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.