Things have been warming up around here, which is a nice change of pace after the non-typical frigid weather we'd been having. I managed to get out on a few runs last week, realizing just how much the winter has slowed me down.

Thursday night I headed down to Golden to meet up with crazy Ted to see how he's doing. His wife Kathy is 6 months pregnant, which was a surprise. He had a zillion treehouse questions, I wouldn't be surprised if he makes it back out to the farm before too long, assuming he can slip away from his fatherhood duties.

The drywall guys showed up on Friday, and spent a good portion of the day repairing the water damage from the busted pipe that wreaked havoc a month ago or so. The repairs look great, they fixed a few issues that weren't water damage related, so the place seems a little better than before.

Kristen and I headed into town Friday night to use up a gift certificate at the Chop House. We somehow managed to spend all of the certificate, and had a good time doing it. We hung out on Pearl Street for a bit, taking in the sights on a warm Friday night.

Saturday we slept in a bit, then headed into town. Kristen rode her bike, I pulled up the rear on foot. The weather was amazing, near 60 degrees without a cloud in the sky. We enjoyed some lunch on the mall, and a little window shopping. Afterward I headed into work for the rest of the afternoon.

Sunday involved cleaning up after the drywall experience, involving a lot of vacuuming and nervous cat action. We had to move all the furniture back to their original spots, re-do the bookshelves, etc.

We also drove up to Jamestown to do a drive by on a house that had caught our eye online. We were sure that Jamestown was too far of a commute, and we came to the conclusion that it is. The house looked good, but was on a ridiculously steep road above Jamestown, making winter living seem like an impossibility. We did stop at the "Jamestown Mercantile" for lunch. It was an interesting mix of mountain hippies and Lycra clad cyclists.

We took an exploratory route home, and spotted several other houses that were for sale that looked nice. We later realized that they looked so nice due to being so far out of our budget. We did get to see a lot of the recent fire damage on the trip, it's amazing how many houses survived, even though their yards had burnt completely up.

We once again ended up on Pearl Street, this time with a few more gift certificates in hand, and picked up some nice clothing. We watched a few movies Sunday night, and generally took it easy.

This upcoming weekend involves a trip to Deadwood with the college friends, and hopefully part of a day on Teri Peak to relive the college skiing days. It ought to be interesting to see what the mountain is like now that I've seen a bit more of the snowboarding world. I'm hoping we can get Vince and Tony out on some skis, I'm sure hilarity will ensue.

Last week the time just flew by. Wednesday night Boulder had some high winds and field/forest fires burning. Some of our friends had their fence and tree catch on fire, but luckily their house survived the ordeal. A large portion of our western horizon was lit up with flames. It was quite a sight.

I was afraid that all the time off would make it hard to put in a full week. Before I knew it, it was Friday, and time for another weekend.


Friday night we tried grilling in the fireplace, using the propane grill Jason and Becky gave us for Christmas a year ago. It fit perfectly, and it seemed to work well. Kristen made some excellent Cheese & Bacon grits to accompany the grilled beef, and we ate ourselves silly.


We got up early on Saturday and headed over the Lafayette Oatmeal Festival. We watched three friends run the race. We'd forgotten about the race, and were in no shape to run it, but still had fun watching our friends put themselves through hell. We'll have to be careful about being spectators instead of runners, it was a little too easy to do.

In the related Oatmeal cooking contest, Matt ended up winning first place in the Dessert category for his upside down pear/oatmeal cake. He also took home the grand overall prize for his honey-oatmeal bread. He's done well in the past, but was obviously really tickled with his performance this year.

Kristen and I did a little furniture browsing afterward, more for fun than anything. We're simply out of room for more furniture. It's always fun to look though. We then grabbed some lunch, and then had a staggering 2 hour nap. Where did the day go? We groggily arose, then headed downtown for dinner with Morrissey and Sharon.

Sunday morning I got up early, and headed up to Copper Mountain with Morrissey for a crazy day of snowboarding. We logged in 45 miles, 31,000 vertical feat of descent, 18 runs, all in five and a half hours of riding.

We jumped off a few cornices, which was definitely the highlight of the day. Even though the drop was only 3 or 4 feet, if you had any speed when you left the lip, you'd drop about 10 feet before hitting the slope. It was quite a rush. I had one good face plant, and several bigger-than-normal crashes. I'm more sore today then I've been in years. Kristen points out that every year I hurt a little more afterward. Hmm.

Happy New Year!

Kristen and I had a quiet New Year's Eve, I believe we made it until 10:00 or so before heading to bed. Kristen tried out a few new recipes for dinner, we went to bed full.

We both had Thursday off. We did a bit of shopping, picking up a few frames for some of the artwork acquired over x-mas. After struggling with doing the framing ourselves, we decided to let the professionals handle a few of the more oddly shaped items. Now we just need to decide where to hang everything.

Saturday we headed over to Kristen's mom's place to open a few belated Christmas presents. We ate massive amounts of lasagna and watched a movie or two. Later we met up with Matt for some sushi.


Sunday involved Eric T coming over with his clogged carpet cleaner. After a quick autopsy, we found the cause, but then struggled to get the thing put back together. We actually had to use the internet to figure out how to get it back together. We felt a little less manly after being forced to find help online. Eric has had some health issues in the last two years, but it seems like he's coming around and getting healthier, which is nice to see.

The first full work week in a while has started up. Oh boy!

Merry Christmas!

Kristen and I have survived another trip to Cody for the holidays. I headed out on the 23rd, and had a smooth trip out. The roads were 99% dry, and other than almost running out of gas near Casper, it was a pleasant drive. The folks were happy that I made it alive. I had to challenge Dad to the "Feats of Strength" at some point.


Kristen showed up the evening of the 24th fresh from England. She was a little jet-lagged, but overall she had a good trip and no snafus on the way to Cody. We drove around Cody to see the Christmas lights before heading back to the house.

For only having four people at the house, the number of gifts under the tree was a bit obscene. Mom had fun lighting the candles and watching them burn.


Christmas morning came, and we proceeded to open the gifts. The place looked like a bomb hit it, which is par for the course. Lena helped open a few of her gifts, but never got too crazy. She seemed a little confused to what all the commotion was about.


We all received a bounty of wonderful gifts. Of note was my Honduras key chain holder. I'm still debating exactly where to place it. I had fun trying to guess which of Becky and Jason's gifts was the one that didn't cost them any money.


At some point we fed Linda and Elijah's chickens. The turkey found Kristen's pants (or maybe butt) interesting, and kept pecking at it. I found it hilarious.


After a few days of taking it easy, Kristen and I headed back to Boulder. The roads weren't bad, there were a few slick spots. We watched a car load of teenagers pass us, then skid off the road after a few miles. We helped them get started up and pointed in the right direction again.


Back in Boulder, the harsh reality of going back to work loomed. It was lessened somewhat by the enjoyment of many of our gifts.

Last week was pretty busy trying to clean up the water mess and get things taken care of at work. I did manage to get all my Christmas shopping done, along with all the "leaving town for a while" errands.

On Friday a few friends and I played hooky to do some snowboarding. The mountains have really be getting hit hard with the snow, so it seemed like a good time to take a vacation day. We got 16 challenging runs in on Friday, and another 11 in on Saturday. I was pretty spent after Friday, Saturday was a lot rougher going. The snow conditions were great, and the crowds were non-existent. The high on Saturday was 6 degrees, which may have scared a few people off. We all got a bit of wind-burn on our faces, but it was worth it.

Sunday involved a little work, more trip and Christmas errands, and a lot of recovering from snowboarding. I tried petting the cats a bit extra since neither Kristen and I would be around for a bit.

Kristen did make it to England OK and has been sending me updates on the trip via e-mail. She just recently returned from a trip to Wales and took some great pictures.

I ended staying up until 4:30 fighting the various water issues coming through my ceiling. I think I used every pot, pan, bowl, and bucket that we own. Very little got on the carpet, but there is some drywall damage. Luckily the condo association will pay fix it, so other than some inconvenience, it wasn't too big of a deal.

I'm having a hard time keeping up with timely posts. Just not enough hours in the day.

Last week was pretty crazy. We had corporate visitors in town for the first half of the week, and the fallout of their visit kept us really busy through Friday. My brain was frazzled by the end of the week. Friday while brushing my teeth I thought I had dropped the toothpaste off of the toothbrush before it made it to my mouth. As I was brushing I looked around the floor to see if I could see where it dropped. Not finding it on the floor, I felt around in my mouth, thinking perhaps that it was hiding out in there somewhere. No luck there. I mentally retraced my steps, and came to the horrifying realization that I'd put face lotion on the toothbrush, not toothpaste. Yuck!

Kristen and I met up with her Dad and Step mom for dinner in Platteville. Bruce told a joke about a woman receiving a fax from her butt, which received a mixture of laughter and rolling of eyes. Later, Kristen and I headed out for a beer with a few of my coworkers to celebrate the end of the week. Unfortunately we were all so burnt that it was a pretty lackluster affair.

Saturday involved going to the mall to do yet more X-mas shopping. It seems to never end. Afterward Kristen and I headed to the mountains to celebrate her birthday. It snowed like crazy on Saturday night, which gave me more excuses to try out the new vehicle on icy roads. It's pretty sweet.

We got back to town early on Sunday. Most of Sunday was spent getting Kristen ready for her England trip. She got all packed up, and was ready to go.

Monday I drove her to the airport around noon. I haven't gotten the "I've arrived" e-mail yet, but I'm assuming she made it. Meanwhile the cats and I have been trying to stay warm. Cody's has had it worse, but we had a high of -4 on Monday.

I love technology. Here's a picture of Aida taken with my new camcorder. The resolution on the thing is crazy. Oops, it looks like this actually a quarter of the resolution that it normally is, I can't quite yet figure out how to get a full resolution picture off of the thing yet.



It can store about 2 hours of video at that resolution at 30 frames per second on a 16 gig SDHC card. Here's a picture of the card next to a quarter. To put things in perspective, our Commodore 64 we had in the early eighties had 64K of memory. That tiny card can store 262,144 times more data than that first computer could.




I was just about to hit "Publish Post" when a strange noise came from the other room. The vacant upstairs condo had a pipe bust, and apparently it just thawed out. The Fire Department was here, I have all my buckets and pots out trying to contain the deluge. Looks like I'll be up late tonight.