Happy Anniversary, Denver

Exactly one year to the day I moved to Denver. Technically, we blasted Carbon Leaf's "Let Your Troubles Roll By" on our way into the Denver County line on July 13th, but had arrived a day early and stayed at a (bed-bug free) hotel that night.

My first year in Denver has been incredible. The weather for each and every season has been completely unusual and I'm told never to expect it to be that way again. While it normally snows in October, it was still 54 degrees in December. I think we barely had ten inches of snow in the city for the whole winter while the mountains got hammered with record snowpack. The spring was chilly without much rain, but we've been hammered by severe storms and heavy rainfall for the last two weeks. Everything is still green when it should be brown and crispy.

I've gotten the hang of the ski season, bought the 'wrong' ski pass, but skied great mountains anyhow. I've pre-purchased my 'right' ski pass for this year and am aiming to get in more weekends on the slopes.

I've adjusted to the altitude. Mostly. I've run the most I've ever run by myself, adopted healthier eating habits, and had a solid lifting routine for the first time in my life. I PR'd my 5k time and signed up for my first half marathon. I lost weight then good beer helped me put it back on.

I've completed a graduate degree and got my professional license. I got promoted.

I've had free time for the first time in four years but I'm the busiest I've ever been.

I've spent more money at REI than I care to even tally. But I've used that gear to spend cold nights warmed up in my sleeping bag, blown away by the view while peeing under the stars at 2am. I still have a list a mile long of the gear I still want to acquire.

I've summited my first 14'er and glacaded down a mountain. I've learned new words like post-hole and glacade. I've learned what altitude sickness feels like. I learned that when the bottom of the clouds go flat, get your butt off the mountain.

I got to travel to new parks and new states, both for work and play.

I got to go home and back to DC more times than I had even hoped for. I'll go back to DC twice more before 2012. Being far from these people and places didn't feel as distant as I was worried it might.

I've made amazing friends. I love my life.