A Perfectly Acceptable ....

A Perfectly Acceptable Substitute for No. 4: Performance at Red Rocks


While I am not taking No. 4: Performance at Red Rocks completely off the table, I am willing to acknowledge at this point that some of the things on my list just may not happen in the next -EEK!- 4 months.  So Saturday night I did something totally in the spirit of the list and of going to an outdoor concert and of No. 25: See a concert- live music.

Possibly No. 4 will end up being put on the 90 by 90 list.   Yes, that's probably going to be a thing.

But.

Last weekend the tiny little town of Salida (population about 6000 really cool people) hosted the Gentlemen of the Road Stopover.  I've been hearing about this since last January. At the time I thought "Cool. I want to go. But. I will be back in Texas."

Fast forward and my days of not knowing where I will be next continue. Turns out I will be in Colorado. And the preparations for the Stopover are coming together and tickets go on sale. Urk! Tickets are $200 each for the whole weekend, including camping. No one day tickets are being sold. Hard to justify that.
But...but... Mumford and Sons are headlining. I love them. I want to see them. But... but... $200.00.  Just for one ticket.

The last few weeks before the show and instead of the 30,000 tickets that the promoters thought would sell,  only 20,000 have been purchased.  So one day tickets go on sale.  Saturday night will be $125.00.  Still quite a bit but maybe.  But who will go with me? I don't want to go by myself. (Whine.)  I've pretty much burned Bunny out on Mumford just by constantly playing their Babel CD.

Last Friday no tickets have been purchased, no plans have been made. Bunny and I head into town for dinner and to just see how crowded and entertaining it is. The stores are all decked out with signs and British flags are everywhere and there is a party atmosphere. Bunny says "We should go tomorrow night. I have a couple of friends going."

Home again, we go onto Salida Swap, our local buy/sell/trade/find a lost dog FB spot.  "ISO two one day tickets for Saturday night".

By Saturday morning I have two discounted tickets, just have to go pick them up. I feel like I'm doing a drug deal. First stop is a house in town. I hand over $70 cash and get a sole red wrist band. Assured that is all I need, I go on to my second stop: a Shell station in the next town over. There I get an info packet and a black wrist band in exchange for 3 twenties.Wait! What's the difference? Why is one red and one black.  No one seems to be able to tell me. Did I just buy a ticket for Friday? The wrist bands need to be registered online and I get "Success!" after entering each one so ...fingers crossed...they both must be good.

Hmmm. One of these is not like the other.

Turns out one was a weekend wristband, the other was a day wristband.

Bunny and I head into town about 5:30. Mumford and Sons plays at 8:15.  Parking is easy although we have about a mile to walk to get to the stage area. Tents are everywhere. It's all so...organized. Clean.  There's a tiny security check with no wait. And ... no one ever looks at our wristbands. The instructions said they would be scanned but no.

Within ten minutes Bunny has abandoned me. O wait! She let me buy her (and me) a T-shirt first. Then she scampered off to meet up with friends.

No worries. I realized I had a choice.

I could do something I really, really wanted to do and enjoy the entire experience or I could sit at home  and whine about missing something I really wanted to do but didn't because I didn't have anyone to go with.

Guess what? I'm pretty good company for myself.

I grabbed a taco and as it got closer to 8:00 I edged my way up to the stage, picking a spot near the sound booth/VIP area because there was a low fence to lean on which also gave me a pretty good view. Somewhere along the way I realized how short I am. And how many 6 feet tall guys there are out there. With their 5'8" girlfriends.

Jenny Lewis was playing. Never  heard of her but totally enjoyed her music.  A group of exuberant twenty somethings was gathering next to me. A cute thirty something (maybe 40?) couple leaned on the fence next to me. One of the 20s asked me "You here by yourself? That's cool. How in the world did you do concerts when you were a kid without cell phones?"  Half of the couple asked if I was alone and did I want to meet them in Moab to go mountain biking next month.   Um. No. I don't even know your name but thanks for the offer.

And then.... the main course.

Mumford and Sons.  They were great. Awesome. Did I notice one bit that I was alone? No.
Would it have been nice to have someone there to ooh and aaahh over the band with?
Sure.
But better to be alone than to have someone with me that didn't care about the music or the experience.

The best part of the night? The four band members singing together around one microphone with just one guitar. Marcus Mumford asked everyone to be quiet and you know what? Everyone was. Twenty thousand people quit talking/singing/yelling and just listened. I videoed a bit of it but of course, not a very good video. I was too busy listening myself.


                    

(If you can't see this, go here.)

And when it was over I walked alone to my car with 20,000 of my new bestest friends that I had never met before.   And here's the amazing part. Not a care in the world. Not one second thought about walking alone to my car a mile away surrounded by strangers at 11pm on a dark night. Once in my car it took me exactly 4 minutes to get out of the parking lot and on my way. Like I said, everything was very well organized.

So while it wasn't Red Rocks,
which is its own experience, this huge outdoor concert was definitely an acceptable substitute for now. Red Rocks may still get done before December but it may not.
No worries.

No. 39: Grow a vegetable

No. 39: Grow a vegetable.


Haha! I thought I had this one nailed.

Right before I left for Texas I had two tomato plants covered in blooms. I had enlisted the neighbors to water them and hug them and kiss them while I was gone.  I KNEW I was going to have tomatoes when I returned.

The afternoon we left Colorado there was a huge thunderstorm. Hail. Rain. More hail.

I got a message that my plants were shattered. Broken. Crushed.

BUT!

I had put some potato starts in the ground back in April. And then I pretty much forgot about them. I watered the plants and they grew but still...no way to know what was going on underground.

Two little rows of new potato plants. 

Somehow I hoped that something would work. It's hard to grow plants when you are moving back and forth between two states with two different climates.

So...potatoes, tomatoes.

Upon my return, I realized the tomatoes weren't a total loss.   A couple of blooms hung on. My neighbor brought over another tomato along with some peppers. A friend brought me one of those upside-down tomato planters. Something had to work.

At this point I have three tomatoes on two of the plants.

Not red yet, but getting there. 

The upside down planter has a tiny tomato and a couple of blooms too. 

Unexciting picture.

This is my first experience with one of these planters. 

So far, so good. 

The peppers are out in the back bed and I didn't get a pic of them before the rain started tonight. But there are two habanero plants and one jalapeño and they all have blooms and peppers.  They seem to be holding up to my sporadic watering so I'm expecting results in a few more weeks. 

And the potatoes? Well, they are the reason I am counting No. 39 complete. 

I noticed the plants were dying even though I was watering them daily. What the....??   Then I remembered my friend, Cherrilla, telling my that the potatoes would be ready when the plants started to wither. 

This morning I went out and dug.

It was just like Easter morning.  

Potatoes!!  

Potato size ranges from grape to cherry tomato size to normal new potato size. 

We will eat them all.

In this case, size does not matter. 

Tiny new potatoes. About enough for one meal for two people. Bunny will be back in Colorado this weekend. Guess what is on the menu? 

No. 39 has been grown. 

No.43: Get that Colonoscopy

No. 43: Done!

Today's post is your PSA for the day.

No. 43:Get that Colonoscopy is done!

For obvious reasons (no one says this is lots of fun) I have been putting this off. For years. 

The CDC and the U.S. Preventive Services Task Force recommend colorectal cancer screening starting at age 50. My doctor started recommending a colonoscopy to be done by age 55. From 55 on, he hounded me. "Had that colonoscopy yet? Here's a recommendation." And every year I didn't do it. Age 60 is the "You better do this or you will die a gruesome death" deadline.
Anyway, I put it on my list. So I had to. 

 While I was in Texas I scheduled my appointment.

The night before is the not so fun stuff. Prep. Horrid horrid liquid gagged down in big gulps followed by lots and lots  of water. And then..... Whatever. You all know. 

The morning of Bunny was my designated driver. A last minute review of the instructions stated clearly "You must have someone drive you and stay in the office. Drivers must be age 18 or older." Oops. I yelled at Bunny to put some make up on and act older. Chronologically she's only 17 but she acts older than most 20 year olds. The hubs was put on notice in case there was an emergency and/or Bunny got carded. 

Feeling ten pounds lighter, we arrived at the doctor's office and passed check in. While waiting in pre-op I got to eavesdrop on all the other patients. The doctor is a Latino and so were most of his patients. Spanish was flying all around me. Love love love that I can speak and understand another language. I'm a little rusty but that morning it was fun trying to see how much I could comprehend. Lots apparently. I'm sure the women in the cubicle next to me would be horrified that I now know so much about her intestines. 

Then it was my turn. Count down from 30 and ....

This is what I remember:

Until...

Voices floated into my consciousness and for some reason I tried to whistle. I don't know how to whistle. Eventually I managed a sound and the nice nurse came over. "I hear voices. Am I supposed o be awake?"   Why yes, I was. All done. Feeling wonderfully rested, I waited for the doc to come over. That Propofol is a wonderful drug. I see why Michael Jackson loved it. 

Dr. Trabanino appeared, declared that I had the colon of a 30 year old and released me. 

The best part?  I'm good to go for another ten years. 

I'm counting on the pharmaceutical companies to come up with an improved prep by then.
Please.