Negative. Good.

Winter                                                    Cold Moon

Kate’s endoscopy is over with gratifyingly negative results. The GI doc was a right jolly old elf with white hair and a belly that shook like a bowl full of jelly. Swedish Hospital, where the procedure was done, is an old hospital, built in multiple oddly connected buildings of different ages. Some are brick, some the same tired modernist shtick that infests elementary schools. Overall the mood is mildly depressing.

Swedish is in Lakewood, the first ‘burb in the Denver metro after we leave the mountains headed east on Hwy. 285. Its massive ongoing construction, buildings separated from each other and a general confusion about what goes where, makes their offering valet parking a very nice gesture.

This one had Kate worried. Not me, but it wasn’t my alimentary canal being scoped either.

After Kate woke up, she got dressed and asked that I drive further east on Hampden (also 285) to the New York Deli. There we picked up a half gallon of CNS, one huge matzo ball and a pastrami sandwich. We turned back west on Hwy 285 and made our way out of the Mile High City and into the foothills, then the Front Range.

Each time we leave the Denver metro and head home into the mountains, one of us says, “I love living in the mountains.” Kate said it today. As we climbed into Conifer, flakes of snow began spitting around us, not much, but a reminder of the bigger winter storm scheduled to hit us tomorrow and Thursday.

As the storm comes, we have plenty of CNS and leftover pastrami sandwich to see us through. New York Deli has come to the mountains.