I guess you can call my friend Shantel and her boyfriend Dave “foodies.” They really know how to savor the flavors of a well-cooked meal, especially if it is ethnic or exotic. In fact, Shantel and I have become lunch buddies who search for and taste Fort Collins’ hidden culinary treasures weekly.
So of course I was delighted when she and Dave invited me over one night for a dinner party. Make that a Chinese dinner party. The next day, after all, was the start of Chinese New Year. Continue reading »
Even among best friends it is hard to predict the future. I was reminded of this one fine evening when Lisa, Tori and I were at Charis and Chris’ and marveled about how 10 years ago none of us could have ever guessed we would all be sitting around a dining table in Fort Collins. Continue reading »
From passion parties to roller skating to karaoke to tango, it seemed like gal-pals Ryan and Tanya and I had figured out all sorts of ways to have fun at night over the last year. It may be a surprise, then, that we’ve never gone bar hopping before, defined as “going to more than one bar in a given night.” Happily, then, today we had some good excuses to do so: (1) it was a new year and decade, and (2) it was our buddy Jon’s birthday. Continue reading »
For the last couple years, whenever a winter holiday came around I’d get to see Bandy, an ol’ buddy from high school. It helps that I have family in California where he lives, and he has cousins in Northern Colorado where I reside. This Thanksgiving we were able to hang out again because he came over to the Rocky Mountain State for five days. Continue reading »
“How are you doing on the turkey?” asked Tori the day before an early Thanksgiving dinner among a dozen close friends at my place. “I realized you [probably don’t have enough space in your] fridge to defrost it in for the normal three days. How did you work around that?”
Three days? I didn’t even have the big frozen bird yet. Then I read on the Internet, “The only safe way to thaw a frozen turkey is to place it in the refrigerator,” and soon I was panicking as much as a turkey being chased by a fox. Continue reading »
Roller skating nights sort of fizzled out; there were no more Passion Parties to attend; and I declared myself “retired” from a karaoke career shorter than William Hung’s. One might suspect, then, that life in Northern Colorado for my friends and I had suddenly become more boring than pouring through a programming manual on C++. But this was not the case. No, not with gal-pal Ryan living here. Somehow she always manages to find new places for fun, exercise, and doing things more off the wall than sweeping leaves off the front porch with a mop. Continue reading »
