Home safe

And thank you to everyone who commented while I was away. The trip went pretty smoothly overall, despite a rocky (ooh, a Colorado pun!) start. I got to the airport at 11am for a 12:30 flight ... only to find that the first leg of my journey, a flight to Chicago, had been cancelled. Ooops. The best they could do was book me on the direct flight to Denver that didn't leave until 5:55pm. I thought about heading back home, but I'd already left the car at the parking structure and taken the shuttle, and there was roadworks .. so I decided it was too much hassle, especially because I had my knitting with me.

So I cast on for, and finished just as we landed in Denver, another Potato Chip scarf from the Trendsetter Dune I bought at Threadbear. This time I cast on 95 stitches, rather than the 90, so ended up with 780 to bind off. But it meant I had less yarn left over. However, I don't think that I could have fitted a single extra stitch on the 32" needles. Here is the scarf artistically draped in my Colorado hotel room:

On the entertainment center	And on the desk lamp.

Here is the view from my hotel room window - and yes, that is snow on the peaks of those mountains. I was staying at Beaver Run resort in Breckenridge, which is a fairly large complex, with condos as well as hotel rooms, and a conference center. And outdoor hottubs and swimming pools. If you want to see more photos, I've uploaded a whole bunch to my flickr account.

The conference itself was intense: a day and a half of pretty much the world experts in the field of mild and unilateral hearing loss getting together, sharing the knowlege-base so far, and then brainstorming all kinds of recommendations for everything from screening for this kind of hearing loss, to diagnosing it in young infants, to the pros and cons of hearing aids and other amplification systems, to early intervention services. I was asked to give a talk on the Tuesday afternoon, and it went OK - I was very nervous, and got a horrible case of dry mouth, so I talked way too fast, but people were kind and said nice things about it afterwards. Tuesday evening I ended up at dinner with the crew from the Center for Disease Control's hearing screening program, who'd organized the conference. Last night, I tagged along with 7 of the other conference attendees.

This was taken as we all were walking in to the downtown area of Breckenridge. As we walked along the river, I was oooh-ing over the pine covered mountains ... and then spied a singer tuning his guitar by the river, with all these old looking town buildings in the background. Just too perfect a composition not to take a photo. It's worth clicking on the larger version so that the guitarist isn't just a blob in the middle of the shot. Dinner was great fun - we ended up at Bubba Gumps, where I had yummy New Orleans shrimp - just the right amount of spice, and a delicious sauce. And a local wheat beer from a microbrewery nearby, which was the perfect accompaniment.

So the flight home was uneventful: I did a good five inches or more on the Aggressive Beginners scarf and am almost finished with the first skein of yarn, so I'm now a third of the way through it. It's actually becoming close to mindless knitting for me now.

And then I get home ... and as per Suz's comments, there was indeed a box waiting for me. She was only meant to send a check to cover the yarn cost of the Booga Bag ... but, sweetie that she is, she'd mailed me the most yummy smelling "Juicy Ripe Watermelon" candle. I could smell the fragrance even as I was opening the box. An unexpected, but much appreciated, gift. Here's the candle and card:

A very nice gift to come home to. (And yes, for you eagle-eyed observers, that is indeed one of our wedding pictures in the background.) Now I'm off to catch up on everyone else's blog entries, and throw some comments around as I feel inspired. Hopefully Terry's on her way home soon, so we can enjoy dinner together.