This week Bruce participated in the Author Showcase at the library. Local authors got 5 minutes to talk about a book they've recently published. Technically, we've only lived in Colorado a year, but evidently that's enough to qualify as a "local."
When Bruce applied to do this presentation, he'd just published the 4th book in his Mindslueth series, From the Mind of a Witch, so that's the book he was required to present (at the time of his application, it had to be a book published within the past year). Since then, he's published the 5th book, A Wrinkle in the Mind. He was not the only author doing a quick pitch for his latest book at the end of his presentation.
There were 11 different presenters who'd written books ranging from murder mysteries to memoirs to self-help to beach reads to historical fiction to children's literature, but no other author had a techno-thriller. At the end of the presentations, each author got a chance to sell autographed copies of their books. Since this was held on a gorgeous Saturday afternoon, most of the attendees were friends and relatives of the authors, but Bruce was lucky enough to sell a copy of his book. I thought that was pretty impressive, since he told the audience they could check it out from the library for free.
In other news, the Cardinals played the Rockies this week, so we went to an afternoon baseball game at Coors field. We took the light rail downtown, because you can ride free this month (their slogan is "no fare for cleaner air" - clever). The train was packed with Cardinals fans - people like us who were from St Louis but had moved to Colorado.
We had fabulous seats for the game - under the awning in the Club section (good thing, since it got up to 97° by late afternoon). Only the people sitting along the first base line hoping to catch a foul ball were crazy enough to sit out in the sun. But there were A LOT of foul balls hit into the stands - I think every Cardinal player hit at least 2 every time they came up to bat. While it was a very exciting game (lots of home runs), the Cardinals lost to the Rockies in a knuckle-biting 9th inning 6-8. I'm guessing the Cardinals had trouble like me trying to breath in this no-pollution, high-altitude air.
This week the president of our bike club went to New York with his grandkids, so I organized a breakfast ride to a local cafe. Since we weren't going very far (just along the bike path around the neighborhood), Bruce joined us.
The Heritage Cafe serves HUGE breakfasts. I ordered the corned beef hash - very tasty, but I took half of it home (and that's after sharing part of it with Bruce). Good thing we don't do breakfast rides very often, because I couldn't handle all those calories.
Our Geek Club president hosted a meeting at his house to show off all the electronic gadgets he's made for pickleball. This is a pitching machine he made out of a leaf blower. This is his 2nd iteration for this gadget. The first time he showed it to me, it felt like I was being attacked by a pickleball machine gun. He's subsequently slowed it down quite a bit.
My Ladies Out to Lunch group got together and played a game on the indoor court he built in his basement. He had to hire an engineer to widen the distance between the support beams, so that he could have a "regulation" size court. He even hired a company to lay a rubberized floor.
Bruce finished painting the floor in our basement and we set up our pickleball net in the open space. It's only about 3/4 the size of an actual field, but it's good enough to practice in and it didn't cost us thousands of dollars to install.
On Thursday I went to lunch with one of my Ladies Out to Lunch groups. I have to tell you... I like living in a 55+ community, but it's starting to exhaust me. I think this week, I may have to take a break and just entertain myself.
