another rest day in colorado!

Yes, it is true - today my adventures took another form, the kind where I practice resting. I may have mentioned this before, but I'm notoriously bad at resting. One of the goals of this entire trip, of the whole general plan of "quit my job to have adventures" is to become okay with idleness. Generally, the reason I fail to be idle is that I just find so many things that are interesting and different ways to keep myself occupied that I forget to notice that I never stop at rest. I find there can be a fine line between "staying busy because everything is interesting" and "working all the time." So, I did my best to welcome the day of rest.

When I awoke this morning, snow was swirling and there was a thin layer of it upon my car. Every direction we looked, the sky was laden with ominous dark clouds. The radar map was a sea of light blue and every other color that might indicate treacherous winter weather. I had already had my fill of metropolitan Denver yesterday, so I was more than content to park it in Englewood (a suburb a little southwest of the city) for the day.

Once I realized that the several inches of snow were not actually going to accumulate, and in fact that was probably because it was only about 33 degrees out, I went for a jog. I'm currently staying in what appears to be a generally average residential neighborhood built sometime in the last half of the twentieth century. But only a few blocks away lies an extremely well-to-do subdivision, where I saw absolute behemoths of houses, all recently constructed. Most of these were actually rather hideous to look at, to say nothing of their size.

Other highlights of the day: I went to Staples to try to talk to them about my camera, but they couldn't fix it, or swap it out, because I had bought it on clearance. They said I could return it for a refund if I came back with all the cords and whatnot, but I figure I can try my luck at a few more Stapleses, and continue practicing expressing myself through ways other than a digital camera.

I spent a lot of the day writing, catching up on other things I've been intending to write about. With every day that passes on this trip, I remember more and more how much I love writing. For the majority of my childhood, I dreamed of being a writer. Since about senior year of high school, though, my writing skills have mostly aided me in achieving high grades on papers where I knew nothing about the subject content (oops), and writing lengthy letters and blog posts. I don't know if I could strictly be a writer; I might require more constant social interaction than that. Nevertheless, it was good practice.

I also changed a headlight on my car! This is a feat I have accomplished before, but it's a task I had been putting off for a few days. I was so thrilled by accomplishing this extremely small feat that I wanted to run around and make sure that everybody who owns a car knows how to do this, because it is so empowering. I felt like an old rusty mechanic!

This evening, Shannon had her monthly bunco game. Bunco is a dice game that mostly exists so that women have a chance to get together once a month, eat snacks, and laugh heartily. That's the definition so far as I understand it, anyway. There's absolutely no skill involved, though I suppose the exact technique you use to throw the dice could make a difference. My mom played in a bunco group for years when I was younger, and I often got to sub in. Tonight, Shannon's group needed a sub, so I got to go play bunco in Colorado with a cadre of mostly kindergarten teachers and aides. Some of the scoring was different than with my mom's group, and I had Miller Lite and a baked potato rather than soda and M&M's, which was the typical offering before.

Today I found myself dreaming of Oregon quite a bit, and wishing I were there already.

Tomorrow I am on the road again, and if the weather forecast is to be trusted (and who knows, really) it should be clear sunny skies the whole way. I am excited to be on the road again, and it does feel nice to have a day of rest. I did laundry and tidied up my car, so we are ready for more adventures. After five days on the road, apparently my car and I became a "we." Now that's a relationship I'm ready for!