Karma or Luck?

Its pretty funny how things can work out sometimes, I am not sure if I am lucky, have good karma coming my way, but what ever it is I hope it keeps working the way it has been. Of course in every journey there are little snags and snares, sometimes you want to stop or you see or hear something that can ruin an entire day, but if you keep going in my experience things get better. Basically things are going pretty darn good for me so far. I think I have apartment lined up, I got a new bike, and I think my hand will be good enough to play the open mics this week.

It's pretty difficult to find a good place in Breck, especially during this time of the year, everyone is both moving out and in all at the same time so it become very competitive. Thankfully, I think I may have lined up and will know by Monday, I will keep you posted. It's a small 1 room apartment, just for me, and its even closer to my job than the place that I am in right now. Looks like I am going to be staying here for a year. I could really think of worse things, to be honest. Hopefully my fortitude granted to me by Chicago winters will see me through this place once the winter comes.

Yesterday I had to work a double, I got off work the night before at 5:30am, and had to be back at Noon, work for 4 hours, go home and come back to work 6 to close, alone, on a weekend, it was good times. I was on my little 2 hour break between shifts and I decided to walk home and take a little nap, I was almost home and I saw my neighbor outside and I just said "Howdy Neighbor" and kept walking, and this woman yelled after me, "Hey, you want a bike?". So I figured she was trying to sell me a bike, I went and took a look at it and it is basically brand new, its this nice little mountain bike, she told me that I could have it for free, cause they are moving and they don't feel like taking it. So... ya I got a free bike just for saying hello to my neighbor. Well also I helped her put her grill into her car, but I think if I had to do it all over again I would.

The funny thing is that just the day before I was looking at the bikes that the bike rental places are starting to sell because the winter season is coming. You can get a bike for literally half its retail cost, I have seem 3k road bikes go for 1k, I wanted this small mountain bike for 275 but I was trying to make sure I could pay my incredibly large first, last, and deposit on my new place. Good thing I held off cause now I have a basically brand new bike that I got for free.

This is why I wonder about luck and karma, I feel so lucky out here, things of course go a little haywire for time to time, but I just keep my head up and within a couple of day I have been given a new bike, or a good job, or an awesome apartment, its hard to believe that I work for anything because sometimes it seems so effortless to acquire it.

I  have also been kind of getting in with the open mic crowd, which incidentally is also the chess crowd and old bookstore crowd, you wont hear me complaining. I have been going to chess nights and open mics every mon and tues since I have gotten here. Funny story, I was at the chess club and I look over, and this guy that looked very familiar was also looking back at me, and I was like "Tom?" and he was like "Craig?", it was a guy that I knew about 5 years ago back from home. He just lived 1 town over and we used to hang out and had a group of friends and everything, we both kind of dropped off the grid for a while but suddenly here he is. I can tell that he has grown up a lot, its just so funny how he came out here a month ago, and I came out 2 months ago, we had the same thought at pretty much the same time, and here we are in a place that only has a population of about 5,000, what are the odds?

Back to the open mic, last week I couldn't play because I had a tragic long boarding accident and messed up my hand, its still pretty sore but I think by Monday I will be able to play, which is good because one of the guys in the group decided that I am going to play lead guitar for him for "Babe I'm Gonna Leave You" -Led Zepplin, and "The Final Cut" -Pink Floyd, while he sings and plays backup guitar, I am actually pretty excited, but I need to study and my hand needs to come back to me. Even if this Monday doesn't work out, I learned about another open mic night on Wednesdays that is actually run at the book store where we all play chess and stuff. Its more of a poetry, acoustic music, acapella kinda venue, I think Chris would love it. I took this Wednesday off and am going to go to that as well. The next 3 days will be Open Mic, Chess Night, then even better Open Mic, I cannot wait for my days off.

So there it is, a small part of a much larger week, I got a free bike, pretty much found an apartment, I like my job, and in general I am happy and having a good time. It seems like I should be getting some visitors soon, my grandparents and my mom and brother, and some of my friends, I hope to see you all soon. Thank you all for reading this post, I will hopefully find the chance to write again soon.

Craig

Almost 2 months now.

Sorry that it has been a while since I have last posted, life can get kind of crazy some times. My cousin Sam just came to visit me and reminded me that I should continue this blog, so here I am, I will try to be more reliable in the future, but I cannot promise anything.

So I think a recap is in order, lets see....

Those two jobs that I had, well one of them didn't work out, I guess I just wasn't that into olive oil cause we had a mutual parting of ways if you know what I mean. But I have this other job that actually turned out to be pretty decent, although some drama at work has been making me rethink that position. Basically I
work in a Chicago style eatery, how ironic is that? I come from the south suburbs of Chicago to serve our food to the find people of Colorado. Luckily I am actually a pretty decent cook, waiter, and bartender, so I am rocking the job. I thought I would have been handicapped by my being a vegetarian but that is not the case.

The people love me, I have people come in all day telling me that they loved my food, ordering more, its a really nice place to be in a small town and to do a good job, it also helps that half of these people are drunk, stoned, or both. Sometimes things are bad but I take everything with a grain of salt, my good friend Chris told me that his Mom, Nancy always told him that, "you should lets the bad roll off of you like water on a ducks back" and that's what I do. But sometimes people are toasting my name and telling me that I am awesome at my job. Also my boss said he is going to buy me my ski pass and teach me how to ski cause he is an instructor.

Talking about extreme sports, I have started trying to long board so that I can be better at snow boarding once the season starts, unfortunately concrete is much harder than snow, cause I have fallen more than once, and in general when you fall from a long board you are gonna feel it tomorrow. I have been working for the last week with a messed up thumb and unfortunately cannot play guitar right now, but its healing, I could have gotten more hurt I am sure.

I started going to this open mic night that's just down the street from me, there are a bunch of locals that go up there an play, and its really all different levels and types of music which a good atmosphere. I try to go there every week, but as I said I messed up my thumb so I didn't go last week. I met a bunch of people up there, some want to play music with me, some wants to learn how to role play, and I found another place to hang out, an old used book store where people meet up for chess every Tuesday night. Hopefully this next Monday I can play cause I am supposed to play lead guitar for "Babe I'm Gonna Leave You" for one of the guys that I met there, this should be fun!

Also my new girlfriend Ramona comes with me to these chess nights, she is pretty cool and interesting and we seem to want to do the same things most of the time. Last week we went camping on top of a 13k mountain (13,000 feet), I have pictures, its was a really amazing place.

Its a Pretty great place to camp and live and in general be. So far I am pretty happy here, there are of course some snags along way, I have to find a new place to live cause in 2 weeks my sublet lease is up, also I want to try to see some good concerts are Red Rocks before it gets to cold up here.

For now I must go to work, the slow season has just started so its going to be exceptionally boring, but we shall see how it goes. I'll try to post again soon.