What's Chris Been Up To?
"Mr. Gorbachev, tear down this wall!"
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Hey now. My 2023 is getting off to a hectic start. We closed on the little house we bought in Crestone, which is a deeply stressful event in the best-case scenario, but when you’re buying a house built by a guy with some significant “issues” in a town with no building codes…. For example, the second-story deck is built from untreated wood, designed all wrong and isn’t connected to the house because the guy thought he’d run out there with a chainsaw and cut it down, like some kind of lumberjack Jason Bourne, if a brushfire was blowing up the hill. So I’m spending a lot of time doing, redoing, and undoing. And don’t get me started on the half-finished bunker….
On the other hand, the universe continues to astound us with it’s generosity. A few weeks ago, a lovely guy named Carter reached out to see if we wanted any of the perfectly good windows he’s going to be pulling out of a Mexican billionaire’s ski mansion up in Breckenridge. Hell yeah we do! So we’ll be renting a truck in March/April to go grab a bunch of free windows that will get repurposed into a sunroom by us and into all sorts of other projects by our friends in the Crestone Conglomerate.
In other news, we had our first book club meeting last week (we read Kundera’s The Unbearable Lightness of Being). Our group chat lasted about 90 minutes, and although I’d read it a bunch of times, I learned a lot from the folks in the group. I know it probably sounds like some kind of humble-brag, but I’m so fucking gratified by the intelligence and overwhelming awesomeness of people in this community.
I hope you’re knocking down some walls, too. As always, thanks for coming along for this strange ride.
CPR
ROMA (“Ranting Out My Ass” — essentially rants about whatever’s on my mind at the moment), BROMA (Bonus ROMA); TOMA (“Talking Out My Ass” — autobiographical stories from back in the day, ranging from travel stuff to an upcoming series about what it was like to shift from teaching English in Spain to bestselling author in a few weeks); AMA (Ask Me Anything).
I can almost guarantee you're wearing Crocs in this pic.
Welcome to home ownership, Mr. Ryan. I sold mine in Seattle last year and it's the first time I haven't owned any real estate since 1991. Feels liberating. Have fun bashing down walls.