House Hunting & More

Saturday morning Kristen and I herded up Ada, and took her to the vet.  She wasn't too happy about it, but eventually survived the ordeal.  We'd noticed that she'd been losing hair on the back of her feet.  The vet's theory is that she was nervous about all the packing up and changes going on around the house, and was a bit neurotic about things.  She's now on kitty Prozac, at least until we get into another house, or her hair grows back.

We then headed off to look at four different houses.  Two of the houses we wanted to look at went under contract in the last week, so our day was a bit shorter than we expected.  We looked at one place "way" out in the country.  It looked good on paper, but was an absolute wreck.  It was at the very top of our budget, and would have required a few 100s of thousands of dollars to make decent.

Our theory was that the "Always Plenty" sign referred to the amount of work required to make the place nice.

We saw two cookie-cutter houses that were large, but pretty beat up, and just not overly interesting.  We did look at one place in Boulder that we liked a lot more than we expected.  It reeks of the 1960s, but in a good way.  It's in a good neighborhood, and is about the right size.  It does have a fair share of pink tile, some shag carpeting, and a few other issues, but overall we thought it might work well, if the seller was flexible with the price.

We met up with a friend for Sushi later in the day.  He'd just seen "Hot Tub Time Machine", and seemed to enjoy it.

The next morning I headed off to help a few friends work on their vehicles.  We also did a bit of packing up around the house, and made one trip to the storage unit.  The weather was amazing, and we took advantage of it by going on a good walk around the nearby lakes.  We then drove into town to walk around the potential house, in order to feel what the neighborhood was like.  We liked what we saw.

Another week of work looms. 

Treehouse Platform View

I was doing my semi-monthly check to see if any interesting satelite imagery had been updated, and found these using bing.com:

You can definitely make out the platform of the treehouse.  The shadow really makes it obvious it is there, and I believe you can see the black tarp in the first photo.

I imagine in a year or two they'll update the data again, and the actual structure will be there.

Better late than never

What crazy weather we've been having here!  Last week we were in the mid to high 60's.  Really felt like spring.  Then on Friday and Saturday Boulder received more than a foot of snow.  I was in Portland for business, and stayed over the weekend.  The plan was to go snowboarding at Mount Hood on Saturday, but things played out a bit differently.

I'd seen "Super Diamond" a few times in the Nineties, so it was cool randomly find them playing in Portland.  My co-worker Mike and I bought tickets, and ended up enjoying the show a little too much.

We woke up a little too late to make it Snowboarding the next day.  Instead we drove around the Oregon coast a bit, and took in the sights.  That area of the country is pretty cool, it's certainly doesn't remind me of anyplace I've spent significant time at.

By the time I got back to Boulder, Kristen had a bit of Cabin Fever, but most of the snow had melted.  Tuesday night we got another foot of snow.  The roads got pretty messy, and a co-worker was in his car for over 5 hours, trying to make it 37 miles back to his place.  I didn't take any pictures, but found this one on the local paper's site:

Most of the snow is gone in town.  The mountains didn't really get hit that hard, and I don't think Kristen is going to let me go up there any time soon anyways.

Weekend at Home

This was the first weekend in a month where both Kristen and I were home.  On Saturday we looked at five different houses.  Most were easy to rule out, but one or two were fairly interesting.  We're following up with one, but aren't too hopeful they're interested in our lowball offer.

Sunday involved some work around the house, trying to get it ready to put on the market.  I'm pretty sick of staining window sills, hopefully I'm done with that task.  We still have a lot of stuff to put into storage to make the place look less cluttered, but we're getting there.

I have a Portland trip coming up on Thursday, it ought to be fun.  We're staying an extra couple of days in order to get some snowboarding in.  The weather here has been warm and sunny, not exactly conducive to good snowboarding conditions.  We're hopeful that the conditions in Oregon are better.

Busy Couple of Weeks

The Winter Park trip wrapped up the weekend before last.  Everyone enjoyed the trip, there were a few injuries, and a few equipment failures, but all in all it was a lot of fun.  We lucked out and hit the best week of snow of the year (so far).  9 consecutive days of snowboarding was pretty rough, my body is just now recovering.  I unfortunately caught a cold toward the end of the trip, and have been paying the price ever since.  I tried to recover last week, but it got a pretty good grip on me.

Last weekend Kristen and I headed to South Dakota to say hi to Nono and Ma, and to visit a few friends in Deadwood.  We took off after work on Friday, and drove through some pretty nasty weather.  Most of Wyoming had a Winter Storm Watch in effect, even though it was 50 degrees and sunny in Boulder.

Saturday we visited Ma & Nono.  Nono is doing well and has a very large collection of Jacoby pictures already.  She is really looking forward to the visit of the Great-Grandson.  I guess being a Grandson has just lost some of its luster.

Saturday afternoon we headed to Deadwood.  We met up with Vince & Theresa, Brent and Trudy, and Tony and Lisa.  We had a big dinner together, telling as many embarrassing stories as possible for the significant others to hear.  We also discussed the upcoming Canada trip a bit, they all seem game to come.

Unfortunately my cold was getting the better of me, and I sat out of most of the festivities.  I was pretty glad the next morning, as everyone was moving pretty slowly.  Kristen and I headed back to Boulder around noon, and had smooth sailing all the way back.

Winter Park Trip

There are only a few days left of the annual week long Winter Park trip.  Things have gone well so far, the snow is really falling, and only one injury so far.

The last two days have been a little low-key, as most people went back to work, leaving us with only a few people at the house.  Tomorrow things should pick up with another 5 people showing up.

We've managed to find a few new runs and routes.  We sought out a few of the "Smoking Huts" that are scattered around in the tree runs.  We also tried a new route down Vasquez Cirque which proved to be very cool.  Fun stuff!

Facial Hair

I've been letting the facial hair go wild since Christmas.  I'm now to the stage where I"m trying to trim it into humorous designs.  Here's where I'm at currently.