Busy Weekend

After the work week came to a roaring close, I got the weekend started off with some good, old-fashioned culture. Melisa and I headed out for an evening with the Colorado Symphony Orchestra, starting the night at Prima Ristorante in the Hotel Monaco for some drinks and a nibble. I highly recommend their duck crostini, but the tortelli we ordered took forever to come out to us . . . still frozen. The bartenders were good sports about it, bought us some drinks and stole somebody else's order that had just come up.

The symphony was quite lovely on the whole. I was looking around the concert hall, amazed at how empty it was. Maybe Friday night isn't all that popular for an evening of culture (although all of the other DCPA venues seemed pretty packed) or maybe Denverites don't get it. I found the Mozart and Brahms pieces to be quite lovely, but the Vaughn Williams symphony was a bit too modern for my liking. It had the feel of a musical score from a movie I probably wouldn't want to watch. I do not mind tonal music in bits and pieces and some of Williams' Symphony No. 5 had some pleasing, pastoral, sweeping sections but for my classical music, I'll stick to the classics. The soloist for the evening, Elina Vähälä was very impressive and I found the Brahms Violin Concerto very enjoyable. Even more impressive is the fact that she plays a 1678 Stradivarius, begging the question, how do you travel with a 330 year old violin with a value of well over $1,000,000? Besides very carefully . . .

Saturday was a day of running around finishing up last minute prep for the Low Country Boil party at Melisa's house. Kudos to Scott Hartley for showing up with a stylish set of Dr. Bukk specials, his wife is a very lucky lady. It was incredible how quickly 25 lbs. of potato, corn, sausage, and shrimp disappeared. At 6:35, I emptied the contents of the giant pot onto the tables and by 7:00 people were done eating and had resorted to bemoaning the discomfort and/or satisfaction of a stuffed belly.


Nothing brings more joy to the Southerner inside me than a new turkey fryer/outdoor cooker.

Bourque decorates, shows a good grasp on paper lantern techniques.


Everybody was looking forward to the 6:35 dining time, especially Craig. He loves shrimp!

Almost everybody is in the pool, just waiting on the shrimp.

Seriously, Craig loves shrimp. He scoped out all of the positions at the table to determine optimal proximity between shrimp and Old Bay.

Brian and Jessica made it to the party, escaping their house in Nederland where 12' of snow have already fallen.

Scott's toothy grin shows exactly why Buffy is such a lucky lady, click for a closer look at his grill.

After the feeding frenzy, people settled around the two fire pits, only stirring on occasion to refill glasses of hot, spiced cider and rum. Clean up in the morning was kept to a minimum since everything got shoved into either trash or recycling and the tables got hosed off for use on another day. This will be a party concept that gets repeated when warm weather returns for sure.

On Sunday, I headed up to Boettcher Mansion to celebrate Brian and Simon's recent wedding. It was a perfect, crisp, fall morning for such an event. I made the quick drive up to the top of Lookout, counted that as my "ride" for the day, and caught up with some people I hadn't seen in a while. The celebration was very heart warming and refreshing. It is rare you get to see such true expression of love between two people. I am glad to have Brian and Simon as friends and I wish them all the best! The formal reception was followed by a slightly less formal gathering at their house later in the afternoon. Another weekend in the bag, I think I could use at least another day of sleeping.

On the home front, I should see some happenings in the backyard this afternoon. At the end of the day Friday, I got everything lined up for getting the concrete pad for my garage poured hopefully this week. Pictures to follow or something like that.