3/29

• Sparky is once again up at dawn with his uncle; today he does the Ouray puzzle before I get up! Since today's the day we're going to M0ntr0se/Ouray; good timing.
  
  
• On the way south, we hit R^ssell St0ver. I go hogwild. We ship several pounds of chocolate back home (all our Easter candy, essentially).
  
  
• Once in Ouray, we wander from City Hall to the Beaumont, sadly closed for Spring Break. The bookstore isn't. Beast rolls his eyes; I buy things. What else can I do??
  
  
• We eat at one of the only two restaurants in town that are open. Some things don't change. Things never used to be open in the winter back when we used to visit.
  
  
• After lunch, Sparky & Jan go swimming at the hot springs, Beast takes off on a photo crusade, which eventually finds him hiking the Cascade Falls trail (puff puff) and we girls stop at the used bookstore, ably staffed by Big Bluff Guy and his three purebreds: a Newfie, an Alsatian, and a Chow. We have coffee (well, yeah, I have tea since I don't/never have/never will drink coffee), chat, let Mom rest, etc. Then we drive through town, essentially unchanged. Yeah, a few more houses, but not awful. There's no place to put them really. We do get a chuckle out of the $500,000+ pile being built...in a flood plain that is washed out every spring. Like clockwork.
  
  
• We go pick up Sparky & Jan at the pool, Beast and I drive out to take pictures of Our (former) House, and then we head back to M0ntr0se.
  
  
• Stop at H0ward & S0ndra Ch!lders for a visit. He was my first pastor. They are salt and saints of the earth. St. James was really blessed.
  
  
• Dinner at Pizza Hut in Delt@, with the Fruit@ high school girls' soccer team.
  
  
• Mom ready to drop so we take her home.
  
  
• Sparky asks me to read him to sleep.
  
  
• I FINALLY SLEEP! But still woke with a terrible backache.

Great day! Really wonderful. Mostly because I didn't spend much of it with Annoying Guy. Who is getting annoying.