Lots O' Stuff

I was in Portland early last week.  Matt and I headed out to sit down with corporate and map out our next years worth of work.  Things are a bit grim at the mothership, people are getting laid off, and it looks like more are to follow.  We've let one of our co-workers go, so we'll be back down to 8 people in a few weeks.  However, we should be stable for the next year, unless something surprising pops up.

You can see the deep concern in Matt & my eyes in the following pictures.  Portland is a fun city to visit

Kristen and I received some belated X-mas gifts from the Browns last week.  We had a lot of fun opening up the zillion packages, trying to determine who got what.  We argued over the beautiful bread knife for quite some time.  Thanks Becky & Jason!

After so much traveling, Kristen and I mostly stayed around the house this weekend.  Kristen spent a lot of time gardening, and I spent a good amount of time in the garage.  I'll be taking one more load of junk to Goodwill tomorrow.  A few more trips there and we'll be officially fully moved in.

Flowers are starting to pop up everywhere.  We spot a few more each day.

Ada is enjoying being the only cat in the house.  Little does she know we're planning on getting a kitten in a month or so.

Sometime within the last two weeks, Kristen's sister Allison gave birth to a healthy baby boy: Conall.

I'm sure I'm missing other tidbits of news.  Kristen and I are getting excited for the farm trip at the end of April.  We're hoping that our lives settle down a bit between now and then.

Vail

I'm in Vail with a few friends.  We're having a lot of fun, we had 9" of new snow this morning, and bluebird conditions.

Keeping current

Trying harder to post...

Last week's big storm fizzled out, so no snowboarding stories, and the brand new snowboard still sits virginly in the living room.  I'm leaving Thursday for Vail for four days, but it doesn't look like we'll get much new stuff.

Friday night Kristen hosted nephew Maddock at the house.  Meanwhile I had another LAN party to go to.  At some point the router blew up, so the LAN party turned into just a "party" with 20 socially awkward nerds.  Luckily that only lasted for 20 minutes.

On Saturday Kristen, Maddock, and I spent some time doing yard work.  I've discovered that you can't get a lot of work out of a four year old.

Later in the day we headed into town to see "Rango", I think Kristen and I enjoyed it more than Maddock did.

After we returned Maddock to his folks, we met up with Tracy Zedeck who was in town for a few days.  We headed down to the Med for dinner.  You can tell spring is just around the corner, Pearl Street was really happening.  It was fun seeing Tracy and catching up with all the crazy things she's been up to.

Sunday involved house work for Kristen, and a long day at the office for me.

A few missed posts...

We've been busy doing everything but posting to the blog.   Here's a short recap of a month's worth of weekends.  We just recently found the camera, so we only have a few pictures here and there.

Four weekends ago?
Kristen and I headed down to the Home & Garden show with the Nedrows.  We spent a good number of hours looking at an untold number of booths trying to sell concrete curbs, solar panels, and tile.  I eventually settled down to watch some poor guy try to sell cookware.  The sales guy asked the big guy in front of me what he thought of when he heard the word "Salad".  The big guy answered:  "Yuck!".

On Sunday, I put together Kristen's cold frame I'd promised her at Chistmas, or as I refer to it:  "Kristenmas".

Three weekends ago?
Kristen and I headed to Grand Junction to visit Katie and Jordan.  While the girls hung out and cooked, Jordan and I ventured out for a day of snowboarding.  It was Jordan's first, and I had forgotten how truly painful it is to learn to snowboard.  Jordan was a trooper, and didn't complain too much.  We went out for a big sushi dinner afterward.  Luckily, no trivia was played.  I have a lot of video of Jordan "eating it" on the snowboard, there's a highlight clip just waiting to be created.

Two weekends ago
Friday I headed to a LAN party to play computer games with a basement full of nerds.  It was fun as always.  I was definitely one of the leased skilled people there.  Back in my day, I would have shown those whippersnappers how to play Quake, but unfortunately those days are way behind me.
I took of the next morning to Winter Park with Eric Telingator.  We spent both Saturday and Sunday snowboarding.  I ended up with a broken board and a slight concussion, a first for me.  We still managed to have a lot of fun.  I made a great run with a group of "old guys", they showed me a few parts of the mountain I'd never seen before.

Kristen meanwhile headed to the "Alpaca Extravaganza" in Longmont with Christy Nedrow.  They looked at a lot of Alpaca, but thankfully didn't bring any home.

This weekend
Kristen and I headed into Longmont on Friday to hang out in a neighborhood we almost moved to.  It was fairly happening, and we had a good meal.

Saturday involved putting the finishing touches on the Cold Frame, and heading up to Nederland for the Frozen Dead Guy days.  It was a bigger event than ever before this year.  Unfortunately we didn't quite dress warm enough, and headed back to Boulder earlier than we'd like.

 Sunday involved shopping for a new snowboard, and a few hours of going into the office.

I'm hoping to play hooky on Tuesday, a giant storm is moving through the mountains tomorrow night.  Hopefully it'll make for one last great powder day.