It was another laid back weekend. A few more of these, and we'll actually be bored.

It was supposed to snow 14" on Friday, but the storm was a no-show, we didn't even get any rain. The weather on both Saturday and Sunday was beautiful, hitting 75 degrees on Saturday, and 80 degrees on Sunday.

Kristen and I made it to our running group on Saturday. We did a fairly long run, and both felt like a million dollars afterwards. It's amazing how much easier these runs are this year as compared to last.



We ate a big lunch, and then slept it off. We drove around a few neighborhoods looking for appropriate houses for sale. Every one we found that we liked was horribly out of our price range. The search will continue.

On Sunday we worked on our taxes, and finished those up. We spent a bit of time on the front porch with the cats, who weren't very brave about coming out of the house.


Kristen spent some of the day doing work stuff, we did a bit of gardening, and I did some programming. Things should pick up next weekend.

Happy Easter!

We had a laid back weekend. It stayed below freezing all day on Saturday, and finally warmed up to about 40 degrees on Sunday.

We didn't do a whole lot of anything. We skipped running on Saturday since it was so chilly. I did manage to get a few things done around the house, and Kristen worked on the taxes a bit. I got a bit of bot work done in the garage.

Sunday was more of the same, bot work in the garage, Kristen did some house work. She cooked a wonderful Easter dinner with home baked bread, turkey soup, and a crumb cake for dinner. It was very tasty. Those cooking magazine subscriptions are being used!

The weather was great this weekend. We were doubtful, as we awoke Thursday morning to 4 inches of surprise snow.

Kristen and I made it to our running group on Saturday for the first time this year. We'd missed the two previous meetings due to inclement weather and scheduling conflicts. It felt good to get out and run early in the morning, and we both felt a lot better than we did last year when we started. We both dropped down to a slower group, so hopefully we'll both be running with people more our speed.

In the morning, I built up our garden plot a bit, trying to level it out a bit. I was mostly successful.



I then spent a bit of time in the garage working on planes and robot stuff. Here's a picture of the 50 pound drum that will be on our 220 pound robot:



Sunday morning I met up with Mike and Nate and his family to fly planes. There were no crashes, and a new battery I had bought made all the difference in the world in terms of performance. I was able to get a few flips in, a few barrel rolls, and a lot of my confidence back.

Kristen meanwhile attended a garden meeting. The gardening group had hired a guy from CSU to speak about Colorado garden issues. She enjoyed it, and learned a few things.

We had more spring like weather last week. We had a few days in the upper 70's, along with a few days in the 50's. Kristen and I have started up our running training again, so the week was filled with evening runs.

Saturday we were supposed to do a 4 mile time trial, but it was raining and cold, so we decided to sleep in instead. It rained pretty much all day on Saturday, but we managed to make it out to the garden to plant some lettuce and radishes. We have a big order from Burpee in the mail, so we're trying to refrain from planting anything else until that shows up. We had a pretty good patch of chives and cilantro survive the winter, which is pretty amazing, given all the snow we had.

Kristen and I went to see "300" in the afternoon. It was gory, and had too much man-ass for my tastes, but it was still a visually amazing movie. I had to remind myself to breathe a few times. I think Kristen even liked it a little bit.

I made BBQ chicken pizza for dinner, using some of the chives and cilantro from the garden. It was tasty, and it gave me an excuse to hone my skills on the small grill I got for x-mas.

Sunday the weather cleared up, and it turned out to be a beautiful day. Mike and I went and flew our planes around noon. Mike egged me on to try a flip, at which point I promptly crashed my plane. Luckily the damage was minimal, and I should have it up and flying again by next weekend.

I spent the rest of the afternoon in the garage, sizing up the damage to the plane, and re-gluing a few parts. Kristen looked at some spreadsheets for work. We eventually decided we better do our 4 mile run. We ran along the dams of the reservoir, and were amazed at how many people were out.

We met up with Morrissey and Tracy for dinner on the mall, and tried a new Japanese restaurant that was mediocre at best.

Kristen and I headed to Cody this last weekend to help Ma get a new (to her, anyway) computer set up. The drive up was uneventful, other than a bizarre rum flavored "vanilla" shake I got in Shoshoni.

We were surprised to find Aunt Jeanie sitting with Ma & Pa outside when we arrived. She's newly retired, and is taking a month long trip to various places, starting with Cody. Aunt Jeanie, the following picture is revenge for threatening to streak my freshman dormitory. Now you're streaking the entire Internet. :-)



Most of the weekend was spent working on getting Ma's computer set up, it took longer than I expected. We did manage to make it to the Saint Patrick's day parade, and spent some time at the Irma afterwards.



We left relatively early on Sunday, and had another uneventful drive back home. The condo hadn't burnt down, and the cats were still alive, so that was good. I made it to the garden meeting, hopefully on Wednesday we can start planting.

Spring was in the air this last week. Things have really warmed up, we approached 70 degrees several times during the week.

On Saturday Kristen and I headed up to Nederland for "Frozen Dead Guy Days". One of Nederland's claims to fame involves a cryogenicly frozen Norwegian that was stored in a Tuff Shed there for several years. You can read more about it here.


While a large number of events were planned, we stuck around only for the parade. The weather was quite a bit colder then we expected, and it eventually started snowing pretty hard. So we missed out on the coffin races, the polar plunge, the grandpa look-a-like contest, etc. The parade was a lot of fun, a lot of the locals ("ned-heads") were involved, which made it a good people watching opportunity.

The highlight of the parade involved a large number of hearses driving up the two blocks of the parade route. Some had machine guns mounted to them, caskets were abundant, and just about each one had the token skeleton riding along.

The final hearse had large bat wings welded to the top, which created a sort of parapet for the mohawked wielder of the mounted flame thrower. Unfortunately the flame thrower went out right as they entered the main stretch of the parade route. This agitated the mohawked one, who struggled to re-ignite the device. Right after he succeeded, the hearse overheated with steam boiling out from under the hood. The goth women languishing on the hood jumped off quickly while the trouble was sorted out.


It was quite a scene, and definitely was worth the drive up to watch. The crowd loved it, glitches and all.

The rest of Saturday involved hanging out with Ted and Derek, my two bot building friends. We're in the planning stages of a big trip to San Francisco in June. We're hoping to bring a 220 pound robot with us which should be quite an adventure.

Sunday morning I got up early and got a hold of my buddy Mike who I used to fly RC planes with a few years ago. The weather was looking good, so we got an hour of flying in. We were both a bit rusty, but luckily there were no crashes.


Kristen and I took it easy the rest of Sunday. We ate a big lunch, took a look at the garden plot, and started planning out what we want to grow. Less cucumbers, tomatoes, carrots, and onions. More lettuce, radishes, peppers, and hopefully peas.

Kristen and I had a pretty slow weekend. It felt great to not have a lot of plans, and just kind of lay around the house. The cats enjoyed it as well.

Kristen finished up a pair of Alpaca socks she's been working on, and did a bit of studying.


I did a bit of bot work, mostly determining how many pieces I have to remake. I also updated the bot web site with a bunch of videos and pictures.



I also managed to get the tree house blog up to date. It really got me thinking about the next stage or two of building the tree house. I need to start planning the trip or trips back there this year, along with the Canada trip. The plan so far is to make it back to the Farm in the spring for a long weekend to finish up the platform. Kristen and I are hoping to head to Canada the 2nd and 3rd week of August. Then another week or longer trip to the Farm in the fall to put a roof and walls on the tree house.