I’m back. I have been since Friday night, after a minor scare in which my airline (Frontier) went bankrupt on the day I was supposed to fly out. Luckily they were still flying, because I probably would have hitchhiked home, or maybe bought a $8000 plane ticket, just to get out of there.

I think everything in my last post summed up what the return to Denver was like, although by the end of the week, it was greatly magnified. I realized there is no single place in Denver I really wanted to eat, except for McDonald’s or maybe Qdoba. And I was staying in a hotel by the office, which is in an area that basically has a Target and a gas station. (Also, five miles away is a Sonic.) So when I got out of work each night, all I wanted to do was sit in bed and flip channels, jumping back and forth between nine different CSI/Law and Order shows at the same time, while watching my hands turn into dust from the lack of humidity. And now I’m filling out an expense report that’s basically 17 receipts from Burger King.

The game on Tuesday was great, though. I got there super early, and parked in the lot that was right outside our apartment and my office, the one I used to watch from my desk. It was only $10, which gives you an idea of the relevance of a game early in the season against the Braves. Anyway, I went to Breckenridge, one of the sports bar places on Blake Street, to kill some time and watch Detroit lose again. I am not a big sports bar person, but this place had some okay food and nice people, so it was a good place to go for some nachos (unless it was during a Broncos game and you weren’t a Broncos fan.) Instead of going in gate B, where I usually went, I got there early enough for batting practice, so I went in the outfield bleacher entrance, and got to watch the home team belt out a few. It felt so good to see Coors Field again, to look out and remember all of the places I sat - this one for the NLCS, this one for the World Series, this one for the tarp game when it poured rain sideways, and so on.

Once they opened the concourse and I walked over to the Sand Lot bar, I smelled the hot dogs on the grill and that one scent immediately represented the whole baseball season last year. I got my bratwurst, watched the visiting team bat, and listened to that Rob Thomas song “Streetcar Symphony”, which they always play before the game, and is another thing that immediately makes me think of the summer months I spent up in section 331, watching the makings of that 20/21 streak brew on the field.

I had club seats (which is now called the Wells-Fargo Club level), so I caught an elevator up there, got my cracker jacks, and settled in. There were some small updates to the stadium, mostly a lot of propaganda about being the 2007 NL champions: a new logo on the top of the scoreboard, the tops of the dugouts, flags above left field, and so on. The scoreboard had a slight improvement in graphics, and I got to watch the new round of Rockies commercials, which are pretty awful. They also have these new player blurb things in the pre-game slideshow that are a good idea, but are fairly pathetic. All of the trivia stats are things like “tied for 4th place in total RBIs for the team record for players with three vowels in their name”. Christ, a two-second web search could pull up more impressive factiods. How about “career leader in batting average for all active MLB players” (Todd Helton), or “highest batting average, hits, RBIs, doubles, extra base hits, and total bases in the NL in 2007”. (Matt Holliday) Eh.

(Here’s a weird fact - Todd Helton played football in college and was backup quarterback to Peyton Manning. Outfielder Seth Smith also played football in college and was backup quarterback to Eli Manning.)

Anyway, the game - it was cold as FUCK. It started at about 50, but the winds picked up, and after about the second inning, I started hoping it would start snowing after the fifth inning so I could leave. It always feels so weird to be in this below-zero weather and remember when it was like 105 degrees last summer, and I was going to day games with my laptop bag packed in blue ice packs so I could stick my hands in them and try to avoid heatstroke. But I had the similar strategy of retreating to the clubhouse after the third inning, except instead of sucking in the air conditioning, I was sitting over a heater, trying to get the feeling back in my fingers and toes.

The game rambled on, and the Rockies pulled it out, although it was not as interesting as the game the next day, in which the pitcher hit like five Rockies, and in the sixth inning, there were two three-run homers. Another weird moment came when I pushed through the crowd going out, and found I had to walk the same way “home” as I did after all of the games last year, except this time, instead of going in the apartment building, I walked past it, got to the car, and drove half an hour.

I think that’s the thing that fucked with me the most. I am really glad I moved to LA. (Hell, going from a snowstorm to 90 degree weather and tropical humidity tells me that.) But when I was in Denver, I really wanted to come home to 2200 Market and see Sarah and the cats and all of my stuff waiting for me. When I was at work, I really thought I’d hop on I-25 at 6:00, head north, and open the door to two four-legged ravenous felines awaiting their dinner. And to see that apartment sitting vacant made me sad in a really weird way. And some people’s reaction to that would be “oh, you miss Denver”. But it’s not that. It’s definitely more complicated. Anyway, by Friday, I was desperate to get the fuck out of town, and I did, and I am so happy to be back here. I’m glad I made a few bucks, but there’s something to be said about looking out at palm trees and a high of 79 today.

So I just dropped Sarah off at LAX - she will be gone until Wednesday on a quick business trip. In the meantime, I have a complete fuckload of stuff to do. Everybody in the world wants work from me this week, and THIS week happens to be a short week, and I have so much to do for this Milwaukee trip, which is for our wedding reception family reunion thing. I am supposed to be putting together this slideshow on the Mac, and despite all of this iBullshit, there’s not an easy way to do exactly what I want. Now I am making a book in iPhoto and then exporting the book to a slideshow, and exporting that to a movie. So that’s a major pain in the ass. And I hope this whole thing can go without a major hitch, although I now have about 150 people who are all expecting an entire weekend of facetime with us, and when you do the math, you realize a certain amount of load balancing has to happen. And this isn’t an IP network, so I can’t just go lease a Barracuda appliance to get this to work, so people will inevitably get pissed off. Also, I still don’t know what I’m wearing.

With that, I should get to work…

I’m in Denver. It is colder than fuck. Yes, anything below 65 is now colder than fuck for me, but it’s about 30 degrees colder than that, which is absolutely unbearable. And today I was in a meeting, and I looked out the window, and it was pure white from there to the horizon, blowing snow in a full white-out. Luckily, none of it stuck, but I had visions of burning my rental car to stay alive, and making an extra layer of improvised winter gear out of the floor mats, which I think is a chapter in the Air Force pilot survival manual, right after the one that teaches you what snakes you can eat.

So yeah, Denver. I am here for the week for work, and I am now a consultant-type for my last job. My plane touched down at DEN at about midnight (extra hour of time shift) and then I had to dick around with luggage and Hertz and drive about 45 minutes, then check in, then blah blah and pretty soon it was about 2:30 and I had a 9:00 meeting. So I was asleep all day, my stomach in knots from heavy doses of caffeine, answering the “so how do you like California / I hear it’s overrun with Marxists, perverts, and those who have not heard the word of our savior jesus christ” question a few dozen times. It wasn’t that bad, but when I am running on even one minute of sleep under eight hours, even “where can we put your free money” is an annoying question to me.

So, here’s the weirdness. I was just here, and I got to do all of my “leaving forever” prep several times, and then had to come back for our furniture, so being here is more like getting back to town after a long vacation. It’s not like I’m pulling into Bloomington and seeing that all of my old favorite hangouts have been bulldozed and turned into Eddie Bauer stores. It’s all still here. What’s weird is that I am “living” at a Hilton that is just down the road (and I mean literally ON the same road) as the office. So “work” is now “work” and “home” to me. It means I don’t have to drive 45 minutes to and from downtown each day, but in some ways, that drive was therapeutic, and it was nice to have two different corners that did not mingle with each other. So that’s weird.

Being back at work isn’t that weird, because my whole department moved floors after I left, and I’m in a completely different area, in a sterile and different cube. The guy I sat next to got fired, and now the people on either side of me are new hires. And all of that doesn’t matter, because I’m in meetings and meeting rooms all week. It is odd to be back in the building, though. And almost nobody knew I’d be in this week; a lot of people not in my group didn’t even know I was still working for the company. So I got a lot of double-takes today.

I sat around after work dicking around with a Subversion problem and half-watching the Yankees-Jesus Rays game on cable, when I got fed up and left to go find a restaurant and get fed up. And then, I suddenly realized, “shit, I can listen to the game on the radio!” I clicked over to 850 KOA and got the last inning. The Rockies lost their last five games, and I’ve been less and less enthused about catching those games I already shelled out cash for. But thanks to a Matt Holliday 2-run homer, a 1-2-3 8th, and a double play and quick out in the 9th, the tides turned, and the streak was ended.

For whatever reason, I got on I-25 and started driving north into Denver as the game wrapped up. I can’t even begin to explain how happy it made me to listen to Jeff Kingery and Jack Corrigan call the end of the game, after spending 2007 tuned in for the games. I even listened to most of the games I attended last year, thanks to my little AM/FM radio and headphones. To hear all the little nuances of their commentary, all of the bumper tracks and station IDs and ads, it brought out the spirit of the game as much as shitty ballpark hot dogs and plastic chairs that are two inches too small for your butt. I even listened to all of the ads (“If you’re going to buy a diamond, think Trice”; the Colorado beef association ads they play between every damn inning) and it made me think of every game I heard while I was home on the computer working, or driving to an appointment in the afternoon, or waiting for Sarah to get home from work during a 6:05 that was an hour early so they could beam it back east.

By the time I got to Coors Field, the crowd was dissipated (or maybe they were in hypothermia) and I parked on the street right by our old apartment. I don’t know why, but I had to look at the old place. I know I just finished moving us out about ten minutes ago, but I get overly nostalgic about this shit. I also wanted to see if the lights were on and a bunch of NCAA Final Four bullshit was hanging out the windows. (This is frat party central.) Nobody was moved in, although the bedroom window was open a crack. That doesn’t matter, except it added this one tiny human component. Did I open the window? And it was the window right by the cat beds; every morning, once I was ambulatory, I’d open that windowshade so they would have their wash of sunlight for their morning naps. It’s strange how such a little thing could make me think of so much.

Sarah called me around then, and I did a quick lap around the block, looking at the sports bars where we used to eat (but not on game nights), and the huge condo that’s going up on the other corner of 22nd and Market, and finally, the ballpark. The cops were pulling down the barricades on Blake Street, and only a few stragglers were there, so there wasn’t much residue from the night’s victory. But everything was still lit up, the signs and park lights and all of the new 2007 NL Champion flair they’ve added to streetlights and signposts. It had me excited about coming back tomorrow for the second game of the series. (What doesn’t have me excited is the fact that I will be wearing eight layers of clothes and will still need to have toes amputated by the time the evening is up.)

So overall, a weird time at a mile up. It’s reminded me that I like 75 degrees every day; I like humidity (I am drinking gallons of water per second); and in the year I lived here, I developed no strong ties to any people, places, or activities, other than a certain National League West expansion franchise. When I pulled into town, other than the game and my work obligations, I could not think of a single person I needed to call, place I needed to see, or restaurant where I needed to eat. That makes me think we made the right choice.

I need to sleep. I need to work four more days. Then I need to fly home, dump my entire suitcase into the washing machine, and repack it so I can turn around and go to Milwaukee. And I’m guessing it won’t be 75 and sunny there, but they do have cheese.

I forgot to mention that I got a basket of a bunch of glass bottles of soda for easter. There were a couple I have not tried before, one being Dublin Dr. Pepper. It isn’t from Ireland - the Dublin Dr. Pepper bottler is a plant down in Texas that’s the oldest running bottler of the drink, and they still churn out the stuff with cane sugar, in glass bottles. It’s pretty good stuff, and the bottles are very cute, but at 24-8oz bottles for $16 when you buy direct (and marked up even more when you buy singles), I’d rather buy 2-liters locally. The nostalgia aspect is cool, though. If I ever got trapped in that corner of Texas, I’d love to see the bottling plant, right after I hunted down the remains of the Waco compound.

Another one I tried for the first time was Moxie. Moxie is an old New England tradition, and goes back further than Coke does. It started as one of those “nerve tonic” drinks, and you can tell. Moxie tastes like straight up carbonated shit. Seriously, it’s very similar to the Beverly aperetif made by Coke in Italy; it has an aftertaste similar to a solvent you’d use to bring out the shine in your wood flooring. I don’t know how people can drink Moxie and actually enjoy it, but I also can’t understand how people can enjoy 90% of French cuisine, so I guess it’s an acquired taste. At least I know what the deal is with Moxie, so the next time that Food Network show comes on about it, I won’t feel curious.

I am really enjoying having a DVR, by the way. It’s very nice being able to pause TV, rewind to see something I’ve missed, and skip commercials. I watched part of a baseball game, and it was nice being able to skip around to figure out what the fuck Vin Scully is talking about. I still occasionally forget that I can skip commercials, though. And I really don’t have enough shows recorded yet. I should start getting some games on there, but I already have no free time.

Speaking of which, I have a million errands today, and tomorrow I have to get Sarah’s car registered. Then on Sunday, I fly to Denver for a week. And the next week, it’s off to Milwaukee. Lots to do, and I’m running late for something now, so I better finish lunch.

Back in the fall of 1992, I broke my left elbow in a stupid bike accident. Basically, I was slowing down for a pedestrian on that ramp to the parking lot at Ballantine Hall, and I slowed down too much and fell over, landing on my elbow. I ended up with a compression fracture on my radius, a stupid sling that later torqued out my neck worse than the broken arm, and a bottle of codeine cough syrup. I also had this horrible despondence from the thought that I actually broke part of my original equipment, which is hard to explain but is very deep-seated when it happens to you.

Ancient history, right? Well, no. For some reason, that elbow has always been on-and-off weird. Sometimes it gets a little stiff and reminds me it was once broken. And for whatever reason, last week, it got really stiff, to the point where I couldn’t move it anymore, and I was in way too much pain. Finally on Friday, I couldn’t deal with it anymore, and I went to the hosiptal. By hospital, I mean “hospital”, aka the LAX urgent care clinic, which is as much a hospital as IUSB is a university. Within three hours, a doctor spent two seconds listening to my explanation of the pain, I got three x-rays, and he ruled out a few basics, like that I rebroke the arm, or that the arm was stolen by aliens and replaced with a corned beef sandwich. Other than that, there was no diagnosis, so here’s a sling, here’s a big bottle of Vicodin, here’s your bill.

I spent all weekend looped out on the big V. Honestly, it’s only good the first couple of times you take it. It does kill the pain, but now a single tablet doesn’t have me babbling conspiracy theories about secret Nazi bases in the south pole. I can now move my arm significantly more, and I went all day yesterday without painkillers. So it’s getting better, but the whole thing, plus all of my other medical maladies makes me wonder if I have ALS or MS or something else.

Speaking of Lou Gehrig, baseball season has started. I am in two fantasy leagues, and have done absolutely zero in both of them. One I forgot to show up for the draft, and I was first in the draft, and it auto-picked based on ESPN’s ratings, so I got A-Rod in the first round. No time to mess with that for now, though. I do have some games coming up though:

• 5/24 Dodgers v. Cardinals @ Dodger Stadium
• 4/26 Dodgers v. Rockies @ Dodger Stadium
• 5/20 Cardinals v. Padres @ Petco Field
• 4/8 Rockies v. Braves @ Coors Field

First, I am not suddenly a Cardinals fan; that’s because my friend Julie is a huge St. Louis fan, and I’m tagging along for two of those outings. I have to admit that I know almost nothing about the Cards except for Ankiel and Pujols, and that other big beer company has their name on their stadium. But it’s baseball, and it will be fun. And I would normally have almost no reason to go to San Diego and see a game, so I can check another stadium off of my list.

And yes, the Rockies game is at Coors Field! I am going back to Denver next week to work for my last company, and aside from money, one reason I took the gig was that I’d be able to catch a game at my old digs. It will be weird, driving up to the ballpark district, paying to park across from my old apartment, getting a shitty bratwurst at the Sandlot brewery. (Actually, the first one of the season is always great. The second one is good. The 47th is shit.) It will be nice to wear my Tulo jersey without having to worry about Dodger fans throwing batteries at my head. Too bad I might have to wear it under a parka.

My car now has California plates, which looks odd to me. It was a huge feat to get them, and it took two trips to the DMV. I had to get the car (a 2008 with 5000 miles) smog-tested, and then I got in a huge battle about having to pay California sales tax on a car I bought in Colorado as a Colorado resident. I finally found the right paperwork to shut them up, and got plated up for $240 plus the $60 smog check. Now I need to do the same for Sarah’s car.

I was almost getting in a groove as far as domestic engineering duties, until the arm broke. It’s hard to cook one-handed. Anyway, I am a cooking idiot, so I will ask the readers, what’s your favorite recipe? Something that’s not all Rachel Ray and involves two hours of cutting and shaving. My favorite concoction is my own version of the famous Simms chili: very easy, very good. I need to find more crap like that.

Another week is done, and all of our stuff arrived in mostly one piece. After a few more days (or months) of rearranging, it will be business as usual here. Which brings me to thoughts about what I like, what is good, and what’s odd about this place. Rather than try to write some prose, I will start with a big bulleted list.

• • I am in awe anytime I drive past something and realize it was in movie XYZ or some recent TV show. I had this to the point of overload in NYC, especially with all of the Law and Order shows, but I think moving to Denver knocked that out of my head, and now it’s all amazing to me again.
    • I’m always reminded of Bukowski. There are old dive bars that still have their signs from the 60s, the styleized cursive words in neon, dull after 40 years of dirt and smog, and I always wonder if that was a bar where he hung out. This is further confused by the fact that a lot of brand new bars and restaurants have similar signs that were made to conform with the whole Swingers retro craze.
    • (As an aside, I want to make a google map of all Bukowski stuff. I have heard there is a bus trip that makes this route, so maybe I better get off my ass.)
    • I forget if I mentioned Fry’s, the electronics store. There’s one down in Manhattan beach, and I think I’ve been maybe once or twice. I don’t know how I missed out on this all of my geek life (probably because I didn’t live in California) but that place is off the hook in a very major way. Basically you start with a Best Buy or Circuit City, but instead of, say, only three types of computer keyboard in stock, they have an entire aisle, like three dozen types. And they aren’t all from one manufacturer, they hit all of the bases, and even have the el cheapo Taiwan junk you can only get in mail order. It’s the same way in every section. Like in Best Buy, if you need a USB cable, they have the Belkin 3-foot or the Belkin 9-foot, end of story. At Fry’s, they have 863 different USB cables, half of them things you’ve never heard of before. And the place even has resistors and oscilloscopes and soldering irons and computer parts at the level the big boxes would not. The customer service can be a little surly, and the ambience is Costco meets a room in the MIT computer science freshman dorm. But yeah, very dangerous to the wallet.
    • I’ve spent very little time in what most people would think of when they envision LA, because Playa Del Rey is isolated. With the ocean to the west, LAX to the south, the LMU campus west, and the Marina Del Rey channel and Ballona wetlands to the north, there’s a pretty decent buffer zone on all sides.
    • That buffer also includes smog, which seems to be broken up by the ocean. And the temps are about five degrees cooler here, which is weird, because I put forecasts for both here and LA in my dashboard.
    • When I drive to/from anything north, I have to drive on Culver (which just got repaved last weekend) and through the Ballona wetlands. It’s strange to be in LA and be driving down a road in which nothing but swamps are on either side of you. It sort of reminds me of the farming in the middle of Oahu, if you drive the back roads to the North Shore. And at night, you hear very loudly the sound of frogs out in the swamp.
    • (Yesterday I determined that the best song to listen to while driving there is Lynard Skynard’s “Swamp Music”.
    • I still hear and see the jets from LAX southeast of us. The jets aren’t that loud, and the sound is almost soothing. I am sure when I go on vacation and I’m not near an airport, I won’t be able to sleep.
    • We were driving around, and south of LAX (at Imperial and Main) is this little observation park, where you can see jets taking off and landing. There was a small group of dudes with gigantic camera lenses the size of tallboy beer cans taking pictures. I guess before 9/11, you could park and go inside the terminal to a roof-top restaurant and see the jets close up, but that ended quickly.
    • There are a ton of old cars on the road here. I always thought the draconian emissions laws kept cars older than a decade or two from geting plates. But with no salt and no rust, cars last forever here. There are fuckloads of old classic Beetles still rolling here, with perfect sheet metal. And at least once a trip, I see some completely cherry car from the 50s or 60s, like an ancient Packard or a topless GTO with three twos. And I’ve seen many classic Camaros, the early 70s models that are my favorite. For a fan of old cars, it’s a phenomenal place to be.
    • The best food in LA tends to be in strip malls. I don’t know if that’s because all of southern California is a strip mall, or if just one of those backward things, like that the best doctors don’t take insurance, or the best clubs in NYC don’t have signs outside. We went to this soul food restaurant, which was like next to a TCBY or Vons or Rite Aid or something, and it had been there forever. They had the signed photos on the wall, and I’m looking and there’s a picture of Martin Luther King Jr. - personally signed to the owner. Their fried chicken was also like the best I’ve ever had. I need to forget about that place if I want to make it to 40, though.
    • Hughes Aircraft had a huge facility just up the road in what’s now called Playa Vista. They built the Spruce Goose there, then disassembled it into chunks and trucked it to Long Beach for its maiden flight.
    • Prices of almost everything here is back to about what I was used to in New York, with a few odd exceptions. For some reason, the McDonald’s closest to me is very cheap. My usual (#2, no pickles, coke) cost $5.95 in Denver, and now it’s $4.84. Other cheaper things: car washes, housecleaning, lawn care and landscaping, and anything related to fresh fruits and vegetables. (See a pattern?)

And I am now in bachelor mode, as Sarah goes to Atlanta to visit Mitsubishi. This will largely consist of playing the now-connected PS3 and trying to write this game I am working on. So I better get to work on that.