artie

(Ari + Katie = Artie)

What a great day. I miss this town so much. So much that it hurts, almost. I left Stef and Jason's this morning after chilling out to coffee and the Sunday New York Times. Drove down (past a fifteen person, bike-powered mobile bar!) Logan all the way to Speer, through cool breezes, garage sales, families on bikes. Then Speer through downtown and its clean streets, towering art, commuter trains, skyscrapers. Ended up in the Highland neighborhood, one of the many great two dozen or so distinctly Denveresque 'hoods. Meet up with my old friend Katie and finally got to meet her new love, Ari. They both work together as public defenders (lawyers) for a local county.

Katie is great. She is an old friend but one that I have crossed paths with many times over the years. I feel like I know her so much better now than when we first met those years ago back in Anchorage, Alaska. We used to work together there but the times we've hung out in Austin and Denver had so much more meaning, so much more depth. We have grown up, we have matured. And we both have long searched, I think, for many of the same things and I think that we both have found some of them, most notably in our significant others: her with Ari, me with Leah. It is nice knowing real people, people that work hard and get everything they are supposed to deserve, people who acknowledge with a steadfast humility everything along the way. Hanging with these two today, over tacos, over beers at one of the best cafe-bars I'd been to in Denver yet, all made me miss Leah so much. We will end up here, we are supposed to, I think.

Check out these sweet outtakes of the lounge/porn music trumpeter outside the bar: his face and his horn.

Tomorrow is my last day in Denver. I will miss it greatly and will most likely not make it back again until December. Tomorrow, we will have a final family brunch here at my parent's house with everyone then its off. Also, tomorrow: at the airport, Leah also arrives from her trip back to Tucson. We will meet up there and drive back to our home. Our home in Fort Worth. Our home.