Good news at the end of this crazy busy week, my application for our company’s telecommuting program has finally been approved! What does this mean? Simply that I will once again be allowed to work from home just as I was doing since we moved to Denver until a month or two ago. I’m not sure why it took so long to get approved as I was working from home full time before, but this time the approval did have to go beyond our small work group.

Unfortunately it’s not a full time telecommute this time, now I will only be permitted to work two days from home and then the rest of my time is spent in the office. We haven’t settled on the days yet, but I know that Friday’s are likely out of the question. We have a weekly meeting that day and my boss really likes us to be in as few locations as possible. So I’m leaning towards Monday instead, and then I can hopefully get Tuesday as well. We’ll see, as I mentioned my boss is on vacation this week, so I may have to wait another week before anything is finalized.

As I mentioned earlier, the first stop of our honeymoon is in Cannes where we are also planning to see Monte Carlo and Nice. The second stop of our trip takes us to port town on the western coast of Italy called Livorno. Just like with Cannes, I don’t think there is much to see or do in Livorno so I am planning some self exploration of a couple other cities.

First we will take the train out to Florence, the capital of Italian Renaissance. I think it would be easy to fill multiple days with the number of things there are to do in this city, so we’ll have to pick and choose what we do. I definitely want to see the Santa Maria del Fiore, known as the Duomo, which is the domed cathedral. There are also a few other sites nearby that are likely worth seeing.

Florence also has many museums, of which the most popular are the Uffizi Gallery and the Accademia dell’Arte del Disegno. The Uffizi is said to be one of the most famous galleries in the world, likely just behind the Louvre in Paris. I’ve heard that lines can be terrible here, but I’ve found a site to reserve tickets online. However, I’m not sure Kim and I are artsy enough to enjoy it. Has anyone been before? The Accademia houses Michelangelo’s David sculpture and can also been swarmed with crowds. Tickets can also be bought in advance, so these are still up in the air.

Once we’ve seen as much of Florence as we can squeeze into an afternoon, we’ll take the train back towards Livorno with a stop in Pisa along the way. Just from the name of the city it should be obvious that the goal here is to see the Leaning Tower, and hopefully climb to the top of it. There are also a few other surrounding structures that I’ve read are worth visiting. However this stop will not be nearly as long as the time spent in Florence, and once were done here it is back to the ship and onto the next destination…

Our second game of summer hockey went better than the first, but it still provided another loss for our team. This time it was just a 6-5 loss, and we easily could have won the game if we played the whole game like we did in the third period. I scored one of our five goals and likely should have had an assist or two. I’m sure once we all adjust to playing with each other we will start doing well. Hopefully some more things start clicking in our next game.

This is going to be a busy week. My boss is on vacation and I’ll be covering many of his tasks for the week. I’m hoping that it won’t be as bad as it has been before when he took extended vacation, since there is another individual in the office who will be doing some tasks, but I guess only time will tell. So far it’s been a really busy day.

Our Memorial Day labor day weekend (I always mix the two up) was good though. We were back in Cincinnati for the wedding of one of Kim’s cousins. Kim was a bridesmaid in the wedding and we’ve known her cousins husband for awhile as well, so it was nice to attend their big day. And since a good number of her extended family was there it gave us a little taste of what our wedding will be like. Everyone better get their dancing shoes out and be ready to swing all the way into party mode! I took some pictures throughout the day and I hope to get them online sometime soon. I’ll be sure to post a link.

I just read that my beloved Frontier Airlines is going to start charging for the second piece of checked luggage, just as United has already done. Personally, I think it’s a dumb move as the free luggage could be viewed by some as a reason to fly Frontier over United. It won’t matter to either Kim or me as we are both ascent level members, which will retain the second piece for free, but overall I don’t really agree with this decision.

At least we don’t have to use American, which is now charging for any checked luggage. And I guess we better get used to these additional charges, as this is likely just the beginning. If gas continues to rise the airlines are forced into finding new ways to make additional money. There will be no more free food, though a bag of peanuts hardly counts as food. I heard one analyst say that it could go so far as to start charging people for their seat based on their weight!

Last night, Kim resumed playing volleyball over in Wash Park. Her and a small group of friends played in a league at the park last summer, and they are back at it again this year. Since I don’t consider myself to be very good at volleyball, and that whole ankle injury thing, I don’t play but I have resumed my role as team coach. This role is also known as the guy who sits on the side and drinks beer the whole time. I encourage everyone to try it, it really is a good time!

I attend my first Rockies game of the season last night, along with Kim and some of her coworkers. We sat in the row of purple seats that is exactly one mile high, and enjoyed a relatively exciting game especially toward the end. With the team’s record currently at 18-28, a win is not something to be expected, but we were all hoping for one. Going into the ninth inning the Giants were up 4-3 and they added a couple more runs. Many people left the game thinking it was over, but the Rockies quickly added two run in the bottom of the ninth. Even though they still ended up losing 6-5, it was quite an exciting finish. Hopefully I’ll be able to catch more games as the season goes along.

Sunday morning we found a new coffee shop that is walking distance from our house called Wash Perk at 853 East Ohio Ave. Both Kim and I had a big cup of their coffee of the day and we split a couple of croissants and a piece of coffee cake. We enjoyed all of this from the spacious outdoor patio with a large group of others gathered on neighboring tables. It was the perfect little start to our day, which soon included walking all around town for a total of seven miles. I guess Kim was a little jealous of the five mile hike I took the day before, and wanted to some walking of her own. It was a nice way to spend a Sunday though, that’s for sure.

Saturday morning I went for a hike with a small group of people from work. The guy who put it all together is a very experienced hiker, and he has created a program for the summer culminating with a hike of Mount Elbert, one of the many 14,000 foot peaks in Colorado. Though I don’t think I’ll be able to attend any of the other group hikes, I am hoping to hike a bunch this summer, including at least one 14er. So his knowledge will definitely help when I have any questions arise.

Back to Saturday, we hiked on the Ben Tyler trail for around 5 miles round-trip. As this was the first hike in the series, it’s the easiest on the schedule, but still provided enough challenges to make it interesting. The toughest thing that I found was hiking on the snow that we encountered. We crossed over a creek, around our halfway mark, and onto a north facing slope. This was still covered in snow and quite slippery as you could imagine. It was a great first hike filled with varying terrain. I can’t wait to get back out in the coming weekends.

Today is a big day for Kim. She is scheduled to have LASIK surgery in just over an hour from now. I know how excited she is for this, and I couldn’t be happier that she is finally having it done. She’s been saying to me the past day, “This is the last time you’ll see me with glasses on at 8AM,” or whatever time it happened to be. Keep your fingers crossed for an easy surgery and recovery.