Tree scouting trip.

I headed to the Indiana farm this weekend to scout trees for a possible tree house. I had a lot of fun hanging out with the parents and the dog, and tromping around the woods. A few promising trees didn't pan out after we climbed up in them. The original plan of using a single tree with many limbs didn't seem like such a hot idea when we saw how the random limb placement would complicate things.

Above is the first tree we seriously considered. It was a huge sycamore. Note Dad near the bottom of the picture. After using a ladder to get up into this tree, I suddenly wasn't so confident about building a treehouse. 18 or 20 feet up in the air really changed my perspective on things.

Lena helped quite a bit this weekend. Here she is carrying a rope for us as we headed out to look for trees.

This is the tree we settled on. It's a sycamore that has five trunks coming up from an old stump. We're hoping to put the floor right at 16 feet above the ground, which should give us quite a bit of floor space. I'm hoping to return in the fall to build the platform. We'll see how it holds up over the fall, winter, and spring.

Here are a bunch of the better pictures I took:

Bolder Boulder '06 is a wrap!

The weather cooperated, there were no costume malfunctions, and I think everyone had a blast. Kristen didn't make it due to a broken toe and having her CPA exam the day after, but we had a pretty good showing otherwise.



We saw the traditional sights: Elvis, the Belly Dancers, Jake & Elwood, and a whole lot of questionably talented garage bands. Morrissey sampled the various staples offered to runners: freshly fried bacon, tator tots, although he passed on the beer. Nate, Mike, and I were running too damn fast to stop for such distractions.


I wore the kilt Kristen had gotten me on her trip to Scotland this year. The thing was amazingly easy to run in, and very comfortable. I did wear undergarments, I can't imagine running 10k without them.






Next weekend it's off to Indiana for a long weekend on the farm. The weekend after that is another 10k in Longmont. Kristen and I signed up for a half-marathon training course, so we'll undoubtably continue to get a lot of running in this summer.

The garden is really starting to grow. We've been watering it once or twice a day since it's been pretty hot.

We ran a 5k last Tuesday, I finally was able to beat Nate for the first time ever. Felt pretty good. It was my second best 5k time ever, so I'm on schedule to set a personal record this year at some point.

This last weekend was our robot club's annual event. Ted and I got everything organized and setup, and the event went off without a hitch. It was held during a "Fantasy Festival", which meant there were a lot of very interesting people running around. We had a small turnout, so the event only lasted for two or three hours. I then delivered the arena to our buddies Ed and Rick up in Fort Collins. Our arena now has a permenant home with them, so hopefully we're out of the business of hauling that thing around.

This upcoming Monday (Memorial Day) is the Bolder Boulder, so Kristen and I have been training pretty hard for that. We'll find out soon enough if it paid off.

Another busy weekend!

Saturday morning, Kristen and I made it to our running class for the first time in over a month. We've been following the workout schedule, but always seemed to be doing something on Saturday morning. The run was an 1:40 run, which is the longest either of us has ever had to run. It about killed us. I could barely shuffle along at the end, and it did strange things to Kristen's body for the rest of the weekend. Kristen ended up covering 7 miles, my group did around 10. Since we've signed up for a half-marathon, it's good to get a glimpse of what the future holds.

After the run, we headed to Kristen's Aunt Penny's place for a lunch/barbeque. Here's Maddock Bruce, Allison's new son, making faces for the camera.

Kristen's grandma Wilson was in town, as was her uncle Mark, whom she had not seen in over ten years. I got to be the camera guy, and took approximately 300 pictures with various cameras.

Sunday was a lot more laid back. We worked in the garden a bit. Our radishes are starting to sprout, and maybe an onion has poked through as well. Kristen planted a bunch of tomatoe and pepper plants earlier in the week, so it's starting to look like a real garden.

Lot's of activity, but no pictures. Kristen and I planted half of our garden on Sunday. We don't really know what we're doing, but it's fun anyway. At the suggestion of my sister, we're tying a "Square Foot Gardening" style, although several of our crops take up more than one consecutive square foot. So far we've planted cucumbers, cilantro, chives, radishes, carrots, onions. We have plans to plant peppers and tomatoes, but haven't bought seedlings yet for that.

We had another 5k race last night. I improved my time by over a minute, to get my second fastest time ever at 24:19. Kristen remained steady at 34:10. We also signed up for half marathon training. I'm a little concerned about getting my body to run 13 miles, but we'll see what happens!

The Kinetics Race was this Saturday. 5 of us ran the Kinetics 5K in the morning, then made it to the resevoir's beach to watch the craft races. Our friend Nate's craft ended up winning the race, for I believe the 4th year in a row.

The weather was nice, but it seemed a bit less crowded than in years past. The two previous cool days probably contributed to that. Plus, I believe the first day of Finals for CU are on Monday.

Kristen and I then hosted a barbeque at our condo to round out the day. We were both pretty exhausted (and sunburnt) by the end of the day.

Zack made a trip to the groomer today. Once the weather starts to warm up, he starts having "hair problems". Our solution is to get him a yearly "Lion Cut". Here he is shortly after getting home, desperately trying to clean himself.


Aida usually doesn't warm up to him for a day or so. She never seems to recognize him.