Colorado on the Quick

This year will be the first year I am not going back to Denver for Christmas. Ohio is where I will wait for Santa and I am pretty excited to spend it with Tiff's family. It has been a difficult reality to swallow though, not seeing my own family. Ergo, when the sagging business of the Cafe prompted them to scale back hours and they gave me three days off in a row, I contacted my friend Frontier Airlines to see if they had a reasonable flight. Success.





I flew out on Sunday night after the Ramble and was shocked to leave 40 degree Chicago for -15 degree Denver. My folks picked me up and we headed back to the house for some homemade potato soup. Delicious! I hopped up early with the sole objective to return to Chicago as tired as possible on Wed. Dad and I headed to Lucille's (Denver) for some amazing cajun breakfast! Seriously one of my favorite restaurants ever!

He took me a few blocks to Scott's house where we set out on a mission to get a scanned photo for him. That resulted in much time spent waiting, but hey waiting with a good friend isn't so bad. We caught up on several subjects with the quick jumping topic nature that happens when you are just enjoying talking a lot. After success there we grabbed some coffee and he tried to take me home only to discover the key pad to let me in was dead. In a high school like flashback, I got dropped off at the mall (Best Buy) till my Mom picked me up. Very surreal.

I was actually picked up by another friend now living in Denver, Emily. She and I hit one of my new favorite cafe's. Solid Grounds is a great spot, should you find yourself in the Denver area. My Mom swung by and we had fantastic coffee and veggie burritos. On the home front, we had Dad's mexican dish. So far tons of good food and friends. An excellent first day. Except I could not wait till the next day to see my awesome niece and nephew. They were bigger and cuter.

On the second day, I ran out to meet Scotty at his place first thing in the morning. He took me to his audition and I was able to crash it. Not only that, but we were able to go in together. That was super fun and hopefully it works out that I would have to call my friends Frontier again in Jan. We boogied around west Denver a while till it was time to meet my friend Mereth for lunch. I wanted to introduce Scott and Mereth and discovered introducing two friends from different area of my life just meant I was going to get ragged on from two different eras of my life. Yeah.

Scotty then took us over to Jason Knauf's place and we chatted for a bit before I split to head home. I had Sydney and Lincoln's gifts from Tiff and I to wrap. I also needed to weed through the diminishing stack of thing in the basement to see what I could take back to Chi. Mom brought tons of lasagna home and Jen brought the tribe over. That was super fun as the pictures indicate. My evening was shorter than usual though as I had to get up at 3:30am to catch my 6am flight home.

By 12pm I was at work once again... whew!