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Another curious and entertaining doorway. I suppose the residents of this little duplex tell visitors to go to the right or the left of the cat.
San Miguel, Cozumel, Mexico.
Quote of the day: “If you want to believe in something like Fate, she’s a capricious character. Sometimes she stand there blocking the doorway you were born to pass through, and sometimes she takes you by the hand and leads you through the minute you poke your nose out. And the stars gaze down and keep their counsel.” — John Avide
Daily gratitudes:
Pussy willow
Pie with my sweetie-pie
Stark white seagulls agains barren fields
Intrigue in the early morning
The first blooms of a dwarf weeping cherry tree
I would have to flip the arrows around on this sign so both were pointing in the same direction – towards me, which is towards the beach.
Holmes Beach, Anna Maria Island, Florida.
Quote of the day: “When you do things from your soul, you feel a river moving in you, a joy.” — Rumi
Daily gratitudes:
That MKL will buy me a rose when I am down
Thai comfort food
Loving energy between two people
Sore muscles from doing squats
That I can leave work at 5:30 and it is still light out
As the end of my birthday week celebration (or at least the first week of my birthday month celebration), MKL and I went to see La Boheme at the Central City Opera on Friday night.
It was magical. Our last opera was The Marriage of Figaro by Opera Colorado in February. If you’ve never seen an opera, I don’t recommend Marriage of Figaro as your first one. I love opera, but haven’t seen one in about 17 years, and “Figaro” was four hours long and tough to follow, which made me wonder why I loved opera in the past. But La Boheme made me remember.
We drove Tristan, MKL’s BMW show car, up to Central City just in time for an appetizer and a glass of champagne at the Teller House as the sun dropped below the mountains. The Teller House fortunately still has an air of age and elegance to it.
Though the Face in the Barroom Floor has faded, as has much of the grandness of this former mining boom town since gambling was introduced back in the early 1990s.
We still had a little time to peek inside some buildings that have not been tainted by slot machines and blackjack tables, including the Williams Stables, which is also the purvey of the Central City Opera, and which holds small pre-performance excerpts of whatever is playing.
And the dagger in that picture? REALLY sharp and totally unattended.
You are notified that it is almost time to head in for the performance by the staff marching up the street singing, by the ringing of handheld bells, and by ten-minute, five-minute announcements, a friendly and gentle reminder to get your buns in gear.
It takes no time to get to your seat, and the interior of the Opera House is intimate, old, and beautiful.
As photos weren’t allowed during the performance, I borrowed this one from the Central City Opera website.
This version of La Boheme was staged in Paris in the 1930s, and sung in Italian. The subtitles on the foot of the stage were very helpful, even though I knew the storyline, and I played with my own memory of two years of college Italian to see if I could catch any words or phrases. I must say, the subtitles were pretty loose with their translation, but it was still easy to follow. The orchestra was seated beneath the stage, and I could just see the tops of their heads from our seats in the fourth row.
At intermission, we retreated to the darkened, romantic, terraced garden for a glass of wine.

Central City Opera House Courtyard image courtesy of http://www.waymarking.com
Every performer had a simply heavenly voice, and we both cried at the end (spoiler alert) when Mimi died.
It was a lovely evening, though it was late as we started home, and we had just reached the turn-off to I-70, when Tristan decided to play out his own death scene. Yep, he died. And no amount of MKL’s roll-up-your-sleeves sensor/relay switching and eventual tire iron thumping made him start. My view was approximately this:
We wound up our evening with a long ride in a cushy (really!) tow truck, learning about life story of Ryan, owner of Father and Son Towing and longtime acquaintance of MKL. It was a little surreal, but totally charming.
A marvelous birthday present…
I’m not a big fan of Halloween, and I never have been. But I surprised myself this year. Somehow or other, I found out about The Shining Ball. And somehow or other, I asked my new beau, MKL, if he’d like to go. And somehow or other, he said he would. So a few weeks ago, I found myself renting a real Halloween costume.

Image of The Ritz courtesy of http://www.metromix.com
I don’t know why I’ve never liked Halloween. I like the concepts that it encompasses – souls, spirits, alter egos, revelry, chocolate. Still, not my favorite holiday. Kelsea has always loved it, so I did the dutiful costuming of myself to accompany her when trick-or-treating. Generally those costumes would consist of nothing more than a neon colored wig. I like neon color wigs.
A couple of years ago, I did fall into possession of a slutty pirate costume, that I still have and like very much. But that was a seriously bizarre Halloween that will never be discussed. It did make me contemplate why 95% of Halloween costumes are slutty. Is that seriously what women’s alter egos are? Slutty cheerleaders, slutty pirates, slutty nurses, slutty vegetables? I really couldn’t say.
What I can say is that Friday afternoon found us making our way to The Ritz in Boulder to pick up my costume, and, after a slightly aborted start, we were off to the lovely little town of Estes Park.
Estes Park is known as the Gateway to Rocky Mountain National Park. Founded in 1859 at an elevation of 7,522 feet, it was long ago a summering area for the Ute and Arapaho Indians. It earned the nickname “The Gutsiest Little Town in Colorado” after it rebuilt itself following the Lawn Lake Flood in 1982, in which an earthenware dam collapsed, flooded the main street and beyond, and killed three campers .

Image courtesy of http://www.estesnet.com
Our destination today was the famous Stanley Hotel. Opened in 1909, this beautiful Georgian architectural style hotel was built by F.O. Stanley, one of the inventors of the Stanley Steamer automobile.
The hotel has housed numerous famous visitors, and most notably, Stephen King, whose stay in Room 217 on a blizzardy night inspired him to write “The Shining”. While the Stanley Kubrick film by the same name was not filmed here, because Kubrick didn’t think that audiences would find such a hotel believable in a location like Colorado (hello? reality check?), it does run on a continuous loop 24/7 on one of the stations on the hotel’s televisions. On the other hand, the mini-series, which was much less violent because it was made for TV, and much more accurate, because Stephen King was involved in the production, was filmed on site. And coincidentally, my boss’ husband appeared on-screen several times in his role as an “extra”.
I have never seen either the movie or the mini-series, nor have I read the book, having sworn off Stephen King some time ago. I have tremendous respect for his writing, but reading it is simply destructive to my psyche. But The Stanley makes the most of the connection, with exhibits pertinent to the novel, and The Shining Ball, a wonderful costume ball and Halloween tradition. Room 217 is also included on the hotel’s Ghost Tour, which we missed out on. But not entirely. More about that in a bit.
The Stanley offers rooms in the original building and the Manor House, built slightly later. Our room was in the original building in a little dormer on the fourth floor, which is the most haunted floor of the hotel.
Dormer rooms are small, but cozy.

Word to the wise (and now head-injured) - the shorter person takes the side of the bed with the low ceiling.
Since it was so late, and cold, and parking spaces were rare, we decided to have a light supper in the Cascade Room, taking the stairs this time, instead of the terrifying cage elevator. I’ve had a deathly fear of cage elevators since I was a child, but I took it when I had to. The staircases though, were too beautiful to resist.
Dinner was expensive but delightful, made all the better by our wonderful server, MaryAnn, who had worked at the hotel for 21 years and told us her own personal ghost stories. She made us promise to come back the next night in costume so she could see us.
We had wasted no time upon arrival in exploring our creepy hallway. Fortunately for me, MKL is rather a sensitive in this area, as I am, so at least he doesn’t think it’s nuts when I pick up on energy or see stuff that would spook most humans. In fact, he often shares the same experience. So it’s quite a pleasure for both of us to have someone who understands.
About halfway down the hallway, I got dizzy. I got queasy. My head ached. And the farther I got towards the end, the thicker the air became, until it felt like walking through goo. And yet everything appeared perfectly normal. Energetically, however, normal it was not. We experimented with the hallway many times, and with other hallways in the hotel. The experience was always the same, hitting at the same place, and it never happened in other hallways. On one of these little escapades, I turned and quickly took a photo, and caught the culprit in orb form.
It vanished in the next instantaneous photo. I know there are plenty of naysayers out there, but I’m a believer in my orb.
The next day was gorgeous. But bitterly, freakishly windy. Painfully windy. Wind that, as MKL put it, was throwing dirt and rocks and branches and small children at us as we tried to make it to the car from breakfast at The Egg and I. It totally deterred us from our planned explorations of town. So we stopped at the excellent combination pharmacy and liquor store to pick up some champagne (who can’t love a store that sells both drugs AND alcohol?) and retreated back to the hotel, picking up some sandwiches for late night post-party consumption.
Our room was, as I said, on the haunted fourth floor. The hotel runs ghost tours from around 10:00 am until 10:00 pm, taking small herds of visitors (who, by the by, sound like baby elephants tromping around the old creaky floors) to the spookiest places in the hotel. Room 401, which housed the infamous Lord Dunmore, who remains a mischievous ghost, was just down the hall next to the elevator. Room 428, home of the kissing cowboy ghost, was next door to us. Room 418, supposedly one of the most haunted rooms, where ghost children take candy if it’s left out on the dresser, was down the hall. Room 406 , where we started getting the most creepy vibes wasn’t specifically mentioned on the tour, but in the hallway itself numerous ghost children run up and down it at all hours, playing ball, and flushing toilets in rooms repeatedly. Including ours. Yes, that toilet started flushing itself on our second night, periodically, refusing to stop.
So, all of this knowledge we gleaned from listening to the ghost tour outside of our door. We also ran into a crowd outside Room 217, where Mr. King found his muse, and outside of Room 237, where Elizabeth, a former chambermaid, “looks after” guests. Elizabeth is very benevolent, and MaryAnn told us that when she first started, she could feel Elizabeth looking after her, leaving lights on and such. It was rather awkward, though, when guests in these rooms would open their door when a tour was stopped in front of it. And slightly startling to find people taking pictures of your room door.
The time came for us to get dressed up and head down to the ball. The Shining Ball. In full costume with about three hundred other people in the haunted MacGregor Ballroom. We felt like such royalty going down the beautiful staircase.
We came as the Phantom of the Opera and Christine. While I don’t yet have any photos of the two of us together, we were told by many people that we were a gorgeous couple.
We are waiting for our new friend Natalie to send us some of the photos she took of us. I didn’t like the only two I have – I felt like they made me look big as the hotel. Natalie looked stunning as the Black Swan.
Her adorable mother Mary came as a slutty gypsy. We ran into these two right in our hallway when we first checked in, again at breakfast and later, they saved us some seats at the Ball. I loved watching these two. I hope that when Kelsea is Natalie’s age, she and I have a similar relationship. In fact, I look forward to it.
And so we had cocktails, we danced and danced, we went outside to cool off in the chill mountain air, and we people watched. There were some amazing costumes. I’ll share a few here:
We had a marvelous time. There were lots of people dancing on their own, which is great, although sometimes it got a little creepy because of the costume. There was a jester always at our elbow, checking out MKL. There was the incredible hulk who kept sort of thrusting himself into all partners. There was the red toga lady who was really getting into grinding on me from behind while MKL and I were trying to dance, until her husband (Nero) called her off (literally). And there were a phenomenal amount of exceptionally tall people there. Really. Close to seven feet tall. Weird. And lots of my photos of partygoers also contained orbs, so the ghosts enjoyed the festivities too.
Stopping for a final martini in the bar before bed, we watched a very tall guy dressed as a cowboy trying to decide if he wanted to accept the attentions of either of the guys who were hitting on him. He looked pretty drunk and pretty confused. We wished him well, and turned in at almost two. I haven’t stayed out that long in years. I felt like a princess. It was so cool.
We got a slightly late checkout, had a wonderful breakfast at the Mountain Home Cafe, and talked about what we might be if we go next year. It would be a lovely tradition.
Kelsea and I are on what is the first of several road trips for the summer this weekend. We’re up at Cripple Creek for Donkey Derby Days, which I’m looking forward to writing about.
I love her. She’s so awesome. It was almost as if we started out being a little quiet and awkward on the ride up, but then we started talking about music – she has an immense knowledge of music and I have no idea where that came from.
We strolled around town, had a nice dinner listening to an awesome singer, and then shot pool for hours. Her game is improving, and I, of course, shot like a goddess, except for scratching on the eight-ball. We both danced with an old miner named Wayne. She got to see a side of her mother that daughter’s don’t often get to see, I think, and while I was mentally beating myself up for not exactly being Mother of the Year in the eyes of the world, I’m Mother of the Year to her, and I guess that’s all that matters.
Kelsea and I are here in soft and grey Milwaukee. While not exactly an impulse weekend, it was an impulsive time to go away as we are moving so soon, but I think it will do us both good. We are that sort of people, who need to see something new when stress levels are high.
Arriving last night after what was a remarkably short flight, we only got slightly lost on our way to our hotel, the County Clare Inn. I thought I would indulge her love of Ireland by staying someplace Irish-ish, and sure enough, the check-in girl had a lovely Irish lilt to her voice. Our little room is lovely, with a big whirlpool tub and a comfy bed.
Dinner was yum – salmon and spinach. I never take pictures of food, but it was so pretty!
Our waiter, who had lived all over, has adopted a touch of the brogue in his accent. I’ve never met someone with such a tin ear. We followed up dinner with darts in the game room and then collapsed.
My sister was supposed to come up to meet us, but her littlest sweet girl got sick in the middle of the night, so I don’t know if she’ll make it. I hope so.
We’re off to explore and will keep you posted.
Guess what this weekend was? It was our annual excursion to ….. (drumroll please) ….. Frozen Dead Guy Days!!
This was Kelsea’s and my fourth foray into this festival of the intoxicated macabre. And this year, we took her uber-cool friend Will.
You may not be familiar with this event, which is now in its tenth year, but the legend (or fact, really) that inspired it is far older. Back in 1989, Grandpa Bredo Morstoel passed away in Norway. Instead of going underground as so many do when they pass, Grandpa took to the skies; his corpse, packed in dry ice, was flown across the pond to the US. After seeing California (as so many Norwegians want to do) and becoming cryogenically preserved (not quite as popular a tourist activity), he arrived in Colorado to wait out his fate in the company of his daughter and his grandson in the old mining town of Nederland, Colorado, just outside of Boulder.
Grandpa Bredo was kept quietly in a shed on his daughter’s property for a few years. He was a colorful piece of local lore. I recall hearing about him before he was famous, but no one was sure if the rumors were true. After he’d been resting comfortably for a couple of years, the proverbial S hit the proverbial F. Grandson Trygve found himself deported, and daughter Aud found herself evicted. And Grandpa found himself on his own, which is not a good position for a frozen old Norwegian in a Tuff Shed.
You must understand that the people of Nederland are a people apart. I love it up there. The townsfolk took Grandpa to their collective bosom. People stopped by the Tuff Shed where he was stored to tend to his dry ice needs. And they rallied the town council to – literally – grandfather – Grandpa into the town’s new law that prohibited keeping bodies on private property. I wonder if any other town has that regulation?
Grandpa’s plight garnered quite a bit of publicity on a worldwide scale. He has his own caretaker who, with the help of the ever-loyal townsfolk, keeps his body packed in a sarcophagus surrounded by 1600 pounds of dry ice. He’s been relocated from his original Tuff Shed, due to logistics and safety factors, to a larger unmarked storage facility up the mountain a bit. On occasion, guests can go up and see the shed, but not Grandpa Bredo himself.
Still, his share of fame grows yearly. He’s been the subject of two documentaries by the Beeck Sisters – “Grandpa’s In The Tuff Shed” and “Grandpa’s Still In The Tuff Shed”, and a book written by his caretaker Bo Shaeffer (aka The Iceman) called Colorado’s Iceman and the Story of the Frozen Dead Guy. There’s even a mystery set around the festival, which I have, but haven’t read yet, called One Too Many Frozen Dead Guys by Pamela Stockho. And there’s a song by T.D. Rafferty, most aptly named “The Frozen Dead Guy Song.” Both books and the song are available at trusty www.amazon.com.
Back to the festival! It’s become a packed event, which is good for the town’s small businesses, but it seems that as it grows, it becomes less and less quirky. Sad. However, the two-and-a-half day festival still consists of such unusual activities as:
- Parade of Hearses, which is exactly what it sounds like
- Polar Plunge, where participants in varying stages of costume or undress jump into a hole cut in the frozen lake
- Coffin Races, in which teams of people carry makeshift coffins through an obstacle course in the town playground
- Frozen Salmon Toss, where you see how far you – yes, YOU – can throw a frozen salmon
- Brain Freeze, an ice cream eating contest held in the middle of First Street
- Frozen Turkey Bowling, where you use frozen turkeys to knock down bowling pins (this is also commonly done in supermarkets late at night, and Australians use midgets instead of turkeys)
- Frozen T-Shirt Contest, where you must unfold a frozen T-shirt and put it on
- Rocky Mountain Oyster Eating Contest, in which you consume as many “prairie oysters” as possible
We arrived a tad bit late, just after the start of the parade. The parade is definitely my favorite part of the event. Several dozen hearses, most of them from the ’60s and ’70s, but the occasional entry from the ’40s and one even from prior to the 20th century, turn out to make a circle around the center of the little town.
Ghoulish participants were waving and throwing candy.
Small children hardly knew what to make of the event.
And really, who can blame them?
After the parade, we headed over to the Polar Plunge, which takes place in a little pond off the creek. Paramedics are handy by the ice hole to help plungers out if they have trouble.
We found a perfect spot on the edge of the ice. Nederland is a very dog-friendly town, and pooches were plentiful among the aspens.
Plungers weren’t as creative in their costumes or their approaches this year, which was a little disappointing. I had tried to talk Kelsea into jumping with me, but she said not until next year, since she’s not a strong swimmer and didn’t want to embarass herself in front of her beloved paramedics. But we had a grand time watching…
until the latecomers started just packing onto the ice in front of us so we couldn’t see anymore. How rude. In fact, my edit function was apparently set pretty low, as I was telling people in no uncertain terms to sit down. And I was wishing all the ice would just collapse, making the whole inconsiderate lot of them into unwilling plungers. The paparazzi really were testing the limits of ice gravity.
It had gotten REALLY chilly, so we headed to the bookstore/coffee shop to warm up. I love this little bookstore – it’s mostly used books, but they also have ice cream, a little clothing, a little jewelry, a Tarot card reader, and of course, chai, cocoa, lattes and etcetera.
And they have creepy stuffed squirrels bolted to their exterior walls.
We got coffee and brownies and found a little table in the children’s book room in the back.
The shop cat immediately came to say hello and Will decided he wanted to marry it.
Man, I don’t know what was in those brownies, considering there’s a “green wellness” clinic on either side of the bookstore, but we spent about two hours in silly hysterics, laughing and snorting and giggling at absolutely nothing. We poked around the bookstore, and fell more in love with the cat, who was now occupying the Tarot card table.
I chatted with a lady who teaches knitting and who had knit some amazing glow-in-the-dark skullcaps. I didn’t even know there was such a thing as glow-in-the-dark yarn.
(And as a lovely reminder of my last lovely weekend, there’s an Alpaca Store in Nederland where she gets her yarn.)
We spent so much time in the warmth and silliness of the bookstore that we missed the coffin races. Kelsea and I had seen them before, so we didn’t mind – the wind had picked up and we were all cold. Heading back into town through the little covered footbridge, we stopped in a couple of shops. Will and Kelsea parked themselves in rockers and pretended to be old people.
I took lots of artsy pictures.
And imagined decorating my new little house.
Emerging again into the chill, we discovered a mechanical bull set up outside the Pioneer Inn bar. Well, in my ongoing quest to try new things, I tried this new thing.
It was a lot harder than it looked and I don’t think I stayed on for 8 seconds. But Kelsea did quite well!
Our time was winding down. We passed the Brain Freeze contest, with very few participants.
And we passed more cute dogs (in trying to type ‘dogs’ just then, I typed ‘gods’ twice).
As our final excursion, we decided to walk out into the half-empty reservoir, something else I’ve always wanted to do. The reservoir is full to the brim in the summer, putting Boulder at risk of the imminent and overdue 100-year flood, which last occured in 1894.
But in the winter, it is a barren plain of rocks and dry earth.
The wind was absolutely vicious; we walked out as far as we could bear, then turned and made a run for the car. A real run, tears streaming down our faces and snot flying in the wind. By the time we got to the car, we sounded like we’d had strokes, we were so cold and our brains so bizarrely impacted by who knows what (wind? brownies? mechanical bulls?) that we could barely form words.
We happied our way down the mountain back to Boulder. That night, my eyes were still hurting from the grit and the wind, and Kelsea and I were exhausted from battling the breeze, the cold and the mud. But we had a wonderful time. Next year, maybe we’ll try tukey bowling and salmon throwing.
I think it’s great that even with dead guys, there’s always next year.
No, I did not buy an alpaca at auction. However…
This weekend the Boulder County Fairgrounds hosted the Alpaca Expo. You may remember from our trip to the Stock Show this year how enamoured Kelsea and I were with the alpacas. Well, even though Kelsea chose to go to the Mall on Saturday, I decided to fly solo to see the critters.
O. M. G.
There is (almost) nothing I have found that makes me smile more than alpacas. While the Expo was fairly small, I spent almost three hours there, just hangin’ with my alpaca peeps. I made friends with several of the ranchers there to exhibit and I learned a lot of little tidbits.
But mostly, I just kind of hung on the railings of the little corrals and basked in the glow of the beasts. I don’t know what it is about them, but they have amazingly soothing energy. They are calm, expressive, curious, and gentle. Kind of like me, but with more hair and bigger eyes.
I had such a wonderful time that Kelsea and I went back on Sunday. And as an extra-added bonus, we went to an antique auction that was being held next door. If you check out my Life List of Things Yet To Be Done (in Lists), you will see that buying something at auction was one of my life goals. Well, not only did I buy something at auction, I bought somethingS at auction – namely, two pocket knives, a sword, a miscellaneous box of vintage hats, purses and gloves and an amazing piece of folk art – a flying pig, who told me his name was Homer.
My auction number was 339 and I was flapping my little card along with the other pros, aka, Pierre, George, Tommy and a lady whose shop we had visited in Cheyenne last Labor Day. Anyway, the whole thing was AWESOME! And here’s a sampling of the things that I – wisely, in my opinion – didn’t bid on.
As for the alpacas, well, as I said, we learned a lot. And here are a few things we learned that I’ll bet you probably didn’t know either:
Alpacas are very social creatures. You can’t have just one.
Alpacas only have bottom teeth until they are about three years old, at which point they are ready to breed and get their fighting teeth.
When they get bored, they chew things.
Alpacas’ adorable “Hmmmm” humming noise means they are stressed. Or hungry. But I guess being hungry can make you feel stressed.
Like many animals, they like to groom each other, and can often find leftovers in their Alpaca buddies.
The Suri is the most dominant type of Alpaca, although it is the least common type outside of South America.
But there are also some interesting Vicuna-Alpaca mixes (and all alpacas (and llamas) are part of the camel family).
Alpacas chew their cud in a figure-eight shape. And when they swallow a lump of cud (what’s that called?), they immediately bring up another one. If you watch their throats, you can see the one coming down and the other coming up.
Alpacas sit on all four legs, but when it’s very cold, they raise their hindquarters slightly off the ground to increase their warmth.
Alpacas are raised for their fiber and for breeding – several people were weaving and spinning at the event.
They don’t always like being touched on the head because their mothers generally nudged them on their heads to discipline them. They prefer being touched on the neck.
And when a randy male alpaca tried to mount Perfection, he was decidedly put in his place by her spitting most firmly in his face after escaping his lascivious clutches. She is a feisty little beauty. No one can mount Perfection.
Most importantly of all, they give amazingly awesome angel baby kisses. Storm the big white alpaca kissed me several times. (No tongue.) I felt truly privileged.
So it was a lovely weekend. I even tried out Zydeco dancing on Friday night. Not well, mind you, but it was new and fun and great exercise, so I think I’ll try it again. And since the auctions happen once a month, we’ll definitely be back. It will be THE place to furnish the new house!
Have a happy week!