Project 365: Day 19

Minot North Dakota... huh?

Exactly... where the heck is that? Well it turns out it's exactly in the middle of nowhere!  A solid 3-4 hours drive west of Fargo... and I thought the Denver airport was in the middle of nowhere!

I snapped this picture on my way to Minot, as I was driving down the highway at 80 miles per hour on cruise control.

Tomorrow, I go home!!!



Project 365: Day 18

I have to say, having states like the Dakotas, Kansas, and Nebraska has it's perks. On one hand it's a lot of ground to cover, but on the other hand... it's a lot of ground to cover! For example, today I had one meeting at 11:30am. I had time to wake up early, do Yoga, and get some work done before heading to the meeting. Then after about an hour and a half, my "work" for the day was done and I was on the road for a 4 1/2 hour  drive to my next locale.

Now a 4 1/2 hour drive isn't typically my idea of a fun time, but I have to say, I kind of enjoyed it. It  gave me lots of time to listen to NPR - which I really love - and just spend some good quality time with myself.

Had I been in Chicago or St. Louis, I could have had three appointments today with barely any time to think - let alone turn on the radio - and so I'm thankful for the occasional trip that involves some serious time on the road. Of course driving through the Dakota's isn't necessarily the most efficient or effective way for me to use my time, but on the other hand, I think there is huge value in making social calls to our customers and absolutely hate for my first visit to be after they are already funded for an instrument. I think it's important to build that relationship with them beforehand, so that we have a good foundation when it comes time to do the real work together. So I really don't mind coming out to places like this every once in a while, and actually.... I kind of enjoy it. 

Tonight, I'm staying in Fargo. Thanks to a great recommendation by my customer, I had dinner at HoDo's downtown during their monthly "Science Cafe." It's a little event put on the by College of Arts and Sciences at NDSU where faculty members are invited to speak about their research in an informal setting. Tonight the speaker was Linguist Dr. Erin Conwell talking about how children learn language and it was pretty interesting. Definitely a nice change of pace from eating dinner by myself all the time - AND I sat next to a girl who was from Taiwan! We had lots of fun talking about how much we miss Taiwanese food!  After the talk, I took a little walk down Broadway in Fargo and snapped my picture of the day:

Project 365: Day 17

On the road again.... This morning I flew to Sioux Falls, South Dakota for a 4-day trip through North and South Dakota. In the span of 4 days, I will visit 5 customer sites and drive approximately 17 hours - 3 of which I knocked out today going from Sioux City north to Brookings and then south to Vermillion. After a meeting a U.S.D. tomorrow morning, I'm headed up to Fargo! Thankfully I've got my GPS and my rental car (a VW Bug!) has an auxiliary input so I can hook up my iPod to the stereo. Some sunflower seeds and coffee, and I'm good to go! 

My picture of the day today is a view out my windshield of the open road in South Dakota... I have a sneaking suspicion that this is pretty much all I'll be looking at for the majority of my 17 hours on the road, but if I find anything else, you guys will be the first to know!

Project 365: Day 14, 15, 16

Yay for the weekend. It was absolutely gorgeous in Denver this weekend - unfortunately on Friday I was cranky and exhausted and just didn't get my act together to take a picture. Right before bed I tried to get nick to pose for a picture but he was not feeling it... so I'm actually missing a picture for Day 14.... sorry!

Day 15: A bike ride through the city.

Day 16:
Disc golf in Arvada - good times with good friends!!!

And now, I'm off to North and South Dakota for the week!

Project 365: Day 13

For almost the last year, Nick and I have been going to a class at the local Y called "Extreme Fitness," but we just call it "Lamar" after the instructor of the class (As in "are you going to Lamar today?")

Lamar is awesome. He's like a high school coach, you want to show up for him and you want to work your ass off for him  - and he won't let you down. The class is like a boot camp, there's running, agility ladders, plyometrics, weight lifting... it's got it all.  AND it's 4 days a week! When I'm not traveling, I try to go 2-3 times/week, but when I'm on the road, sometimes I miss it all together.

Anyway, this week I was home all week (YAY) and got to go to class Monday, Tuesday, and Thursday, so my picture of the day is of Lamar. He's great!



Project 365: Day 12

As I mentioned a couple days ago, this week is restaurant week in Denver, so tonight I went out with a friend of mine, Natalie, to Strings on 17th and Humboldt.

The meal was amazing - I have to admit it was leaps and bounds over Kevin Taylor - every course was mouth watering. I will definitely be recommending this place to friends and taking Nick out on a date here some day soon. And a fun fact is that they actually do a $52.80 dinner special every Sunday night, which is an amazing deal because as I said, the food was fabulous.

Just for fun, I copied the description of my dinner from their menu:

White Bean and Carrot Soup ~ Garlic Chips and Carrot- Cumin Crème Fraiche

Seafood Capellini ~ Mussels, Shrimp, Calamari and Spicy Tomato Sauce

Confit Pork Cheek ~ Asparagus, Snow Peas, Fontina and Truffled Cream

Key Lime Tart ~ White Chocolate Cream, Tropical Fruit Relish, Mango Coulis


Yum yum yum!

I knew all day long that this was going to be the highlight of my day so I was saving my picture of the day for my dinner, but I didn't want to be snapping pictures of the food throughout the whole meal.. so I cheated a little and had the waiter snap a pic of us at the end of our meal. It's not exactly 'my' picture of the day - but well, it's not like there's a Project 365 rule book... so here's my picture of the day!

Good friends, good food, good times!!!

Project 365: Day 11

Another beautiful day in Denver! But instead of a photo of the blue sky I thought I'd share a picture of one of my latest pinning projects:

I found the project on Pinterest, (from this blog). And the idea was to take a canvas, cover it with some cool fabric, mask off a quote that I like, and spray paint the thing black.  A couple of weeks ago I found this awesome fabric and attached it to my canvas using spray adhesive - The blog recommended a staple gun but (1) I didn't read the blog very closely and (2) I don't have a staple gun anyway and (3) I kind of have a thing for spray adhesive these days.

My next step was to find a good quote. I was planning on going with something from Dr. Seuss, but was unexpectedly inspired by the air freshener hanging up in Aimee's car this weekend. 

So, once I had my quote and I had my canvas, I was ready to go. As I mentioned, I didn't read the blog very carefully or else i would have known that contact paper would have been much cheaper and more effective way of doing the project. Instead, I bought some stickers from Michael's and used some painters tape for the boarder - neither of which stuck very well once they got wet with the spray paint. 

Here's a picture of the project after one coat of paint

I was pretty shocked that it took so much paint, I used an entire can on the thing before the whole thing was covered. A note for anyone else attempting this project: I would probably skip the spray adhesive because I think it caused my spray paint to come out a little funny and the fabric to bubble up a little bit.   I might go over it with some acrylic paint to get rid of the weird sheen in some areas, but I think I'm going to hang it up in my room... overall I'm pretty happy with it.

And that is the story of my picture of the day! Yay for pinning!