An Academic Summer - Part IV

So I've been gone for a while. Yep, you guessed it; it was the vacation segment of my academic summer. I left on July 14th for Kerri's house. We went for dinner and trivia night at a place that I think was called Fused, in Roswell. We were second place all night but ended up in 3rd. Still got a $10 gift card out of it though!

The next day I flew out to Denver. That weekend was the Mile High Music Festival and I rode in a chauffeured party RV with 14 of my friends to the shows both days. I'm normally always on the look out for crazy things to take pictures of at festivals like these (think Bonnaroo but shorter and minus the on-site camping).

Last August at the Outside Lands festival in San Fransisco I found unusual things such as these two young men playing around with police.

Or this woman walking her duck. No. Seriously. She had a duck. On a leash. At the Grace Potter and the Nocturnals show. I ran after her to get a photo and this is the best I got.

Then there was this chick. I'll just link to it (Click Here) because it's a little naughty (think pasties and marijuana leaves...). She was posing for pictures like it was her job (it wasn't) but I still edited out her face. It was wild.

This time, however, I really didn't care about anything but being with my friends. My pictures from the festival are pretty much only of my friends and/or me and I didn't take as many as usual.

And I took almost no pictures when I wasn't at the festival... and I really didn't go anywhere most of the time I was there. I went out for a quick happy hour trip one day in Boulder but, the rest of the time, my activities revolved around friends, food, drink, music, and doggies. I didn't do any work. I didn't think about work. I didn't read news, really. It was the purest vacation I've had in years and it was absolutely glorious. So glorious, in fact, that I got pretty emotional the morning I was supposed to leave (okay, okay, AND the next two mornings after that... what? I moved across the country alone and left all my people behind!) and promptly called the airline to tell them I wouldn't be showing up and to put me on a flight leaving the next night.

Some of my adorable, amazing, incredible, fantastic, magnificent, KICKASS friends came back over that night to hang out with me and play with all of our many pictures from the weekend's festival adventures. Some even came back the next day to road trip to the airport with me. Between all that and a view like this from the park I walked to with the dogs...

it's no wonder, right? Maybe Chief Niwot's curse is real. I guess it's interpreted in various ways (and I think he probably meant it along the lines of: "It's so beautiful here that people will come and come and they'll end up destroying this/our land.) but there is one interpretation that sticks with you: "Once you gaze upon the beauty of the FlatIrons, you will never be happy anywhere else." There's a little bit of truth in there somewhere, I think.

But now I'm back in Georgia, fighting losing battles against the omnipresent mosquitoes and trying to keep the vacation going through the weekend. I think I will go make some mayonnaise.