We made it to Denver!

Julia and I survived the cold, hazardous, four day trek from Gainesville, Florida to Denver, Colorado; me driving a 16' moving truck and dragging a car behind, and Julia shuttling a couple of (understandably) grumpy, mewling kitties in her car. You can view a camera-phone pictography of our journey in the photo album. There is a lot to say about our moving adventure, and we might have to start up a separate blog to chronicle our new lives in Denver.

But, for now I'll just say that Denver is everything we'd hoped for. There are tons of great places to eat, the public transportation system rocks (I can take the bus from my doorstep straight to the front of the building where I work), the downtown is lively and full of character, the microbreweries are ubiquitous and excellent, and the people are some of the friendliest you'll ever meet. As our cable guy said, "Denver is America's best kept secret". If only it weren't so damn cold all of the time... (and for those dear to us who we left behind, we miss you!)

Hector is a Cat

Apparently there has been some misunderstanding in my office, where The Remonstrance is read with a mixture of disgust, confusion, and indifference on a weekly basis. One of my officemates assumed that Hector was a dog, and he was surprised to hear me describe him as a cat.

Looking back on my catalog of exquisite artwork, I cannot possibly see how anyone could mistake Hector to be anything but the extremely rare male variety of diluted tortie feline that he was designed to be. Sheesh.

GATORS WIN! GATORS WIN! 41- 14

It was crazy as hell, man! Pandemonium 2007!

New Pictures

I just posted new photos to the album of Julia's and my adventures for the last couple months. We travelled to New York City to attend a black tie event and to see Julia's grandfather's portrait hung in NYU medical school, and then flew to Houston - in a fit of spontaneity and temporary insanity - to see Jeremy Enigk and Cursive play. Then I flew to Denver for some job interviews (yes, I got a job, and yes, we're moving to Denver in a few weeks!). Not two weeks later, we both flew back to Colorado to go snowboarding at Copper Mountain... Whew. I don't need to see another plane for a long time.

What I'm Reading

John Kennedy Toole, author of A Confederacy of Dunces, never saw his novel get published. According to the book's forward, his mother persistently pushed the manuscript on an unwilling English professor after her son's death. When he finally read it to appease her, he found it impossible to put down, and quickly agreed it needed to be published (it eventually won the Pulitzer Prize for Fiction). I'm glad he did, because this book ranks among the funniest I've ever read.

All of the characters are drawn with such flair and audaciousness. The main character, the morbidly obese and pretentious Ignatius J. Reilly, has to be one of the most colorful antiheroes in literary history. He waddles around 1960s New Orleans spreading his peculiar brand of medieval nihilism, wreaking havoc and headaches for employers, his mom, her friends, and pretty much everyone with whom he comes into contact. I especially enjoyed the metropolitan setting, as Julia and I spent last New Years (exactly one year ago, at that) in New Orleans, and it was gratifying to read a narrative of the familiar street names and locales before they would forever be changed by the tragedy of Hurricane Katrina.