Happy Thanksgiving!

Whew!  What a whirlwind of activity.

 On Monday of last week, we released the next big version of our software at work.  Preparing for that, and dealing with the aftermath has kept the office pretty busy.  Luckily, with that out of the way, things should slow down a bit for the holidays.

I took Wednesday off, and headed up to Winter Park / Mary Jane for my first day of snowboarding of the season.  Even though Boulder has been fairly temperate, the mountains have been getting a lot of early season snow.  Things are much better than they were last year at this time.  It was a bit chilly up there, but the snow was unbelievable.  Morrissey and I got a very full day in, showing up right when the lifts opened, and riding them until it was getting dark.  I was sore for several days afterward.

Thursday of course was Thanksgiving.  Kristen had put together quite a feast.  We had 10 people show up, and things went very smoothly.  There was plenty of food, every one got along, and fun was had by all.  Things ramped down around six o'clock.

A few hours later Katie and Jordan showed up with Rocco and Olie in tow.  There were a few tense moments between Zack and Rocco, but for the most part things went well there.

Kristen and Katie took off early on Friday to hit some Black Friday deals.  Jordan and I took it a little easier, and managed to stay fairly stress free for most of the day.  Jordan and I did head out to Disco Friday night, in painfully embarrassing get-ups.  Disco was sort of a bust, but we managed to have fun regardless.

Saturday morning saw Katie and Jordan heading back to Grand Junction.  Kristen and I spent the rest of the weekend cleaning up the house and relaxing.  The cats were glad that things settled down again, and that something that resembled normal life had returned.

The calm before the storm

Next week is going to be exciting. At work, we roll out our product for another part of our corporation. That will keep me busy. Shortly afterward Thanksgiving comes a-knocking, that will keep both Kristen and I busy.

So, we took it pretty easy this weekend. I worked a bit on Saturday, Kristen ran a bunch of errands. Sunday involved some yard work, and various small tasks around the house for me. Kristen headed down to Denver to meet up with some family. Maddock got to visit Santa. I think he looks a little suspicious about the whole deal.

A month ago or two I bought a robotic vacuum cleaner. I didn't think it'd be that effective, just a cool gadget. It works better than I expected, our house is getting vacuumed a lot more than it used to, mostly because the thing is fun to watch. Here's 5x normal speed timelapse of "Flo" cleaning the sun room.  Hmm, I just noticed that there 6 minutes of black at the end of the video.  Oh well.

Last Year's Snowboarding

After many hours of editing, here's the summary of last year's snowboarding:

Ada is not amused!

We had a pretty slow weekend.  Both of our work situations have been a bit hectic, so we didn't feel like doing much.  We did head out on Friday night for the annual viewing of the new Warren Miller ski movie.  It was a lot of fun, as always.

We've gotten some colder weather, and a few traces of snow here and there.  The mountains are starting to get some accumulation, which means that the snowboarding season is just right around the corner.  I'm getting pretty excited.

We got our front drapes hung, the mattress for the guest bed showed up, we picked up some bedding, and generally tried to finish up any other house duties that are outstanding.  We have yet to really tackle the garage, neither of us really felt like getting out there in the colder air this weekend.

We did manage to figure out to get the fireplace open, so we had a good fire on Saturday night.  However, on Sunday the downdraft was strong enough that we failed to get it lit then.  I'm sure we'll get better with practice.

Indian Summer

The weather continues to be unreasonable.  We hit 76 on Saturday, and were in the 70's again today.  A big change is coming on Tuesday, we'll have several days in the 40's and 30's.

Kristen and I managed to get out and enjoy the weather a bit on both days.  We did a bunch of hiking/walking on Saturday, and spent a good amount of time working on the yard both days.  I raked the leafs up on Saturday, just to find the yard covered with them again on Sunday.

We've been spending time trying to winterize the garden.  We're still eating salad from the garden, and hope to get it to last a bit longer.

We also did a bit of shopping for the house on both Saturday and Sunday.  We ordered drapes, art, and a queen sized mattress for the guest bedroom.  Hopefully that about does it!

Pumpkin Carving

On Saturday Kristen and I hosted a pumpkin carving party.  We didn't take a lot of pictures.  We had a pretty good turn out, and a lot of pumpkins were carved.

On Sunday we really took it easy.  It was the laziest day we've had in a while.  Felt pretty good.

Here's some random video from the Indiana trip.  Some time on the Island Queen, including a time-lapse cruise around the lake.  Also a time-lapse of me closing up the treehouse.

Farm Trip

Last weekend I spent I took a few days off to check on the tree house.  I hadn't been back to the farm all year, and was concerned that the door had blown open, a window had busted, or something similar had happened.

Luckily everything looked more or less fine in the tree house.  A lot of wasps had gotten in due to the venting in the chimney structure, and the tree was showing signs of stress, but everything else looked good.  I managed to install the solar panel, putting the last piece of that project in place.  It managed to fully charge the battery every day.  I also hung the inside/outside thermometer, and did a few other small projects around the place.

The weather had been very dry for a long time, so I was able to walk the creek (named "Sugar Creek" on the old maps) from one end of the farm to the other.  Lots of fun stuff to look at.

The first night I got in, I saw the Island Queen cruising across the lake toward a nesting place.  It was a pretty cool sight.  We spent a good amount of time cruising around the lake on the Island Queen in the following days.

We also did a bit of work on the bulldozer, and mulched the old pond that Dad had re-sculptured recently.

It was a great, but short trip.  It ate through the rest of my vacation time for the year, so I'll be enjoying fewer trips until the new year.