duck-shaped pain

My trip to Denver, part one:

23 December

Drive to Denver. Ate an enormous burger topped with gorgonzola cheese in yet another enormous suburban restaurant with my mother (this was not the House of Giant Food but it was close to it). Went to the bookstore to spend some of my gift certificate. Slept.

24 December

Bagels and lox for breakfast, courtesy of another gift certificate (given to my mom by some realtor). Then, shopping. My mom and I went to some new! exciting! shopping center thingy out near where she lives. Its theme is that it's outside, and that strolling though it is supposed to be reminiscent of some real street in some quaint little village, but it didn't quite succeed. For the day before Christmas, it was surprisingly empty, but it was also damned cold. "Outdoors" as a theme doesn't work well in weather extremes, and I really would have rather been inside. It's not like there was anything new here -- just the usual stores, which lose any appeal they had when you can't feel your toes anymore. Plus, there was no coffee. How they allow new shopping developments to be built without including a place to buy overpriced coffee these days is puzzling. I would have killed for some, though.

Christmas Eve festivities took place at my mom's new boyfriend's house, where I got to see one of those countertop rotisseries in action and later I had to explain how the Japanese yen worked. It was a mysterious evening.

25 December

Christmas dinner was eaten at a big fancy restaurant on a hill, somewhere in the north suburbs. This place was chosen for its reasonable price and enormous buffet. At one time, I had a plate that had tamales, cheese blintzes, steamed mussels, pecan pie and grapes on it, all at the same time. They were good tamales. I could have had some enormous crab legs, too, but the restaurant was oddly short on the crab tools, and a set could not be located for our table. It's not like they didn't know how many people were coming -- this was a reservation-only dinner -- and it's not like they didn't expect people to fall for the all-you-can-eat crab, so the shortage of crackers and crab forks was sort of a stumper. I didn't drink as much champagne as planned, though.

Later, my mom and I planned to go to a movie, but so did everyone else, and we arrived at the theater to find every show for hours to come sold out. So we went back to the apartment and watched six or seven hours of "Trading Spaces," which I had never seen before. Such capacity for evil on that show.

26 December

More shopping. Drove up to Broomfield to go to the Canyon of Shopping, didn't get much. Mostly just drank coffee and watched people fuss with each other, which was my goal for the day. Ended up purchasing some down foot booties for my perpetually cold toes [1] and a silver penguin that hold candles for you.

After shopping, I wanted some Thai food, so I drove to the best Thai-Lao restaurant in the metro area [2] Which was closed. So I drove to the other best Thai place I knew of [3], which was also closed, and I eventually ended up eating a gyro at Pete's, where I sat right next to the revolving spit of gyro meat. I closed the day by going to the bookstore and using the rest of my gift certificate.

27 December

Drank coffee. Bought some more books. Hung out with S. for six hours. He took me to a really good, cheap Chinese restaurant [4] that I'd never noticed before. Diners were sparse, perhaps because it was so late, but S. said that it was always that empty. The food was really good -- my Hunan chicken was actually very spicy, which is rare -- and dinner with tea and appetizers came to less than $17 for both of us.

28 December

Went to go see a movie -- Amelie -- which was really gorgeous and happy and made me pleased in a way that I had not been pleased in for a while. Ate steak and potato soup for dinner.

29 December

Ate sourdough pancakes for breakfast. They were fantastic. Drove downtown to check into the hotel I would spend the next three nights in. Bought an Indian cookbook at the bookstore next to the hotel in an attempt to change my hundred-dollar bill -- no banks were open, and I was going to buy the book anyway, so why not?

Met up with H. and S. and we relaxed and discussed things back in the hotel room. Then we set out to see what was going on elsewhere in downtown (not a lot, unfortunately). We looked at CDs and at books and I was a bit overwhelmed by the selection available for some reason, and I ended up staring at one of the video screens suspended from the ceiling. So surprising, though -- downtown was almost empty, odd for a holiday weekend. We walked uptown to fetch some coffee and then a beer, and met up with some of H. and S.'s friends, who came by with their very small child.

Finally, food. [5] Things slathered joyously in green chile. The two of them had been anticipating this meal for ages, and nearly wanted to take of picture of their plates when they arrived. Crispy chiles rellenos [6] abounded. Then we walked back to the hotel and made fun of TV before bed.

30 December

S. left in the morning to go be a rock star for a couple of days, and I took H. down south to go have some more sourdough pancakes. We watched a lot of suburban people come and go while waiting, including this scary woman with enormous hair, who tottered about on tiny legs.

After breakfast, thrift shopping. We followed my mom's usual weekend thrifting route, visiting about four or five different stores. I found some jeans, a white shirt, an atlas of Paris and a really disturbing mug with crazed-looking cartoon bears wrestling or screwing on it. It's my new work coffee mug, I think. H. bought a lot of black clothes, plus a German army jacket that I covet. After a few hours of poking around, we both had a serious case of Thrift Store Hands -- dusty and sticky, covered with black marks from clothes hangers.

So no more thrifting -- time to go to a bad suburban mall. We went to Southwest Plaza -- somewhere I hadn�t been in about five or six years. Not a kooky themed mall like some newer ones, but a plain white box in the middle of a parking lot somewhere. Full of the usual dying-mall stores, but set apart from others by its kiosk that sold glowing Jesus clocks. We walked around briskly, taking in the native wildlife.

After a bit of that, we drove back in to the city and went out for some vegetarian food. I had some Caribbean jerk tofu with grilled coconut sweet potatoes, and H had the sesame seitan, which was much tastier than most of the sesame chicken I've had recently. Dessert was eggnog cheesecake (her) and vegan pecan torte (me). Then we went and got some coffee again, and she drew and I wrote. I tried to draw, but it didn't work out. Drawing on lined paper always bugs me anyway. Beer was then needed, so we walked next door to get one. S. walked in, not unexpectedly, and we hung out and talked until the place closed.

We stopped at a convenience store on the way back to the hotel to buy some cigarettes, and were amazed by their selection of Mexican snack treats. They had an especially amusing snack treat named Sponch -- marshmallow goodness and sticky red goo on a little cracker (see here for another review). I bought some, along with another treat called Gansito, which was some sort of chocolate log. The package featured a drawing of a hat-wearing duck giving the chocolate logs a thumbs-up, which I found appealing. We also stocked up on disturbing American snacks -- a weird sticky slice of strawberry cream bread and some puffy cheesy things. Then back to the hotel for testing and review. The sticky slice and the cheesy things were good, but the chocolate logs were dry and nearly inedible. I could still taste them in my mouth when I awoke the next day.

In Part Two: New Year's Eve, followed by The Day of Silence and Sitting Very Still. Coming�soon.

[1] They work, but they make my feet look enormous and puffy, so walking around with them on is sort of disturbing. I keep staring down at them, and not going anywhere.

[2] Vientane Garden, which is on Sheridan at about 70th, housed in a really crappy old shopping center. Which means that they can spend money on food instead of rent.

[3] Tommy's on East Colfax, which is a place that everyone's eaten., and for good reason.

[4] Singapore Caf� (I think that's the name), which is across the street from the Bluebird Theater, and is open pretty late (1 a.m.), at least for a Chinese restaurant.

[5] Las Margaritas on 17th Street -- much better than the reviews on the link might indicate. I'd never been there before, but I was very pleased with what I ordered.

[6] Yes, it's true that soft chiles rellenos are more authentic -- that is, the ones covered in a batter of egg instead of fried inside an envelope of dough -- but the crispy ones are fairly ubiquitous here in the Centennial State. The menu at the restaurant described the crispy ones as being "Colorado style" if that gives you any indication. I was once a fan of the crispy ones until one of the Mexican restaurants here in my town converted me with their excellent egg-battered chile relleno plate. But, luckily, there were both types available at this restaurant. A relleno for every personality.

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