I apologize for the delay, but I’ve been busy entertaining a couple of friends from high school who are visiting through this coming Sunday. We’ve been eating good so far, including dinner last night at CityGrille and lunch today from Breckenridge Brewery. It was the first time for all of us at CityGrille. I chose it after my friend Ken had his heart stuck on a buffalo burger, which I’m told was very good. Everyone else was also satisfied with their order, so I’ll add this to my list of great places in Denver. Breckenridge Brewery has always been on my list, and was delicious as usual. Ken and Jon should be finishing up their tour of Coors Field shortly, so I better wrap up some work and get back downtown. I’m off the rest of the week and should be busy, so I’ll write more next week.

Last week I headed up to Boulder for a Barrack Obama event. But this wasn’t for political reasons, at least not for me, I headed to the Fox Theatre to hear SoundRabbit play at the event. If I haven’t said it before, the Fox has to be one of the best sounding places I have ever heard, so it was an easy decision for me. Upon arrival I was told that they were at maximum capacity, but would be letting more people in at 9:30. So I patiently waited and finally the crowd mellowed out a little and I was able to get in. I’m not sure if people thought that Barrack was going to be there, and then left disappointed, or if the first musical act was bad, but the crowd definitely had cleared out. By the time I left later in the evening there were probably only a hundred or two folks left in the place. Fortunately, that smallish crowd was very into the SoundRabbit set. I brought my recording gear along and got a great sounding tape as well, so check it out!

Well, crap! My clownfish died over the weekend, lasting only a few days in my tank. He was pretty small and wild caught, which I guess means more prone to and often already having diseases. I’m betting that the store I got him from didn’t quarantine him in their store for very long, and he would have died regardless of what tank he was in, mine or theirs. I checked all of my water parameters and everything seems be be perfectly fine, so this is my only explanation. I guess that’s what I get for trying to save a few bucks on the fish. There are other stores in the area that have higher prices for the same thing, but I know that they are quarantining their fish. The exact date the fish entered the store is often displayed, and they will not sell them for at least a couple of weeks. You get what you pay for, right? I just hope the rest of my tank is okay and that I won’t have any other problems. I’ll probably give it a week or two before I add anything else back into the tank.

It seems like the TV schedule is finally picking up again, at least a little bit. I guess this writers’ strike is affecting more than I ever would have thought. One thing that it can’t control is American Idol, which is currently showing the tryouts which will kick off another season of the show. These are the episodes full of terrible singers and weird people. It’s entertaining but I can’t wait for the real show to start.

Another show that is back on is Chuck. After the first season of the show was over, I wasn’t sure if it would last only that season and then be canceled. Fortunately, those thoughts were way off. I’m not sure why the writers’ strike isn’t taking its toll on this show, but I’m glad to see it back on the air!

Are there any others worth mentioning?

A live recording of mine is currently being featured on the Live Music Podcast. The recording chosen is Will Hoge from 02.02.2007 live at the Trilogy Lounge in Boulder. The entry says that the show was on February 3rd, but looking back on it, I made a mistake and it was actually the 2nd. Oh well, that’s not really important. What is important is that you check this out and be sure to check back often for other podcasts.

Play Podcast (.mp3)

I added another fish to my tank today, a clownfish. I always have wanted one of these fish, and now I finally have one. The Clownfish was the winner of the poll from a couple of weeks ago, so it was an easy decision at the store. It looks like some people liked the Royal Gramma as well, so maybe I’ll get one of those sometime. I still have room for at least one more fish, but I’m taking my time adding to the tank.

The Cardinalfish from before is still doing well in the tank. He’s a little shy, but is slowly coming out from his hiding spot more and more. I also have five of the original six hermit crabs roaming around the tank. One of them disappeared early on, and I’m still not sure what happened to him. These little guys took out my snails that I initially bought with them. They are quite feisty and have big appetites. So I added another snail last week. This one is bigger than the others were and it seems to be able to escape from the crabs, at least so far. I’ll try to get some updated pictures soon.

I had another hockey game last night, and this time was even better than the outing last week. During warm-ups I could tell that my ankle was feeling even better than last week. This is a trend that I hope continues. In the game I scored both the second and third goals for our team, helping us achieve a 5-4 win over some good competition. Our winning steak is now up to six games, and we are finally playing really well. And we are going to need to continue playing well if the streak is to continue next week, when we face-off with the top team in the league.

Our first trip to Steamboat was a huge success! I’m convinced that it never stops snowing there, although we did see some blue skies as we drove away yesterday morning. Not that constant snow is necessarily a bad thing at all. According to the snow reports, they had 10+ inches of snow over the two days we were out on the slopes. That’s in addition to the over 250 inches they’ve already had this season. Needless to say, the conditions were great!

We stayed in the Scandinavian Lodge, which was nicely furnished and really close to the slopes. It is sometimes advertised as ski-out, but that’s only true if you count the narrow trail from the parking lot that weaves between other condos and lots of trees, not to mention the street that you must cross. However, one of the lifts is less than 200 yards away and an easy walk to/from the condo.

With my ankle feeling better with each passing day, and the awesome conditions, I finally felt comfortable doing a few jumps here and there. Here’s a quick video that Kim captured of my adventures. As you can tell, she was a little surprised by how close I got to her.

Kim also took some pictures from our trip, which can be viewed here.

Gotta love half days! I’m outta here for the weekend. Our friend Tracey is in town, along with her brother, and we are heading to Steamboat. There will be no update tomorrow as I will be out on the slopes enjoying the “champagne powder” as they call it. Have a nice weekend.

I played hockey for the first time in awhile last night, over a month in fact. I don’t think that I had any points, although I kind of remember assisting one of the goals, but maybe it was one that we should have had. The most important thing was that I was able to play and not injure myself again. I had a little bit of pain in the ankle, but as the game went on it got better. I’m hoping that I can continue to strengthen my ankle more and more with each passing week. As far as my team goes, we are quite a winning streak, five games to be exact. This brings our record to 9-5 which puts us tied for third place in the league out of eight teams. I’ll take it!