use real butter

Orchid Pavilion is touted as the best Chinese restaurant in Boulder. I hope you will forgive me if I am skeptical of Boulder residents’ ability to judge good Chinese food, but I am skeptical… very skeptical. At 9 pm on a Friday, the restaurant was fairly busy, although we had a heck of a time finding it because there were no signs on the outside on the street unless you walked right up to the door and saw that it was indeed, the restaurant.

Tonight was community night! It was fabulous as usual and we had a great time with Nicole, Andrew, Kellie, Tom, and Beth. There would have been a picture of me and Beth, but I think that martini Jeremy had negated the autofocus feature. I’ll shut up now and just post the pics.

**Jump for more butter**

Happy Birthday to all my mates born on this day! I know the autumnal equinox bops around a bit, but I love it when the first day of autumn coincides with my birthday. Why? Because it means the ushering in of a favorite season with pumpkin pies, fall colors, cooler weather, Halloween, apple cider, autumn harvest, hearing children at play in the school yard, the smell of smoke from chimneys drifting through the air, and frosts.

But today we managed to skip over all of that and plunge into winter. Okay, to be fair, the forecast calls for warmer temps and sunshine in the coming week. However, today I could pretend it was winter – except it didn’t require much pretending. On our drive to the trailhead this morning, the roads were completely slicked with a sheet of ice. Although I love winter, this punch of winds and then cold temperatures seems to have some aspens going from green to brown. Thankfully, there is still some color to spare.