Burwell bound

Off to Burwell for a weekend of rodeo! Meeting my fam and my 3 besties from high school... all in my new cowboy boots. (Thanks Travis!) How nice of them to plan a rodeo to celebrate my birthday :)

UBS

If I had stayed with UBS, do you think I would be getting a share of the $2bn Swiss francs? UBS-ers, you'll have to let me know when your bonus checks come in :)

27 July 2010 Last updated at 04:17 ET

UBS profits ahead of expectations

Shares in UBS were trading higher on the back of the results

Swiss bank UBS has announced quarterly profits that beat market expectations, helped by strong equities and foreign exchange revenues.

The bank made a net profit of 2bn Swiss francs ($1.9bn; £1.2bn) in the April-to-June quarter. Analysts had expected a profit of about 1.3bn Swiss francs.

Profit at its investment banking division improved from the first quarter, although revenues fell.

"This was a good result in volatile market conditions," UBS said.

"I remain confident in our future and I firmly believe that we have the right strategy in place," said chief executive Oswald Gruebel.

UBS shares were up 6% in morning trade.

Twins in Denver :)

Two days in Denver with Briana and we were mistaken for sisters multiple times, twins twice, and Norwegians once. Seriously?! Not to say I'm offended at all, Briana would make a pretty good twin :) We packed a LOT into two days...let's move on to pictures, shall we?

Went hiking near Golden - this Panorama Point with a view of 100 miles of the Continental Divide

Awesome hike! Tons of flowers along the trail

What better way to cool off after a long hike than a (free) tour of the Coors Brewery? Complete with (free) beer after! Yes, this picture cost $20.00 to buy. Yes, we took a picture of the picture and then gave it back to them.

Fresh Blue Moon and a very happy B.

Sad after we realized we missed the "fresh beer" taste. Dang. Ah well, I guess three beers at the end was probably enough for us!

Out dancing with the girls at Cowboy Lounge! (Think Guitars and Cadillacs on steroids)

Touristy day in Denver. View from the top of the State Capitol Building.

And on to dinner... This is B's Uncle's restaurant. Family-style Italian - VERY good. We highly recommend it!

Despicable Me in 3D. Stylish. (Travis was there too, but may have fallen asleep. Some people just don't appreciate good animated movies :))

This is where we have to PhotoShop B in - I had planned on taking her tubing, but that was before I realized her flight left on Saturday instead of Sunday. So unfortunately, she wasn't able to come - but that didn't stop the rest of us from going! (Sorry B, that is DEFINITELY on our list for next time)

Thanks for coming to visit, B! I had an AWESOME weekend, and now I'm exhausted and going to bed at 8:45 :) Hope you're having fun at Martha's!!

Yay!

Briana is coming to visit today! Woo-hoo!!

Survived

Yes, we all survived the big rafting trip- and no one fell out of the boat! (There were a couple close calls, yours truly included, but we managed to stay in.) It was a full weekend, and we all came home exhausted and sore. But well worth it

Day 1: Arrived at our wonderfully obscure campground via many windy, bumpy roads. (If anything can bring back the car-sick tendencies from my youth it is mountain roads!) Luckily Alicia had been there before so we could follow her. We set up our tents via light from our headlamps and then cooked some dinner. Campsite photo courtesy of Ben, who has a much nicer camera than I do!


Day 2: The four of us woke up to the blazing sun (yes, it is as hot here as it is in Omaha!) and decided we would melt if we stayed in the campground all day. We headed to play 9 holes of disc golf and had to dodge cacti and other assorted poke-y things. That nearly melted, us too. So we decided to tube down the river to cool off. It took us quite a while to track down tubes, but we finally found the last 4 in all of Canon City. We spent the next few hours tackling rapids and avoiding rocks. Only after Travis's tube popped, he got stuck in the middle of the river, and cut his foot open on a rock did we decide to call it quits.

Day 2 cont.: Kate and Renee meet up with the crew. We played some Frisbee, wiffle ball, and got some great photos of the mountains and canyon near the campground. Aside from one other group, we were the only people in the campground. (Not counting the gigantic beetles, that could nearly count as people. Huge. Gross.)

Day 2 cont.: Hobo dinners - yum! And Travis worries us all by testing out various hatchets/axes from our military neighbors.

Day 3: White water rafting down the Royal Gorge! Such a great time, and a-mazing views. We went directly under the bridge and got great views of the train, the heli-tours, and everything else that you can do for a pretty penny at the gorge. I think we got the best deal, by far! (Thanks, Groupon.) Two hours of rafting and we were all worn out and left with achy muscles. No photos, obviously, unless you wanted to purchase them from the outfitters at $28 bucks a pop. Now I really like photos, obviously, but even I thought that was a bit steep. You will just have to use your imaginations :)

Thursday already?

I dare say I've gotten into a bit of a summer routine... WFP during the day, CMI in the mornings/evenings, Snug Run on Thursday, then up to the mountains! I've discovered I like summer mountain activities more than winter mountain activities. (Although that isn't really fair, because I didn't make it to the mountains much this winter. Nonetheless...) Having weekends grad school-free during the summer sure is nice...

This weekend a group of us are going camping and white-water rafting in the Royal Gorge.

Let's hope this doesn't happen to us.

Holy Balloons, Batman

I spent this last weekend in Steamboat Springs, AKA SkiTown, USA. What does one do in SkiTown USA where there is no snow? Well, quite a lot, actually! A friend planned a trip for her husband's 30th birthday, and she did a great job. We went to the farmer's market while the guys golfed, went tubing down the river (got tourist suckered on that one, for sure. $17 to rent a tube? Not a problem. Only allowed to go down once and done after 30 minutes? Problem. Ah well.)

That evening we headed to Strawberry Hot Springs, natural hot springs that flow into 6 pools. Clothing optional after dark. eek. Very relaxing, though! The crew. (Minus me. Harder to set your self-timer in a pool.)

This weekend was also the 30th Annual Hot Air Balloon Rodeo! A few of us got up early to see the balloons take off around 6:30 a.m. Early, yes, but so worth it! I can't remember ever being that close to a hot air balloon, much less that close to 30 of them. So warning - here come a LOT of balloon pictures. But it was just so darn picturesque!

The inside

Steph, I took this picture for you!

I like the circus balloon in the back. It looks vintage. Although, if I were going up I'm not sure I'd want to ride in a "vintage" balloon.

The balloon "going vertical"

Well, hello, there!

A challenge - the "Splash N' Dash". They had to drop down, dip their basket in the pond, then rise up again. Pretty cool.

The road trip (and early morning) crew! We have about 300 pictures between all of us, so if you're in need of any balloon pics, just let us know :)

It was an awesome trip, and Natalie did a really good job planning. Hmmm...my birthday is coming up soon.... Travis, did you take notes?!?

Hiking (last weekend)

Last weekend, well technically Monday, a group of us girls decided to go hiking. When we pulled up to the trail head I thought, "Wait, I think I've been here before..." Well whaddaya know, it was the same place Travis and I first went hiking! I'll have to admit, I thought I would have no problem with this hike a second time. After all, I have been in Denver for about a year, I'm basically a native. (Just kidding, locals. Don't get offended.) Anyway, I was wrong. The hike kicked my butt just as badly the second time! But man, was it fun :)

There were still quite a few wildflowers up there, I loved them!
One of the level(ish) areas...on our way to the snow!

Lunch break. Pretty sure Jake got some of everyone's lunch

Lovely destination

Group photo before we head back down! Yes, even Jake's backside got in there

Slacker.

I've been one. No one likes a slacker blogger. I'll work on it tonight! (After Snug Run, of course.) Let's cross our fingers for good pasta sauce today...

Happy 4th!

Happy holiday weekend, everyone! Last year at this time I was in the Hamptons with my lovely London ladies, and this year I was originally going to be in NC for Lindley's wedding! (Lindley is one of afore mentioned London ladies.) Unfortunately I wasn't able to make the trip, but I'm SO happy for her and Paul, and can't wait to see photos.

This weekend has been an adventure for me so far! A group of us went tubing in Poudre Canyon near Ft. Collins (thought of you, Molly!) and all survived, some more worse for the wear than others.

Optimistically filling up our tubes! Notice the smallish black ones on the left? That is what most of our group ended up with (due to some false advertising at Jax). Travis so kindly pointed out, "Those are the tubes that people die on." Oh, great. Luckily it didn't come to that.

The river! Okay, it looks calm, but there were definitely some rapids. At least I thought they were rapids. But I AM from Nebraska.

We survived! Renee and I had larger tubes, and we went down twice. The rest of the group got pretty beat up the first time and were more than happy to sun themselves on the shore until we returned.

On to the 4th of July! We headed to Wash Park, which was just crawling with people. Crazy. Bikes, people, and various balls, Frisbees, and dogs were everywhere.

We grilled a lot of great food, corn pictured below. It was quite hot, of course, which made it difficult to break in two. Hence the looks below.

And then the rain moved in. Lots of thunder beforehand, and we thought it was more bark than bite. But it rained and kept raining. We stuck it out for quite a while, but finally gave in.

But it did break long enough for a rainbow! (barely visible in the pic, sorry)

Headed to Littleton to watch fireworks with Travis's fam afterwards. It was STILL raining, and hailing not far away. The fireworks did go off after a delay, and they were pretty impressive (the ones that weren't hidden inside of the massive smoke cloud).

Much love from the Rockies!

Holy Cruisers, Batman!

Woo-hoo, Cruisers! Wow, that's a lot of bikes... and unicycles, big wheels, low-riders, etc.

Renee and I riding through the city...with just a few friends

The theme was Dress Night. Hmmm...this lady had it confused with Pasties and Stripper Heels Night. Gotta applaud her self-confidence though, that's for sure!

On our way back home... We're all a bit jealous that Hicham looks better in a dress than we do