Kevin's musings

Just a few more days left on my bebox auction. Only one bid so far. It’s a great deal on computer
history. Tell anyone who might be interested:

bebox(es) auction on ebay.

Went out with some folks last night to go Jazz club hopping down in denver. Overall a pretty
nice time. Lots of drinking and conversation. We only managed to hit 3 places:

The first place was El Chapultapec on the corner of 20th and Market. It was small, small, small.
The music was quite good there and everyone seemed to be listening and having a good time.
If we had managed to get there earlier and snag a booth or something I would have been happy
to stay there, but as it was it was standing room only and we decided to mosey after the end
of the set. It’s also worth noting that I really need to get a
Tv-Be-Gone. There was a TV right over the
band that was playing commercials as far as I could tell. It was anoying and distracting.

Next we went over and checked out
Herb’s. The cover there was $5 a person and some of
our party didn’t really want to fork out that early in the evening. We looked around a bit and wandered
on. I didn’t get too much impression of the place, but it’s probibly worth going back to sometime.

Next we ended up at
Trios Enoteca. It was a pretty yuppy,
tendy looking sort of place, but there was lots of room and drinks. The band was sort of backgroundy
and after a while I didn’t notice them much. They were a gypsy jazz band. The drinks varied in
quality: The Lemondrop I had was pretty blah, but the “buttercup” martini was excellent ( vanilla
vodka, butterscotch schnapps and bailys ). We basically hung out there until the place
closed up shop.

To paraphrase M*A*S*H: “I bet I’m boring when I talk about my dogs?” “No, thats the only time you
are interesting.”

I took some pictures of merlin running around the yard like a maniac. It’s pretty hard to get any
kind of non blurry picture of him while he’s running around like that. You just have to throw
the tennis ball once and he runs around with it in his mouth for several minutes. A few of the
pictures turned out kinda nice even though they were blurry, like this one:

Twyla often leaves her tounge sticking out when she’s sleeping or lounging around.

Today I got a picture of her doing it in a particularly amusing manner:

Well, had a very good time today snowshoeing. Got up early and packed up and made it up to
boulder to meet up with the group around 10am. Took a while to get all the things together that
everyone needed and rent the snowshoes, but we were off from boulder around 11:30 or so. We
went up to Brainard Lake. Pretty nice area. Often its crowded, but it wasn’t all that bad today.
It’s interesting to walk in snowshoes. You have to make sure you put down the back of your foot
first or else you catch the front/spikes on the snow and get all messed up. Turning around can
also be a challenge (You don’t want to step on the back of your other snowshoe).

It was a really warm day, probibly in the 50′s up there. The trails were all hard packed down
and it wasn’t too hard to walk on. We did venture off the trails a few times and that was much
harder. Probibly 4-5′ deep or so. Brainard Lake itself was very pretty and frozen over. The road
back was easier to walk on without the snowshoes, since it was so melted on the road.

It was a nice time. I would like to go again sometime just after a storm to get the fresh snow
experence.

Here’s a bunch of pictures from today: sunday snowshoeing trip

As a side note, I was worried about the dogs, they aren’t usually left alone for all day. It was about
9.5 hours I was gone today. I was fearing there would be cleanup needed or something destroyed, but
when I got home everything was just fine. They had no problems at all!

Another day, another netflix. This time another Disney movie:
The Black Cauldron. I have a great fondness
for the
Lloyd Alexander Chronicles of Prydain
books. I even went out and got a new set of them a few years ago when I couldn’t find the ones I
had read many times. They are still a great read. The Disney movie of the first 2 books isn’t nearly as
good as the books, but it’s still fun, and pretty well done. I had a nice time watching it. If you can’t
spare the time to read the books (shame on you), you might still enjoy the movie.

Another netflix down:
Big Fish this time. It had some really good parts,
but for some reason it didn’t grab me. It wasn’t fantastic enough to be magical, and wasn’t
dramatic enough to be touching. Just sort of entertaining way to spend an hour and a half and thats
about it. I would say if you have time to kill this one might be worth watching, otherwise stick
with a movie thats better.

Mouse count as of this afternoon: One dead in the recycle bin, one in one of my mouse traps
and one live (ran away when I went out there). I see that my neighbors have a mouse trap sitting
in their front yard, so I suspect I am not the only one with mouse problems. The dead one in
the recycle bin is a bit of a puzzle. Wonder if someone is poisioning them? Oh well, tomorrow
I am going to work on cleaning out the table and last corner of the garage and that should hopefully
finish evicting them from my garage.

I realized recently that I have been woefully neglecting my netflix movies.
I had one that I hadn’t watched in 4 months, one in 3, one in 2. I’ve resolved to do better and get
my moneys worth from netflix. To that end, some movie reviews:

Anastasia was quite possibly the worst
anamated disney movie I have every seen. I really didn’t care about any of the main characters.
The villan was really lame. The russian history co-opting was lame. The animation was lame.
One to miss. There is no reason to see this one.

Russian Ark was one of those movies I was
glad I had seen. It’s a 90 minute continous take done in the russian history museum in St Petersburg.
It was dull and boring in parts, and very pretty in other parts. The dancing at the end was great.
It does make me want to someday go to the museum. You should see this if you are feeling artsy
or like russian art.

Veronica Guerin was pretty well done. I realize
it was based on a true story, but it was pretty predictable seeming. It’s hard to say what it had to say
more than any other of the 10million movies that talked about the drug trade. It did have some
very brief greyhound racing tho. I guess I would reccomend this if you are in the mood for a
irish drug lord movie.

Well, about 75-80% done with cleaning up the garage. Yesterday I surprised the mouse. He leaped off
a shelf and into a pile of boxes. Didn’t see him at all today however. I probibly flattened about 50 boxes.
I tend to just toss boxes in there when I get something and they really pile up. I also found out
why the mouse(es) are there. There was a 40lb bag of “fit-n-trim” dogfood in there that I probibly
got with some foster dog and forgot about. The mice had burrowed a nice hole in the bottom and were
enjoying nearly limitless dog food goodness. I put all that in the trash along with a ton of other junk.
There was probibly all total about 3-4 cu ft of rat droppings. I swept up the bulk of that for the trash.
Hopefully that will help the smell there. The mice had also found and old dog toy and made a nest in it.
That got tossed. Next weekend I will try and finish up the job. There is a big table that needs all the junk
on it cleaned up, and some more boxes to nuke.

Off to eco-cycle with a truck load of boxes.