Around Here

Around here...

We're happy that my overall cholesterol number has gone down 40 points in the last five months without medicine!   I was really unhappy to get a high number in December and made a big effort to avoid meat;  eat lots of veggies, flax seed, oatmeal, apples, and almonds;  lose a few pounds, and pretty much eliminate ice cream (sob!).  But it did the trick.  All my lipid numbers are good now.  Whew!  

To celebrate tonight we had a lovely dinner on the patio of pasta with meat (!!) sauce and this great wine from Sicily.   Okay, I really love vegetables and fruit and fish and oatmeal and almonds, so it wasn't a big hardship. Still, it's nice to have a luscious fatty treat occasionally.   

Around here...

The late poppies are starting to bloom.  Still no white ones, but some pretty pinks.  I love how they close themselves up for the night, giving themselves a little private time before they bloom again in the morning.  

Around here...

It's been raining quite regularly for such a dry area.  Everything is green and lush and beautiful.  This is not how it's supposed to be for spring in the Denver area, but it's what we got this year.

Unfortunately, our "water in the basement" problem showed up again.  Over the past few months we have put four tons of dirt (!)  up against the foundation of the particular basement wall that is affected.  And "we" means first, a crew of guys, and second, me and Ben (mostly Ben.)   We tamped down a bunch of fill dirt right before a huge storm and we were excited when we realized that the fix was working.  However, we could see that we needed to put more dirt further down the length of the wall, so we rushed to do that before the next storm.  And it worked!  No water except from some leaky 5-gallon water bottles stored in that area.  Can you spot all the dirt in this photo? 

Around here...

We're in the final steps of preparing for our trip to Switzerland and Paris.  We leave Tuesday morning!  Really, we're preparing for two trips.  The first to Lucerne and then up to the Alps, an adventure which requires cold weather clothes, hiking shoes and poles, and various other outdoor gear.  I'm just hiking but Ben is doing an actual mountain climbing adventure, a half day trek up the Monch, right next to the Eiger.  

And then we'll be six days in Paris, which requires nice looking city clothes and decent looking shoes.  

Traveling involves so many decisions; today we decided how we're getting to the airport.  Up at 5 am to walk to the bus stop and catch the 5:41 bus.  Then two flights, one thorough the night as the time moves ahead 6 hours.  We arrive in Geneva at 7:30 a.m. Swiss time, which is about 1 a.m our time.  Then a 3 hour train ride to Lucerne.  I wrote to our hotel in Lucerne today begging for an early check in!  We'll see; and we'll cope no matter how it goes.  

Around here...

We're into the old series, Deadwood.  We are always so behind in popular culture!   I mean, the series is now so old that they've come out with a ten year reunion movie featuring the cast and characters!  Well, it may be old but it's still good and we're enjoying it.

I also recently read The Expats and The Paris Diversion by Chris Pavone, thrillers set in Europe and with many scenes in Paris.  Both very enjoyable.  

 Well, that's all for now.  Of course I've been hiking and quilting, but those reports must wait for another time.   I'll leave you with this lovely photo of the turkey vultures swooping back to our neighborhood to roost in the trees on 6th street.  I don't know which I love the most, the hummingbirds or the turkey vultures.

Linking to my friend, Lee Anna's, "I Like Thursday" blog, celebrating the small but important joyful aspects of daily life as a counterpart to the constant drum roll of news and politics.