a cake, a kid, a mustache

I've just emerged from our crawl space, empty handed. It's dark in there, I went looking for the guest book from our wedding, of all things. It's in there somewhere.

Peggy over at https://straightupnochaser.blogspot.com/ posted about celebrity sightings, of which I've experienced little. When I worked at a hotel in downtown Denver in the mid 80s, we often had professional wrestlers stay for WrestleMania type events, but I've never followed professional wrestling. So, despite the throngs of fans in the lobby, the wrestlers weren't anything more than typical hotel guests to me.

However... How Ever... we did have a couple of well-known movie stars at our wedding:

Mr. Sam Elliott, along with his illustrious mustache, and wife, Katherine Ross.

No, it's not like they are long-time family friends who made our wedding guest list and RSVPd "Yes!". They actually, more or less, crashed the reception with the help of their young daughter, who is now 41 years old. I got this photo after googling from around the time of the wedding crashing.

SOURCE

So, the story of how our worlds collided

• I grew up in a small town in Colorado.
• We got married in my hometown.
• My hometown is surrounded by boonies. Lots of boonies.
• A movie adaptation of a Louis L'Amour novel was being filmed
• Louis L'Amour wrote westerns. Lots of westerns.
  
• Sam Elliott (and sometimes Katherine Ross) starred in lots of westerns
• Sam Elliott and Katherine Ross starred in this particular western
• The movie was filmed in the boonies surrounding my hometown
• The movie cast and crew stayed at the hotel of my wedding reception

BOOM, celebrities at our reception.

Our wedding cake was set upon a table, and this little blonde girl walked in and asked me, "Can I show my dad your cake?"

"Okay", I replied, nonchalantly.

She returned with freakin' Sam Elliott in tow.

And honestly, my mom was already practically best girlfriends with Katherine Ross by that time. My mom worked at the hotel in the restaurant. Mom was very easy to be friends with, and never went all stalker on Katherine Ross. 

She told me she treated them like any other restaurant guests, and one day slipped Katherine a note saying, "I loved you in 'Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid' and 'Stepford Wives'", to which I can attest is true - those were probably Mom's two favorite movies. And the friendship grew from there, at least during their time in my boonie hometown.

Magnum and I got a picture with Katherine Ross and their daughter, a.k.a. chief wedding crasher, and I'm sad to say WE LOST IT - THE PHOTO.

There are lots of other photos of the wedding weekend, but that ONE is conspicuously MIA, lost during one of our earlier moves. I lost that photo along with my diploma for my bachelors degree. Of those two things, I am way more disappointed about losing the photo.

But we've got a signed wedding napkin, and the couple did sign our guest book - which is somewhere in the crawl space... maybe.

nieve seis de mayo

We're having us a snow day. First one for the whole school year, and it comes in May?

But we'll take what we can get after our long, dry winter.  Poor awakening trees, welcomed by drought only to get dumped on with heavy, wet snow. Their roots are loving it, but their branches, not so much.

So, I'll be zooming with the tutees today. No complaints from me or them. I have an easy commute to campus, but remote sessions mean I need only be presentable from the shoulders up. 

 I took a soggy walk-about the neighborhood this morning. Pretty quiet out with all the schools and colleges closed - a precursor to summer break when many of the university students go away. 

Monday is the last day of our semester. Then it's a couple of weeks until the summer session begins. I've made myself available for summer tutoring. There are less students in the summer, but also less tutors, so it seems to balance out. 

Welp, time to try to make myself a quarter presentable.

proms, snow, and dopamine

We made it to May. Snow in this coming week's forecast after a whole lotta nothing all winter. 

I'll take it, better late than never.

But this weekend's been lovely. I went out to take care of a couple of easy errands yesterday via bicycle. At one point, I rode through a picturesque part of the university campus. It was teeming will well-dressed folk.

It's too early for graduation, I pondered. Plus, graduation would bring out caps and gowns, none of which were present. As I got closer, I noticed the well-dressed folks were a bunch of kids - broccoli-haired boys and gowned girls. 

Ah... prom.

Apparently, that location on campus is a popular place for prom pics.

I thought back to high school prom days and to how oh-so-important it seemed at the time, and how oh-so-unimportant it actually is/was in the grand scheme of things. But I hope they had fun - didn't get too drunk, and no one got pregnant.

Speaking of almost graduation, one week remains of the semester. Do-or-die for some students heading into finals. One of my tutees has very long, decorative acrylic fingernails. They can be cumbersome to deal with when she's doing her online homework - needing to use her chunky knuckles instead of fingertips when using her laptop touch screen.

"These nails make it difficult to do my math homework", she acknowledged, to which she added, 

"but I need the dopamine to do my math homework"

Hey, it's a balance.

watch out

"Wanna arm wrestle?"

Party Girl asked me this on Friday at work. Friday mornings in testing are nearly always very busy, but then things typically quiet down by noonish. We were at noonish. She suggested the arm wrestling to see which one of us could clock out early.

I asked what made her think of arm wrestling, "We could just rochambeau", I suggested.

But then I said she could go early since I had to tutor later so wouldn't be leaving campus anyway. She then admitted she just really felt like an arm wrestle match. So fine, I granted her wish, weird as it was. I don't think I'd arm wrestled since maybe middle school?

I won by the way.

• Speaking of granting wishes, two of my PEO friends and I interviewed a woman who applied for an educational grant. Bottom line, we learned she has too much financial aid already, so is not eligible for this particular grant. I need to draft an email to inform her, so am procrastinating by blogging instead. 
  
  
• We trudged around another property-for-sale in the boonies yesterday after deciding the access road to that other one was a deal breaker. Meego has come along both times, but Wolfgang had conflicts both times, so I meant to take photos of yesterday's site for Wolfgang, but plum forgot.

These are from the listing.

Again, there is some fire damage - from a fire in 2012 - but it's not nearly as stark as the last place we visited. And there are gorgeous views. I think we might put an offer on this one after a bit more research.

• After working up an appetite, traipsing around in those woods, we stopped at nearby Vern's just outside of town. 

Vern's is very popular, known for it's hearty meals and humongo sweet rolls. We'd never been there. It's an interesting contrast to restaurants in old town Fort Collins, which are more trendy, for lack of a better term. 

from Google reviews
What is that little thing below? A wolverine??

The Vern's decor is plentiful taxidermy, dead eyes watching from every vantage point. And there was a lot of camouflage clad clientele. 

Breakfast was delicious. Mine was meatless, which seems rather contradictory upon reflection.

cancel, campaign, commute

I'm in the computer commons at the college killing some time before my next tutoring appointment. I got to campus just in time to receive a text from my earlier tutee...

"I'm really sorry to do this so last minute..."

Okay, fine. She had to late cancel - health issues. So here I was in vagabond mode. I was in the student center for a while, having a snack. A guy walked up to me,

"Excuse me, are you a student?", he asked.

Heck no, what?? was what I was thinking, but to be fair, there are a few from my generation who decide to take college classes, for whatever reason.

So I said, "Uh, no. Sorry"

He approached the girl sitting not far from me. He's running for student government, getting signatures. I have no idea what the student government does here. As for me, I reached into my bag and put on my nametag so as to not look so student-y.

In other news, the Pelicans are here. They come every spring to, apparently, breed. Why Colorado, I have no idea.

I'm sure there are pelicans breeding in other places, too, but I always see a flotilla of them on my commutes home this time of year. 

And with that, so endeth todays loitering. 

moonscapes and lilacs

The weeks are a-flying by. Only three weeks left in the spring semester... but who's counting?  It's a busy time, and I'm SO glad I am not PEO president for another year. It almost happened, and *whew*. I've got enough other things to do.

I mentioned a while back that we've talked about purchasing some recreational land, and we've gotten more serious after perusing properties online. I should give credit where credit's due and mention that Magnum has been chief peruser, knowing our criteria. He's taken it on, sends me links to candidate properties, and found us a good realtor.

Yesterday was our first site looky-loo. We drove up to the boonies with Realtor to this mass of dirt that appeals to us for various reasons. It's kind of a sad story actually. The current owner purchased it a few years ago, worked at paying it off, built a small cabin - just a nice getaway. And then...

The Cameron Peak Fire happened and ravaged the place. It is now a landscape of blackened used-to-be trees and not much else. 

So, one's sad story is another's blank canvas.

Here's one of the pics I took of what was once a lovely evergreen forest

Very tall Realtor included for scale. (Seriously, the guy's like 7 ft. tall...)

But there are gorgeous views, primo location (when not on fire), and lots of potential. We really liked the property, but one downside is... The Road, yes it deserves to be capitalized. The road to get there is a bear for about the final half-mile. We brought our 4x4 truck just to make sure it could do it. It made it, and while not a deal breaker, The Road is a big red flag. Even Realtor and the local guy who maintains the roads in the area agree it's a beast.

So I want to look at at least one other property for juxtaposition. Not ready to start throwing money around just yet. 

Speaking of juxtaposition, lilac season is upon us despite our hot, dry winter and spring. I snapped this photo on a recent morning run around.

I'm sneezy, but they're pretty.

elevensies

Craving
Coffee walk
I'm surely addicted
12oz drip, oat milk
Happy

I recently read about a journaling technique. "Eleven" refers to journaling thoughts in the pattern:

• 1 word
• 2 words
• 3 words
• 4 words
• 1 word

So I gave it a whirl and came up with today's opening lines just prior to this morning's coffee walk. Afterward,

[student's name]
New hair
It suits her
Change would be good
Go

That one came about because we went for our coffee walk and ended up at a coffee shop inside a local bookstore. I went to the counter to order and was met by one of my college tutees, who was barista-ing. I didn't know she worked there.

"Oh, hi" I greeted, "I know you"

"Yeah, hi", her response

"Ooh, I like your hair, looks great", I genuinely shared.

"Thanks" <smile>

Her hair did look good. It's sort of a shag style, now died black with a shock of red on the lower half of one side. It's not something I would do or look good with, but it suited her. She'd recently decided to change her major from a STEM subject to creative writing. She'd never confessed fully to me, but I'm guessing she really wants to be a writer, but figured she should study something more "practical" in college, so went the STEM route.

Then she likely decided, "screw that", gonna follow her dreams instead. I think that decision likely lifted a weight off her shoulders. She did seem more at ease today as bookstore barista with cool new hair than as the last time I'd seen her - struggling math student.

Maybe she'll become a successful author, and I can say I knew her when...

On that note, we're already down to the last few weeks of the semester. I'm looking forward to the summer break, but a few students have already asked me about summer tuting. So it likely won't be a full-on snoozer, which is a good thing.

Balance
All play
And no work
Invites in the dementia
Maybe?