Denver…again!

I'm running out of ways to title posts about my multiple returns to Denver. But it's just such a nice city!

When I bought my plane ticket for my Thanksgiving trip to Orlando and D.C., I didn't know that my car was going to sell so quickly and easily, and I was anticipating driving it back to Wisconsin to sell there. Now car-less, I'll be flying home to WI instead. Now that I'm saving all that driving time, I got to spend it instead as two final days in Denver seeing even more great people I didn't have a chance to connect with in November.

I was inconsistent about taking pictures of these visits, but did get some recorded for posterity. I had a fantastic catch-up over coffee with a former co-worker, L., who just welcomed her third daughter, S. Big thanks to S. for sleeping through most of our chat, waking up for a little meet-and-greet and feeding, and then conveniently konking out again. Babies are so SIMPLE and EASY. (Ha, ha.)

My lunch with D, a board member for the org I worked at in Denver, was another great chance to catch up and share travel tips/info/connections. When I e-mailed my friend C to solicit advice on D's behalf for her upcoming trip to Croatia, auto-correct changed D's actual name to "Drifted," which I failed to notice before sending. C wrote back: "Happy to help with Croatia advice. Do you really have a friend named 'Drifted'?!?!" No, but now I wish I did. That is an AWESOME name.

I also had coffee with gardening buddy B, and apparently got so distracted taking a picture of this incredible desk (made of BOOKS!) at the café/bookstore where we met that I forgot to get a shot of B herself.

Timing was perfect to attend the monthly meeting of the book club that I belong(ed) to. Great fun catching up with this group of ladies, who were really the first people other than my co-workers that I got to know when I first moved to Denver.

Then, my great friend M (middle), her boyfriend D, and M's roommate…also M…welcomed me over to their apt. for an extremely yummy lunch. This table of people made me glow with happiness at its international flavor: D is Italian, M Iranian, and M#2 American, but her mother is from El Salvador and I walked away from the lunch with a list of places to go and see when I am in Central America in a couple months.

And then MORE great food and fantastic company at one of my two favorite Ethiopian restaurants on Colfax. I've never been there with this many people and so have never before seen the gargantuan platter served to our half of the table.

Disturbingly attentive blog readers might recognize this group of women from one or more of the get-togethers in Avon over the past few years. Such attentive readers might also notice with alarm how much of the food on the platter above is missing, a couple of hours later, from the platter below.

For real: this is probably the last Denver post for awhile. Sadly. Already looking forward to the next visit.