R.I.P.

Sad news: Singer-songwriter Chris Whitley died Nov. 20 at 45 of lung cancer. I admit I haven't kept up with his output lately, and he could be inconsistent (his "Din of Ecstasy" baffled me), but when he was good, he was oh-so-good. Check out "Living With the Law," "Terra Incognita" and "Dirt Floor." I guess he had some demons, and I've heard of shows he barely made it through, but the times I saw him were marvelous. Slide guitar like you wouldn't believe.

Winter wonder

OK, all you literalists, I know it's not winter yet, but fall/autumn wonder doesn't have quite the same ring. Since we moved, everyone's been wondering: Is it snowing? Are you stranded? Is it freezing? Here's the rundown for the past month:

Average temperature: 60s

Days of snow: 2
(Once it snowed while I was at work and wasn't even evident by the time I left; the second time there was just trace accumulation the next day.)

Skies: Sunny 95% of the time

I'm sure this will all change, and in fact, a cold spell has been moving in the past few days for highs in the 40s, lows in the 20s and teens, but so far the bad weather you've been seeing on TV is in the mountains or beyond Denver. We've taken Angus on lots of walks in shirt-sleeves (us, not Angus, though he has worn his reversible nylon/corduroy coats a few of the colder days).

We are guessing December-February will be the real test, but apparently the snow here is generally gone within a day or two (provided it's not a huge storm), and all the locals say the winters are mild. Of course, many of them have no basis for comparison. We are thinking that maybe people exaggerate the winters here like Northwesterners exaggerate the rain (which I would call drizzle) to keep outsiders away. We'll keep you posted; then again, there's already too many people here, so maybe we'll tell you the winters are dreadful and to stay away at all costs.

Exploding soup cans at inopportune moments

I'm playing a bit of catch-up here since I haven't e-mailed anyone much beyond our new contact info since we moved. Now that we're more settled in, here's the saga of THE ACCIDENT.

I was due to leave Albuquerque early Oct. 23 and start my job the following day (Michael & Angus were staying behind for a week to deal with the movers and meeting me in Denver when our apartment was ready Nov. 1). On the 22nd, we'd gone to a party at co-worker Ollie's and had a lovely time. When we got home, I was doing some last-ditch purging in the kitchen, my final contribution before heading out and leaving Michael with all the cleanup work.

About two weeks earlier, Michael had bought a can of Progresso lentil soup with pop-top that I discovered had a bulge on the bottom. Now (and here's where probably everyone but me says "Duh!"), I knew not to eat food in a faulty can, but I didn't know not to open it. (I was going to dump the contents so I could recycle the can.)

The second I pulled the tab, the lid shot off with the force of a bullet (Michael said the sound in the next room was in fact like a gunshot) and straight into the crook of my right hand, between thumb and forefinger. I immediately realized I'd made a terrible mistake when I saw the deep gash in my hand, and Michael's reaction confirmed it.

I want to keep this short, so I won't get into the whole part where he tried calling urgent care to find out where to go (we'd never used our insurance in an emergency before), or how he got into a spat with 911, or how cops showed up at our door while we en route to the emergency room and asked our neighbors if they'd heard a domestic dispute. All you need to know is that I got four stitches by a doctor who looked very much like Kurt Russell (I told him so), I lost two days of work at my new job (couldn't drive with a swollen, barely mobile hand), my insurance ran out in between jobs and I had to pay out of pocket to have my stitches removed here, and we are in talks with General Mills on recouping some of our losses.

That's the semi-Reader's Digest condensed version, and now we're up to speed on the move. Will fill you in on that next time.

A welcome and a rant

First off, welcome to this site. I can't promise anything in the way of output/consistency, as my follow-through's not so great (for instance, I created this blog probably a year ago and never put anything in it). With our move to Denver, though, I wanted to do a better job of keeping in touch than I did after we went to Albuquerque and figured this might be just the forum.

On to my minor rant. Nothing against my lovely husband or men in general, but I have been highly frustrated lately that everyone just assumes the man is the one in charge. I first noticed this during the summer, when Michael and I talked to a mortgage officer at the bank about getting preapproved. Even though we made it fairly clear that I was the "moneyed" one, the woman directed almost her entire spiel to Michael, to the point that he was practically offering hand signals to remind her I was in the room.

Hadn't given it much more thought until recently. We opened a new bank account in Denver and realized later that, though it's a joint account and I'm currently the employed one, a number of the forms contained only Michael's name and not mine. Granted, we both have equal access to the account, but I was peeved that the guy, for whatever reason, chose Michael's name.

Then, we received a deposit refund from our old landlord. The envelope listed both our names, but the check was made out to -- guess who? Yes, Michael. Even though, as he and I both pointed out, he never wrote a SINGLE check for the rent.

OK, it's out of my system now, and I feel better. Maybe it's just us, but I'm suspecting it's a fairly common trend. As James Brown says, "It's a man's man's man's world."