Beginning to Settle In

The most exciting news of the week (besides the fact that my Chronicle of the Horse subscription has finally switched over to Denver) is that Billy's furniture is here!! This is big news for obvious reasons, but especially because it means we are no longer sleeping on an aero bed. THANK.GOD. This was the third week we'd spent on the aerobed, which I think is about two weeks and 6 days longer than you should ever sleep on one. My physical (and mental) health have been steadily deteriorating thanks to several sleepless nights this week.

A real bed!! Ignore the moving box.

Not only do we have a real bed, we have a dresser (no more clothes in piles on the floor!) a couch, and dishes (we have been working with two plates and two bowls for the last two weeks)! Our apartment is now somewhere between being homey and having moving boxes EVERYWHERE. Most of the boxes are at least empty now!

Yes, that is a bean-bag chair. With a footstool.

No shortage of boxes in the kitchen!

It's a huge relief to finally have almost everything...although we still need to find a kitchen table. We went on the hunt at IKEA last weekend (the great test of every relationship) and instead came home with a lamp. But the important part is that we didn't want to murder each other by the end of our trip. If you ever want to see an enormous amount of white people looking either hopelessly lost or furious with one another, go to an IKEA on a Saturday. We managed to go the wrong way and ended up missing the entire furniture portion of IKEA, so we actually made two laps around the entire store. Fantastic!

Anyways, Billy is in his second week of school now. He's found it to be a very intense program, but also highly valuable. I've met most of his classmates now and they're all super nice and much less nerdy than you would expect from a computer programming class.

Speaking of his great classmates, Billy and one of his classmates found a stray dog while on a coffee break this week (I heard Billy was quite heroic, tackling the dog before she could run into traffic!). Naturally, I was pulled in once they had to figure out what to do with the dog they found. 

Zoe! She is happily back with her owner now.

 
I hung out with her until Animal Control picked her up and then threw myself into putting her all over the Internet since she clearly belonged to someone. I ended up finding her owner on Craig's List and he picked her up the next morning! A happy ending that inspired me to apply to volunteer with the Denver Animal Shelter because their Animal Control Officers are AMAZING. The officer that picked the dog up from me actually called me to tell me the dog went home with its owner. How awesome is that?! 

In addition to trying to find some volunteer opportunities, I've been looking for a barn so I can get back in the saddle. Working at home means I have to work a little harder to start building a community here (and to remember to change out of my pajamas at some point during the day).

We've been busy (as always!) since we've gotten here, but we're loving Denver so far. There's always something to do here and now that it's stopped raining (which reminds me, I forgot to mention that we were very fortunate to not have ANY flooding in Denver!) we're enjoying the fall weather and happy to be feeling more moved in.
 


 

We are officially Denver residents!

Byron and Hansel and the Kansas sunset

We're in Denver! We have an apartment! We love it! Wait, there's so much to catch up on.

We got almost all the way through Kansas before calling it quits on day one of driving. Everyone talked a lot of crap about driving through Kansas, but I actually loved it! The first part is through big rolling hills and there's horses and farms everywhere (I now realize that "horses and farms" aren't nearly as big of a selling point to other people). It also helped that the sun was setting, which made everything look even more beautiful. I loved Kansas! Don't judge me.

We stopped for the night in Wakeeney and set out early the next morning to get through the last four hours of driving.

It is VERY windy in Kansas.

 We didn't see much of Wakeeney besides this sign since we stayed approximately 20 yards from the interstate. Billy dutifully drove the last part of Kansas, which is where it actually does get horrifically boring and flat. I was pretty surprised that after crossing into Colorado, this didn't change. We didn't even see mountains until we were driving into downtown Denver!

I was envisioning more mountains, less dead grass.

 It was also really cloudy, as you can see, so unfortunately I couldn't get any cool pictures of the Rockies as we drove in. Honestly, we could only see their outline it was so hazy outside. We didn't even see them until a few days later, when I screeched "OH MY GOD MOUNTAINS!!" while driving around looking at apartments. Confession: I definitely envisioned them still being snow-capped. In August.

Despite not being picturesquely covered in snow (there will be plenty of that to come, I'm sure), the Rockies did not disappoint, and neither did Denver.

We were staying with (read: sleeping on an aerobed in the living room) of one of Billy's future classmates, Simon. We didn't know anything about him besides that he was probably not a serial killer since he'd gotten into gSchool, but we were thrilled to find out that Simon is awesome! He and his roommate, Michael, were amazing hosts and we were SO lucky to get to stay with them. Without even knowing us, they welcomed us into their house, introduced us to their friends, and told us to stay as long as we needed and eat whatever we want! We could not have asked for a better introduction to Denver.

Simon and Michael's awesome house!

 As you can see, Simon and Michael live in a really cool, big old house. There are a lot of them in the neighborhood we were looking in, but we ultimately settled on a more up-to-date apartment (we really wanted A/C and a dishwasher). The week of apartment searching was exhausting emotionally and physically, but after four days of blood, sweat, and tears (predominately the last two-Denver's having a heat wave and the rental market is BRUTAL) we found the perfect place!

We loved staying with Simon and Michael, but we are even more in love with our new apartment! The furniture may actually be here soon, but even with just what we had in the car, it feels a lot like home already! 

 We toasted our first night with the wine we got in Indianapolis and settled into our aerobed, now in a different living room. But at least the living room is ours!