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Mount Evans at about 12,200 feet.

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More views from Mount Evans looking toward Rocky Mountain National Park

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Another view of the Garden of the Gods

Very nice! What do you mean he got freaked out, and how are your eyes?

Warren, thanks for the sneak peak at your character!! I can't wait to read the book. Jess, I personally can never hear to much baby stuff, I will email you the latest funny from my nephew soon!

The crush is sending mixed signals, and I am trying to slide it back inot the friends realm. Of course, being male, he doesn't realize he is sending signals at all, and has no idea I am spun haha. He makes me smile a lot, and thats nice.

last night I got to the shop, he had cleaned, put out a new comfy chair, and had my kind of soda and ice cream. He had jack johnson on the stereo (last time it was all ozzy and iron maiden). There was lots of yummy eye contact, and then he said something about wondering if the cute girl at the sandwich shop was single. . .

So today I had let it go, and he called for me to come over. He bought me some things. . .

meh, it may be more fun just to crush for a bit haha, stoopid boys!

Warren, I suffered some cornea damage while on my ride. Both eyes were damaged similar to what happens to a welder's eyes when they stare at a welding rod.

I'm not sure how it happened, but it was probably exposure to wind and sun, and using Visine. I now know the preservatives in Visine can really screw up some people.

I ended up in a Leadville, Colorado. emergency room. The pain was kidney-stone like. I was unable to function, so I took the meds they gave me and just got a hotel to try and heal enough to continue on my journey.

This morning I am off to see a doctor about my eyes and also look into options for corrective procedure for my up-close vision.

I also want to tell you guys what my therapist told me about alcohol use ... to be continued.

Oh Warren - I want you to know I visited a music school a couple weeks ago and made a financial commitment to start guitar lessons.

I prepaid for 5 one-hour lessons.

When I was in my late 30s I made a promise to myself to fulfill this dream of playing music by 40. Well, at 39.5 I bought a nice guitar and then never did anything with it.

I'm now 45 and very close to 46, and so I decided to finally give it a go. I will work hard up until Christmas and then access my progress. If I don't have the aptitude then I can happily put the guitar down and check that off the list.

Charles, glad you had a good time :)

Warren.. dude... why the vodka ad?? Ick.

Hope everyone has a great weekend.

Ut oh.....yes I see that. The Ab..... (with no E, coincidently) and stands OUT far more clearly than MUSIC. In very poor taste Warren, no pun intended. What's you MO Warren.

Alcohol isn't a part of my life anymore, sorry I didn't get the reference. All that did was make me think of a big bottle of Absolut.

Glad you changed it, but definitely don't do so on my account. Why did you want to wait for comments? It's a bottle of liquor, vodka even, a huge preference for later stage drunks like me..as an avatar on a sobriety website.. of course people here might get a bit edged out about it. Or maybe it's just me.

As the old saying goes,

"Don't tell me what kind of man you are, show me."

Sorry if I busted in on this thread, I'm outta here anyways. I stick my nose where it doesn't belong often, and I really don't want to be party to any of this here :)

Enjoy!

Having one of those days when I'm just not feeling like myself and I"m super stressed. But this too shall pass, right?

Hope everyone is well~

Ok, here is a piece of a recent discussion with my therapist about drinking. Remember, before passing judgment on him, this is being translated through me.

And for the record, Warren I have read your comments over this last year, and have mostly just thought you were thinking out loud and not really setting up up an alibi to go back to drinking. I thought this most of the time. There may have been times where I worried about you and thought you were getting close, but I didn't think you were showing signs of weakening totally.

But, I also support the response our classmates threw at you. Every comment that was said to you was said out of some form of compassion, or at the very least their own experience compared to the behavior they were witnessing.

I say all this because what my therapist had to say about drinking could be ripped to shreds by the 12-Steppers based on their indoctrination materials for successful living after giving up alcohol.

I asked him if he thought the reason I reacted to alcohol the way I did was directly connected to the subjects we have been dealing with in therapy. In other words, was my drinking a form of self-medicating the unresolved psychological issues I was working through.

And if that was the case, and I actually reached a better place because of therapy did he think I could drink again in a healthy manner?

I didn't ask him this because of any desire to slip. I asked him because I was curious if a healthy psyche would change my reaction to booze, compared to the old psyche.

He responded this way. He said in his training, alcohol use is viewed in two ways, alcohol dependency and alcohol abuse.

Of course dependency will have abuse with it, but often abuse can occur without dependency.

He said, "based on what you have told me," you seemed more of an abuser. According to him, "abuse" can be a modifiable behavior. Meaning, for some people they can go back to social drinking, but I don't think it is common because very few people truly take the time to resolve their reasons for self-medication. Also, the retraining of drinking behavior is also difficult.

That's not to say some people can go from an out-of-control drinking lifestyle having the occasional glass of wine. But, at this point I don't have many examples of success to use to bolster my thesis here.

For the most part, I tend to believe that for people like us who get to a point where we know inside drinking is hurting, killing or ruining our relationships with others, or costing us jobs, etc, we probably will never be able to use drugs or alcohol again.

This pattern of abuse (or style of drinking) always stays inside us and even if we are able to moderate and and show composure, some day we will return to the dark place in all of us that brought us here.

I tend to accept I am no snowflake and I will not be that person that can return to a life of social drinking. Although I am certain tonight I could go out for dinner and have a couple glasses of wine and stop. But what would NOT stop would be that voice that used to speak to me all the time ... the one that talked me into all sorts of circumstances I never want to repeat.

Welcome back, Charles :) Looks like you really enjoyed my "backyard" lol.. Jason and I actually got married within eyeshot of Garden of the Gods, and Pikes Peak.. beautiful down there for sure. We go back to hike around often.

What your therapist said totally makes sense. I know I could go have 2 beers, and be just fine.. I've done it hundreds probably thousands of times.. it's the mental piece that would f with me. Though I could be 'disciplined' enough to stop at 2 (mind you, 'normal' drinkers never have to use discipline or think about limiting drinks lol), I'd want more. Maybe not that night, i'd probably be high on what I thought was success. But it'd open the door for the next time, and that for the next time and so on. I'd spend so much time thinking about drinking or not drinking or whatever it would impede my otherwise pretty awesome life. I like never thinking about it.. knowing I could have a few drinks and never drink again does nothing for me. So what? Maybe I could.. maybe I could do it for a year? My relationship with alcohol is so different at this point, that I'm not SO in love with it anymore that I feel I need to find a way to keep it in my life or have a taste now and again.. to me that's crazy thinking. I've moved on, and that 2 drinks I could 'will' myself to have and stop at would be worth absolutely nothing.. the fact that I've been sober, have worked out some personal kinks that probably contributed to dependency, abuse or whatever mumbo jumbo there is, THAT is where my strength lies, not in the delusional 'strength' it would take to have 2 drinks.. to me that purely defines weakness and backstepping.

That's of course just MY opinion.. we're all very different, and lot of "us" have returned to drinking, and I'm sure of it that several of 'us' will again.. I don't tempt it, I don't think about it.. the only time alcohol is even a whisper of a thought is when I read about it here. Also another reason I'm not here as much as I used to be.. I have no solid place 'here', my life has changed too much to identify right now. Maybe that makes it easy for me to say 'never', maybe this kid has given me a free pass to sobriety.. I don't know. Regardless of my pregnancy, what I stood to lose before while I was drinking, I still stand to lose now and none of that is worth risking.

Ok enough from me.. this place depresses me! I'm off to do some baby furniture shopping and out to lunch w/ Jason's mom..(very typical crazy mother in law.. ugh!).

Hope you all have a great weekend/week etc..

xox