What I've Been Up To Lately

When the Summer of Rhonda was over, I thought my schedule would slow down a bit, but that has not been the case at all! I didn't do any volunteer work during the summer, so I've been doing quite a bit of that over the last couple of months. I volunteered twice at the Starz Denver Film Festival, which was very fun. Can you believe they had me bartend in the Filmmakers' Lounge? Kind of like asking the fox to watch the hen house, if you ask me. I've also volunteered a couple of times at Urban Peak, which is a shelter for homeless and runaway teens. I always look forward to going there and cooking for the kids. For the most part, they're very polite and grateful. Being there always makes me extremely appreciative of my own safe, cushy upbringing.

I've also been having a lot of fun with some new friends that I've made recently, and it seems like just about everything we do involves costumes! First, there was Halloween bar hopping downtown. I was feeling kind of super hero-ish this year, so I decided to go as Bat Girl.

Here's the whole group.

Me with Andrea and one really creepy clown (her husband Brian).

A friend of mine is starting a business called Bar Scavenger, which will provide everything you need for a scavenger hunt for bachelor/ette parties, birthdays, etc. They had their first trial run in November, and Amanda and I were more than happy to be guinea pigs for the experiment.

Part of the scavenger hunt is to complete certain challenges and tasks. Here's Amanda taking on the "challenge a stranger to a push-up contest" task.

We had to find the one bar in LoDo that has pickle-infused vodka (Retro Room, in case you're wondering), and 3 team members had to do a shot of it.

And I took on the challenge of "invent a team shot, give it a name and get 3 strangers to drink it with you."

Then, a couple of weeks ago, we did the 9th Annual Denver Santa Pub Crawl. You're asked to bring at least one unwrapped toy to be donated to needy kids. This makes you feel not as guilty about the fact that you're day drinking. Costumes are required for this, and I'm certainly not going to pass up an opportunity to traipse around downtown in something sexy!

Our ridiculously fun group. No, really, I swear I'm wearing clothes!

Rudolph and Mrs. Claus.

Yeah, we had a little bit of fun.

So, thats pretty much what I've been up to lately....volunteering in order to bank some good karma to balance out the bad karma that may come my way by spending countless hours drinking my way through downtown Denver.