I doubt that I have to tell you this, but we have still been very busy with the house. We have made great progress in the last week and I think we have about 80 or 90 percent of the boxes emptied. One big thing left to do is get our closets and clothes organized. It will take some work, but hopefully we can get through that by the end of the week.

I ran into one very funky problem over the weekend. We were trying to replace the locks so that the same key would work for the front and back door. Unfortunately this was not the case when we moved in. In fact, we weren’t even given a key that worked for the front door at all! The problem I faced was the lock on the front door had some one way screws on it. These are the screws that go in just like normal, but cannot be removed (at least not easily). After messing with it for an hour and searching for advice from my dad along with the Internet, I stumbled upon a suggestion to use a center punch and a hammer to tap it loose. This method worked brilliantly and we now have matching locks on our doors.

Finally, a little commentary on the weather. It appears to be warming up a little bit, and I can see signs of grass for the first time since we moved to Denver. That’s right, over two weeks without a grass spotting! Just look at how much snow was still on the ground over the weekend. Despite the heat wave, we successfully built our first fire last night. I think Kim is addicted because she is already planning to build another one tonight.

We headed back to the Pepsi Center over the weekend for a Colorado Mammoth lacrosse game. The Mammoth play in an indoor lacrosse league, which combines aspects of hockey and basketball into the outdoor version of the game. The games are played in a hockey rink with the ice covered by turf. Each team plays with five men at at time plus one goalie. There is a 10 second backcourt violation and 30 second shot clock, like basketball. All of this adds up to one intense, high scoring game!

On Saturday night, the Mammoth battled the Buffalo Bandits. The last time these teams met was in last year’s championship game, which the Mammoth won. It was obviously a big game for both teams, as the physical play was abundant. I was literally on the edge of my seat for most of the game, especially towards the end.

The game was tied 10-10 at the end of regulation. For the remainder of the game I don’t think anyone used their seat anymore. The Mammoth scored first in the sudden death overtime period to win the game, 11-10. The game drew 16,523 noisy fans, which surprised me. I wasn’t expecting it to be that popular, but by the end I can understand why there are so many fans. It was well worth the $5 ticket price!

Just a quick update on the house, before I return there to wait for the cable guy. We spent most of last night organizing the kitchen and taking all of the cups, utensils, pots, pans, etc. out of the boxes and putting them into drawers and cabinets. Things are really starting to come together, at least in the kitchen. I’m sure we’ll be spending a bunch more time this weekend organizing other rooms of the house. Hopefully we can have the majority of the boxes emptied by this time next week.

I’ve posted some additional pictures on flickr, and I hope to add more after the weekend.

Kim took me to Wahoo’s Fish Tacos last night. She had eaten there before on prior trips to Denver, but this would be my first time. Despite the name of the restaurant, they have a wide variety of food both with fish and without. At first glance, it looks like a fairly typical fast food Mexican restaurant but with a side of surf culture. The walls (and other surfaces) are covered with stickers and logos of various brands of surf, skateboard, and even snowboard gear.

The food is a unique mix of Mexican, Brazilian, and Asian flavors and dishes. I had some spicy chicken soft tacos and Kim had a veggie bowl with spicy white Cajun beans. We also had some complimentary chips and salsa! All of the food tasted great and we washed it all down with a couple of beers. I’m not sure that I will ever try the fish tacos, but I do think I’ll be back soon and next time I’ll have a burrito.

In addition to snowboarding this past weekend, we also saw the Avalanche. No, not the one that hit US-40, we attended our first Colorado Avalanche hockey game against the Tampa Bay Lightning. This was my first NHL regular season game since seeing the Columbus Blue Jackets years ago with my family. I must say that I miss watching a good hockey game live and in person. The Avs won, 4-2, and I even got to see Joe Sakic score! I look forward to going to many more Avalanche games. I also hope to make it out to some Mammoth and Pioneer games. Anyone have any free tickets?

It’s official, we are now second time home owners! Late yesterday we finally closed on the house I talked about long. Our furniture was delivered today and therefore we’ll be pretty busy the next week or so. It’s nice to have all the worries and troubles out of the way. I’m finally really excited about the house once again!

I do have one more issue to figure out, cable service. Fortunately Time Warner doesn’t exist here, but unfortunately Comcast does. So far I’m not sure which is worse. Anyway, I’m pretty sure we’ll end up with digital cable package and DVR. So the question now remains, what about internet service? It appears that they try to get you to lease your modem for $3/month, at least Time Warner gave you one to use for free. So now I’m thinking of buying my own cable modem, the Motorola SURFBoard SB5101 or SB5120. Does anyone own either of these? Once I get that, the service should be pretty good. Their standard connection is 6 Mbps and you can pay $10 extra for 8 Mbps. I’m still undecided on that as well. I better make up my mind soon as my home office depends on it.

We headed out yesterday for our first snowboard outing of the season. This is after collectively spending over $500 on new equipment in the couple of days prior. Needless to say, we were ready and very excited to head out! We decided on Keystone, since we’ve heard that A-Basin is very difficult and Breckridge tends to be the most “touristy” and thus the most crowded.

As an added bonus, we went to Keystone a couple of years ago and were already a little familiar with the mountain, or should I say mountains. When driving there the first time, we took the Loveland Pass, but this time that route was closed and we went through the Eisenhower Tunnel and Dillon, Colorado. This route feels safer than through the Loveland Pass and possibly a little faster.

The time spent on the mountains was great! The mountains got a little snow on Saturday so there was some good powder and many groomed trails. I love my new board and new boots. The bindings leave a little to be desired, but they might be replaced soon anyway. Kim got some new boots and bindings for her board and for the first time went the whole day without severe pain and discomfort in her feet! The day ended when after a short break inside we attempted to get going again only to find that a small piece on one of my bindings was gone. Instead of risking injury, we took the gondola back down to the car and called it a day.

Earlier in the day we had heard about the traffic going back to Denver on Sunday. We decided to stay in Keystone for an extra hour to have some dinner and hopefully the traffic congestion would clear up by then. I’m not sure if it was any better earlier in the day, but we still ended up in bad traffic. It took us over an hour to drive the six or seven miles back to the Eisenhower Tunnel after getting on I-70. It got a little better after the tunnel, but we rarely went over 40 or 50 mph. The winds that were tearing through the mountains definitely were not helping. I think next weekend we’ll try a Saturday trip instead. Despite the traffic problems, it was a great first day!

Dillon on Dwellable

You may have noticed that the photos section of the site is currently down. I won’t bore you with too many details, but usually my site is hosted on one of my computers at home. Well this particular computer is currently on a truck somewhere and for all I know it could be in Mexico someplace. During the move I am hosting my site from my buddy Aaron’s webserver. To make my long story short, I couldn’t get all of my picture data onto his server quick enough, so I decided to disable it for the move.

This situation presented a problem for me, as I wanted to share some pictures that Kim took during our 600 mile drive from Kansas City to Denver. Using my quick thinking, I decided to give flickr a try. I know tons of people who currently use flickr and it still appears to be one of the most popular choices for photo sharing. So far I must admit that the service is very easy to use. I don’t know if I could ever make the switch over from hosting my own gallery software on my server, but if I did I think flickr would be on the top of my list.

Anyway, I’ve successfully added 18 pictures from our drive for your viewing pleasure.

I ordered an item from RoadID.com for my dad for Christmas on the 13th of December. Why am I bringing it up now? Because it still hasn’t arrived! At the time of purchase I opted to pay extra for USPS Priority Mail service which should have delivered it between the 20th and 21st. The item was shipping from one suburb of Cincinnati to another, so I didn’t think there would be any problems with regular mail, but I wanted to be sure it was on time.

My choice obviously backfired, and since shortly after Christmas I’ve been in constant contact with the people at RoadID. According to them the delay is all the postal services fault, as the item shipped on the 18th. Even with standard mail service the item should have shown up by now, so is the package lost? They are asking that I wait until next Wednesday, the 10th, and hopefully it will show up by then. We’ll see…

After work and a quick run, we took advantage of the free happy hour at the hotel last night. Once we had a couple of drinks, we decided to follow the advice of the bartender and head over to Lil’ Ricci’s Pizzeria for dinner. I’m glad we did, the food was great! I would especially recommend their white pizza. We had the veggie combo (without black olives) on New York style think crust with half red and half white sauce. Many of you may know that I’m sort of a picky eater. Well if you look at the menu you will notice that the pizza had mushrooms on it, and I ate it! I’m even having the leftovers for lunch today. The new year is already bringing change…