1. Ride my motorcycle
2. Start building bookcases
3. Hang out with friends
4. Go to the Monday CrossFit workout

Things I did do this holiday weekend:

1. Finished installing the new baseboard
2. Made lavender simple syrup
3. Took the wife out for a lovely lunch at Salt
4. Cleaned up the garage just a tiny bit
5. Cooked a bunch so we’ll have lots of easy leftovers
6. Went to the Saturday CrossFit workout and still can’t walk straight

I call that a win overall.

I’m sure I’ll post more about it later, but if it’s your thing, you might want to follow the #mountainrb hashtag on Twitter as well as this Twitter list of attendees, speakers and sponsors I’ve tried to build.

My various social network feeds are bound to be pretty single-focus for the next few days, so fair warning.

Ignite Boulder 11 was pretty awesome.

Great crowd, amazing venue, and pretty high level sparks, too. (The one about MS being a plumbing problem rather than an auto-immune disease was a jaw-dropper for me.)

Check the pics and stuff.

I had known about Hush for a couple months probably, but my first attempt to get on the mailing list didn’t work for whatever reason. Then just recently a newsletter from The Infinite Monkey Theorem Urban Winery (of which I have been a big fan for about a year) mentioned that they were hosting the next Hush, so I hopped on their site and signed up hoping I’d be in time to get invited to the winery dinner. As luck would have it, I was and I couldn’t be happier with the result.

The evening started off at about 6pm in the winery’s new courtyard sampling a surprisingly good rosé. We did some milling about, mostly keeping to ourselves, though a few brave souls did approach us. By the time we were told to move in to the winery’s Quonset hut for dinner, though, we had buddied up with another couple with whom we would turn out to have a lot of strange similarities. We had a real blast dining with them and hope to see them again soon.

Dinner itself was A-plus. The food was prepared by Kate Horton, chef at Black Pearl in Denver, and her team with each course paired with a different offering from the winery. Needless to say, I was totally geeking out the whole night.

Then to take the geek factor to warp 11, I met a guy in the line for the restroom who owns a Tesla. We went outside so I could pose next to it and instead he told me to hop in! We took a screaming lap around the block and went back to our tables. The Wife said something along the lines of “What happened to you? You were gone a long time.” to which I grinned with nerdy pride “Oh, I just went for a ride in a Tesla.”

More great food, awesome wine, and fantastic company followed.

So, two lessons:
1) If you’re in Denver, make the effort and go to a Hush event it’s worth the price and and all the underground cloak and dagger effort. If you aren’t in Denver, you might want to look around and see if there’s anything similar in your area.
2) I seem to “learn” this one over and over, but don’t be afraid to talk to strangers. You might find people that love the strange things you love and have great stories to tell you about them.

Congrats to Phil at Hush, Ben at IMT, and Chef Kate. I’m a big fan of all three now.

So, that’s what I started on today. The wall is up, but only partially sheathed in drywall.

Me and the MFing wall that I built
Originally uploaded by Jake Sutton.

Also, I’m finished with my “month off” from booze. Hip to tha hooray, y’all.

Have an excellent life.

I’m sure you’ll grow up to be a well-adjusted, fully functioning, kind-hearted man who contributes fully to society.

…

Or something like that…

So yeah… This week is going to finish well for li’l ol’ pseudo-hipster me.

Fact of the matter is I’m so excited for Andrew Bird that I’ve barely given a thought to Modest Mouse aside from the fact that the show is on CU campus, which is bound to make my skin crawl. When I do make myself think about it, though, I’m pretty darned excited to see them, too.

I’ve seen Andrew Bird before… long, long ago when he played with and along side of the Squirrel Nut Zippers — just as he was launching his Bowl of Fire. Since then he has matured and ventured in some really interesting directions musically. NPR’s All Songs Considered posted a live show of his (including the opener, Loney, Dear on a separate recording) and that positively blew me a way. Based on this and and on giving his latest music heavy rotation on my ipod I’m as giddy as a little girl.

Modest Mouse hasn’t released anything since their 2007 title “We Were Dead Before The Ship Even Sank“, which I enjoyed quite a bit, though maybe a tiny smidge less than their previous two records. Nevertheless, their show at the University of Colorado’s football stadium fieldhouse is likely to be packed and rocking. I’m hopeful they might preview some new material while they’re at it.

Next on the list is a band from Portland, OR that is really high on my list right now. Blitzen Trapper‘s indie-folk story song “Furr” from the album of the same name kills me. It’s truly one of my favorite songs of 2008. They are playing a small club in Denver, so I’m excited to see them in close quarters.

Beyond that are people you’ve all heard about, so I won’t go into them before I see them.

As for stuff not on the list… Laura Gibson is coming to town on a Sunday in April, so there’s a slight chance we might venture out for that. Her latest is really good. Also, I’m cautiously hopeful that I might get a chance to see Leonard Cohen. I will totally brave Red Rocks for him.

Oh, and yes, I’d like to post more often, but I’m a little busy these days…

The house got wicked hot, but everyone got fed and seemed to have a damned good time. I only got to spend a fraction of the time I should have/wanted to with any one person, but that’s to be expected when your living room looks and sounds like a downtown bus terminal.

The food turned out quite good. I’m very pleased.

The people make the event, though, so thanks all! It was a fantastic evening thanks to you.

Next time we may need to sell tickets or something…

It’s seriously one of the most frustrating/educational/shattering/enlightening things I’ve done to myself in a long while. I highly recommend it, though it always comes with a warning. It’s either going to piss you off, make want to throw your hands up, or make you figure “Fuck it! that’s too much to care about!” Or all three. Or more.

Then I immediately moved on to Pollan’s In Defense of Food: An Eater’s Manifesto, which is basically his answer to all of the people who read OD and wrote him to ask “Well, WTF can I eat and where the hell can I find it?!?” to which he replies with his zen koan of a “manifesto”:

Eat food. Not too much. Mostly plants.

It’s a bit trickier than it sounds, believe me. In particular, when he says “food” he means real food, not engineered and manufactured “food products”. He does go on to lay down some more specific – but still simple – definitions and rules that all make perfect sense, but have almost nothing to do with the average Western (more specifically, American) diet these days. I’m happy, though, to hear our new president is at least aware of Pollan’s open letter about the state of food in the Union.

These two books have made quite an impact on me, obviously. Thanks to Michael Pollan, I am now researching things like local farmers markets, CSAs, polyculture farming, “slow” food, grass-finished beef, pastured poultry and eggs, and on and on and on. And this stuff doesn’t come cheap. Pollan notes that himself, but he also points out that the percentage of income spent on food in the US is almost ridiculously low compared to other countries with healthier-seeming diets/lifestyles, so maybe it’s worth it.

It also tends to balance out a bit if you actually cook for yourself, which this shift to whole and real foods has definitely inspired me to do.

That said, I certainly haven’t stopped dining out. I have, however, become a bit more discerning in where I take my lovely wife for a meal. Now I look for establishments that do their best to use local and natural ingredients. Luckily, many of these places also make some kick-ass food. I talk about three examples in particular after the jump:

Park Kitchen, Portland, OR

This place was the absolute highlight of our trip to Portlandd. This is saying something fairly significant, because we totally fell in love with that place.

The first time we ate there, we stopped in on our way to see Gogol Bordello in concert at the Roseland Theater. Since we had plans, we went with cocktails and a trio of Park Kitchen’s “small plates”. The Wife had a martini variation called the Beekeeper, which is knock-your-socks-off delicious and I had a “Summer Sazerac”, which was made with herbsaint rather than the traditional absinthe and was quite tasty (though not my favorite Sazerac, see below). The pseudo-tapas consisted of all cold plates: flank steak with bleu cheese and parsley, gin soused tomatoes and cucumbers, and marinated mussels with corn and lobster mushrooms. We finished the night with a corn cannoli desert that featured the most amazing spiced caramel that had such a fantastic sweet and salty combination we couldn’t get over it.

We loved the place so much, that we had our wonderful and crush-worthy server, Jenny, make us reservations for the next night, mentioning that it was out wedding anniversary and requesting a corner booth for proper cuddling action.

The next night we came in to the feeling that folks were expecting us and word of our celebration had spread. Jenny came out to welcome us with small glasses of cava and to let us know she was working a private party but would be checking in on us through the night. Our waither for the night, Jack, gave us the best advice of the night when he responded to my “So, what’s the story with teh tasting menu?” with a solid “All I can tell you is, do it.” And so we did. More cocktails and more beyond excellent food, including rabbit and fried green beans and bacon (by which I mean there were thick strips of bacon that were battered and fired!). Absolutely wonderful. Made even more so by the company of Shane (who, it turns out, concocted the aforementioned Beekeeper, and his father at the table next to us.

We cannot recommend Park Kitchen enough.

SoBo American Bistro, Boulder, CO

My bosses (and good friends, happily) love this place, and so do I. SoBo is the home of the best Sazerac and the best Old Fashioned I’ve ever had — all of which are apparently inspired by a book called The Art of the Bar. They also crank out some mighty fine food. I had a parpadelle with chicken meatballs that seriously tasted like pork sausage. It was so incredible that I sent our care-taker, Eileen back to the kitchen to find out how they did it. The answer: pork fat! After that, Eileen sent us home with some cherry-vanilla bitters that she had made herself. Can’t beat that with a stick.

I’ve been to SoBo several times, and I’ve encounter an item here or there that hasn’t knocked me out, but I’ve never had a real failure there. I think this just comes from exploring more of the menu — You’re bound to find something that isn’t up your alley eventually.

SoBo is great people and fantastic food. I also love that it’s the best thing going in South Boulder.

The Kitchen Cafe, Boulder, CO

We just experienced The Kitchen for the first time last Saturday before we saw Henry Rollins in Boulder. I’ve known about it for quite some time now, but have never gone because until recently I’ve had an aversion for both Pearl Street and restaurants that require reservations be made days in advance. In the case of The Kitchen, it’s well worth working through those aversions.

This time out, I started with a Talisker, an Islay single malt, neat while The Wife had a fruity grapefruit/lychee gin drink that was really delicious. For the first course we shared the roasted bone marrow. This was the first time trying bone marrow for both of us, and wow! Our server called it “like the best butter ever”, but I’ll stand by The Wife’s “Colorado lobster” analogy. Our main courses were an incredible hanger steak with root vegetables for her and a pair of small but succulent lamb rump chops for me. To compliment the meat we took advantage of the wine prix fixe deal, having a full glass of a Loring pinot noir from Oregon first and and then switching to a half glass of Catena, an Argentinian malbec, to finish with a bolder note.

This place approaches the (probably unreasonable and unattainable) standard set by Park Kitchen in our minds. Well worth planning ahead for the experience.

There’s a slight chance bigger things could interfere with our plans, but for right now, I think I need to queue up the latest release, Songs In A&E, to get to know it a bit more…