We started our first home project yesterday by staining the deck on the back of the house. In this picture you should be able to see the deck and the difference between the left and right sides of it. Sometime before we bought the house a new section of lattice (the furthest left) and a handrail was added. Obviously the new wood looks funny next to the old untreated deck wood. We decided that staining the entire deck would help blend the old and new as well protect the whole thing. So far I think we are about half way done but a bunch of the lattice is left and that is the hardest to do. It’s so hard that I’m considering removing the bottom lattice sections and attempting to clean up underneath the deck, though that might be considered a project of its own.

The World Cup has been going on for about a week now and this is the first time I’ve mentioned it. I guess this goes right along with most American’s interest in soccer. Sure, I was a soccer phenom back when I was five, but I had to give it up to concentrate on hockey full time. This is opposite of Happy Gilmore who needed to “give that shit up and concentrate on golf.”

I have been trying to keep up to date on the events of this World Cup though. It can be very hard to do this when all of the games are during the day while I am at work, but just like everything else you can keep track of things online. Trinidad and Tobago is currently playing in their second World Cup game ever. They qualified for the tournament for the first time this year. They are now tied with England at half time. One of our clients is actually a TV station in Trinidad and Tobago and we were supposed to update their software earlier this week. This was delayed by a request from the station, and I’m wondering if it has anything to do with their “football” team. Many countries are crazy about their teams, especially when it comes to the World Cup.

Obviously I’m sure everyone has heard about the US loss to the Czech Republic by now. Many Americans are already giving up on the team, but I’m holding out hope. If everything goes as planned I’ll be watching my first World Cup game of ’06 on TV when we go head to head against Italy on Saturday at 3PM eastern.

I’ve been playing a bunch of tennis lately and I’m actually starting to get better and enjoy it. About once a week I’ll get together after work with some people from work and head to a nearby high school where the courts are almost always open. Some of my coworkers are definitely better than me, but just volleying back and forth with them is a big help.

Last night we played for two hours. We even played a little doubles match that ended in a 6-6 tie. We’ll have to pick it up from there next week to find out who the office champs are.

I’m even thinking about getting my own racquet and one for Kim too, especially since our gym is primarily a tennis club. Instead of doing all of that running in the morning maybe I can convince her that we should be playing tennis. It’s worth a shot.

I mowed the new yard for the first time last night. I would have said that I cut the grass, but it’s more like cutting down the fast growing variety of weeds. Previously Kim has done this task and I’m now gonna give her some credit. It looks much easier than it really is. The main problem is getting to those hard to reach areas, which would be much easier with a weed eater. Luckily Kim showed up with one of these last night, a gift from Phil and Doni. The only problem is that it is slightly broken and not usable. I hope to take it to a store in the next couple of days to see if it is fixable. Then after that our only problem will be getting grass to grow instead of all of these weeds.

I’m back at work, still a little tired but clean shaven and no longer covered in dirt. Overall Wakarusa was a great time and I wouldn’t complain if I was still there. Things were not so great when we approached the festival. We avoided lines at the police checkpoint because my buddy Steve had a K-Tag, but that’s where our luck ran out. We than sat in the car for about an hour and a half waiting to get through the festival gates. It got even worse when we arrived at will call to find another line of people waiting for their tickets. We waited for another hour or so but it was all worth it when we were given our press passes for the weekend! Our friends from Virginia Coalition hooked us up with guest-list spots to the festival which resulted in our press passes.

Unfortunately all of this waiting forced us to miss VACO’s first set, but we were able to see them the next day for what they said was a better set anyway. We also missed Will Hoge’s set, which is probably my biggest disappointment of the weekend. Anyway, we arrived at our campsite sometime between four and five hours after leaving Kansas City. From there we spent some time sweating while setting up camp. Later in the night we enjoyed sets from 56 Hope Road and Grace Potter and the Nocturnals, among others. We quickly realized that our press passes were not only good for prime viewing access in the VIP areas but also allowed us to enjoy some drinks for free.

We hung around the campsite for a few hours early on Friday and later caught up with Virginia Coalition as I mentioned before. I think the couple hundred people under the tent would agree with me when I say that their set sounded great! They took advantage of playing in-front of a jam band crowd by doing more improvising than I had seen from them before. Other highlights from the day included Jake Shimabukuro, a solo acoustic performance by Michael Franti and of course Robert Randolph and the Family Band.

Saturday morning again came earlier than I would have liked. It’s hard to sleep in your tent when it turns into a sauna once the sun rises. We spent some time swimming in the lake in an attempt to avoid the inescapable heat. It definitely helped but eventually it was time to get back to the music. I was especially impressed by both Assembly of Dust and Tea Leaf Green. It’s also nice to be able to say that I have seen The Flaming Lips and their incredibly interesting stage show.

After waking up various times throughout Saturday night’s storm, I finally popped out of the tent to see my recently purchased canopy broken into pieces on the ground. I guess a $20 purchase is too good to be true. The nice thing was that the storms actually cooled everything off, at least long enough for us to pack up the car. We decided to go ahead and get it all done before it got hot again, and I’m glad that we did. Just an hour or so later we were once again sweating while enjoying bands like ALO and MOFRO not to mention another solo performance, this time from Bela Fleck!

As I said before, the festival was an awesome event that I believe was even better than last year. Many people were/are complaining about the increase in security throughout the weekend, but that never affected me personally. I do think that the “shakedown street” from last years festival was much better, but that could be just my late night cravings for grilled cheese talking. The food from Ahli Baba’s Kabob Shop out of Burlington, VT did a good job at making up for it though. Now that I have a small taste of the VIP experience, I’m pretty much convinced that is the way to go. Sure the ticket price is expensive, but it includes the prime viewing spots, unlimited drinks including New Belgium beer, and to top it all off you get catered meals. Basically it allows you to experience the best of the festival with having even less things to worry about. Perhaps next year…

In about an hour my work week will be over. I’m going to spend the next four days or so as a hippie at Wakarusa. It looks like the weather is going to be dry and hot for the weekend but at least it shouldn’t rain. There are tons of good bands playing throughout the weekend, so come on out if you want. Day passes can be bought for $50 and that allows you to camp for that night. I’m heading out to the park today and will have a camping area all setup. It’s gonna be a blast!

If you didn’t already notice, I added pictures for both the wedding in Greensboro and our trip to Minneapolis and St. Paul. Some of the wedding pictures turned out okay, mainly because of where we were sitting in the church, but as you’ll see I still need to work on my low lighting from a distance photography skills. Most of the pictures from Minnesota are outside and thus much cleaner. Maybe one day I’ll upgrade cameras to something a little more powerful…

The Stanley Cup Finals started off with an exciting Game 1 last night. I watched bits and pieces of the first couple of periods and tuned in for the majority of the third. If you didn’t watch here’s a brief recap of what happened. The Edmonton Oilers scored the first three goals of the game to take the early lead. The Carolina Hurricanes finally got on the board midway through the second period and then scored three more in the third to go up 4-3. Edmonton finally scored a power play goal with six and a half minutes to play to tie up the game 4-4.

From there things took a bad turn. The Oilers star goaltender, Dwayne Roloson, was injured about thirty seconds later and was forced to leave the game. Edmonton then had to bring out a cold backup goaltender to finish the game. At that point I was a nervous that they would then lose the game. For the next five minutes or so Edmonton played excellent and their new goalie only faced a shot or two. But then with just over thirty seconds to play in regulation, a bad play behind the goal between the Edmonton goalie and one of their defensemen gave Carolina’s Rod Brind’Amour the puck with an empty net. Brind’Amour’s goal gave Carolina the 5-4 lead and although Edmonton didn’t give up they couldn’t score another last minute goal.

Unfortunately for Edmonton it was announced today that Roloson, their staring goalie, will be out for the remainder of the series. This has to give Carolina a huge advantage going into Game 2, but we can hope that Edmonton rebounds after a mostly evenly played game to make the series an interesting one. Game 2 starts tomorrow night at 8PM eastern on OLN. Having cable is so nice!

I finally made it out to a T-Bones game last night. With the Royals doing as badly as they are (14-20) there’s only one team in town that is worth paying to watch, the T-Bones, and it doesn’t cost much at all. We took Bianca and a friend out to the game and immediately lucked into one free ticket. We then bought three general admission tickets for the game at $5 each. These allow you to sit in any of the grassy areas in the outfield.

CommunityAmerica Ballpark was built a few years ago and is in great condition. The grass areas were very comfortable although they are significantly slopped. We brought in a couple of blankets to sit on and watched from just outside the right field wall. We didn’t see any home-runs last night but we were in the perfect spot to catch one if we would have.

They love giving things away at these games. At various times when one of the opponents was up to bat they would offer a prize to a particular section of the crowd if the he struck out. Talk about rooting for the home team! Even though the T-Bones lost the game 4-2 it was still a good time. Hopefully we can go to another game sometime soon. I wish I didn’t already have plans for the 24th because I’d love to go to the “Redneck Wine and Cheese Festival.”

Without a bar in the house we’ve been forced to keep our rather large collection of booze on a bookshelf in the kitchen. We’ve even managed to fill the bookshelf beyond it’s limits. So last night I decided to use some of the liquor for my cooking. I found a recipe for a bourbon chicken marinade online that appeared to be right up our alley. I had to make a few modifications since we appear to be out of garlic powder and I didn’t have dried minced onion. Instead I used about half a clove of regular garlic and about one tbsp of garlic powder.

I fired up the grill for the first time this summer and cooked some potatoes on there as well. I also steamed some broccoli to go along with the meat and potatoes. Everything was very tasty, especially the chicken. The marinade smelled a little strong on the bourbon, but the taste was just right after cooking. Next time I want to let the marinade sit on the meat a little longer, but that’s about all I would change.