So I was over at the High Plains library here in Greeley the other day (a fairly regular occurance) and I was perusing their latest in new selections. I am always on the prowl for a good tropical book as you know, when I came across “Beautiful Maria of My Soul” by Oscar Hijuelos. I had no idea this was a sequel to his Pulitzer Prize winning “The Mambo Kings Play Songs of Love” (which I hadn’t read or known anything about -maybe because I was 9 when it came out and his stories are a little, shall we say, adult in nature).
Anyway, I get all the way through the novel and fall in love with the style and story and find out that this is, indeed, the second telling of the same story, but told from Maria’s perspective instead of the Castillo brothers. It happens so often for me that I fall in love with the characters, setting and story of novels that by the end of the book I just want more…and this one has more, even if I do read it in a different order.
So today I went back to the library to pick up ”The Mambo Kings Play Songs of Love”… AND I also picked up the movie “The Mambo Kings” (starring Antonio Banderas) in old school VHS format (we’ll have to dust off the old VCR). I guess I have some reading to do and Britton and I have a movie for a chilly evening this week. Yay. Here’s a clip from the movie:
The Memorial Service for Dad was very nice. Lots of people came, many memories were shared, and I think the slide show video we made was extra special. Here are a few images from the day. Thanks to everyone who came, or was there in spirit.
Father Brian from my mom’s church officiated. Also in picture are my brother, mom and Justin’s girlfriend
Quite a few people came out
Britton is my rock and did great on the technical aspects of the day
I thought this was such a great flower bouquet for Dad
We sang Amazing Grace and the Honor Guard presented Mom with a flag
Afterward we went out to dinner
It was a tough day, but we got through it. I think we did a great job of honoring Dad. Thanks again to everyone who has helped us through this.
If you are lucky like me, when you just click it Windows Media Player will stream and play it. It is too large for youtube otherwise we would have posted it there.
Last night we went out with our friends Leslie and Al to the Little Theatre of the Rockies, UNC’s performing arts theatre, where we saw “Chicago”. It was performed by students from the University of Northern Colorado, Greeley’s university, and my alma mater. It was great! The props, costumes, singing, dancing, everything was well-done. There were two who really stood out from the rest and that was the actress who played Velma, McKayla Marso and the actor who played Mary Sunshine -Joseph Young. Both were graduates of UNC and came back as guest artists. We had a lot of fun. Leslie was able to get the tickets for free from a customer she knew, so that was cool too! Thanks guys for inviting us!
Last night we decided to go to the Greeley Moonlight Bike Ride sponsored and put on by the Greeley Police Officers’ Association. Registration was at 8:30pm and the ride was to start at 9pm. Unfortunately for us, we are now on the chickens’ schedule because we have to lock them up at night to protect them from attack which means we had to wait for them to go in their coop at dusk. When they finally put themselves to bed, we closed them up and were on our way to the Greeley Police Station on bikes.
On my bike on our way there
The Police Station is only probably about 1-2 miles from our house, so we were there in short order. They had an acoustic guitar band called Girls with Guitars playing when we arrived. We signed in, grabbed a free snack and enjoyed the music.
We had encouraged our friends Matt and Jamie (and their daughter Hailee) to come, but didn’t think they would. They surprised us by showing!
Matt and Britton at Starbucks
Me and Jamie with Police Car
The whole event is free and sponsored by area businesses in addition to the Greeley Police Department. They said they’ve been doing it for 16 years! How did we miss this all the years before? The police rode with us and police cars blocked off whole streets as we rode.
This is route- about 12 miles round trip
We rode from the police station on 10th Street went east on 8th Street, rode past downtown, rode up through UNC’s campus and Reservoir Rd, through Sanborn Park where boy scouts had set up luminaries down the path. It was really cool because they glowed as we rode past the lake. Then we stopped at the Starbucks in Westlake Plaza where they served us free drinks. That was our half-way point. At this point we could see how many people came out by the sheer number of bikes!
And of course, all the people. Here they (we) are waiting for them to call out the door prizes of which Britton won one!
Police guy is on the table yelling out prizes
From there we rode up 20th Street to near 47th Ave and then turned into a neighborhood near 16th Street, rode through Bittersweet Park where the sprinklers were on! Everyone got soaked, it was pretty cool. Then we headed back in a round about way to the police station. I was amazed at the number of people who crashed going that slow. It was kind of funny once you knew they were ok. Now I know why they wanted everyone to have a helmet and light on their bike although they didn’t turn anyone away if they didn’t have either.
Once we were back at the police station they had free sandwiches from Jimmy Johns and drinks from a company called Oogave. They gave out a few more prizes and showed some biking clips on the big movie screen -a bike-in movie! We said goodbye to Matt and Jamie and headed back home by about midnight. And yes, the chickens were sleeping safe and sound.
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