A Weekend Conference in Denver

Busy time of year . . . we're getting ready to go east, the sun's up til all hours of the night, and there is no shortage of things to take care of!  Brian's sister Janet and her husband Fred were here for a week beginning the end of May, and it was great to have them visit.  We went to Talkeetna with them two weeks ago, and I think that it is the only 2 days that it rained in the last month!  We've had beautiful, unseasonably warm sunny weather - even up to 80, 81, which I've never seen in the 3 years that I've been here!  Janet and Fred took a trip to Seward on the train, which it sounds like they liked, and they saw moose and a bear along the way, lots of birds, and then seals and sea otters in Seward.

I thought I had a pic of them, but maybe not!

Brian dropped me off at the airport to fly to Denver for a conference and headed over to the train to pick them up from their trip to Seward, and then they headed home Friday a week ago.  We'll be there ourselves next Monday, as we leave here Sunday night.  The coordinator for the American Democracy Project, sponsors of the conference is Jennifer Domagal-Goldman, who oddly enough, is a first cousin of my stepchildren, so we connected again at the conference.

I remember Jenn from skiing at Cooley's when she was still in high school - as you can see she's a little past that now and about to have her first child!  It was a good conference, and I also had time to bike along the Platte River to an Indian grocery that a colleague wanted to find, meet for dinner at the Aquarium Restaurant, and hang out at Rock Bottom on the 16th Ave. Mall with some very interesting characters!

I got back in time to have a couple of giant birch pollen attacks, which is the first time in my life that I've had allergies like that -- no pictures, big swollen up eyes, pretty awful!   And then, a wonderful weekend of the Wisdom Course on the web - Brian is taking the course, and I am co-leading it!  We're both going to have a big "growth and development year."  Who knows what will happen next?