After work on Friday we met up with Maria and her boyfriend, who was visiting from Chicago. Amanda also met up with us at George Brett’s for dinner and drinks. It was a nice and fairly relaxing night.

Kim woke up early on Saturday to catch a flight to Charlotte, where she will be for most of the week. I slept in and drove down to Wichita later in the afternoon. I hung out with Steve Christy at his place for awhile. Later in the night we went out to a couple of bars and observed all the freaks in costumes.

I made the long and boring drive back to KC early on Sunday afternoon. By the time I got back, it was almost time for my hockey game. I finally got to play forward again, but maybe I would have been better on defense. We probably would have lost regardless.

Not a terribly exciting weekend, but it felt like a busy one.

So we skipped the last dance class last night. Both Kim and I were supposed to head to the Virginia Coalition show instead. Kim didn’t get enough studying done throughout the week, so she opted to stay in a finish up. I thought a few other friends would be coming along to fill up the 4 guest list spots that I had, but the only one who came through was Courtney. Thanks to my buddy Scott for hooking us all up anyway.

VACO was opening for G Love in a brand new venue at Harrah’s called the VooDoo Lounge. In fact, VACO was the first band to ever play on the stage. The venue itself is incredible, which I sort of expected given that it is part of a casino. The sound was good and the crowd was mediocre. It started getting fairly full towards the end of our night, which was before G Love even hit the stage. Due to conflicting start times from ticketmaster, the show was delayed for quite some time. Regardless, VACO put on a great show and definitely earned some new fans. I cannot wait until the next time I get to see them headline a show, who knows when that will ever be though.

I hope this venue markets itself well enough to pull in some decent shows. It actually fills a hole in Kansas City for medium sized venues in the 1000+ person range. There is the Beaumont Club, but I have really grown to hate that place. Besides that dump, I cannot think of another venue around this size. The only downer is that it is north of the river, much further than the rest of the venues in the area. I look forward to seeing another show at the VooDoo Lounge.

I spent another night at Charlie Hoopers last night. A couple of the guys from work were heading up there once again for import night. Kim stayed home so she could study for an upcoming insurance test. If you remember from the last time I went up there, a couple weeks ago, I did a tour of England. Well this time I decided to move the tour over a little bit to the west. The land of choice was The Netherlands, although I think their menu labeled it as Holland (which I’ve learned is just a province of The Netherlands).

First on the menu was Grolsch, which I may or may not have had before. Not a bad beer, pretty similar to Heineken, which is also from the area. I did really enjoy the bottle top though! From there I tried a Bavaria. This wasn’t a bad beer, but nothing really stood out to me. That left either Heinken or Amstel Light. I had to go with the rabbit’s namesake and drink the Amstel. This is one of my favorite light beers ever, so it was a nice way to top off the night.

In site news, as my mom pointed out in yesterday’s comments, I put some pictures up of us carving pumpkins with Dominique and Bianca.

Last night was another volleyball night. This time around we faced off with the Wounded Ducks, a team that lost all three games last week. I wish that was the case again last night, but we were short a player and ended up going 1-2. Both Christie and Ashley are in Cincinnati for one of the GAIC Classes and we couldn’t find a replacement.

The third game was our worst last week, and it was our best this week. I guess it took us that long to figure out how to play with only five people. The 15 minute time limit per game really hurts us as well, since none of the games last night actually ended with the 25 points needed. On a good note, my body doesn’t hurt nearly as bad this week as it did last.

Our overall record is now 2-4 and we are tied for seventh place with the team we lost to last night.

Work has been very busy lately. Sorry about the lack of substantial blogging. Hopefully everything that needs to go into the next release of our software is done by the end of the week, leaving me time to entertain the masses.

Last night was my second time working from home, and it went smoothly enough. I finished up just in time to leave for my late night hockey game. I guess the 9:20 start time was too late for most of the other team and the ended up with only 6 players. We took advantage of this and won 8-0. We are back on a winning streak!

I’m back on the winning side of things in my fantasy football leagues as well. I didn’t go 3-0, but 2-1 is better than last week’s performance. I’m anticipating another 3-0 week coming up, as long as most of my players return to a healthy status. My current overall record is now 15-6.

After work on Friday I met up with pretty much everyone who I ever mention on here, most of whom were already out celebrating Kim’s promotion and another Friday evening. We watched the Chiefs game at the Brooksider and then later hit up Bobby Baker’s to round out the night.

Saturday started a little earlier than I would have liked, but it was worth it. We picked up Dominique and Bianca and brought them over to our place. We made some lunch and then carved the pumpkins we bought last weekend. I never realized how tough the carving actually was. I’ll have to remember to get some pictures up soon.

From there we hit up Susan’s fish fry for a couple of hours with Mike and his visitor from out of town, Chrissie. It was a nice excuse to make some skyline dip and then try to eat all of it. Eventually we had to get back to our place for the Shaking Tree pre-party. My buddy Steve Christy was coming up from Wichita, along with a girl who is dating the drummer. Courtney also joined in the party, as did Steve’s brother Jeff and our friend Maria.

The show was good, although by the time it started most of us were getting pretty tired from a very long day. It was nice to finally get out to another show though. After the show was over, we had almost everyone mentioned earlier back at the apartment and when I woke up the next morning they were all still there, covering most of the floor.

Sunday I watched football over at Mike’s. He’s got the “sunday ticket” package, so we could watch whatever we wanted. I wasn’t happy with most of the results though, I don’t think Mike was either. From there we ran an errand or two and then I was off to my hockey game. I thought I played pretty well, especially since I was playing defense again, but my passing could have been better. I’m still trying to adjust to my new stick I guess. We lost the game, but have another game tonight. Hopefully we can get back on a winning streak.

Last night was our third (and maybe final) dance class. I know that both Todd and Christie will not be attending next week because they will both be out of town. We might have other plans for next Wednesday and honestly I feel like I’m finished with it. It was fun while it lasted, but I’ve learned all the dance steps that I want to learn.

Anyway, last night we did a quick review of everything that we’ve learned so far, electric slide, reggae cowboy, blue rose and cowboy stomp, and then attempted to learn two more dances. These two dances are called the twenty step and the cowboy cha-cha. I could have had another night of just doing the four previous dances since I still haven’t mastered those.

What am I complaining about? It’s not like I plan to ever actually use any of these moves. Well unless I’m at a wedding reception and the beers are flowing. I really doubt you’ll ever see me at a country bar, unless I’m bribed into it and, as I mentioned earlier, the beers are flowing.

I’m not sure if I mentioned this before or not, but a couple of months ago I created a website header and layout for Doni’s parents trophy company. They had an idea of what they wanted it to look like, so it wasn’t really that hard, but I think it turned out nice. I guess I should put a screenshot and link to it in the websites section.

Anyway, I went over Doni and Phil’s last night to help out in putting the finishing touches on kingwoodtrophies.com. Before we started working we had dinner from Chipotle along with some salsas from New Mexico. By the end my mouth was really burning, so we required a few Boulevard Wheat’s to put the flame out. Then the work began. All we really needed to do was put an order form on the site, which didn’t take too long at all.

For now we are using form-mail.com to process the forms for us since we have not figured out how to run sendmail on a Windows PC. I’m not sure how nerdy my audience is, but if anyone has any suggestions on sendmail please let me know.

As if we didn’t already have enough going on, we now have another evening activity to keep us busy. Last night was the first game for ‘Dig This’ our new co-ed volleyball team. Our roster includes Kim, Mike, Christie, Ashley, Mike’s buddy Jim and of course myself.

We battled it out with the Banchees last night, splitting the first two games pretty evenly. Our team fell apart in the fourth game though, perhaps this was due to our burning thighs. I never realized how much squatting is required in volleyball. I think we’ll have a really good team in the end, we just need a little more practice.

We are currently tied with another team for 6th place. Here’s a link to the schedule and standings.

This weeks fantasy football results were a bit of a disappointment. I only won one game and lost the other two. One of the losses was in the league with Kim, my brother, Doni, etc. There were a couple of catastrophic events that really hurt my team this week. First Deuce McAllister getting put on the injured reserve was a blow, but the other backs I have on my team have picked it up. Marc Bulger then got injured last night, which also was bad news for Torry Holt, who is also on my team. Overall, it didn’t lose by too many points, and my opponent had the highest point total this week in the entire league.

As for my other loss, I’m not sure this team can recover. My receivers scored zero points combined, including the two who are on my bench. Houshmandzadeh’s injury has been hurting me for a couple of weeks, so I had to find some other options. The best I can find in the league are Brandon Lloyd and Chris Henry, Houshmandzadeh’s replacement. Lloyd was on a bye week and Henry “hung a fantasy doughnut on the board with only one catch for five yards,” as Yahoo put it. The final blow involved the lone receiver I thought I could count on, Randy Moss. In case you didn’t know, he got injured this weekend and missed most of the game and maybe more. The rest of my team did really well, but I am in serious trouble if I don’t find a receiver fast.

Oh yeah, this takes my FF record to 13-5, which is still pretty good.

Last night was the first time that I worked from home. Let me tell you how exciting it was. So far it looks like I didn’t mess anything up, so that’s always a plus. I cannot wait for next Monday, when I get to do this again.