And to update the story of the "missing" hiker in our neighborhood, it turns out that the entire disappearance was staged.  This guy really did not want to report back for more duty in Iraq.  See the Boulder Daily Camera article and CNN coverage here.  A sad story all around.

The Daily Camera has this article on the missing climber/hiker.  I keep thinking about mountain lions and bears, which are both active in our neighborhood.  I can’t imagine how hard this must be for his parents, family, and friends.  Good luck to the searchers today.

Getting ready to head out to Santa Fe and Albuquerque for Brad to run another marathon, and saw maybe the biggest spider I’ve ever seen on the wall of our house.  Outside, luckily.

The local media are reporting on the missing climber here.

A sheriff’s deputy just came to the door to ask if we had seen or heard any sign of the missing hiker/climber, which we unfortunately haven’t.  It must already have been a long day for the missing man’s family, and I assume that every hour that passes decreases the chances of a happy outcome.  The deputy mentioned that all the national media is still in town for the almost-trial in the Jon Benet Ramsey case — now they have a new story to report.

An unusual thing happened at our house this morning — a stranger appeared at our door at around 7:15.  Given our fairly remote location and our gated road, we are almost never surprised by a visitor.  It turns out this guy was from Rocky Mountain Search and Rescue, trying to locate a climber who had fallen sometime last night and was still missing.  They had found where the guy had slid and found his climbing shoes, but had not found him.  We told him our dogs had not barked in the night, and we unfortunately had no information to help.  A sheriff’s vehicle and maybe 10 people staged in our meadow about an hour ago, and a red helicopter with a white cross on it just made a slow, low pass down the canyon.  I hope they find the missing climber.

It’s consistently about ten degrees cooler at our house than it is in Boulder, since we’re an additional thousand feet higher at 6,250 feet above sea level.  Yesterday afternoon the difference between 95 and 85 made all the difference indeed..

After being away for 6 weeks, paper had conquered my home office.  I spent a goodly chunk of the day going through piles of paper on my desk, on the floor near my desk, in bins and various containers near my desk, and my inbox.  I love categorizing papers and putting them in the place where they belong (Typical Categories:  Trash, Refer, To Do, File/Scan, Personal Correspondence, Scrapbook, Magazines by category (design, fashion, brain food (The New Yorker, The Atlantic Monthly, The Economist), anti-brain food (People), etc.)).  I threw away bunches of paper (in the recycling bin, of course), filed a bunch of mail order catalogs in alphabetical order in their lateral file, sent receipts and invoices and financial statements and philanthropic requests to my family office, and eventually found the surface of my desk.  Now all I have to do is actually do the things in my To Do pile.

The first week back from Alaska was a busy one, and I mostly felt like I was just hitting the ground, and not quite succeeding at the running part.

Red-eye flights really make me wonder about how much of what we think of as personality is actually biology.  I’m a morning person who likes 8 hours of sleep at night. In Alaska we sleep long nights and take afternoon naps and get a lot of rest.  After getting maybe 3 hours of sleep on the 4 1/2 hour flight from Anchorage to Denver, I just didn’t feel like my usual happy self, and on Monday and Tuesday I still wasn’t ready for the flurry of activity here in Boulder. 

Brad’s parents, Stanley and Cecelia, were here when we arrived.  We had lunch with them, and dinner with them and Daniel and Laura on Monday.  On Tuesday Brad managed to arrange a private tour of the Denver Art Museum for them and then we had a delicious dinner at Rioja.  I’m almost omitting the being late for our tour (turned one block too early on Broadway and took a driving tour of Denver, too) and getting confused between Rialto Cafe, where we actually had a reservation, and Rioja where I had intended to have a reservation.  Luckily, Brad functions better than I do on a messed up sleep cycle and made everything work out just right. 

I would say that I came in for a bumpy landing, but partially recovered on Wednesday with lunch, a massage and pedicure with my sister Wendy, and then a night at home with Brad just reading and relaxing and having some talking time, and finally a good night’s sleep.

Thursday I headed up to the mountains to look at potential ski houses, which we’ve been thinking about buying since we first moved here almost 11 years ago.  I had a great day looking, and found a place in Keystone that we’ve had our offer accepted on.  Stayed overnight there and drove back to Boulder on a perfectly beautiful Friday.  Saturday we had planned to have a Brad torture session (also known as shopping for clothes) since the places we had planned to go in London for my birthday required "gentlemen" to wear ties, which Brad just doesn’t own any of.  The weather was rainy, cold, foggy, and generally dreary, and he doesn’t need those fancy clothes any more anyway, so we stayed home until sushi dinner in Denver with friends Tony and Hollen.

Sunday was mostly a normal day for us:  Brad ran to town (14 miles), I drove there to meet him for lunch at The Rio, then afternoon massages, then a celebratory early evening with Claire and Brian, then dinner with Wendy Lea and Chris Byrne — and the first week at home was over.

And here we are on Monday morning.  I think I’m ready..