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A Quiet Few Days
Spent most of the days when Jet was at camp working furiously on a follow up story to the novel ![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-userinfo.gif)
darkprism_fics and I are getting published at the end of July. Torquere seemed interested in follow up shorts stories to keep the characters alive, and maybe progress to the next novel.
So by Wednesday I was utterly beat. I had a quick consultation gig that afternoon with Mimi, which was very calming as she had a list of online things she needed done, and we just marched through them in a quick checklist. I love that she uses me simply to Get Things Done she otherwise would not do. It's one of my real strengths, and delights both of us, as she wouldn't get them done without me, and I feel accomplished when it's finished.
We drove down to Cherry Creek mall for dinner. There was a Teavana there, a tea shop thatmysocalledhell often talks about near her work, and I decided that I was going to go take a close look and see if there was something I'd like as well, as I've been tossing a lot of the old teas in my cupboards out. I found a lovely blueberry green tea and a blackberry rooiboos both of which smelled wonderful and could be easily iced as well as brewed hot.
Getting to taste both was nice as well.
From there we headed to the Kona Grill, which turned out to be fairly expensive, not nearly as Hawaiian influenced as I'd halfway hoped, but the waiter was really great. I enjoyed his service as well as his sleeve tattoo, and the food was decent. Not great, but good enough. The macademia nut chicken I had was an unusally refined crust as the macademias were ground fine. John's beef salad was very very good, tart, tangy, and intriguing.
Rather than eat dessert there, we decided to wander about, found nothing, but when we got back on the road, we saw that the Enstrom Candies was still open! Just barely, it turned out as it was 8 and they closed as we walked in, but they were kind enough to serve us ice cream. I had a scoop of their English toffee ice cream, which had bits and chunks of their toffee. There was also a sample platter that served just fine to satisfy my craving for their dark chocolate almond toffee. They make a really nice one.
From there we headed to Castle Rock, as I was pretty exhausted. We thought about seeing the new X-Men movie, but I was so tired I couldn't see straight. So we just went to the hotel, checked in, and settled in our little space for the night.
In the morning we went to La Foret to pick up Jet and Nicholas. We were treated to a performance by all the kids of a number of their camp songs, and then we all packed up and headed out. Right by the camp there was a fiber arts studio that looked like a tiny cabin, but turned out to be a fair sized house with a whole other enormous work room across the bridge. The yarn selection was immense and the fiber selection in the back even better! I found a whole sack of local llama wool in all kinds of grays, thick and luxurious and strong. It'll probably make excellent working fingerless gloves for John. He's been wanting a pair for a good long time. I also got a couple of dye colors that I'm running low on, and was very happy to find them.
That was a really nice find, and I'm probably visiting that place again. We took the 38 into Downtown and stopped at H Mart, a huge Korean grocery store and stocked up on all kinds of frozen dumplings, several Chinese fried dough strips, and Korean BBQ meats. The meats were frozen, so everything went into a cooler back in the trunk and we hightailed it for home.
The boys dropped me off in the house so that I could get everything into the freezer. By the time I was done with that and repacking my tea, they were home and Jet really, really, really wanted to play video games with me. I loved that.
So we played.
It's been pretty hot since, in the mid-90's and we've been going swimming and trying to cool off during the day.
I also started reading I, Sniper by Stephen Hunter and I got totally hooked on the Bobby Lee Swagger character. One of the themes of Hunter's books seems to be snipers, so I went to the library to check out a number of them, as the one that I managed to get is very very tightly plotted, the action lovingly detailed, and the technological aspects of the ordinance involved actually part of how the plot unfolds. I really loved that, immensely.
I also really enjoyed the characters and how they interact in the environment they're given, and the final confrontations between Swagger and the bad guys is just breathtakingly difficult. I think what I liked the most, however, were the detailed descriptions of what sniper warfare, or the one bullet war, really is all about. That was amazing to read.
Yes. I enjoyed it a great deal.
darkprism_fics and I are getting published at the end of July. Torquere seemed interested in follow up shorts stories to keep the characters alive, and maybe progress to the next novel.So by Wednesday I was utterly beat. I had a quick consultation gig that afternoon with Mimi, which was very calming as she had a list of online things she needed done, and we just marched through them in a quick checklist. I love that she uses me simply to Get Things Done she otherwise would not do. It's one of my real strengths, and delights both of us, as she wouldn't get them done without me, and I feel accomplished when it's finished.
We drove down to Cherry Creek mall for dinner. There was a Teavana there, a tea shop that
mysocalledhell often talks about near her work, and I decided that I was going to go take a close look and see if there was something I'd like as well, as I've been tossing a lot of the old teas in my cupboards out. I found a lovely blueberry green tea and a blackberry rooiboos both of which smelled wonderful and could be easily iced as well as brewed hot.Getting to taste both was nice as well.
From there we headed to the Kona Grill, which turned out to be fairly expensive, not nearly as Hawaiian influenced as I'd halfway hoped, but the waiter was really great. I enjoyed his service as well as his sleeve tattoo, and the food was decent. Not great, but good enough. The macademia nut chicken I had was an unusally refined crust as the macademias were ground fine. John's beef salad was very very good, tart, tangy, and intriguing.
Rather than eat dessert there, we decided to wander about, found nothing, but when we got back on the road, we saw that the Enstrom Candies was still open! Just barely, it turned out as it was 8 and they closed as we walked in, but they were kind enough to serve us ice cream. I had a scoop of their English toffee ice cream, which had bits and chunks of their toffee. There was also a sample platter that served just fine to satisfy my craving for their dark chocolate almond toffee. They make a really nice one.
From there we headed to Castle Rock, as I was pretty exhausted. We thought about seeing the new X-Men movie, but I was so tired I couldn't see straight. So we just went to the hotel, checked in, and settled in our little space for the night.
In the morning we went to La Foret to pick up Jet and Nicholas. We were treated to a performance by all the kids of a number of their camp songs, and then we all packed up and headed out. Right by the camp there was a fiber arts studio that looked like a tiny cabin, but turned out to be a fair sized house with a whole other enormous work room across the bridge. The yarn selection was immense and the fiber selection in the back even better! I found a whole sack of local llama wool in all kinds of grays, thick and luxurious and strong. It'll probably make excellent working fingerless gloves for John. He's been wanting a pair for a good long time. I also got a couple of dye colors that I'm running low on, and was very happy to find them.
That was a really nice find, and I'm probably visiting that place again. We took the 38 into Downtown and stopped at H Mart, a huge Korean grocery store and stocked up on all kinds of frozen dumplings, several Chinese fried dough strips, and Korean BBQ meats. The meats were frozen, so everything went into a cooler back in the trunk and we hightailed it for home.
The boys dropped me off in the house so that I could get everything into the freezer. By the time I was done with that and repacking my tea, they were home and Jet really, really, really wanted to play video games with me. I loved that.
So we played.
It's been pretty hot since, in the mid-90's and we've been going swimming and trying to cool off during the day.
I also started reading I, Sniper by Stephen Hunter and I got totally hooked on the Bobby Lee Swagger character. One of the themes of Hunter's books seems to be snipers, so I went to the library to check out a number of them, as the one that I managed to get is very very tightly plotted, the action lovingly detailed, and the technological aspects of the ordinance involved actually part of how the plot unfolds. I really loved that, immensely.
I also really enjoyed the characters and how they interact in the environment they're given, and the final confrontations between Swagger and the bad guys is just breathtakingly difficult. I think what I liked the most, however, were the detailed descriptions of what sniper warfare, or the one bullet war, really is all about. That was amazing to read.
Yes. I enjoyed it a great deal.