Exploring Denver: magic foods, museums, parks, and more!

It has been a while since my last post - and we have done a lot of things and found a lot of things. We have been trying to go places on bikes, though not easy given how big Denver is. Brant did bike downtown (~8 miles) to go to a Rockies game with some of his friends. We have explored our neighborhood, and I finally have pictures to post of the reading park - if you look closely, you'll see "READING" in the leaf and "GARDEN" - so cool. They lined the park with concrete books in the retaining wall too!

Everything out here is green or greener than what we are used to. Okay, well not everything. I have officially given up my Iowan citizenship - my driver's license is from Colorado, and after doing the emissions test, the VIN verification, obtaining my title, and paying the state some more money, my car now has Colorado license plates. Brant says that it'll help my car fit in better out here - you know, a Jetta with Colorado plates. So now it's time to send my Palo Alto plates back to the courthouse - so sad. Throughout this process though, I did really miss being able to just go to the courthouse and ask for plates or get my photo taken for my license. I waited for 2 hours for my license and 1 hour for my plates at the DMV, on separate occasions.... the Colorado DMV - not such a friendly / awesome environment.. I was a little nervous the whole time I was there. It could be worse though.
There are lots of bikers out here too, but they do not always obey the traffic laws - which can be a little frustrating when trying not to hit them.
With the whole "green" theme in mind, we are trying to make more of our foods at home. I made alfredo sauce for the first time today - why have I not done this before? Sooooo easy! We live 2 blocks (literally) from an Albertsons, so getting groceries is just a short walk away. That has been a huge perk of living in Lowry! I found potato chips with 4 ingredients - yes, it's true.... and they even taste like potato chips! Magic foods - I swear!
So, to the whole "not everything is greener" that I wrote about earlier... I miss the no-smoking laws in Iowa. We went out some of the other residents from UCH last night, and at the end of the night, I had more drinks and cigarette smoke on me than I could remember in a long time. While it was very fun (for me), it was a long wait: 20ish minutes into downtown, then parking, then walking back to LoDo's, then 15 minutes at the door, 2 minutes at the bar for a drink each (go me for scouting out the non-busy bartop), 10 more minutes in a line to get to the upstairs patio, then 15 minutes in (another) line upstairs to get out onto the patio... yes, it's true: it took us an HOUR to find my friends at the bar. That's Denver though! Brant also made a great observation (as one of the two guys with our party): more and more increasingly drunk guys came to chat us girls up - but our number never changed. Their odds went down with each man approaching. What's even more funny is that two of us had our boyfriends, one is clearly married, and three were not interested. Awesome night! But, I do miss the no-smoking laws... for those of you still in Iowa, enjoy them for me! :)

We may have become old-people over night. We are members of the Denver Museum of Science & Nature. It sounds kind of lame, but it is awesome! The Body Worlds exhibit is currently in Denver at this museum, so we went to see it. We became members since it was cheaper to become members and pay $12 each to see Body Worlds than to just buy the tickets outright. They have so many awesome exhibits: dinosaurs, mummies, space/moon travel, animals from all over the globe. We didn't go into many of the wings - now that we have a membership, we can go whenever we want! We're planning on going to see an IMAX movie about the Hubble telescope soon too. .. We are big science nerds.

Work for me has been awesome. I am truly loving what I do - for now at least :) In a few weeks or months I may have a different story, but for now I am loving it all! Saving people with drugs... so cool. I know that it's kind of morbid and disturbing that I could/would be so excited about people being incredibly sick, but those are the people that I can have the biggest impact on. The doctors have all been awesome so far too - they call me back and say "hey, this is xxx (insert first name)". I love it! They want my help, and they are always calling and asking questions. The computer system has been a steep learning curve, but so far I am really enjoying it!