It’s so nice to be able to say that today is Tuesday. We are that much closer to another weekend. As for this weekend, here is a recap.

Friday started off well with some drinks at our apartment with Joel and Amanda. Mike decided to skip the show on Friday since it was his buddy’s last couple of days in town. We took a cab over to the Beaumont and attempted to get in to the show. As I mentioned last week, I was taking my gear hoping to tape the show. Beaumont has historically been one of the most difficult places for me to get my gear into, even though I only tape bands that officially allow fan recordings. Anyway, the bouncer immediately tells me no. I ask him to find someone with the band, and a guy from pipeline productions comes over and says no as well. I told them all that according to Better Than Ezra’s website they are completely okay with it and ask to speak with someone from the band. We stand and wait at the entrance for probably 45 minutes. Kim finally asks the first guy if he ever heard anything. The guy turns into an even bigger asshole and starts going on about how he already said no. I calmly exchange a few words with him and decide to give up. Luckily our friend Courtney had her car in Westport, so I stashed my gear in her car and we all headed in to the show. Pomeroy was good as always and they even busted out a few tunes that I had never heard before. You might remember Better Than Ezra from their big hit “Good” back in 95. I believe this was the second song in their set. I recognized a couple of other songs they played within the hour or so of their set I watched. I was not really impressed by them though, maybe it was the struggle I had to get in the venue or maybe it was the suddenly chilly temperature outside. Regardless we all headed inside of the Beaumont for a couple more drinks and then headed home. Despite all the crap that happened I still had a good time and I think everyone else did as well.

Saturday seems like so long ago, I am struggling to remember what exactly we did. I do know that we headed up to the pool at Woodside with Mike. We met up with Doni and Susan and “laid out” for a couple of hours. Mike and I quickly grew tired of that and had to come up with something else to do. After watching him, Kim and Susan take some dives off the diving board we decided to move on from the pool. After quickly cleaning up we decided to head out to the Great American Barbecue. This appeared to be similar to the American Royal but we quickly learned that it was on a much smaller scale. It probably didn’t help that we got there at 5PM on the last night of the competition. One of the reason we decided to go was that Tanner Walle was playing later in the night. We hung around for a few hours until his set and managed to entertain ourselves mostly eating, drinking and watching the mechanical bull. Tanner’s set was short but sweet. We got to hear a few new tunes as well as a great new cover of “Super Bon Bon.” Hopefully we’ll make it to see him this Thursday, which appears to be his last show in the area for quite some time.

Sunday we decided to have a little barbecue of our own with some corn on the cob we had picked up while down at the City Market earlier in the day. Mike came over with some chicken to help out. We also tuned in to the end of the Indy 500, which ended under a unimpressive yellow flag. For the rest of the afternoon we just chilled out until it was dinner time. At that point we headed over to Westport again to Thai Place, one of Kim’s favorite restaurants. I was not all that impressed, but maybe it was just the dish that I ordered. We then picked up a couple of movies and headed home. My choice at the store was Spanglish, which I assumed would be funny since Adam Sandler was in it. We put this on first, and boy was I disappointed. I tried to stay awake but was less than amused by the movie. However Kim seemed to enjoy it and watched the whole thing. Talk about a role reversal!

We spent most of yesterday over at Doni & Phil’s. Phil and his buddy Chris Martin were smoking some ribs for the better part of the day. We stopped off at Home Depot and bought all the supplies we needed to make 2 sets of cornhole boards. Mike came over and helped out with the construction. When we left we had the boards completely built and had put on three coats of paint. I would say that they are just about done. Well besides the fact that the first design we came up for the folding legs doesn’t seem to be working so well. The second design is working much better, so we will have to convert the first set into the second set design. The only thing left for me to do is buy some bags online, which I hope to do today. If everything goes as planned next Monday’s blog entry will be all about how much cornhole we played over the weekend!

Where the hell did today go? Feels like I just got into the office a few minutes ago, and I’ll be out of here in just over 2 hours. I guess I’ve been busy all day learning some stuff since I’ll be filling in for my boss next week while he is on vacation. Woohoo! :|

We have a great concert lined up for tonight! Better Than Ezra and Pomeroy under the stars in Westport. I should be recording the show too, something that I haven’t done in a long time. I hope I still remember how all of my gear works. Anyway, we are heading up there with at least Joel, Amanda and Mike. I’m sure some others will be up at the show as well. It should be a great night!

As for the rest of the weekend, we’ll probably spend some time lounging around a pool. We might also take some time to build those cornhole boards I keep talking about. We should have ordered some bags online so we would have them for this weekend, but we forgot. Guess we can take a couple days to get the boards ready though, and start playing next weekend! Have a great holiday weekend…

Not much at all has been going on here. Last night was my last night of hockey for a few weeks. They are melting the ice to do repairs to the boards and stuff. I’m not sure how many days a week I’m going to play once they reopen. I’ve been thinking about playing less now that it is summer, but we’ll see.

I’m about to book our flights to New Orleans for The Rock Boat. I’m so excited, I finally get a chance to visit the city of New Orleans. I’m sure it will not be a disappointment. I wish we could spend a couple of days there, but we will really only get one full day there. My vacation days are just about all accounted for, and this is with no days off after September. I figure I should save at least one date for the end of the year.

With the lack of exciting things to write about, I’ve added a new song of the moment, download “Wordplay.” This one is from Mr. Jason Mraz. I haven’t really listened to any of his music by choice in quite some time. I really figured that his follow up to Waiting For My Rocket To Come would have come much sooner. There was that live release that was put out, but I never listened to it all that much. Finally though, Mr. A-Z will be out on July 26th.

Sorry about the downtime today, apache crashed for some reason and I had no way to restart it while stuck at work. I’m trying to track down the reason for the error but the apache error logs can be a little over my head at times. All the more reason to get a dedicated server with fewer applications running on it. Perhaps some day…

Last night I went and saw Star Wars with Mike. I didn’t go to one of the opening midnight showings like I had done for at least one if not both of the prequels. I won’t say too much about it here, but if you enjoy the Star Wars movies at all, this is a must see. Mike never saw episodes 1 or 2 and I don’t think he was ever lost in the plot of this one. Go see this one ASAP!

Alright so first thing I did on our busy Saturday was replace a temperature sender on the Jetta. You may remember talk of a check engine light from over a month ago. Well I though it was just a loose gas cap, but that was not the problem. A few weeks ago I took the car to a car parts store and had them pull the error codes. I then googled the error codes and found a message board thread describing how to fix the problem. I bought the parts last week and then pretended to be a mechanic. Today the check engine light is no longer on! Looks like that problem is finally fixed.

From there we took the car to Tires Plus to get the tires rotated and balanced as well as have a brake inspection performed. For a week or so there had been an occasional squeak coming from one of the wheels. In the end we got a call saying the car was ready and the brakes are fine. Guess I’ll just keep my ears open for any other sounds and take it from there.

While the car was in the shop we headed to a couple of PETCO stores since they were the only ones in town to have the tank stand I wanted and the turtle dock I wanted. After we bought the necessary pieces we went home and I put the whole thing together. I took some pictures of the process and also have a webcam up and running. It should take a picture every 2 seconds or so. This is quite a strain on my PC though, so we’ll see how long it lasts. I think it is pretty neat though.

Mike came over during the setup and after it was all done we walked down to a newer pizza place near UMKC‘s campus called Pizza 51. They have huge slices of pizza, along with good calzones and sandwiches. Oh yeah, they have beer and Saturday night entertainment as well. We stayed there for awhile and that pretty much ended the night.

Sunday we went to the grocery and then picked up the car. My mom told me earlier in the day about a scanner at OfficeMax for $5 after rebates. So I picked one of those up and started scanning ticket stubs again. Right now I’m just re-scanning the old ones so that they will all be of the same quality. I have hundreds of stubs though so this will definitely take some time. We also fit in a round of golf with Mike during the day. Toward the end of it I really started to hate the game, but hopefully we’ll get out again next weekend.

Pictures from our trip are up! I pretty much handed the camera over to Kim, so no comments about my photography skills please. :)

Yesterday was a pretty standard work day and a typical night of pizza, beers and movies. We have a busy day lined up today, I’ll tell more about it later…

I forgot to mention that while we were gone Kim got a tow notice on the company car. She brought the car home after work on Friday so that she would have it when we got back since she was heading to the airport early the next morning (Wednesday). That means that the car was on the street for just over 4 days. It has now come to our attention that a vehicle is considered abandoned on the streets of Kansas City after 48 hours. 48 hours?!?! That’s fewer hours than there are in a weekend. We probably “abandon” our car at least 2 times a month. What a bunch of crap. This isn’t the first time I’ve seen these notices on our street either. The guy who lives next door typically has two cars parked out on the street and one morning I saw a notice on the car he drives less often. I wouldn’t be suprised if this is all the work of the “grandma” who just moved in above us. She had her son in law come down to our apartment on the night of her move to ask us to turn down the music. The problem is, it was like 9:30 on a Saturday night!

I am back at work and Kim is on her way to Minnesota for business. Here is a brief recap of the weekend. We left Kansas City bright and early on Saturday and stuck with the route described on the page I linked to earlier. It took us about 13.5 hours to get to Cincinnati; it usually takes 9. The drive was much nicer though and we did stop a few times at various little towns. One in particular was made famous for their albino squirrels. We went to the city park in Olney, IL but were not successful in sighting one of these. We did see a bunch of really friendly regular squirrels though. When we got into Cincy, we went straight to Amy’s apartment. A small group of us gathered there and then we decided to take a cab out to our old stomping grounds, the UC campus. We went to Christy’s first and then made it to Murphy’s before last call. Overall I felt pretty old in the bars, but it was a nice night out.

Sunday we visited with my family for a few hours and then headed back over to Kim’s for a gathering of her extended family. That took care of most of the day and then on Monday we finally got our loan to buy out the Jetta’s lease. We are now the proud owners of the car. :) From there Kim went out to dinner with Amy and other friends for Amy’s birthday while I met up with my buddy Jon and went out to Paxton’s where Ken was bar-tending. When Ken was done with work we all headed up to Hap’s to finish off the night with Kim and Amy.

The funeral was on Tuesday and it was a very nice service. I’m sure everyone appreciates all of your thoughts and prayers.
HAIS Charles F., beloved husband of 64 years to the late Mildred M. (nee Doyle) Hais. Loving father of Carolyn (Doug) Otto, Peggy (Ron) Fleming, Chuck (Mary) Hais, Susan (Tom) Cupito and Jodi Hais. Dear brother of Margie (Don) Flick, Mimi (Dick) Berning and the late Al Hais. Devoted grandfather to 20 favorite grandchildren and 10 great grandchildren. On Thursday, May 12, 2005 at 84 years of age. Visitation on Tuesday at B. J. Meyer Sons Overlook Funeral Home, 4841 Glenway Avenue, (next to St.Teresa Church) from 10:30 A.M. to 12:30 P.M., followed by Mass of Christian Burial at St. Teresa of Avila Church at 1 P.M. Family requests memorials to Teen Parent Mentor Program, One YMCA Place, Greensboro, NC 27401 or St. Teresa of Avila Memorial Fund, 1175 Overlook Avenue, Cincinnati, OH 45238. www.bjmeyersons.com

In light of yesterday’s news Kim and I will be driving back to Cincinnati tomorrow. I talked things over with my boss and we do infact have a bereavement policy that covers up to 3 days off of work. So, we will be in Cincinnati from sometime on Saturday until after the funeral which is on Tuesday. We will then drive back Tuesday night and be at work on next Wednesday. One good things is that this weekend is my brother Bryan’s 18th birthday, so we should be able to spend a little time with him and my family as well. To make the drive a little more exciting we are planning on taking US-50 all the way to Cincy. Rand McNally is the only site I can get to actually give directions using 50 and it says that it will take 15 hours. That’s an extra 6 hours, which I don’t really believe, but either way I think we are gonna do it. Since we plan to leave early in the morning, the worst thing is that we get to Cincy at the same time we do when we leave after work. Wish us luck. :)

Exactly two months ago yesterday Kim’s grandmother passed away, and now Kim’s grandfather has passed away. I feel so bad for Kim and her family, especially her dad who has now lost both of his parents in two months. We saw Kim’s grandpa the last time we were in town and it seemed as if he had no desire to live without his wife. So I guess this is a good thing for him, but I’m sure is so hard on the family. Please keep Kim and her entire family in your prayers.