So I’m back in Kansas City, back at work. I sure didn’t miss this very much. I’m very tired still from the weekend, so I’m just hoping that the day goes by fast. NYC was a blast! The shows were excellent and the setlists were amazing. I ate so much pizza, it doesn’t get much better than that. As we expected the hotel was a dump, but the renovated rooms were actually not too bad. Since they ran out of double bed rooms, they gave us two adjoining rooms for the price of one. We did a few touristy things like going to central park and visiting ground zero. The time we were there flew by. Unfortunately I missed my return flight. It was a combination of over sleeping and then the cab I was in broke down. In the end I just rerouted my trip to Kansas City instead of Indianapolis. I guess it worked out, but I was tired of airports by the end of it all…

Well we made the never ending drive Friday after work. Since we were already tired from the night before, we made many stops along the way. The drive took us around 10 hours this time, and we finally go to my parents place at 5 am. I couldn’t fall asleep for awhile after because of the amount of caffeine that was in my body. So what do we do? Wake up at 8:30 to go watch Kim’s brothers play soccer. They won the game, and each of them scored at least one goal, so it was worth it. That win put them in the championship game the following day. After the game Kim took a nap while I watched football with my dad and brother Tim. I should have napped, but figured I would be alright at the wedding as long as my second wind kicked in. The wedding was nice, and did not have communion so it was about half the time of a normal catholic wedding. The reception was great! So good seeing all of my family in one place.

The next morning we did wake up and go to the championship soccer game. They ended up winning again, and this time Kim and I both took a nap afterwards. The rest of the night we spent over with Kim’s family playing texas hold’em and celebrating Jason’s birthday.

Monday we hung around with Kim’s family some more, and later on met up with her friend Amy at a bar. We played darts and also chatted with her cousin Katie and her boyfriend Bill. It was a good night!

Yesterday we went to the zoo with one of the new Hais foster kids, Lilly. We also went along with Kim’s aunt who was hauling around 5 more kids. It was a good trip but even more exhausting than the trip to the Omaha zoo. We then met up with all of my high school buddies at a bar and played pool for a few hours. It was very good to catch up with all of them.

Tonight we are going to dinner at Montgomery Inn with some of Kim’s friends. Since I’ve been back I’ve made sure to go to Skyline, LaRosa’s and Penn Station. Looks like I’ve been to all of my favorite places here, so my trip is just about complete.

Tomorrow we are off to Deer Creek Park near Columbus to celebrate Thanksgiving. Then on Friday I’m off to NYC!

Well we made it into work today. We got to Lawrence around 8 last night, when the doors were supposed to open, but in typical Granada style they were not and someone was still soundchecking. I should have realized this was the first sign that nothing was gonna happen on time. VACO was supposed to play at 9, but it was obvious that wasn’t going to happen when the first band still wasn’t on at 9. This band didn’t start till near 10. A pop punk band that wasn’t bad to listen to for 5 songs or so, but by their 7th or 8th I was ready to pack up and leave. They were trying way too hard. VACO finally made it on the stage at 11, 2 hours later than scheduled. They played for around 45 minutes or so, and sounded really good. I wish they could have played longer though, I haven’t seen a decently long show in awhile. Pomeroy took a long time to get ready to play, so it was getting very late. We stuck around for 3 or 4 songs and then headed out. I think we were home by 2, but I really wasn’t paying attention, all we needed was bed. We had to be rested up for the drive tonight. I’m now counting down the hours until I can leave here…

Good news though, US Bank is finally agreeing that they screwed up, and all 7 overdraft charges should be off the account tomorrow!

Last night we got some packing done, since we really don’t have any time between now and when we leave. Tonight we have the vaco show out in Lawrence. I’m really excited for this one! Then we have work again tomorrow (hoping for a short day) and we will leave asap after that. We do have to go home to get amstel, since we are bringing him along. We got an “exercise cage” that we can keep him in at our parents houses, most likely in the basement somewhere. He would hate being stuck in his cage for long periods of time. Funny story about him, I heard all this noise coming from the porch when I was getting ready this morning. I get up and see two flashes run by the porch door. A squirrel had found its way onto the porch and amstel was chasing him out. The squirrel was up on the railing and eventually gave in and left. What a bad ass rabbit! :)

I did get a couple things done over at sonic.edpaffjr.com. I need to change the font colors for the site text, but that will have to wait for a little while. Next up is probably putting in an application form. Shouldn’t be that bad…

Last night we actually took a run outside. It seems like it had been forever since we did that, and it felt like it too. The hills wore us out pretty quickly and so we only did 2 miles around the track, which I guess is really only 1.6 miles. We then thought about going to the vaco and pomeroy show for awhile and decided not to go. The show wasn’t going to start until 10:30, and with it being an hour away we wouldn’t have been home until 3am at the earliest. We will be going tomorrow though, and the show is a little closer this time and earlier. Steve Christy will be going to the show as well, so it will be more fun than last night. I just realized that the two bands are playing in St. Louis on Friday. I’m gonna think about maybe stopping there for the show and spending the night as well. It would break up the drive, and we will still get to Cincy in time for the wedding.

Speaking of which, if you didn’t already know my cousin Jeff is getting married this Saturday. I’m sure it will be a really good time with all of my cousins there. The reception is right down the road from my parents house, so it couldn’t be more convenient. Kim and I will then be spending the entire next week in Ohio (well I’m going to nyc next weekend) so we should have lots of time to catch up with everyone. As I just mentioned, I will be heading to nyc for the annual Thanksgiving OAR shows! I’m sure I’ll have lots of good times in the next week and a half, I’ve only got to get through 3 more days of work…

Edit: I lied. We cannot stop in St. Louis on Friday. We already made plans to be at Kim’s brothers soccer game on Saturday morning. I’m sure it will be just as much fun! :)

Well the charges have not been removed, but over the weekend I come to find out that over draft protection was just added to my account this past Thursday, the day after we talk to this branch manager. She avoided our calls most of Friday as well. If she realized they screwed up, then why not credit the money back to us. I’ve already placed a few calls to the district manager to get this resolved. Hopefully it will only be another day or two.

Sorry about the lack of updates. I’ve been working very hard lately, and very closely with my boss. That should end today, so then I should have plenty of time to update this regularly.

This weekend we headed to Omaha, Nebraska with Doni and Phil. It was my first time in Nebraska! Kim and Doni got free tickets to the University of Nebraska at Omaha hockey game through work. They were playing Bowling Green from back in Ohio. We not only got tickets but free food and drink! The game was good, I really miss college hockey. It’s been a long time since I’ve seen a game. Of course I had to explain a few of the rules throughout the course of the game. UNO won the game 4-2.
Saturday we went to the Omaha Zoo. They have the worlds largest everything! Largest indoor rain forest, largest geodesic dome, largest indoor desert, etc. It was really cool, and I’m sure my brother would have loved it, even though we didn’t see any elephants. I think it was too late by the time we got out to where they were. The gorilla habitat was really nice though, and I even saw a couple of Cincinnati natives there, not people but gorillas. I think the rain forest was probably the best part of the zoo, but they seem to be doing never ending work to make all their exhibits better.
After the zoo we created our own little Omaha Old Market pub crawl. It was definitely a good night in Omaha!

Kim took off for North Dakota again today so I will probably be doing lots of computer work tonight and tomorrow. I need to get some stuff done for Sonic anyway…

Since I added another state to my visited list, I realized that the link I had here before didn’t work very well. I created a page on the site to display the image, and you can now see it here.

I have had it up to here with US Bank! Kim and I both setup overdraft protection on our accounts using one savings account. So essentially we have separate checking but one savings account, we can easily transfer money to each other and we should have protection against all of those stupid overdrafts we are known for getting. Well I sign in today to see that I have 3 overdraft charges on my account for $34 each. That’s over $100! What’s worse, according to my account balance after every transaction I never went negative. I have plenty of money in my account to cover everything, it just has to do with how the different transactions are going through. I call the 1-800 number and have absolutely no luck with the chick on the phone. She tells me that I don’t even have overdraft protection setup. Kim calls the 1-800 number and I think she gets the same chick back on the phone, who is again no help. We meet for lunch at the bank where we setup the overdraft protection and there is only one person there who is handling accounts and we are 3rd in line. We leave some info so that she can investigate. Kim goes back before they close to talk with her. She says that the overdraft is all setup, the account never went negative, and she isn’t sure why those charges are there. She won’t remove them though. I know they can remove the charges, Kim has had it done before. She says that she will look into this on Friday if she gets time to. She also says that we should get all the money in the savings account into my account to prevent further charges. Where do these mysterious charges come from! This is ridiculous! They better take care of this or it is gonna be bye bye US Bank.

So with the frustration of today, I’m leaving work to have a good Italian dinner and then play hockey later on. Hopefully I’m in a better mood at the end of the day…

Last night we though about doing spinning, but found out Jeff wasn’t teaching the Monday class. We then decided to try and hook up the stereo in the car. This has been a never ending battle, but at least we actually have the stereo now. So I wired the two adapters together and connected the finished product to the car. Amazingly it worked, but now the problem is that the trim on the outside of the stereo is missing, so I can’t get it mounted very well. The mounting sleeve that came with the stereo does not hold it in place and it does not look very pretty. I guess that means I still need to find one more piece, this is so annoying. I will never buy another used CD player. Maybe I should just sell the stupid thing and go buy a new player.

Firefox version 1.0 released today. I strongly suggest that everyone switches over to this web browser from whatever else you are using. I haven’t touched internet explorer since downloading this program months ago, I love it!
Here is a link to download: Get Firefox!

This weekend was a fun and busy one. We picked Chris and Chip up at the airport right after work and then headed to the Kansas City Wizards soccer game. It was the conference championship and tickets were only $5. The game got pretty physical, but the Wizards easily won the game 2-0. From here we went back to the apartment and played Texas Hold’em with the poker set that the boys gave to Kim for her birthday. In the end I lost to Chip, but it was decided that the next night we would play for money.

Saturday we headed to one of the Mexican restaurants down on Southwest Blvd. I have started calling this area of town Little Mexico, and once again I was not let down. The food was great although the selections on the jukebox were not. From here we went down to Kemper Arena. There were some horse competitions going on. The most exciting part was the jumping competition, but we still only sat to watch 4 riders. We then headed down to the zoo. We only had about an hour and a half before closing but this would be plenty of time, especially since they closed Africa. How can they just close a continent, especially the most exciting one. We had fun watching the kangaroos though, trying to get the llamas to spit on Chris, and feeding these birds called lorikeets. We got tickets to go inside of their flight cage with cups of nectar. Once inside the cage, the birds landed all over you. At one point I had 8 birds on me. It was really fun, besides the few that decided to bite my ear, or the ones that decided to poop down my back. I wish we would have brought a camera. After resting up for all of a half hour, we decided to go bowling. My first game was awful, but my second was great. I think I had the highest score of the night, around 120. Kim won the first game and decided to bowl the next game left handed. Surprisingly she did pretty well. After two games, we headed back to the apartment to start our poker tournament. I didn’t do as well as the night before, although I did finish in third place. Kim won the tournament again, but it was a close battle between her and Chip.

Sunday we headed to Chipotle, and then up to the airport to drop the boys off. The weekend went by really fast, but I think we all had a great time. From here Kim and I went to Doni & Phil’s to watch some football. Afterwards I got a much needed haircut, and then soon after it was time for my hockey game. What a busy weekend…

I should have played hockey last night, but a cold just kept getting worse and worse as the day went on. We had some dinner, and then I passed out on the couch, never to wake up until 2AM. I guess I missed hockey, oh well there is always next week.

Oh yeah before I passed out I did try to install the stereo into the car, but I soon realized that I’m missing a wiring harness. The one I bought included one that was all stripped at the end. I am not going to wire this thing when I can easily buy a $15 harness. Still waiting on that circuit city card to arrive…

Kim’s brothers are coming to visit starting tomorrow. I’m sure we’ll be busy and having lots of fun!