On the Covid-19 front, there have not been any significant changes in Colorado. I’m grateful that the mask mandate is still in effect, and I hope that it will be extended beyond the initial thirty days. Whether or not they agree with the mandate, most people seem to be complying, and there is less aggression when we are in stores. People generally seem calm, which is a relief. Truly, life feels more or less normal.

One thing that has really bothered me is the spike in mask conspiracy theories. A new one that I read about involves a hashtag= “save our children,” and links the wearing of masks to a child sex trafficking and pedophilia. Really? It goes deeper, to a conspiracy that powerful people ( democratic politicians/Bill Gates/Celebrities like Tom Hanks) are in on it, somehow harvesting the power from children that is emitted when they are extremely fearful, including acts of cannibalism with children. How can anyone believe this crap???

It makes me even more angry that these conspiracies serve to undermine the vital importance of wearing masks and public safety. They also distract from more important issues like the BLM movement and the upcoming election. It’s maddening. Dan is tired of hearing me complain about it, and quite honestly, I’ve spent too much energy getting worked up over it, so I’m going to distancing myself from reading about the conspiracies. I’m optimistic that more people are level-headed and see through this nonsense.

This week was low-key and fairly normal. We ran errands and ate out a few times, including a “new-to-us” Vietnamese restaurant, where I tried Vietnamese-style iced coffee. It tastes similar to Thai iced coffee, but a little less sweet.

I don’t have a picture of it, but I made the most amazing fresh blueberry crumble. It was delicious, and I even made it with half the recommended sugar. It will happen again and soon.

Dan went golfing with a few of the guys in our neighborhood. I have to share pictures that he took of our local golf course. This is just a short distance from our house and it is gorgeous! It reminds me of Red Rock Canyon in Las Vegas.

In most exciting news, Wednesday was my birthday. I worked, as usual, but Dan spoiled me rotten.

The big package was a Cornhole set, which I’ve been wanting for a few years. I’m surprisingly good at it! I also received several cool kitchen gadgets- many from my Amazon Wishlist, fuzzy socks, a cook book, another outdoor game where you throw a ball on a trampoline ( looks fun), a cleaning gadget ( I’m old, I like cleaning gadgets), a ceramic cotton ball holder shaped like a rabbit, and a box of rock candy, which I recently mentioned was a must-have purchase during childhood Disneyland trips. So many friends and family sent messages and I was much loved on my birthday.

Tom delighted in the box that one of my presents came in. It can be your birthday too Tom!

There is an extra-special treat for this coming weekend, which I will reveal next week. I’ve probably never been this spoiled on my birthday! :-)

Which brings me to some funny emotions that I’ve been having this week. My birthday is always a time when I miss my mom a bit more intensely than other times of the year, and last night, we were watching the fabulous new Anna Kendrick series “Love Life”- specifically an episode regarding Kendrick’s character Darby and her relationship with her mom. Even though my relationship with my mom was nothing like Darby’s, there were themes about simply needing your mom. It made me really, really sad and I couldn’t stop crying. I’m grateful to have a husband who loves me enough to make my birthday incredibly special, but I still miss and need my mom. It’s tough.

On the great news front, last night we had the announcement that Biden has picked Kamala Harris to run as his VP. I’m thrilled and optimistic.

I’m ending on a happy note with cute pictures of the cats. This week, Tom started a new behavior of stealing stuffed animals off of my bookshelf. Naturally, those animals have been moved to a safe, “Tom Free” zone, but it was very funny to catch him being a thief.

Slinky is living his best life by licking the leftovers from a bowl of whipped cream. He licked it completely clean.

This week we continued the celebration of Dan’s birthday with an overnight trip to Colorado Springs, which is just about an hour from our house. Normally, we would’t have spent the night for a place so close, but we had a very early start on Saturday morning for an excursion with Bike Pike’s Peak, so we wanted to stay close to the tour office. The hotel was less than a ten minute drive.

In this post, I’m going to write about our trip in small details, writing a bigger review on the locations in a future post.

We left mid-morning on Friday, enjoying breakfast at The Original Pancake House in Denver, before driving to The Garden of the Gods.

The Garden of the Gods is a major tourist destination and it also happens to be free. Arriving mid-day, which seemed to be the peak of crowds is not advised. We couldn’t find parking, plus it just didn’t seem safe with Covid, so we only drove-through the park. We will have to come back, maybe in the early fall, certainly in the early morning.

Colorado Springs has tons of museums, but many of them are closed due to Covid. The “Ghost Town Wild West Museum” was open! Admittedly, it looked a little suspect as it is located in a strip mall and other signage put “Ghost Town” in quotes, but I love this sort of thing, so we gave it a go.

This place is amazing, again saving for a later review, but a quick note on covid: it’s an indoor museum with a large open space and very high, warehouse style ceilings. There were social distancing notices everywhere and masks were required. They also provided plenty of sanitizer. The best part was we were alone for a majority of our visit. It felt very safe. To drive the safety idea home, they put a mask on their deer statue.

We checked-in to our hotel, Hilton Doubletree in downtown Colorado Springs. Similar to the Hilton in Breckenridge, the hotel was filled with signage regarding masks/social distancing, and hand sanitizer was readily available. Our room did not have the sticker seal to show it had been cleaned, but it looked immaculate, and things like the tv remote had a sleeve to show it had been cleaned. The pool was open and we were able to use it after reserving a slot. The pool is indoors and they allowed a max of fifteen guests in the pool area. We were able to reserve it for an unpopular time and we had it completely to ourselves. It was great! The first swim of 2020!

For lunch, we walked to the nearby Phantom Canyon Brewery, where we were seated on their outdoor patio and the menu was touchless. We’ve seen the touchless menus at a few restaurants and I think it’s a great solution. Other restaurants have disposable menus, which seems like a waste.

For dinner, we had an absolutely amazing experience at Mood Tapas Bar. We were severely under-dressed, but fully welcomed by the staff. We ended up ordering a nine-course tasting menu with wine, that was created by Chef Curry. It was one of the best meals we have ever eaten! Chef Curry personally brought out our dessert and he couldn’t have been more humble. He’s only twenty-four, but he is destined to be a name in the culinary world. He also sent a very kind personal email in response to my Yelp review.

Downtown Colorado Springs is a cute area, with plenty of stores and restaurants. Unfortunately, there were also signs of Covid’s damage.

The next morning, we woke up at 5am for Dan’s big birthday present, a bike tour down the tallest mountain in Colorado: Pike’s Peak! The tour company, Bike Pike’s Peak, was great about Covid-safety, although I can’t help thinking that this was one of the riskiest things we have done in this new normal.

Masks were required, but we did get in a shuttle van with six other people. We also didn’t have sanitizer as we were biking. The bike ride itself was extremely thrilling, really pushing my comfort zone, but I would definitely do it again!

Our experience included lunch and we felt funny not sitting with a guy from our tour that was solo, so we joined him. This was risky, as we had to remove our masks to eat and we were in close proximity. Who knows how this stranger has been handling social distancing? I’m not sure if others feel the same way, but we have had some experiences where the norms of social politeness have prompted me to be a little risky. It hasn’t been anything really bad, but small risks or moments where I don’t know how to navigate politeness with this new normal.

On Sunday, we found out that our friends, Roger and Katrin, whom we haven’t seen in about four years, were driving through Denver on their move from Minnesota to Los Angeles. We couldn’t miss seeing them, so with other mutual friends (Julie and Ryan), we ate dinner at The Lazy Dog Cafe. Roger and Katrin have a very cute elderly beagle named Billy, and we all sat on the patio. Again though, we were in close proximity and we gave hugs.

It wasn’t enough catching-up, so we had the whole group over to our house for dinner the following evening.

Roger, Katrin, and Julie immigrated to the US from Germany, so I was proud to bring out the colored crystal glasses that my mom brought back from Germany in 1961. My father was in the military and my parents lived in Germany for two years. My mom was evacuated with other military families, when the Berlin Wall went up, and she carried these crystal glasses on her lap during the plane ride. She also hauled them around Tivoli Gardens, during a lay-over trip in Denmark. To me, they are holiday glasses, and when I look at them, I can taste my mom’s turkey dinner with her stuffing.

This was a busy week, but we did have time to start a fabulous, if not highly uncomfortable, television series: “Love Life” starring Anna Kendrick. We are three episodes in, and every episode has made us cringe, but we are blown away by the excellent writing and Kendrick’s performance. It’s on HBO Max and totally worth it. We also discovered that HBO Max carries our favorite cheesy show that we always watch in hotels, “Impractical Jokers.” So we are now working our way through the series to discover episodes we missed. It’s great to watch without commercials. It seems bizarre that this show was acquired by HBO. The brands are not compatible.

And my usual ending with cute cat pictures. Slinky is in a bed that Julie and Ryan gave to the cats and he’s owning it! My favorite picture is Tom listening attentively as Dan plays the ukulele. This time last year, we were heading home from our magical Hawaiian vacation. I hope we will return in 2021.