Of Hobbits and Happy Trails

I must say, I've had a pretty happy day.

Our hiking venture was full of fail (for lack of planning), but we've had a great time anyway! After a month here, Jeromie and I figured it was about time for some mountains, but we really had no idea of where to start without tackling on of the (in)famous Colorado 14-ers. Don't get me wrong, we'd love to hike five or ten or all of them, but we didn't want that to be the first trip out... so, on the recommendation of a new friend, we headed toward Boulder.

Fail factor #1: a late start (what with work, cleaning and laundry that needed to be done)

Fail factor #2: lack of a packable lunch

Fail factor #3: the decision to stop in Boulder for lunch

Upon entering Boulder, we headed for Pearl Street, and that was the end of any plans for hiking... downtown Boulder is just plain crazy. Perhaps it was just today, since there was a fall festival going on, but I feel like we saw a little bit of everything there, and it was awesome. We grabbed lunch at a place called the Falafel King (which was delicious), then puttered around taking the place in. We ended up spending a looooooooooooong time in a kite/toy store (can't remember the name) and found a furry friend that very nearly came home with us:

From K100D

They also had some hilarious band-aids at this toy store, like ones with sushi, kiss marks, pirate symbols, or Jesus on them. I don't know why, but sushi band-aids are kind of tempting to me. :-)

Once we finally wrenched ourselves free of the toy store, we headed for the car to salvage the plans for hiking, at which point the sky decided to threaten rain and then *dump.* We still might've made it out, had we not found a cozy coffee/bike shop in a TRAIN.

A bike/coffee shop in a train in the rain in the mountains.

From K100D

Folks who know me well will recognize that this is a win/win/win/win situation in my book... a lot of my favorite things all rolled into one. Add some thunder (of which there was some), and you've got one happy Liz. The only thing that could've made it better would be either hiking before, or biking to get there.

We'd planned on finding a coffee shop to crash & study in anyway, so we stayed. And it was the awesome. And it's still the awesome... because we're still there.

* * * * * * *

In other news, we now have confirmation that Jeromie is a hobbit:
- he has furry feet
- he eats about 8 meals a day
- he lives underground (mmmm... basement)
- and he gives presents on his birthday!

Meet Maple:

From K100D

She's an MSI Wind Notebook... about 10 inches wide & 3lbs. Tiny and cute. After a few weeks of school, we realized that one computer and two paper-writers was just not working out. While I love Macs to pieces, they don't make any particularly small and affordable laptops... thus we started looking at windows machines and found out about netbooks... which is what this thing is. Small, very portable, and great for all the things I typically use a computer for. What's funny is that Maple makes Jeromie's Macbook look fat... and Macbooks aren't fat at all! She came in the mail yesterday, and I've already been vastly more productive. :-D

Anyhow... back to my studies.