Bouncing Birthday

OK, let's catch up on the last three weeks. I did a little busking on Pearl St with my bari to try to promote our Earthdance Boulder gig. It was fun, but probably had zero impact on ticket sales. I got a request for the Pink Panther Theme and had to pose for a photo with a bunch of CU girls.

Last Friday my friend Piper had a birthday party that started at Serioz Pizza in Denver and continued at Boondocks Fun Center in Glenwood Springs. We had a real blast at Boondocks - 2 kinds of go carts, bowling, laser tag, and arcade games. The go carts in particular were a blast. You really feel like Mario cart as they are so small and so well-encased in metal that you feel indestructible and happily drive in a self-destructive manner to maximize the excitement.

My upstairs guest room is again changing hands. My current tenant stayed six weeks, during which time he stayed almost entirely in Boulder with his girlfriend. I think he spent a total of about six nights here. Pretty much the ideal tenant, but alas, he has sadly decided to officially shack up with his lady. Thus I have secured a new tenant for October 1.

On Monday I watched an Ascendance performance that was one of the TEDx Boulder pre-events. I knew about Ascendance, but had never seen them perform. It was really fun to watch and inspiring. They had some good music selections as well.

Tuesday was the Afronauts rehearsal closest to my birthday, and I baked a banana, cinnamon, chocolate chip cake. It came out pretty tasty, but definitely could be improved for next time. I made another cake Thursday for my official birthday. That one was chocolate/cinnamon with chocolate drizzle topping. That was a lot more ingredients and made me a bit nervous at first. The recipe said to bake at 400F for 20 minutes, so I did and when I went to check it, it was still basically liquid. I had to bake it for more about 4x the recipe time. I added more water to the recipe to account for altitude and decreased the baking soda a bit, but still that was unexpected. Anyway, otherwise it came out really well.

Wednesday was my last day at my job at Sococo. The main reason I left was that I had taken the job wanting to work with the node.js technology, and I wasn't working with it. Prior to starting the theoretical node.js project they intend to build, I had to finish a PHP/backbone.js web app that had been in development for six months and was in the "glide down" before launch (exact phrase quote). After an additional seven months of me working on that, shipping nothing, and not working with node.js, I had to throw in the towel. As a web developer wanting to stay at the edge of emerging technologies, I can't justify spending a year off on a tangent. So after closing my last few bugs, I took my big 27" display and my tiny MacBook Air to FedEx and shipped them back to the Eugene office.

Wednesday night I made the Thai green curry recipe Jasmine showed me since now I own enough green curry paste and fish sauce to make it a dozen or more times. It made 3 meals of yumminess (but it's definitely not part of my slow-carb diet).

Thursday was my first day of "funemployment" since my new job starts October 1. I spent most of the afternoon baking that second chocolate/cinnamon cake. I felt particularly fancy in that I pre-measured out all of my ingredients into little glass bowls so everything was ready to go into the bowl once the batter was started. It was also my official 34th birthday, and that evening a bunch of my friends and I went to JumpStreet in Lakewood, and indoor trampoline park. It was really a blast, and at $10 for a 2-hour session it's pretty darn reasonable. We played on their basketball hoops (which wasn't officially part of the package we paid for but the guy running the show was slack on the rules, at least for the first hour or so), fooled around on the giant trampolines, and played trampoline dodge ball. It was good enough exercise that despite eating two gigantic slices of cake smothered in chocolate drizzle afterward, I weighed the same the next day.

Friday I recorded the Serenade I've been working on during the afternoon. I've been getting some input from Chris and making improvements. I think one more take of the main theme and it will be ready. Friday night I went to see the Aspen Santa Fe Ballet at CU. They did 3 pieces and it was really great. I was on an OKCupid date and we hit The Kitchen Next Door afterward for some chocolate mousse.

Saturday I feverishly packed up music gear all morning and made preparations for the Afronauts Earthdance gig. Then I headed to the Boulder Circus Center for open workout. I had some time to kill afterward so I browsed around Ares Thrift store and found a better-fitting bike helmet. I was looking through the blog archives at this post from my first mountain bike rides in Flagstaff, and I realize I've had the same mostly crappy ill-fitting helmet for over 4 years, so I felt better about buying 2 thrift-store helmets for a total of $14 in order to find one that fit me better. The Earthdance gig was OK. Not as big of a crowd as we were expecting and hoping for, but there was food backstage, we only played a single hour set, and we were done by 7PM, so I'm not expecting a lot of bellyaching at Tuesday's rehearsal.

After the gig Jasmine invited me to dinner at a friend's house. It was a big group meal doing home made pizzas with lots of fresh ingredients. We milled around, me in my liberty spike performance hairdo, and a few folks played some music, which was fun. A grad student named Alex described the work he was doing analyzing Coltrane's Giant Steps solo from a non-harmonic perspective. Afterward Jasmine and I watched Babel, which is a movie I really like with a fantastic sound track.

Today was mostly a recuperation day. I slept late and moped around the house a bit in the morning before eventually getting motivated enough to hit the gym. I did a personal best by doing military presses with 50-lb dumbbells. I can just barely heave them from my thighs to my shoulders, but once I get them there, I can actually press them. I guess the handstand push-ups I have been doing at CATS recently have been paying dividends.

I'm blogging from the under-new-management Good Measure Coffee Shop (formerly Dragonfly), which I was led to believe by my web research is the only coffee shop in town that stays open past 5PM on Sunday. However, like the rest of them, Good Measure also closes at 5PM (despite the paint on the door and yelp indicating close at 6PM), so now I'm out on their patio using their wifi but the staff has long since left.

OK, so that takes care of journaling the last three weeks. Now I can move on to thinking about the future in the next post.