Courtenay Brown

Today was my birthday! I turned 32, which is how old my mom was when I was born, which she reminded me via suspiciously not-Sal-like text message: “OMG you’re half my age!!” Hmm.

My day went like this:

I had Environmental Policy class from 8 to 9:15 a.m. This is the class I T.A., I go to lectures on Tuesdays and Thursdays and hold office hours by appointment. Office hours start tomorrow, today was my first signup day, and four whole students made appointments to see me! I was pleasantly floored.

Then I went outside and hacked up two lungs, Boulder is burning, FYI. I called Felicia about the fires, she said to NOT TRAIN OUTSIDE, which made complete sense.

However… I am only on pedal power until my car gets fixed and somehow found myself at FAC, where we only do masters in the outdoor pool. I didn’t put on sunscreen because I fully planned on not swimming, I was just going to see what the workout was and “borrow” a towel from the gym and pedal over to an indoor pool at one of the city rec centers, but Dave Scott started out the workout by telling the whole pool a story about how last week he went for a ride up Lefthand Canyon and saw this woman up ahead and thought oh sure I’ll catch her, but it took him for forever, as he got closer he saw she even had on a backpack, finally he got in her draft, then came along side, and guess who it was? ME!!!!!!!! Yay. And he didn’t drop me either. Props from The Man himself!!!! And he didn’t even know it was my birthday today!!

So obviously after he told that story to Julie Dibens, Tyler Butterfield, Joe Gambles, etc., I had to do the workout . And hack up more lungs. Then after that I went outside and laid in the grass and made Dan come fetch me, no way was I riding all the way up a hill in the smoke with a backpack and flipflops and no snacks on my birthday.

Then I had a run on tap but swimming in that air was more than enough, even though the workout was amended due to conditions… so. No training due to smokey air, what to do? Shop!! (Yes, I know, danger all around). My birthday chauffeur (Dan) gave me a ride to AND from Anthropologie/MAC/Whole Foods/Aveda (where I met another woman whose birthday was today!). Oh and I had an MRT appointment with Josh the miracle worker, after which I found myself showing Craig Alexander’s daughter photos of Hercules (do recall, the world’s cutest pony) on my iPhone. Next up was fabulous “family dinner” at Aji. In between all this, many wonderful calls and messages – thank you!!

Coming up: photos of things, and stories from the weekend…