AtomJohnson Blog

Every Memorial Day weekend, the Boulder Creek Festival hosts the annual duck race.  Since Jess’s new place of employment is the host (and recipient of proceeds), I agreed to volunteer to help out on Monday.  So, Jess and I spent the better part of a very cold and rainy Memorial Day selling tiny, yellow, rubber duckies to people hopeful that their duck would be the first down the river.  That lucky person would be going on an all expenses paid trip to Mexico.  The race is incredibly fast and much less exciting than you’d think.  In the end, one of the ducks won, one lucky person went to Mexico and Jess and I went home to dry and warm our toes.

I’m sure there are millions of amazing places to get married, but Ten Mile Station on Breckenridge Mountain has got to be somewhere towards the top of the list.  Last weekend I was reunited with a group of girls from a neighboring high school that I became great friends with while in high school.  The moment that I saw them, it was like a day had not passed.  There is a certain comfort that you get around people who’ve known you that long that does not seem possible with anyone else.

The wedding was picture perfect.  There was an award-winning bluegrass band playing during the ceremony and reception.  The surrounding mountains were plush and green, the skies were blue, and the breeze was…well, its was pretty cold.

I’m not sure if I can blame the altitude or the vast number of drinks that I seemed to order and then empty, but I woke up the next morning with a swollen ankle, a pounding head, and a swatch of wheatgrass lying flat across the top of the television.  Apparently we won the dance off….

My good friends Dave and Chandra live in an incredible log cabin outside of Lexington, Virginia. They have a very sweet German Shepherd named Dexter that would scare away a grizzly bear and then turn around and watch Oprah. They just posted this video of Dexter helping to plow the garden…

Manure: In the 16th and 17th centuries, everything had to be transported by ship and it was also before commercial fertilizer’s invention, so large shipments of manure were common.

It was shipped dry, because in dry form it weighed a lot less than when wet, but once water (at sea) hit it, it not only became heavier, but the process of fermentation began again, of which a by product is methane gas As the stuff was stored below decks in bundles you can see what could (and did) happen.

Methane began to build up below decks and the first time someone came below at night with a lantern, BOOOOM!

Several ships were destroyed in this manner before it was determined just what was happening.

After that, the bundles of manure were always stamped with the term ‘Ship High In Transit’ on them, which meant for the sailors to stow it high enough off the lower decks so that any water that came into the hold would not touch this volatile cargo and start the production of methane.

Thus evolved the term ‘S.H.I.T’, (Ship High In Transport) which has come down through the centuries and is in use to this very day.

I remember when a trip to IKEA barely consumed the better half of a morning.  This was the case when I lived in San Francisco.  This was the case when I lived in DC.  Not so the case here in the greater Denver area.  Here a trip to IKEA requires a minivan, 3 bags of Corn Nuts, and an entire weekend.

So, last weekend Jess and I decided to make a weekend of it.  We departed from Boulder at 7am on Saturday morning, drove a borrowed 1996 light blue Plymouth Voyager in shorts and sandals through a crippling snowstorm in Wyoming, to finally arrive at the Swedish furniture superstore (in Salt Lake City, Utah) at 3:30pm.

Mind you that 3:30pm till 9pm should seem like enough time to shop anywhere, but as they say….”time flies when you have to cover 310,000 square feet of furniture decisions to wade through”.

By 6pm, we had finally wandered through the entire upstairs showroom, ending up in some sort of Swedish cafeteria.  When in Sweden, do as the Swedes do.  So, I had Swedish Meatballs and Lingonberry soda.  The entire cafeteria gave you a decent preview of what it would be like to eat in the world’s largest IKEA-furnished dining room.  Let me tell you, it would be awesome!

The fabrics and lighting sections of the downstairs put both of us into some sort of time warp.  In what seemed like minutes, we had already reached 8pm.  This left us an hour to load up all of our furniture in the self-server area.  This area is a giant warehouse of numbers, letters, and cryptic sketches of the furniture contained inside the boxes.  I think we would have been fine if we had to only get our furniture, but we had also promised to pick up some inexpensive Swedish shelving for several neighbors.  I can only describe the feeling as a panicked shopping spree.  We were running around, loading up furniture, grabbing more rolling carts, and filling them full again.

By the time we got to the new dining table, I was exhausted of shopping and weary of the meatballs I had just consumed.  The enormous table tops proved to be too heavy for Jess and I to easily load.  I had the brilliant plan where she would hold the cart and I would push the table onto it.  This resulted in me pushing the table in a circle around Jess, the pivot point.  That resulted in both of us laughing uncontrollably, while still running in circles, pushing this heavy box.  This then resulted in me “passing wind” with every step I took.  We eventually ran into some boxes, which stopped the spinning, but not the “passing”.  Everything eventually settled down leaving us sweating and exhausted from laughter.  It was the best, most embarrassing comic relief that I’ve ever experienced while purchasing furniture.

At the stroke of 9pm, we entered the checkout line with everything we had come to purchase.  Locals with only one or two items in hand passed us with an annoyed glance as they saw we had three rolling pallets and a grocery cart stacked about head level.  6 and a half hours after arriving, we had finally selected, located, loaded, rolled, paid, and packed everything into the Plymouth.

My good friend Kathryn from work was gracious enough to let us arrive late and stay at her house about 15 minutes away.  During the course of our conversation that evening, we learned that we were treading on sacred ground.  Apparently, this neighborhood of Salt Lake City is where the movie Footloose was filmed.  It is likely that Kevin Bacon had danced on (or at least near) the very spot that we were sitting.  It was a fairy tale ending to a fairly long day of shopping.

I would not want to be a flower in Colorado. It has been consistently in the 70s here for weeks. Yesterday it crept up into the 80s….I almost hooked up the swamp cooler. This morning, through the crack in the shades, I could see heavy, white flakes falling at an incredible rate from the sky. The open windows from the day before had reduced the temperature in my house to a chilling 60 degrees. How can anyone plan anything in this insanity?

Jess and I took Ronnie and Anne to play bingo last night in Longmont. Anne won on her very first game! Jess came within 1 square of winning the $1,000 final game. I didn’t win anything, but I enjoyed the heck out of the $3.00 burrito.

Anne’s winning Bingo card…the diamond game for $100

Anne and her winnings

The card that almost won $1,000

The Longmont Bingo Alley $3 burrito