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.

Friday night started out with a high school football game. I’ve wanted to catch one since I’ve been out here, but I guess we usually have plans on Friday nights. Anyway, a group of us went out to see Rockhurst beat up on Todd’s Alma Mater Liberty. Rockhurst is an all male catholic high school, just like my high school. Todd added that Rockhurst is probably the best team in the city. Good to see the catholic schools ruling another city. :)

From there most of us headed back to our place, where our visitors from Cincinnati were finally arriving. For the rest of the night we sat around our place and caught up on everything.

Saturday we started off the day pretty early, walked around both the Plaza and
Westport. Between shops we caught the end of the Buckeyes game, good to see them pull out the victory. For lunch we headed to Oklahoma Joe’s BBQ. I’ve heard about this place many times before, but this was my first time there. It will definitely not be the last, great stuff. The atmosphere is great, you eat your food right in the middle of a gas station. Their sauce is delicious!

Later in the night we all headed to Amanda’s moving out party. None of us had ever been inside of her place before, and when we finally did it will likely be the last time. She is moving way out to the suburbs sometime next month. The party was a good one though. To end the night we headed to George Brett’s since all the other bars were packed.

Bobbi and Eric left our place after we had some breakfast. From there Kim and I picked up the littles and headed out to Faulkner’s Pumpkin Farm. It was a bunch of fun, the only down side was that you didn’t actually go to the pumpkin patch. I wish I would have taken the camera, there were lots of photo opportunities.

That pretty much sums it all up. I played a hockey game later on Sunday night, but we lost and only had seven guys playing. We are now 1-1, with two games next week.

This morning Kim got promoted to Senior Underwriter, so congratulations to her!

We had dance class again last night, yipeee! We not only mastered the blue rose, which can be a couple’s dance, but also learned the cowboy stomp. Kim and I did pretty well with the blue rose, while Christie and Maria spent most of the time deciding who would do the guy parts. Todd skipped out on lessons this week to play tennis, weak!

From there we all just hung out at our apartment for awhile. Nothing terribly exciting to report about that. Hopefully I’ll have some better stories after the weekend. We do have visitors coming! Kim’s sister Bobbi and their cousin Eric are driving to KC as I’m writing this. They have both visited at least once before, so we’ll have to find some other things to do this time around.

Last night we, along with Christie, met up with some people from my office at Charlie Hoopers in Brookside. The occasion was import night, which features lots of good beers for $2 a bottle. More expensive beers are still given a significant discount, so overall the price is definitely right.

I did my own little tour of England. I started out with Young’s Double Chocolate Stout, a beer I had drank before but Shawn, one of the guys I work with, was already drinking one and it looked good. From there I moved on to Old Peculier, which was a very nice surprise, probably my favorite of the night. I then had a Boddingtons, which I thought I had before, but overall I wasn’t that impressed. Finally I topped the night off with a Newcastle, one of my favorite beers of all time.

It was a great night out, and hopefully we are going to do this again in a couple of weeks.