meet Oliver!

Puppy time! After months of wanting to adopt a dog I finally have, and I am so pleased with my little Oliver! I thought I wanted a boxer. I looked at pictures of boxers, read all about them, and even went to see them at the shelter. I thought I wanted a girl too. So what do I end up with? A rowdy little boy who they think is a shephard/heeler mix (although I think they throw "heeler" into just about every dog description around here for some reason.) Everything just kind of lined up, and after working the night shift I stayed up and had breakfast with JP and dragged him to the pet store where they were having puppy adoptions from A Puppy's Voice shelter. We were the second ones in the store, and we both fixed our eyes on Oliver. I picked him up and he nuzzled his little head under my chin and I was of course instantly sold. One of my initial worries about finding a dog was how I would know which one was my one, but it was obvious right from the start. I mean, look at him! How could I resist?!


Now this might come as no surprise to some of you, but I am totally going to be one of those dog owners. When I have kids it will probably be even worse...just warning you! Remember all those kids I have nannied? You probably do, in fact you probably remember little stories that I told you about them that have really nothing to do with your own life because I LOVED to brag about them. My poor boyfriend got to hear about every little squeak, cry and laugh that A. uttered last fall whether he wanted to know about them or not. This is why I know I will be one of those dog owners who talk about their puppy like it hung the moon. I dote. I dote a lot. Remember how I doted on Pigeon? I think this will be even worse. So there is your warning. I am sure I will post too many pictures of Oliver, and write on here to tell you about some inane little thing he did that I thought was so charming but is really just normal puppy behavior, so bear with me! Can you really blame me though? He really is the cutest, smartest little pup that was ever born ever. Lucky me!

..and then I went to Portland too!

As already mentioned, I did in fact get stranded on the East coast, but a quick thinking sister brainstorm got us on a bus to Maine by 2:00 that afternoon before it had even begun snowing. We thought a few steps further ahead when we went to a little deli on the outskirts of Chinatown and bought a wedge of gruyere cheese (mmm my favorite!), and shortie bottles of wine to bring on the bus to go along with the crackers that Erica thoughtfully sent with us. It was a tasty, decidedly unclassy kind of bus picnic.

The ride wasn't bad, and when we got to p-town around 9:00 Joe picked us up and we went straight to whole foods to get taco making supplies. Mmmm again. It was so nice to get in before the crazy blizzard that we woke up to the next morning! No planes were moving out for a few days for sure so we made the most of it and made enchiladas, desserts, ate goat cheese and of course made a Walsh staple: Arepas. Once the snow stopped falling I even made it to the University of New England to get more information about their PA program and to check out the campus, which is quite lovely with its New England charm. It was a little stressful to be away from home for so long right before the semester started, but if I had to be snowed in it was a great place to be stuck!

A snowy trek to the store to get baking supplies.

Famous Walsh rubber faces!

Sibling time!

I've got a problem

Well folks, as so often happens in my life I am going to document something I am not proud of in hopes that it will soon become something that I can take pride in..like when I was trying to exercise more. Good news in that department is that I actually do exercise now, in fact I workout 5-6 times a week and am finally starting to feel great again! Woot endorphins! But, in all seriousness I do have another problem, one that my brilliant plant-loving/plant-information-knowing friends Nora and Rudy are helping me solve as we speak. Remember my dear baby tree that I loved so much? (pictured in this post) Well, it died a slow dehydrated death while I was gone this summer. Not that I, ahem, blame anyone, ahem...But the fact of the matter is that when I returned to Denver it was brittle-y pile of needles that needed only slight encouragement before it became a naked brittle pile of branches on the floor. Sad day to be sure. Fast forward to Christmas this year when we found a larger version of the norfolk island pine at the grocery store being sold as a Christmas tree! Well we bought it right up and took it home. It was brilliant because it was a good size for our house and it could be decorated first and then loved forever more. Until it wasn't. While we were in MN we had a weird cold snap in Denver, and the heat went off in our house leaving it at a cold, cold, tree-killing 30 degrees. The tree was looking pretty crappy at that point, but I had high hopes. I have been tending to it, brought it into the kitchen to give it more light and have been checking the soil daily. Unfortunately, this brings me to mistake number...2? let's call it 2. The tree was in a pot obviously, but there was gold foil paper stuff around the pot. Probably to make it festive. Festively killing it. I didn't think about taking it off for some reason, probably because I am good at making plants dead, but the plant was steadily getting worse and worse. Its branches are curling in towards itself and it is really dry but still green! It was 45 degrees yesterday so I brought it outside to sit in the direct sun for a little while and took off the gold foil stuff. Lo and behold anyone reading this would probably have told me to take it off as soon as I got home and realized the plant wasn't doing well, BUT I didn't do that until about ten minutes ago. At which point there was a puddle of standing water that the plant hadn't drank that was just sitting around the bottom of the plant probably killing it. So, what can I do!? Nora set to work immediately researching on some special school database thing she has access too and gave me tons of advice on how to make my little tree vibrant again. I am going to follow her advice, and hopefully with all of those instructions and all of my attentive love and support, it will once again be alive. Here are the pictures of my sad drowning tree:




Doesn't it looks so sad! Now I am going out to my backyard to get some rocks to set on a plate so the excess water can drain out of the pot instead of sitting at the bottom. Hopefully my tree will bounce back really soon!

P2SF reunion '011

Oh yes, in case you were wondering, vacations are still amazing in my book. This one was extended a bit because of a crazy blizzard that hit the East coast the day I was supposed to leave, but for me that just meant an impromptu trip to Portland, ME to hang with my brother and sister for a few days while we waited out the storm! In any case, that portion of the trip is going to be part 2 since I have to return to work tonight (in an hour) and I wanted to get the first portion up for you all to see! For some reason there wasn't much photo documentation that went on, probably because it was too cold to take off your mittens to get the picture, and because it was such a chaotic quick trip for most of the visitors! In any case we had a blast being back together again! The majority of us stayed in Erica's apartment (I think there were 20 staying there!), where lined up thermarests took over any available floor space, it was nice to be cozy, squished in together again! We got out to see some NY staples like the Rockefeller Center, (where we missed seeing the tree by less than a few hours!) and Central Park. We ate yummy food both at restaurants and at Zach's apartment where the NYC'ers made us amazing GF chili that was gone pretty quick! Mostly we just hung out together and reminisced about our crazy summer. It was pretty perfect.

A really awkwardly spaced picture of some of us while watching the zambonie in Central Park.


Melon and I. We were seriously mistaken for twins TWICE while I was there.

Erica, Kristie and I after stuffing our faces with chili!

home for the holidays

Oh vacation was amazing! I bunched all my shifts at the hospital in a clump both before and after the holiday so that I could have the most amount of time home possible, but that led me to work five shifts in six days with no energy left for blogging. I just, just finished my last shift for the week, and am going back on vacation tomorrow! Life without school is a pretty good thing I think. But if I have to have a life with school, at least it doesn't have to start until the 18th of January and from where I am sitting that's still a pretty good distance from today. Joy! In any case, now that I have re-introduced myself as a scattered brain, I have some pictures from Christmas to show you all! We had such a great (although it's always too short isn't it?) time together in Duluth. Christmas day started out a bit rough with me coming off a night shift and then staying up until our flight which was supposed to be at 2:00 but was broken, delayed, waitlisted and then delayed again until around 9:00. At which point, after nabbing a coma-esque nap on the airport floor for a whole 30 minutes, I was basically a ridiculous tear-stained mess of an Elise. We got to Chicago and the airline booked us a room at a Hilton that was attached to the airport. We decided against having a drink at the hotel bar when the menu listed a coors light at a whooping $12. Seriously. BUT we had a great room with a bed, which was all we needed:


Although we missed having Christmas with my family, they waited to start the celebrating, eating and tree decorating and dad even claimed that they wouldn't have any fun at all until we got there. Although there was tell of Micah giving the family an impromptu solo on the panda flute, but I suppose they couldn't abstain from all fun things! In any case, we eventually made it, and were probably in better moods (heh, at least I was) for having gotten a full ten hours of sleep before arriving. Everything went by so quickly, but we made the most of the snow and got out for sledding, and JP skated for the first time even holding his own in a hockey game in which two of his opponents were Joe and Emily who are pretty fierce competitors especially when they are charging at you full speed on skates while you teeter and try not to fall... It was great fun. Here are a few pictures from the trip:






Now it's off to NYC for a Bike & Build P2SF reunion extravaganza!

but first, about my birthday

To celebrate my birthday I slept all day and then went to the hospital for a twelve hour shift. Fortunately I am dating a very sweet, well-intentioned boy who wasn't going to let my 26th year on this earth go by so unnoticed. My parents arranged for a gluten free cake with my name on it (literally) to be made at a bakery here in Denver. JP picked it up and brought it to the hospital to celebrate the day, complete with candles. Yes, he brought candles, because what is a birthday cake without candles? Unfortunately, and he was pretty excited about this part, he seized this first opportunity in his life to buy trick candles that relight and relight and relight. When they relight they also emit a lot of smoke. The sweet gesture ended in a panicked frenzy of magazine waving, door opening, and squashing candles between wet fingers in an effort to avoid setting off the fire alarm in the hospital at midnight. Luckily we did not in fact set off the alarm, but more than one person commented on how it smelled like something was burning and we quickly redirected their fear by shoving (delicious) cake in their faces.

All in all, it was a great birthday.

i'm not convinced that it's december

I feel like I have put myself back together again, just like humpty dumpty, and I didn't even know I had fallen apart! After this summer the "Elise that loves to bike" died slightly and the "Elise that loves any form of transportation that doesn't involve exercise" came to be. It was a good few months being that Elise, and as you know the whole no transportation as exercise also evolved into just no exercise period. BUT, that has all changed. The feeble attempt to shame myself back to the gym actually worked, that and not really fitting comfortably into my clothes anymore helped too! I've been dutifully going to the gym and doing pilates at home, but today was SIXTY-TWO DEGREES and while we were driving around finishing up our christmas shopping I saw so many people in their attractive spandex and I just could not resist the temptation to jump right back into my own outfit that is a constant hug. And seriously I haven't been on a "real" ride since crossing the Golden Gate bridge back in August. It was so, so great. I am finally re-embracing the bike and I can not tell you how much I missed it and didn't even know it! I dug out my gear and pumped up my tires with the stupid little hard to actually fill my tires with pump. I tucked a clif bar into my jersey pocket, a water bottle in my holster and didn't even glance twice at the camelbak in the front closet. Another joy of riding now is that I don't have to carry squat on my back. NADA. That one factor makes such a huge difference. I took streets for about 5 miles until I hit my old training path and turned on towards the reservoir. It was so weird being back on the old bike path, I knew it so well from riding all spring on it and remembered places I stopped to picnic and how excited I was with San Francisco in my minds eye. I think back then it was a kind of unbelievable thing that I was training for, and to be honest the routes I trained on are pretty laughable when I compare them to the Appalachians and the Rockies, and Nevada... but you know what? It was the perfect route for today and a great one for me to get back on the (literal) saddle. Speaking of saddles, can someone please explain to me why I didn't invest in a decent saddle?! Ever at all during the trip?! I know I had my excuses and I know people thought I was crazy and should have spared no expense for the limited padding my bum would be perched upon, but I was nervous to get one because of the expense and the fact that they are so different on different people. I wasn't confident that I would pick the right one and as a result I just resorted to tilting the stock seat at an absolutely ridiculous angle and literally perch perching on the rear seam of the seat in order to assure that the least amount of contact between my rear and the seat could be achieved. Incidentally I kept it that way during a recent ride to school and for the next two days could feel my bones ever single time I sat down. In any case, the reason for all this explanation and rumination is because I recently came across this beauty for only $2.99 at Goodwill:

Handmade in Italy, this saddle usually costs over $100! It was pretty much a steal, but for some reason (probably similar to the reasons that I didn't ever buy a saddle the whole 4,200 miles across the US) after I bought it almost two months ago I didn't put it on my bike until today! Luckily I did because it is worlds more comfortable than my old saddle. WORLDS I say. But(t) in addition to my now comfortable derriere, my body felt pretty good too. It was just a perfect ride, I stopped when I wanted to take pictures because I didn't have to worry about cramming in some training miles, and even chatted with a guy about routes around Denver while dodging wayward pedestrians and their un-leashed dogs. Pretty fun, and picturesque, especially when you consider that it's the last week of December and it looks like this:

In addition to finding a new trail that runs really close to our house, I found our old, dear friend Dry Creek (pictured above, and no that's not the actual name). I don't know if I ever mentioned that old, dear friend, but Dry Creek was a constant companion on the trip this summer. I think we found a version of it in almost every state, some of them were even literally named Dry Creek, so I had to include this picture for Robby. Now I have to go to work, and in just a few more days it will be my birthday and a few days after that I will be home! I can't wait! I have some posts lined up from the crafting I have been doing for presents, but I can't post them until after Christmas. I've been busy though and am particularly proud of one project that I sewed with only a pattern that I made in my head with a few tips for attaching the final piece found on the internet. Hope you are enjoying the season, and getting more snow than us!