Denver has a new ice cream shop, Sweet Action Ice Cream, which just opened not even two weeks ago. Kim and I took a walk up Broadway on this past sunny Sunday afternoon, and stopped along the way to sample some local and delicious flavors. Kim had a scoop of the cinnamon hazelnut, and after stealing a bite I was really impressed. I looked through all of the flavors, but couldn’t keep my eyes off of the ice cream filled cookie sandwiches in the freezer cabinet. I ended up selecting a peanut butter cookie filled with sweet cream. Taking the advice of the cashier, I let it sit out for a few minutes, which allowed it to be much easier to eat. Once it was edible, it was gone in a matter of minutes. Great stuff!

The weather was perfect on Saturday for the annual St. Patrick’s Day parade in Denver. I’ve read that they estimated the crowd to be 200,000 or more. We arrived down on the corner of 17th & Blake around 11:30 and it’s safe to say that the parade had already been going on for an hour and half but it continued for another two hours or so. It was long enough for me to get a little sunburn on my forehead and nose.

There were over 200 different participants in the parade, and I’m told that nearly anyone can register a group. This definitely adds to the hilarity of the parade, as you’ll see everything from the regular firetrucks and bands to the rarer horses and large party buses. Heck, even the Hare Krishnas were in this years parade. Just like last year, we all joked about getting a group together for the following year’s parade, but perhaps we’ll actually act on it in 2010.

My personal celebration of St. Patty’s Day will continue through tomorrow, as I’m taking a half day off of work and joining a group of others for lunch and drinks!

I’ve been spending a bunch of time working on my fish tank recently. I bought a new lighting fixture and a couple of brand new compact fluorescent bulbs with the hopes of one day adding some corals to the tank. Since I bought the fixture used on eBay, the bulbs that came with it were also used. After installing the powerful new lighting, the tank quickly developed some green hair algae followed by red slime algae. So I’ve been doing lots of water changes, scrubbing of the tank, and with the new bulbs I am hoping that I can stop the nuisance algae.

Here are a few photos I snapped of the tank and fish today. Despite the algae mentioned above, I’ve avoided catastrophes in the tank for over a year now. Which also means that the six line wrasse has been alive and doing well in the tank for over a year. And both clownfish are doing fine too. One has grown larger than the other so I’m beginning to wonder if I’ll have a breeding pair. It’s well known that all clownfish start the life as males, and the dominant fish of the group will go through a sex change to become the female of the group.

I’ve been making some small changes to my site design, though they may be going mostly unnoticed. First, I added a background to the sidebar on the right side of the page. I think it helps tie in the header design into the side. Now I may end up doing something similar with the footer. I also added a Twitter section to the sidebar. I’ve found myself using the site more and more, and figured I should post my updates to my website, since it’s so easy to do. If you aren’t already, be sure to follow me.

Finally, I added a few more little icons to the site. This was supposed to be another easy task, but as I got into it I discovered some issues. All of the little icons used on the site come from the the silk icon collection in .png format. This works perfectly on Firefox, Opera, and other good browsers. They actually work okay in Internet Explorer 7 and up, it’s in earlier versions where the problem lies. The transparent background does not work with the earlier versions of IE, and though I found some solutions online, none of them worked completely for me. So instead of wasting more time with that, I converted all of the icons to .gif files, which are displayed fine by all browsers. However, this doesn’t mean that those using IE 6 shouldn’t update. If you won’t move over to Firefox, at least update to IE 7. You can thank me later.

I made my triumphant return to the gym last night. Kim and I decided a little racquetball would be nice on a cold winter day. This is the most excruciating activity for me since my last ankle sprain. I am happy to report that my ankle held up fine, with no complaints at all. Unfortunately the same cannot be said for my overall endurance, which has taken quite a hit. Hopefully that can be quickly resolved, as we are hoping to hit the slopes this coming weekend. Perhaps I should consider getting back into running with the weather getting warmer. I would like to run the Bolder Boulder sometime.

Over the weekend, we took a couple hour drive up to Leadville, Colorado. Situated at an elevation of 10,152 feet, Leadville is the highest incorporated city and the second highest incorporated municipality in the United States. The reason for our trip was was to check out the annual ski joring competition. We first heard of this event this past November when watching the latest Warren Miller movie, Children of Winter. We arrived shortly after 11AM, and quickly realized that we’d be waiting around for awhile. In the future, I would say it’s safe to bet on the competitions getting started around 2PM. I have to admit that it is just as awesome, if not more, than what I was expecting. The horses are flying straight down the course, while the skier being pulled snakes back and forth trying to hit all of the objectives on the track.

The first round of summer tour dates for O.A.R. have been released today. Included are shows for nearly all who regularly read this here blog. For those in KC, Sandstone will be rocked on June 6th. Riverbend in Cincinnati has a date with O.A.R. on June 13th. And for me, the band will be making their second appearance at Red Rocks on June 5th. This comes after finding out that they will also be in Vail for the Spring Back to Vail event on April 19th. I haven’t seen a show since last year’s performance at the Mile High Music Festival, so I am definitely pumped! Here’s a video of the band announcing some of these goodies.

Summer Tour Announcement from DREWRLM22 on Vimeo.

So, here’s a long overdue update to my homebrewing project. After bottling all of the beer, I let them sit for over two weeks (closer to three if I remember correctly) and then I put a few of them into the refrigerator. Once chilled, I cracked a couple of them open and immediately had mixed feelings. First, one of the bottles appeared to carbonate much more than the other. So they poured very different from each other and even tasted a bit different. And i will admit that neither of them tasted very good. Though it does appear to be an amber ale it tastes more like a wheat or light bock. So far I think I’ve gone through less than half a dozen bottles, so there is still plenty left. I’m now debating just dumping most of it and trying again, as I would definitely give this one a below average grade. Here’s hoping for better luck next time.

I guess it was widely known that there was going to be a Beatles version of the Rock Band game, but I didn’t know it until today. Being a big fan of the Beatles music, I couldn’t be happier to hear this news. According to this new website, it will be released later this summer on 09-09-09. And they are supposedly going to have new instrument controllers modeled after those played by John, Paul, George and Ringo. All of this comes after I recently realized the Rock Band Music Store was finally available on the Wii and I’ve been doing my best to catch up on downloading the available tracks. It won’t be long before I have the entire hard drive full.

Kim stayed home from work today, as they had a new phone/internet system installed in her office. That combined with the gorgeous weather outside (it’s seriously 75 out and we have the windows open) forced us outside during our lunch break. She decided to go for a nice run, and while I considered doing the same, I ended up on the bike figuring I shouldn’t push it too hard with my newly reusable ankle.

After a good workout, we headed back home, but decided we should stop for some lunch along the way. A new little restaurant opened up a few weeks ago just a couple blocks from home. We had yet to visit Vert Kitchen and thought it was about time we do so. I had already glanced at the menu when it first opened, so I knew I was going to have the curry chicken salad sandwich. Kim decided to go with the house roasted turkey sandwich. Both came served with a small side of their awesome mashed potato salad. We decided to split the two sandwiches, and I was equally impressed with them both. Either one would be highly recommended.

As far as the restaurant goes, when we arrived there were plenty of open tables. While we enjoyed our meal, the restaurant became filled to capacity. True, it only seats about a dozen people at a time, but it has only been open for a short period of time. I had no idea the demand for a restaurant was so high in the neighborhood. But I guess I should have known it would turn out to be so popular as it’s the only place to grab something to eat this side of Wash Park. We will definitely be back soon, I just hope there will be a seat for me the next time I do.