Lights Out for Earth Hour!

We love a good excuse to turn out the lights and luckily Earth Hour was this past Saturday night. The idea started in Sydney, Australia a year ago, and this year was celebrated globally. Not necessarily intended to conserve energy, but a nice side effect nonetheless, Earth Hour is meant to raise awareness about global warming.

We timed our dinner to be ready just before 8pm, the official start regardless of your time zone, set the table, readied the candles, put some beer on ice, and unplugged everything aside from the refrigerator (which remained closed for the duration of the evening - spoiled food is bad).

With seconds to go, we served up our grub, lit the candles, killed the lights, and unplugged the last remaining clock. Who knows what time we finally went to bed. We had such a great time just being with each other that Earth Hour turned into Earth Night. We left everything unplugged, brushed our teeth by candlelight, and hit the hay. With no Sunday obligations, we slept in, waking up to a still house and still having no idea what time it was. Perhaps this should be a monthly event.

Moosewood scores again

Mollie Katzen's "Moosewood Cookbook" gets a good deal of use here. One of our favorite dinners is a spin off of the Moosewood Polenta Pie recipe. We follow the directions as far as the polenta crust goes, and once the crust is baked, we toss on any number of raw veggies we might have on hand as well as a healthy dose of cheese and bake it all until it looks done.

In the not-too-distant future, hopefully we'll have our own veggies. The seeds have been purchased, we're in the midst of fertilizing and tilling, and next week we'll plant peas and spinach. In another week or two we'll start some other seeds indoors to be transplanted after Mother's Day (the generally accepted OK to plant now day here in Boulder).

Spring-ish

Saturday March 1st. Boulder, Colorado. 73 degrees Fahrenheit. Ahhhh...... Just got back from a lovely walk and discovered this:

Garlic!


and chives!


Snow scheduled for tomorrow... Only in Boulder.

New Wheels!

As several of you [read: parents] have noticed, we haven't been doing a very good service to our readers lately :) So we thought that we would drop some fun news on you as a special little treat.

The big news is that we've got new wheels! Working hard for cool companies has benefits. Now, although we both got new wheels, they are slightly different types of wheels. Although different, they share this one concept. They both use new technologies to improve upon the spirit of an old tradition. Of what wheels do we speak? Spinning wheels and bike wheels, of course!

Melissa just unveiled her brand new Schacht Matchless wheel, which could easily be mistaken for a piece of artwork. It was so new in fact, that you could still smell the danish oil from the finish. Melissa promptly spun a few yards and confirmed that it was truly matchless in performance as well as beauty.


And, just today Kevin got to assemble his new wheel(s). A brand spanking new Giant TCR Advanced Team road bike. This 16 pound piece of monocoque carbon bears more resemblance to a stealth bomber than a bicycle of old. Yet, it still coaxes a smile otherwise only found on small children riding a bike for the first time.

What's grosser than gross?

The other night Kevin and I went to see "There Will be Blood". Definitely a flick to see on the big screen - it is visually stunning. Well, if you have seen the movie, you know that there is no music for about the first fifteen minutes. The relative silence is disconcerting, but appropriately raw. Unfortunately for me, this meant that I heard the lady next to me when she decided it was a good time to whip out her nail clippers and take care of business. Yes. She clipped her nails in the movie theater. Clip. Clip. Clip. And she let her nail clippings fall on the floor. Should I be grateful it wasn't her toes?

Snowshoeing the Flatirons

Post-Christmas in Kansas, Jeff and Sarah stayed with us here in Boulder for an extra day of fun.


It was super cold and snowy, but that didn't stop us from layering on the gear, strapping ourselves into snowshoes, and heading up the road to the Flatirons. Using our cool new GPS, Kevin and Jeff decided to track our route and elevation gain.


Up, up, up we went...


...until we reached the Flatirons.


But of course we weren't really ON the Flatirons, we were just NEXT TO the Flatirons, so Kevin and Jeff pressed on, or rather up.


Kevin IN the Flatirons.


Our destination from the bottom of the trail looking back up.


Time for some cocoa.

Christmas in Kansas: Part Two

Christmas in Kansas! A very small contingent of Millers and Hankens converged on Paul and Jill's in Lawrence Kansas... and there was much rejoicing.


After a very aggressive yankee-swap-type dice game, everyone ended up with a joke gift or two including: David Beckham "Inspire" cologne, a fart machine a burp machine and an inexplicable ceramic cat mug.


Jeff and Sarah were there.


Kevin did great in the first round of the dice game snagging four presents, but lost them very quickly in round two. Things got ugly.


Though, Emily was the big winner of the night and soaked up all of the attention. What a cutie.


Though, the best present of all is getting to set aside the worries of the day and spend time with loved ones. Wow, the holidays go by far too quickly.