Colorado Adventure Day 3

Day 3 - Colorado Springs

We stopped at the Garden of the Gods Visitor Center first. Off to the right you could see wildfire damage (far to the right of this photo).

We parked and walked the Scotman's Trail until it intersected the Garden Trail.

We walked up to the rocks and climbed on the ones visitors could climb on. The kids loved that.

All the pictures of Garden of the Gods are so neat, it's difficult to pick which ones to post.

Next stop, after lunch, was the Cliff Dwellings in Manitou. The kids liked exploring, especially the four little rooms at the end that you can to access by ladders.

After that the next stop right after the cliff dwellings on the highway is Cave of the Winds. On the GPS the switchbacks seemed to overlap.

This was my first visit inside the caves. The tours got backed up, so we were stuck in one little tunnel waiting our turn for 20 minutes! That wasn't fun for me. And the 45 minute tour took us an hour and 10 minutes.

This is looking into Williams Canyon from the visitor center at Cave of the Winds.

Sock monkey and I stayed on the ground and watched the others do the Wind Walker. It was too high up for us!

Colorado Adventure Day 2

Day 2 - Boulder, CO

On the second day of our trip we drove about an hour Northwest to Boulder, CO. We let the kids sleep in after the late-night concert and got a late start, so by the time we got to town it was time for lunch. I did a quick google search on best places to eat in Boulder and found KT's Real Good BBQ listed as the winner for BBQ for best places to eat in Boulder. We plugged that into the GPS and made our way there.

Delicious! I had the Pig Pile, which was more than I could eat. The baked beans were spicy but delicious. The red skinned mashers were fantastic!

From there we drove to Celestial Seasonings to do the factory tour.

I had looked online and it sounded like tours started every hour, so we were going to kill time until the 1 p.m. tour. I'm glad we walked inside to check it out, because there was a 12:30 tour we got in. They give you a teabag packet as your "ticket."

The hairnets are very fashionable!

You can't take photos on the tour because it's in the actual working factory. All Celestial Seasonings tea is made right here. It was a really nice tour. I survived the Mint Room! (They open the metal doors and let you stand in the room where they keep the mint. The smell is strong. VERY STRONG! They can't even keep the doors open because the smell would permeate all their teas.)

They have a tasting room where you can sample teas before and after the tour (and it seemed like you could come in and sample without doing the tour).

They let you try EVERY one of their 70 tea blends. They say, "We're open until 6 if you want to try them all!"

Around the room is framed art from all the teas. I liked this one, which is also on a large poster on a wall in the factory - Tension Tamer. Looking at the art was cool.

After the tea we drove to see NCAR - the National Center for Atmospheric Research. I especially wanted to see the building itself.

Inside there are displays on weather, which the kids enjoyed viewing and touching (most are interactive). It's not big, but we were there just under two hours. We also walked around the building.

Photos inside of I.M. Pei, the architect, diagrams of the building and a large model of it before construction.

The building itself is really neat.

The views from the building are fantastic!

After NCAR we drove back toward Bouder and stopped at the trail along the river. We didn't hike today, but we walked the path a little and stopped here, where we could put our feet in. The water is very cold!

We had a little difficulty finding Boulder Falls. Luckily I found a site that listed the GPS coordinates for it. It turned out we just hadn't driven far enough. You can't really climb near the falls, but you can walk up fairly close to see it.

Dinner was at Chipotle in town. It was our first time eating at one. It was ok. The portions were large. I think I prefer Qudoba better.

Then we walked around Pearl Street for about an hour. There are lots of shops to see, and it was crowded. Everyone seemed friendly. They have a lot of street performers.

Day Two was busy!

Colorado Adventure Day 1

On the first day of our Colorado Adventure, we visited Four Mile Historic Park. It was a nice way to spend an hour, and admission was very reasonable ($5 adult; $3 kids). They used the map to walk around and see the points of interest. It's basically a loop you walk around, so you couldn't miss anything.

There were no costumed interpreters working, which would have made it more interesting. But we were there on a Thursday afternoon, so maybe they have volunteers working on weekends.

The kids liked seeing the horses, carriages and old covered wagons. The youngest called the windmill "and old-fashioned satellite." LOL

They liked the little one-room school, which was in a larger building called the "Bee Building," so I'm not sure if it was a school or they just wanted to display one.

At night we had tickets to see Counting Crows at Red Rocks Amphitheatre. That was a lot of fun, sitting high up in the mountain looking out over the valley. The kids didn't mind climbing the 129 steps to the top. I noticed the lack of oxygen.

It got cooler after dark and windy. Luckily the rain passed us by, but we could see clouds and lightening far off in the valley.

Day one was a success!

Web Sites for Writers, circa 1999

It was 6:30 p.m. on a Thursday, and after a long day at work I ran to the King of Prussia Mall . It was still warm from the 72 degree temperatures from that afternoon. I stopped in at one of my favorite stores, Gene's Books, the largest and best bookstore before large chain bookstores were created.


I scanned the magazine racks and bought a special issue of Writer's Digest called "Writing for the Web."

I don't actually remember any of this, but I recently found the magazine in the attic with the Gene's Books receipt inside. Scanning the magazine, an article titled "101 Best Web Sites for Writers" caught my eye.

The listing starts with search engines. Guess what the first recommended listing is? Nope, google wasn't around yet. It's Search. Yeah, that's the one I use every day. Others listed: AltaVista (later bought by Yahoo!), Dogpile, Ask Jeeves (now just Ask), DejaNews (which became Deja and eventually sold to google).

Yahoo! was listed, but under "other."

For dictionaries, two are listed: Oxford English Dictionary's word of the day (the dictionary is by subscription but there's an RSS feed for the Word of the Day) and Bucknell's Web of Online Dictionaries. I was surprised Merriam-Webster wasn't listed; I remember it being online in 1998 and wikipedia says it was online in 1996.

And speaking of Wikipedia, it's not listed. The listing recommends Encyberpedia. And forget Google Maps, it lists Mapquest.

There are some good resources listed, but now you could reduce seven pages of content to one line, "If you need information, google it."

The intro to the article by Bill Brohaugh said it best, "Constant change is a daunting aspect of the web (not only so much information, but so much more tomorrow), but that very change is also one of the Web's most exciting advantages."

'Twas the Night Before Leap Day

Twas the night before Leap Day and all through the house

Animals were still stirring but hopefully no mouse.

Two of three children were nestled all snug in their beds

While the third watched The River and people scared out of their heads.

Husband on the computer; dog on my lap,

Reviewing this week's schedule makes me want a nap.

Read Across America: a favorite shirt, stuffed animal, hat,

a book, wear green, and book swap. Thank you, Cat in the Hat.

When what to my wondering eyes should appear,

An extra day on the calender, must be leap year.

24 hours or 1440 minutes, take your pick,

but those 86,400 seconds will go by quick.

What to do with an extra day? Maybe play a game?

Watch a movie or something on TV (too lame?)

But what a great holiday! Nothing to buy!

No decorations or cards or white bearded guy.

No candy to give or cake to bake.

No parties to go to or gifts to take.

It doesn't matter your religion, race or region

And it's not even tied to any season.

So take it easy and relax or live it up and have a ball

Because February 29^th is just an extra day - for all!

I think I'll just enjoy this day that four years brings,

And not worry how to fill it with many little things.

So I whisper to the kids as I turned out their light,

“Happy Leap Day to all, and to all a Good Night!”

5th grade spelling words

So, this week's spelling words in 5th grade were all about "able" or "ible." When we did the mandatory homework practice last night, my son had all but one correct. He asked, "How am I supposed to know when it's able or ible?"

First, I told him there's no way to know other than to practice and memorize them, and when you get older you just know because it will "look wrong" if it's wrong.

Then, I decided maybe there was a grammar rule I wasn't aware of that might help. There is!

I found a rule online that says if you remove the "able" what you're left with is a complete word, but if you remove the "ible" what you're left with isn't a word.

Of course, there are exceptions, like with any grammar rule for English. But, it's something to keep in mind - especially for a 5th grade spelling test.

Book Review: The Expats by Chris Pavone

I just finished "The Expats" by Chris Pavone, and it was the best spy thriller I've read in a while.

I don't usually read the reviews or forward at the front of a book, but since I had never heard of Pavone, this time I did. I regretted it. In his intro letter, the editor of Crown Publishing Group compares Pavone to John Le Carre. Ugh. Honestly, I've picked up "Tinker, Tailor, Soldier, Spy" not less than three times in recent years and tried to read it, and each time I set it aside before finishing the first chapter. But, I decided to give "The Expats" a try.

The premise of the story is that there's a woman, Kate, who is married with two kids. She lives in D.C., and she's a spy. Or, she was. And she was good, but then she did something (you have to read to find out what) and she's no longer in the field.

Then her husband decides they're going to pack up and move to Luxembourg, so she quits her job. Her husband is a super geek who's really smart at computer stuff, but not smart enough to realize his wife was a spy.

Then in Luxembourg Kate settles in to the stay-at-home mom routine, which is portrayed as mind-numbingly dull for someone in a foreign country who knows no one and whose husband works all the time. But Kate wants to be "normal." I'm not sure if SAHMs reading this would be insulted at the portrail of their lives, or if they'd embrace the Kate character because her fictional backstory is something they dream of.

The action happens in Luxembourg as Kate learns her husband has secrets of her own, but an unreasonable period goes by while Kate, who feels so guilty for keeping the fact that she was a spy secret from her husband, refuses to check into her husband's business.

First, why I liked the book:
It was easy to read. Since I never got through a Le Carre book, I can't compare how the characters or plot is developed, but the writing was much easier to read and easy to follow.

The characters are interesting. I liked that the number of characters was kept to the bare minimum, and they were each developed well.

Pavone uses foreshadowing and cliffhangers to make you want to keep reading. That's good; it keeps the action moving and you want to find out what happens. The part of the book that some people may find annoying is that there are two timelines that run through the novel. There's the main story that starts from when Kate is quitting her job and they're leaving D.C. Then there's present-day storyline that you know will take you to the end because it's marked "today" with the time of day.

The other thing I liked was that the book had a clear ending and most of the loose ends in the plot were resolved.

There are a few things I didn't like about the book. One was that there was an ongoing sense of danger, but it felt imagined. Even once the "bad guys" are revealed, when it seemed to me that there was no physical danger, Kate is still worried about physical danger. It felt contrived.

And, as with any spy book, you imagine that things don't really operate like they do in the book. I think this is especially true for the reason Kate left the field.

Overall, "The Expats" is a fun, quick-to-read spy book with French phrases and facts about Luxembourg thrown in.