Firestone, United States of America, North America

I am writing this blog entry from my flight to Melbourne from Los Angeles. This is a 15h 20m flight, so I figured I’d have plenty of time to finish this entry.

After coming back from Vegas I spent about a week down at Mom’s house relaxing. We visited the puppy mill rescue again, but unfortunately my favorite dog (Buster Brown) was already gone. I suppose I should be happy that he’s now with a family in a nice home instead of in a kennel, but I wanted to see him again before I left. Ah well.

Christmas was very low key this year. More so than any other year. It was strange being in America for Christmas time (for the first time in years), but not being with the whole family. This year it was just Mom, Steve and myself, along with 5 dogs for good measure. Mom made a great Christmas dinner for the three of us and we spent most of the day watching sports. Gotta love Christmas!

When Leo and Nikki got back from Ohio, I went up to Firestone to stay with them for a few days. Leo and I went skiing at Keystone on Thursday in some of the worst weather I had ever skied in. The snow conditions were awesome, almost perfect, but the conditions made it pretty unpleasant to ski in. It started snowing on our second run, and didn’t let up until the next day. That made skiing less fun than it could have been, but it also made the drive home horrific! We had planned on doing a bit of night skiing before heading home at about 6, but we found out on our last run down the mountain that it had been cancelled due to weather. This meant that we were going to be stuck in the traffic with everyone else from the mountain at 4:30pm. We were right, and it took just over four hours to get home after getting up there in less than two hours that morning.

The next night was New Year’s Eve and the three of us were going to see what Denver had to offer. We went downtown at about 7pm and hit a few bars before settling in at the Tilted Kilt. This is obviously a Scottish themed bar where all the waitresses dress in tiny kilt outfits (see pic below!). The night was going really well until the clock struck midnight, and then I have no idea what happened. I mean it. I can’t remember anything else. All I know is that I woke up the next morning feeling very ill and I continued to feel that way for the next few days. Not fun.

On New Year’s Day, Mom and Steve came up to Nikki’s house and Leo made a lovely meal, which I could barely eat. But from what I did have, I can say it was awesome. I just wish my stomach had allowed me to eat a bit more that night.

The next day, Nikki and I drove down to Colorado Springs to spend the night at Mom’s house. And of course, I hadn’t started packing yet, so I had to start that as well. I continued to feel unwell all through Sunday and Monday, so I wasn’t much fun to be around for my last few days in the country. Mom and Nikki drove me up to the Denver International Airport at about 3:30pm and I caught my flight out to LA a couple hours later. So here I am on the plane now, with 11 hours still ahead of me, and I can’t wait to get to Melbourne!!