Happy Birthday, Kristen!

Kristen's birthday was on Friday. She took the day off of work, and spent the day playing with her new KitchenAid mixer. In the evening we headed up to Nederland for the night. Kristen saw a mountain lion on the way up, unfortunately I was too busy white-knuckling the car along the icy road to see the lion in time.

We had a nice dinner, and stayed in our favorite hotel. The next morning we headed to Blackhawk for some high stakes gambling. We both lost about $20 on the penny slots after several hours. Luckily the weather had warmed up and the drive back to Boulder was a lot less stressful.



Sunday involved me spending a bunch of time at work doing a big software delivery. Kristen headed to her sister Allison's house to do some cookie baking. Kristen really enjoys hanging out with her nephew Maddock.

Winter is here! We've had a good amount of snow falling in the Boulder area for the last week or so. The mountains are really getting pounded, which is great news for the ski and snowboard enthusiasts. My co-worker Mike managed to play hooky on Friday, and made it up to Winter Park to enjoy the 20"+ of new snow.



The weather kept us pretty close to home all weekend. We did make it to a party at a co-worker's house on Friday night.

I managed to update the treehouse blog with the last details of this fall's trip. Kristen studied, we both pet the cats, and generally tried to stay warm.

Not much to report for last week. I'm having a hard time getting in the Christmas spirit, I still have a lot of shopping to do. Kristen's in better shape than I am shopping-wise, and is impatiently waiting for me to find that spirit.

It was a cold weekend, creeping into the 40s by Sunday. Kristen did a lot of studying, I did a lot of programming for a few projects I'm working on. Unfortunately, neither activity is very interesting when photographed.

The cats managed to get a lot of attention. Now that the weather is considerably cooler, they've both been crowding in on the bed at night. They seem to wait until you're in the most awkward position of the night, then they plant themselves in such a way that you can't move.

The end of year work rush is in full swing. We're in pretty good shape though, so I think we'll survive the crunch.

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.