Denver

It seems we come to Denver relatively often -- we were here two years ago when we bit off a smaller bite in miles and this was our furthest western point.  Now it is a place to stop and be pampered on the return trip.  We have two homes here and over the years we have provided many occasions for Jon's sister Dena to visit with my brother Charles, so we all do things together often.

We spent Sunday night at Charles and Lee Lee's house, lounging on the couches with their very friendly and smelly dogs, and getting caught up.

Lee Lee is thinking of leaving her job of 14 years (as a drama teacher with a huge work load) and looking for a new position -- she is giddy with excitement at the thought of escaping that environment and finding something that allows her more time for writing and creating. Charles' job continues to take him away from home to exotic places (soon he heads to the Philippines and Chile and I forget where else).

We all spent Monday morning getting caught up with work.  Conference calls from various couches, multiple computers open on the dining table, fingers tapping away.  Dena came over in the late morning and we got organized to go outside where it was sunny and gorgeous and almost hot (could it have been 60 degrees?).

In all our visits here, we have never actually spent any time downtown, so we piled into the Newcomb tank and headed for the big city, maybe 10 minutes away.  Took us much longer to park than to get there.  We had lunch at a fancy restaurant, The Kitchen, where Lee Lee had a gift certificate from one of her students.  We tried out the turnip ganoush (at my insistence) because it sounded so interesting. I liked it but it still tasted like turnips.  

We wandered around in the newly renovated Union Station -- Charles describes it as a combination Starbucks and Tattered Cover.  The building is beautifully restored with all its Victorian trim, huge light fixtures suspended from a curved ceiling maybe 30 feet above.  The whole space is full of cozily arranged couches and chairs and library tables.  All around the outside edges are places to get expensive food and drinks.  The room was full of people working and reading.  Any city would love to have that space.  We asked so many questions about it that Charles went up to the ticket counter and got all the answers (who paid for this, how many trains come through here a day, what happened to the model trains...).  Then while Charles had another conference call the rest of us walked up to Coors Field to look at a sculpture of a lot of clever interpretations of "ball" -- spitball, Lucille Ball, rubber ball, snowball ...

And a bear trying to look into the Denver Convention Center.

Then to the Tattered Cover, another Denver institution that we absolutely covet. It is a huge and wonderful old book store with floors and floors of books and spaces to sit.  We ran into Ken Snyder, Jim's brother who lives in the same neighborhood as Charles.  That was fun.

The rest of the day was for lounging around some more. We all had dinner at Dena's house.

Jon and I hung out with Dena and Jacob and spent the night.  Jacob is home from school for winter break, and probably finds it amazingly easy to return to old patterns even if he has been away for four months in New York.  Late nights, friends, he even has his old job back, delivering pizzas.  

On Tuesday we all took a trip down to Castle Rock (well, first we helped move some heavy furniture out of the house that Neil came to retrieve; no one got hurt and the furniture did not get damaged -- success) to see "the ranch" where Neil has lived for the last five years or so.  I didn't realize that Neil is happily retired already, but he didn't love his job enough to extend it beyond the minimum.  He has moved to 80 acres of scrubby, arid hills and some wide open grazing areas, a couple of horses, a barn with woodshop, a lovely house that continually benefits from his steady effort (he builds beautiful furniture, improves existing structures, does projects alone that would be easier with another pair of hands). We didn't get to meet Lauri who still has a real job, but maybe on the next trip we will.  The two dogs who used to live in Denver with Dena now live at the ranch with two other happy dogs: it is dog heaven out there.  Jon and Neil gathered up some materials for a small gate-repair project that Dena and Jacob scarcely notice, but we noticed it right away when we pinched our fingers the first time we arrived here yesterday. Anyway, it was fun to get caught up and to see how well Dena and Neil and Jacob all get along, so easily.