work on personal coding projects for 90 minutes or so each morning. Leaving the house closer to 9am makes the bike commute a lot warmer, as well. That rhythm has been pretty good though so it might be pretty workable for a while.

OK, off to some yumminess at Empire Lounge.