Happy Birthday, Kristen!

Kristen's birthday was on Friday. She took the day off of work, and spent the day playing with her new KitchenAid mixer. In the evening we headed up to Nederland for the night. Kristen saw a mountain lion on the way up, unfortunately I was too busy white-knuckling the car along the icy road to see the lion in time.

We had a nice dinner, and stayed in our favorite hotel. The next morning we headed to Blackhawk for some high stakes gambling. We both lost about $20 on the penny slots after several hours. Luckily the weather had warmed up and the drive back to Boulder was a lot less stressful.



Sunday involved me spending a bunch of time at work doing a big software delivery. Kristen headed to her sister Allison's house to do some cookie baking. Kristen really enjoys hanging out with her nephew Maddock.

Winter is here! We've had a good amount of snow falling in the Boulder area for the last week or so. The mountains are really getting pounded, which is great news for the ski and snowboard enthusiasts. My co-worker Mike managed to play hooky on Friday, and made it up to Winter Park to enjoy the 20"+ of new snow.



The weather kept us pretty close to home all weekend. We did make it to a party at a co-worker's house on Friday night.

I managed to update the treehouse blog with the last details of this fall's trip. Kristen studied, we both pet the cats, and generally tried to stay warm.

Not much to report for last week. I'm having a hard time getting in the Christmas spirit, I still have a lot of shopping to do. Kristen's in better shape than I am shopping-wise, and is impatiently waiting for me to find that spirit.

It was a cold weekend, creeping into the 40s by Sunday. Kristen did a lot of studying, I did a lot of programming for a few projects I'm working on. Unfortunately, neither activity is very interesting when photographed.

The cats managed to get a lot of attention. Now that the weather is considerably cooler, they've both been crowding in on the bed at night. They seem to wait until you're in the most awkward position of the night, then they plant themselves in such a way that you can't move.

The end of year work rush is in full swing. We're in pretty good shape though, so I think we'll survive the crunch.

Happy Turkey Day!

Having four days off from work has sure felt good. Things were getting a little crazy at the office by Wednesday, I hope everyone is well rested. I for one did not spend any time thinking about work this long weekend.


Kristen spent most of Thursday cooking various side dishes for the big feast. This year we went to her father's place, which is about an hour east of our place. She cooked up a metric boatload of stuffing, including one batch of oyster dressing. I had to cut the oysters for her, they were freaking her out.

She also made some stuffed mushrooms that turned out great, and a chocolate pecan pie which was also very good. For my part, I farted around the place, trying to stay out of her way. We did have to make a grocery run, things were calmer at the store than we expected.

We arrived at the ranch around 5, just in time to eat. I was starving, and managed to eat more food more quickly then anyone else, at least initially. I think some of slower paced gentlemen caught up to me eventually. I even had 3 servings of the oyster stuffing, although by the last serving I was definitely done with it.

The highlight of the evening was playing bowling game that was hooked up to the TV. You had to hold the game controller like a ball, then time your swing and release properly. Bruce (Kristen's dad) got so excited that he ran downstairs and got out his bowling shoes, and his bowling towel. It seemed to work, as he consistently won each game.


A boxing video game came out shortly afterwards, and it was hugely entertaining watching two people swing in the air violently, sweating profusely and cussing the whole time.


The rest of the weekend was non eventful. I did a lot of game programming, Kristen e-bayed and did some post turkey day cleanup. The weather was remaining cold, so we didn't make it outside much. It didn't break 30 degrees for quite a few days.


We did make it out to meet up with Katie and Jordan for some cake tasting in preparation for their wedding. It was a fairly painless process, but I think that was partially due to us being hungry and all the cake tasting good. We also visited Muttropolis with Rocco, he seemed to like almost every chew toy.

Our last fish died recently, so we did take the time to clean up the fish tank, and ended up giving most of the gear to the Salvation Army. We continued to pack up other stuff, giving about half of it away, and putting the rest in storage. The place is slowly looking better, but it always seems like we have a ways to go.

We did go to one open house for a "quaint" brick house in downtown Boulder. By quaint, I mean small. It was a neat old house (built in 1900), but everything was tiny. The location was good, the house itself seemed in good shape, but it was too small and too expensive. We almost walked into an open house for a brand new loft right off the Pearl Street Mall, but I chickened out when I saw how fancy the reception area was. I'm guessing the asking prices was well over a million dollars. We weren't dressed appropriately, and couldn't have been unless we first went clothes shopping.


We tried getting the cats to pose for a x-mas style photo. Unfortunately they knew something was up, and quickly hid under various beds and furniture. We eventually coaxed them out, and got them to sit still for a while, but the photos didn't match what we had hoped for.

Happy Birthday Ma!

Not much to report from the weekend. Kristen and I went out for dinner on Friday with Mike & Tracy, then we watched a movie at their place. We didn't do a whole lot of anything on Saturday, and followed up with squat-ola on Sunday. We did manage to take a load of boxes to the storage facility, and Kristen did a lot of e-baying. No exercise to be found.

We're both hoping for slow week at work, then an enjoyable long weekend.

The weather has been amazingly warm this week. We've been in the 70's quite a bit, and have broken a few record highs. This made it a lot easier to get out during the day and do a few runs. Here's the bike path behind my office where I typically run during the day:


Friday night we joined a bunch of friends for the annual Warren Miller movie viewing tradition. Around this time of year everyone starts getting antsy for the snow to fall, and there's always a lot of office talk about the upcoming snow season. Getting everyone into a big theater, having a few beers, and watching a ski/boarding movie works everyone into a fervor. The crowd is always entertaining, very Boulder-outdoorsy.


Saturday I hung out with a very different crowd. Nate and I headed over to a LAN party. For the uninitiated, LAN parties involve a lot of uber-geeks getting together, typically in a garage or a basement, and networking their computers together. Then everyone plays various video games together for the rest of the day. Nate and I were there for about 9 hours, so we put in a respectable effort. I was unfamiliar with most of the games played, and did not fair too well. I hadn't been to such an event for several years, so it was fun to geek out like that again.


Sunday revolved around the Panicking Poultry 5K run. It's one of the most fun runs of the year. The organizers give out a lot of raffle prizes, there's good food at the finish line, and free beer.


Nine of us ran it this year. The big raffle winner of the group was Halley, she ended up wining front row tickets to a Rockies game next season. The rest of us ended up with hats, socks, water bottles, etc. Kristen did win some jewelery cleaner, which seemed to be an odd thing to hand out as a prize.


Nate & Mary's daughter Karrissa "ran" the children's race this year. Luckily she maintained her hydration regimen.

Kristen and I had a pretty uneventful weekend. On Saturday we spent a lot of time cleaning out the spare bedroom. We'd been using it as a storage area more than anything else, so it's nice to have it back in bedroom mode. That cats liked it too, and spent a good part of the weekend enjoying the tidiest room in the condo.


We made several trips to Goodwill, the dumpster, and the storage unit. We're hoping to clean up one room a weekend. Before too long the place will be in a decent "showing" state, with the hopes that we'll get it on the market before too long.

Sunday was a bit more of the same. We did manage to go for a run and do some shopping. The time change threw us off, it was difficult staying up late enough to justify going to bed.

Ah! What an enjoyable weekend of rest! After a solid month of traveling on the weekends, or having some big project going, it was nice to sit around the house and do whatever we wanted.

We did get a little work done. We took two trailer loads of furniture and boxes to our newly rented storage locker. The house looks a little better, but we still have quite a ways to go before we start showing the place. Hopefully getting a new place doesn't take us too many months, it feels foolish having to pay a monthly fee to store our junk.

I spent some time last week updating the treehouse blog. I still have about half the trip to write about, I'll get to it within the next week or two.

We have a gloriously empty schedule for a long time. We have a 5k we want to run in a few weeks, we'll probably start running this week to get ready for it, but it shouldn't be that big of a deal.

We're moving pretty slow, and we hurt in new places, but we successfully ran our 1/2 marathon this weekend. We didn't take a lot of pictures, so you'll have to settle for a lot of scenery shots.

Kristen and I headed to Grand Junction on Friday after work. We stopped in Idaho Springs for dinner at BeauJos. Kristen ordered an individual sized pizza, while I decided to "Carb Up" with a pasta dish. I received the single largest serving of pasta I've ever seen, in a giant pizza dough bowl. Kristen easily finished her meal off, I struggled to eat as much of mine as I possibly could.

With full bellies, we made it into Grand Junction some time after 10. We chatted for a bit with Katie, Jordan, and Rocco, then headed off to bed.


After a good nights sleep, we headed toward Moab. We decided to drive the race course, and it seemed like the hills weren't too bad, and that there was a lot of downhill. A little queasy from the drive, we checked into our rooms at the Red Cliff Lodge, then headed into Moab.

The weather was beautiful, even though it was supposed to be pretty nasty the next day, just in time for the race. While we were eating dinner at Pasta Jay's, the wind came up and really started howling. Rain/snow clouds were moving in, so we were pretty concerned about the run the next day.



We managed to get to bed at a decent hour, and we all got another good nights sleep. Up at 6 the next morning, we all put on our best running clothes, and boarded the shuttle. The shuttle took us back over the course to the starting line. The bus ride seemed long, and the road seemed extra hilly for some reason.

Luckily, the weather seemed to be OK. It was spitting a bit of rain, the wind wasn't too bad, and the only snow that fell during the night was several hundred feet higher in elevation.

At the starting area, we ran into my friend Derek, and Jack, Katie's boss from her Red Robin days. Katie and I waited in the porta-potty line for about 45 minutes. Jordan and I ran a bit to warm up, and made it back just in time for the start of the race.

The hills were worse then I was hoping, and it seemed that the run would never end, but I made it to the finish line in 1 hour, 59 minutes and 36 seconds. Having taken several weeks of running off, I did better than I expected, and was happy to have finished under the 2 hour mark (just barely). Compared to last year, I improved my relative finishing location by about 10%.


Next Jordan finished the race at 2:33:31. Jordan had wanted to finish closer to the 2 hour mark, but was happy with his time. Before we knew it, Katie came across at 2:43:13, with Kristen only 7 seconds behind her. Kristen managed to knock 17 minutes off of her time, which is really impressive, especially considering the 6 minute bathroom line she waited in during the race. Katie surprised us all by finishing so quickly, especially with a knee injury that had been haunting her for a bit.

Derek came across at 2:49:33, well below his 3 hour goal. He seemed excited too, and we all enjoyed a celebratory beer as we limped around the finish area.

We laid pretty low for the rest of the day, eventually making it into Moab for dinner. We played a bit of trivial pursuit, then headed off to bed for an early night.

The drive back to Boulder wasn't bad, although Vail pass had received a lot of snow. The roads were dry, and the traffic was light, which was OK by me. I'm done driving for a while, I'm hoping for no more road trips in my immediate future.

It's good to be back in Boulder. After an 11 day tree house building trip, it's nice to return to "normal" life. Kristen successfully held down the fort, and the cats seem happy to see me.

We accomplished a lot done during the trip. We built the walls and roof, and installed some of the windows. We ran out of time to get the door and a few of the upper windows in, those will have to wait for another trip.



It was a lot of fun having some of my friends show up to help. I was amazed at how willing they were to put in long hours. Thanks Nate, Ted, and Brent! I also got a lot of help from a few of the locals, Andy Roller and Tommy Burkhart in particular. Dad and Ma contributed hugely as well, mom keeping the crew fed, and Dad lending a lot of sweat to the project. Tommy again lent us a generator and scaffolding for the project, and generously donated the windows and door. Andy helped with the roofing quite a bit, and most importantly lent us the use of his crane, which really sped things up.



The project wouldn't be nearly where it is today without the help of all these people. Thanks everyone!



I'll have a lot more detailed report up on the tree house blog eventually, with a lot more pictures.

We also were in town for Tommy's 50th Birthday party, which was a lot of fun. Milly had a few too many drinks, and was discovered staggering around near the food table.

This will be yet another update with no pictures. We need to work at getting the camera out more often.

We had planned to do a long run on Saturday morning, but I got a call at 7:00 am relating to problems at work. I didn't make it home until around 1, which killed our chances of getting a run in.

Kristen's sister Allison showed up for a while, and I ran some errands with Nate. I'd hoped to put together a trap door for the tree house, but we couldn't locate any non-pine wood to make it out of. We did pick up a few odds and ends that might come in handy.

Sunday morning we made it out for the run. We did another 13 miler, and were pretty sore afterwards. We broke Kristen's time for the half marathon last year, so hopefully that bodes well for our official times improving.

I spent most of Sunday evening at work, and Kristen did homework and studied.

I'm trying to get organized for the tree house building trip that starts this Friday. I've read through the relevant sections of the appropriate books, and feel like I have a pretty good idea of what will be involved. It ought to be a lot of fun one way or another. However, I am coming down with a cold, so that will certainly put a bit of a damper on things.

Just a few quick links I've forgotten to post in the past:

Here's a link to some converted home movies:

Link

Here's an interesting map that almost shows all of Donley lake, including topography. It also contains bathymetry for Manitou and others, but unfortunately not of Manitumeig or Donley.

Link

Be sure to use the zoom buttons near the bottom of the map to see more detail.

We had a fairly hectic week last week, and managed to relax for most of the weekend. Wabtec had a user conference for the product I'm responsible for, so I had to dust off my public speaking skills on Thursday. I made it through the process without pissing the customers off, so that's a victory of sorts.

Kristen and I have been ramping up our running in preparation for our race at the end of October. On Saturday morning we ran 13 miles. We both felt better afterwards than we remember feeling last year, so we're hopeful we're in better shape this year.

Sunday I headed over to Nate's to check out his new set of tools that we're planning on using on the treehouse. I also put in an order for the hardware that I know we'll need in a few weeks to start building walls and a roof.

Sunday night / Monday morning we had some pretty good thunderstorms and hail for this part of the country. It made the trip into work pretty exciting.

The big western art show went on this last weekend in Cody. Becky flew in for the deal, I'm excited to see her full report on her blog...

Kristen and I headed to Grand Junction this weekend for our annual "Tour of the Vineyards" bicycle ride. We took off right after work on Friday, and arrived at Grand Junction around 11 pm.

We found Katie and Jordan's place after a few wrong turns, and resisted the urge to stay up later watching cable. Our nephew Rocco had grown quite a bit, and was quite the handful. The next morning we rose early, and enjoyed a quick breakfast before heading out to Palisade for the ride.



The ride was fun, as always. Brandy, one of Katie's friends was along for the first time. She may or may not have been physically ill at the top of the first big hill of the ride. Luckily the rest of the 25 miles is fairly flat or downhill, so we all made it to the finish line a few hours later. Not a single flat tire this year, which is a first, I believe.



After the ride we re-drove the course, stopping at all the wineries to do some wine tasting and buying. Kristen and I ended up with nearly two cases of wine, that should last us a while!



The rest of the day was filled with eating, relaxing, and drinking wine. Not a bad deal. We played trivial pursuit for a few hours in the evening before calling it a day.

The ride back to Boulder the next day was fairly uneventful. West-bound I-70 was closed near Vail, which was slowing the east bound traffic a bit. We made it home to find two lonely cats and stormy weather. We skipped our run, hoping that the bike ride would kinda count for it, and prepared for the upcoming work week.

Whew! Finally done with the Canada postings.

Things have been quiet around here since the trip. We've been doing a lot of running, trying to make up for lost training during the vacation. We're both solidly back into the groove of work, which doesn't seem so bad (at least from my perspective) after all the time off.

The Indiana trip is coming up soon, I'm trying to get my brain to think about the tree house a bit, but so far I haven't spent much time on it. I am looking forward to having a few friends hang out at the farm and help with the project. It'll be interesting to see how everyone gets along. Swimmingly, I'm sure.

Canada Report 4:

Becky and Jason got up early to finish packing. We rounded up as much trash as we could for them to take out. Jason and I were momentarily possessed by the spirit of Godzilla while we smashed cans.





The plane showed up on time, around 10:00 am. Milly got excited and ran around barking for a bit. All their stuff fit easily into the Cessna, and they were off.

The weather started clouding up after they'd departed. The wind picked up as well, although it continued to fight tradition, blowing east to west.


We ate a big lunch, then headed out for some fishing. Kristen caught a 4 pound northern on her glow-jig, but other than that we had no luck. The wind really continued to pick up, it was a fight to keep the boat pointed in the right direction, even under power.

We napped, then decided on an early dinner so that we could fish as the sun was going down. Cooked up some pork chops, rice, and potatoes.

We headed out for more fishing, but had no luck. The shifter handle on the 25 hp motor broke. Upon further inspection, it'd been broken before, but patched up.

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During the night the wind continued to build. We woke up at some point and closed a few windows. It was pitch black outside, but we could see flashes of light occasionally. We debated over whether it was northern lights or lightening, and settled on lightening, since it felt stormy.

We fell back to sleep, but were awakened by some amazing thunder a few hours later. We don't get thunder like that in Colorado. It was shaking the cabin, making the windows rattle in their frames. Waves of rain hammered the cabin in between lightening strikes. I started to wonder if Dad had left the lightening rods installed when he put on the new roof...

We survived the night. The boats filled up with water pretty significantly, the big boat on Donley was only about 2 inches out of the water when I got in to bail it out. Next time I'll pull the boat out of the water if it starts to rain like that.

Kristen cooked a huge breakfast, trying to use up all the extra food we had. At some point we started whispering to one another instead of talking. It was quiet with only the two of us up there, whispering back and forth.

We went down to Manitumeig to bail out that boat and to do some fishing. Kristen caught a bass, a walleye, and a northern all on the same spoon.

Afterwards, I started making a new shifter out of a broken hammer handle. We briefly considered cutting down a large dead tree near the cabin, but decided it was too late in the trip for such a big project. We had Mac & Cheese for lunch.

We headed out for another fishing trip, this time on Donley. We were really hauling them in, including a really nice bass and a 4.5 pound northern. We headed back as the sun was going down.


We had chili for dinner. During the meal on the porch, something smacked into the screen. A few moments later we could see something crawling up the screen that looked like a mouse. Upon further investigation we realized it was a bat. We weren't sure if he was eating mosquitoes off the screen, or looking for a roost.


We had an interesting 1/2 sunset. One half of the horizon had a beautiful sunset, the other was filled with storm clouds. We were hoping that the sunny side of the horizon would win out by morning.

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Wednesday morning started out nice and clear, and with no wind. It was our first day to close up camp, so after a healthy breakfast of cereal, fruit, and something resembling yogurt, we started on our list. The weather was a nice change of pace from two years ago, where the vast majority of work was done in the rain.

By 10:00 AM we had blasted through a good portion of the list, so we decided to take a break. The weather was amazing, easily the nicest day in camp of the trip. We read on the dock, and sunbathed a bit. We stayed out long enough to both get sun burned a little. We saw a grouse near the outhouse. Very chicken-like, it even sounded like one.


We had lunch, and then knocked another 10 items off the shutdown list. We then headed out for some late afternoon fishing. I installed the new shifter on the motor, which made navigating a bit easier. The wind had eventually picked up, today blowing a more typical west to east direction. We had good luck, a 2.5 pound bass was the best of the bunch. Kristen practiced her rowing a bit.


We had another round of pork chops for dinner, trying desperately to use all the meat up that we had in the freezer. We both felt a bit strange from the sun burn, so it was a quiet dinner, and early to bed.

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We got up early again on Friday to try to get a jump on the remaining items on the list. Kristen cooked a huge breakfast, and we ate ourselves silly. We started on the list, then took a break around 11.

We took our last fishing trip catching a few small northern and a few nice bass. With a tear in our eye we eventually turned back toward the cabin.

We cooked an early dinner, then hustled afterwards to finish up the last few items on the list. We signed the guest book, and got the main cabin shut completely down right at nightfall.

All we have left is to shutdown the hill house. We set an alarm the best we could for an early rise, and headed to bed.

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The plane showed up about half an hour late, which seemed typical. It gave us a chance to double check everything, and be fairly certain we didn't miss anything.

I was sure we had too much luggage and garbage to fit in the Cessna, but it all fit without too much trouble. It was fairly cloudy, but the ride out was smooth.

We paid our bills (or Kristen did, I'd left one credit card at home, the other had been blocked due to suspicious Canadian spending), and headed west toward Winnipeg.

We made good time, and had an amazingly easy time crossing the border. We suspect this was partially due to a very suspicious looking Indian guy trying to walk through the line of cars to talk to the border patrol. Kristen mumbled something like "Just don't let him detonate his briefcase near us". The guard talking to us was very interested in what the guy was doing, and didn't give us any trouble.

We drove to Sisseton South Dakota, and found a Super 8 to stay in. We gorged ourselves on pizza, and enjoyed at least one shower a piece, and then settled in to the clean sheets.

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After sleeping in and driving most of the day, we gave Nono a call around 3:30 from Wall Drug. She was excited to hear from us, and before too long we were showing her the 400+ photos from the trip. She had very vivid memories of staying in the lake house and being terrified by the loons, not knowing what they were.

We took her out to Red Lobster. She really liked the shrimp scampi, Mom wasn't kidding. We only got slightly lost heading the the restaurant, I certainly don't remember my way around Rapid too well. We visited a bit longer after lunch, then went our separate ways.


We stayed at another nice hotel near the mall. We had a few drinks at the hotel bar, which was having a Karaoke night. It was fun to people watch somewhere other than Boulder.

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Sunday morning we headed out of town toward Boulder. I felt like I was coming down with something, so Kristen did most of the driving. It was an uneventful day of driving, and before we knew it we were back home with the cats. Zack was so excited that he started drooling profusely, which we hadn't seen before. He didn't stop meowing for about two days. It's good to be home!