Our “meeting” was not a meeting at all. Greg was not even there, or at least we didn’t see him. The receptionist of the place sat us down and had us sign one more paper while she copied our driver’s licenses. From there we were seated at a couple of computers to complete an extensive survey. She told us it could take anywhere from an hour up to two and half to get the thing done. My question is why don’t they have you do this on your own time? I would have been much happier filling out something like this while sitting at work, or during some down time at home. Anyway we finished it in about an hour or so. I guess from here Greg is going to contact to us to schedule a home visit. Sounds like he’ll come to our apartment to make sure we don’t have any weapons or drugs and then take some time to get to know us. I bet many of the things we talk about are the same things this survey asked, so why even take it in the first place? I guess they now have a hard copy of all our answers. Oh well, it is over and wasn’t really that time consuming.

Kim is heading to South Dakota today, or at least I think that is where she is going. I’m sure it will be an exciting time. I’ve got hockey tonight, so that will probably keep me busy enough until tomorrow.

DMB played a show last night at Roseland Ballroom in NYC to kick off the release of their CD today. I guess the whole thing was broadcast over the net by AOL but I had to miss it because of my hockey game. Well good news, the entire show can be watched on demand. I couldn’t get the site to work in Firefox, but it is working fine in IE.

Last night was the championship game in our men’s league. We played like absolute crap and lost 6-1 or so. The worst part was that the other team didn’t have a goalie for half of the first period. I guess we aren’t as young as we once were. This team is almost all 19-21 year olds who can skate really well. I’ve got a couple more Wednesdays of hockey and then the rink will be closed for 3 weeks so they can re-do the ice. I guess that means I’ll be heading to the gym even more than before. This reminds me that I need to pick up a gel ice pack to use on my hips. They feel better most of the time, but I should probably use an ice pack on them after each run.

I put the old router up on eBay. No bites on it yet, but it’s still up for another 5 days plus.

We have our meeting with Greg of BBBS tonight. I think this is a chance for him to learn a little bit about us so he can match us up with a kid (or kids).

We did go to Mike’s roof on Friday and we did drink some beers. When it got a little cold out, we moved down to his apartment and watched Groundhog Day. Nothing else too exciting for Friday night.

Saturday we cooked up some breakfast and then got to work. Kim had some studying to do while I installed the new wireless router. It was really easy to setup and we can now access the internet from anywhere in our apartment. Also the webserver should be much more stable and the site should have very little downtime if any at all. Later on Kim cleaned out the new tank, and I made some minor repairs to it. It should be ready to go after work today, but I think we’ll wait until next weekend to get a stand and a few other supplies before we make the move. That didn’t stop us from going out and shopping though. I think we are going to try using a Turtle Dock in the new tank. We’ll have to use the large size though since the turtles keep growing. Kim noticed that they are building a Coldstone on the plaza, but since they are not quite open we headed out to Overland Park to visit that location. I think the construction of this is the worst thing to happen to us since they built the Chipotle just a few blocks away. Speaking of which, we did have some Chipotle over the weekend! While we were out shopping we picked up a few DVD’s from Doni. That night we watched War Games and then The Incredibles. Mike came over to watch the movies as well. We watched War Games because Doni and Phil quote it from time to time and we never have any clue what they are talking about. I figured out why though, the movie was released when I was 3 years old. Kim fell asleep during The Incredibles and I think I dozed of a time or two as well, so we’ll have to watch that one again. From what I saw though, it was a good movie. It was the end of this Saturday night however.

Sunday we did some cleaning and stuff around the apartment and then met up with Doni for lunch at Mr. Goodcents. From there we hit up the grocery and then played a few games of darts. Before too long it was dinner time. We grilled out some chicken and made some fresh stir fried green beans and potatoes with a little rice. It was very yummy. Afterward, it was back to the TV to finish out the night.

This morning was pretty warm out, so we got to run outside again. I think this week is supposed to be warmer and warmer each day with the possibility of hitting 90 degrees!

I did have exactly three margaritas last night and they were excellent. Nothing else was really accomplished other than watching about 3 hours of TV.

This weekend is going to start off with us hanging out on Mike’s rooftop deck, cooking up some food and drinking some beers. From there I am probably going to clean the new tank tomorrow and finally install the new router. What’s funny is that the current router hasn’t been causing any problems in the past few days. I probably just jinxed it, but it will be removed soon and possibly sold on eBay. Not much else is planned right now, but there has been talk of attempting to build some cornhole boards.

I forgot to mention this earlier, but DMB’s new CD has leaked and I’ve added another track to the song of the moment pages. Be sure to download “Dream Girl.” Enjoy!

Edit: I just realized that I had an error when attempting to download files that prevented everyone from doing so. I have fixed that and you should be able to download files without a problem. Please leave comments if you come across anything else.

I took the router in and showed them the Radio Shack ad. They honored the pricematch, so I was credited $22 although it has not yet been put back into my bank account. The manager on duty said that the $20 best buy rebate will no longer work, but I’m gonna send it in and try anyway. If it does not work, I still have the $10 rebate from Linksys so the total then will be 37.99 plus the tax. If I do slip the $20 rebate through the cracks then the total will only be 17.99 plus tax. Either way, I think it is a heck of a deal for a top of the line wireless G router that retails for $70 usually.

I have not had time to play with it though since I had hockey last night. I’m hoping that the install is really easy and I can get everything up and running quickly. My only fear is the wireless side of things since I’ve never messed with it before. Good thing Phil has the same exact router and runs many of the same services that I do (webserver, ftp, etc). I’m not sure I will get to it tonight either. We have a bunch of TV shows to catch up on but Kim does need to study insurance stuff. Regardless of what we do I hope to have a margarita or three tonight in celebration of freedom and liberty, which is what Cinco de Mayo is about isn’t it?

The Widespread show was a great time. They played for what seemed like 4 hours, taking the stage before 8 and ending close to 12. I’m sure with breaks and such it was a 3 hour show, but still that is a long one. I was surprised at how old the band was, and how young parts of the crowd was, but those guys really know how to play. I would definitely consider seeing them again, although I think I was a little spoiled last night in our 3rd row seats.

I’m off to Best Buy to try and get some money back on the router I picked up last night. Soon enough we’ll have wireless in the apartment and hopefully a router that won’t shut the site down so frequently. Wish me luck!

Nothing exciting from last night, I guess it was sort of a getting back to normal day. However, tonight we do have plans to go out. We have excellent seats for the Widespread Panic show at Starlight thanks to my buddy Jonathan. It might be a little cold tonight, but I’m very excited to be going to this venue for the first time even if I’m not too familiar with the band.

As for the rest of this week, I’m sure I’ll be busy with the home network and the new turtle tank. Best Buy has the linksys WRT54G for $69 with $30 in rebates. I plan to pick one up tonight and then I’ll start using it tomorrow. The nice thing is that Best Buy has a price matching policy that I’m going to use to get $22 back after buying the router since Radio Shack has the same router advertised for $49 on sale. The problem with Radio Shack is that they are not offering the same rebates. I would just take the Radio Shack ad in tonight, but then my receipt would show the price matching and I would risk not getting the rebates. If this all works out, I’ll get the router for around $17! Scandalous, I know. :)

The other thing I have to work on is a 55 gallon tank that I brought back from my parents. The turtles are currently in a 20 gallon tank, so this will almost triple the size of their tank. First I’m going to clean it, repair it and then get it setup for the turtles. This will definitely take some time though, good thing Kim has another exam to study for.

The weekend flew by and so has work so far today. Here is a quick update:

Friday we left work a little early and drove all night. We finally got to Kim’s parents around 2AM and quickly went to bed. I was woken up at 7AM and shortly after we were on our way downtown to run the 5K race. To my disappointment, we were not given timing chips so there is no online record of our times. This was even more disappointing after we finished the race since we all ran less than 8 minute miles. We started off together, but before too long Chris pulled ahead of us. Kim decided she was going to try and keep up with him. I hung back with Chip, even though we were still moving at a pretty quick pace. When the first mile marker read 7:50 I couldn’t believe it. We kept it up though, and finished the race just under the 24 minute mark. I think Chris was close to the 23 minute mark and Kim was just ahead of me and Chip. It was a good run for all of us!

From there we went back to the Hais house to relax for a little bit. Later on that evening we headed over to visit my family. We stayed up a little longer than we probably should have, especially since we got up even earlier the next day to head down and watch my dad run the marathon. I never really went down and watched before, mostly because I was in school and they are typically finished before 11AM. It was a really cool experience though. We stopped at various points along the way to cheer for my dad and Shawna along with anyone else out there. You can check out my mom’s pictures here.

Before we knew it, it was time to get back in the car and head home. We decided to get a hotel in St Louis since we would be getting a late start and didn’t feel like making the drive straight through. We finished off the drive this morning and now I’m back here at work starting off another week.