Sunday Kim and I headed to City Park for our first ever City Park Jazz concert.  We had often heard about this weekly event during the summer, but always seemed to forget about it or have something else going on.  This past Sunday would be different.  A friend of ours mentioned that she was heading that way while we were with her on Saturday, and we promised to show up.  Around five on Sunday we hopped on our bikes and headed toward City Park.  We arrived a little after the concert had already started and immediately were blown away by the number of people there.  I had expected a bunch of people, but the odd stage configuration left little prime viewing places.  Therefore it was odd to see people sprawled to all ends of the park, out of site of the band, and often out of range to even hear the music.

Before finding any of our friends, we enjoyed a couple of songs from the Manuel Lopez Trio.  Kim also decided to get a snow cone from one of the nearby vendors.  There was a wide variety of food offerings, though no alcohol sold.  That doesn’t mean that alcohol isn’t allowed, you just have to bring it yourself, as most people did.  Eventually we found our friends out in the far limits of the crowd.  They had brought all sorts of food to eat while sitting on blankets and enjoying the weather, people watching, and the occasional blast of music.  We had a good time, but it was definitely different from what I had expected.  The weekly event merely seems like an excuse to get together, and not actually the reason.  Perhaps if there were adequate space, the crowd would be more into the music.

Saturday night was movie night for Kim and me, something we haven’t done in a while.  We stopped by the local Redbox and made a couple of quick selections.  Another couple in line behind us watched as we made our selections and seemed to have something good to say about every movie we took a look at.  After watching the movies that they essentially selected for us, I’m beginning to think that they just wanted us to get out-of-the-way.

First up was It’s Complicated, which Kim looked at first.  The guy behind us remarked that it was actually pretty funny.  After watching the movie, however, I think that he and I have a completely opposite sense of humor.  I thought the movie was terrible, and Kim pretty much agreed with me.  I don’t think it could have been more predictable and the end of the movie seemed to go on forever.  The only redeeming quality was that Steve Martin was in it, which did help the comedy aspect a tad.

Redeeming the night for us was Brothers, a story of war and love.  It isn’t really about war, but the war does play an important part in the early disappearance of the leading man.  Fortunately, his brother steps in to help out his now solo wife and their family.  Unfortunately, he and the wife nearly fall for each other, which leads to complications when the missing man eventually returns to the story.  Not only do they have this love triangle to deal with, the returned soldier is also suffering from the torture and pain he dealt with while overseas.  This proved to be a much more memorable and enjoyable movie to watch than the first choice of the night.  I would watch this one again and definitely would skip It’s Complicated.

I started off the weekend with back-to-back appearances at the Irish Snug.  I’m no stranger to this restaurant as it has become our latest Bengals bar in town, after the Bears fans reclaimed Wyman’s.  I rode my bike up to the Snug on Friday after work to meet some friends for happy hour.  They have a great two-for-one deal on draft beers during happy hour, including a couple of special brews from the Tommyknocker Brewery up in Idaho Springs.  I would definitely recommend the Naked Tinker beer over the 5 Lamps Lager.  Neither of them are outstanding, but at two-for-one prices, they are hard to pass up.  Also on the happy hour menu are a variety of small plates.  I’d recommend the jalapeno poppers, curry chips (slightly messy), or the soft shell tacos.  Our group had nearly all the happy hour food items on the menu and I didn’t hear any complaints.

After Friday happy hour, I ventured back to the Snug on Saturday afternoon to watch the World Cup game, dragging Kim along to watch.  I’m glad we ate before we arrived Saturday, as they were only serving a limited menu after getting slammed during the USA and England match a couple of weeks ago.  They were serving their fish and chips, which always seems like a popular staple of the menu.  Rather than wasting time with food I concentrated on a couple of Guinness and the game on TV.  Speaking of TV, they bar is loaded with many of them throughout the two floors, all of great quality.  It’s a wonderful place to watch a game, unfortunately the same could not be said for the results of the game on TV that day.

I’ve been using the latest version of the iPhone software (iOS 4) for a few days now on my 3GS. The backgrounding feature is pretty cool, though I’ve only really seen it useful for listening to things like Pandora while doing something else on the phone.  I haven’t really found any other good use for it yet, though the quick switching between applications is cool.  I just wish that nearly all applications didn’t stay running all the time, making it optional would be nice.  Maybe there is an option that I just haven’t found yet.  I haven’t given it too much time.

Another thing that is great is being able to group apps into folders.  Before this I had maybe seven or eight pages of apps, which made it difficult to find what I wanted.  I did try to keep them all alphabetized, but now I have only two pages of apps.  The first page has a couple of folders but other than that it has my most commonly used applications.  The second page is all folders of various categories with the remaining apps fitting into one of them.  This really helps to keep things organized.  Of course all folders now have the apps inside them alphabetized for even quicker use.

Those are the biggest changes I’ve noticed so far.  I did download iBooks and a couple of free books.  I doubt I will ever buy a book as I prefer to get them from the library, but I’m hoping I can sync some library ebooks up to iBooks in the future.  I’ve noticed the threaded mailbox, but haven’t much time to use it.  The same is true with the 5x zoom that is now available on the camera, and places stored in the photos.  So far I’ve been impressed with the new features and look forward to getting more familiar with them.  Anyone considering the upgrade should absolutely do so if you are running the 3GS.  I’ve heard the upgrade can slow down the 3G, but I haven’t noticed anything like that on the 3GS.

After a great start to this current hockey season, my team has managed to keep the winning going most of the time. I think we’ve only lost one game so far and that was to the top ranked team in the league. I think we played around five or six total games, so our record is looking pretty good. I tried to go online to the league’s website, but it appears that it’s been hacked.

I’ve split my time pretty evenly between playing offense and defense. As long as most of the other defensemen show up, I’m usually able to play wing. I haven’t had a goal yet, but I’ve contributed numerous assists. Our game last night was no exception and I should have been credited with at least one assist in our 7-4 win. I was surprised that I played well considering that I not only biked into work yesterday, but I also biked home from work. It was right around forty miles roundtrip, and I my legs still feel a little like bricks. Playing hockey on top of that was definitely questionable, but the game went pretty well for me. It looks like we are about halfway through this session and are in very good shape.

This morning I participated in my third annual Bike to Work Day.  After ditching me last year, Kim decided to join in again for the fun.  We started our ride around 5:45 this morning, after mapping out a route last night.  Once again it was a different route than used the other two years, though there are some similarities.  We started on a route similar to what we used two years ago, weaving along Franklin, Dartmouth, Colorado, and Quincy.  Once at Quincy we hopped on the High Line Canal trail to take us all the way to the same Panera we visited before for the free food and drink.  From there we continued on Orchard over towards Kim’s office.  As we arrived there just before 7:30 she remarked that we should bike to work more often, as it wasn’t as tough as she remembered it being.

I continued on from Kim’s office, remembering that the ride from there to my office was pretty hilly before, but hoping that my route would be a little better.  Besides, the weather was great and I was hoping to find another breakfast station.  I quickly rode to the other side of I-25 and entered the area I referred to last year as Inverness land, where nearly all the streets have the same name.  However, I didn’t make one wrong turn this year and ended up passing in front of the Colorado Athletic Club Inverness for a couple of slices of orange and some orange juice.  It wasn’t nearly as good as the free bagel from Panera, but I wasn’t too hungry anyway.  I continued on my way, and quickly saw the office sitting up on the last massive hill of the ride.  I ride the hill pretty regularly, now that I am in the office daily, and often bring my bike on the light rail commute.  Though it is always a tough climb, it was nothing like today.  I managed to find the strength to get to the top and arrived right around 8:30.  Even after a quick shower, no one had realized that I was late or that I even biked all the way from home.

I’m considering riding the bike all the way home after work today, which is something I haven’t yet done on Bike to Work Day. I have another route that I really want to try sometime, so I figure that today might as well be the day. I have a change of clothes to put back on, and I don’t have anywhere to be until 9:30 tonight. As long as I leave by six I think I am going to do it. The route that we took this morning can be seen below.

I am really amazed at how much our little vegetable garden has grown over the last month.  I hope it’s not too much longer before we have some fresh produce.  Here is a picture I snapped as I walked into the house last night after work.

The tomatoes are by far the biggest and I put some cages on them a few weeks ago.  They are followed by the broccoli in the third row, and then probably the kale.  The peppers on the far left side haven’t grown too much, though I’m not sure if that’s normal or not.  The onions were doing great a week ago but then we had a rainy week and they don’t appear to be as tall and strong as before.  Overall I am very impressed with the progress, take a look at this second picture which was taken just over a month ago.

As I mentioned at the end of last week, I traveled to Noblesville, Indiana this past weekend for two nights of shows performed by the Dave Matthews Band.  Kim and I both took the late evening flight out of Denver to Indianapolis.  Her parents and brother Nick met us at the airport and they were soon on their way to a nice family trip to Lake Monroe south of Indianapolis.  Shortly after their departure, a group of my friends arrived at the airport to escort me to the campground out in Noblesville, about an hour from the airport.  We didn’t arrive until sometime around two in the morning.  There were only a couple of guys still up at the campsite when I arrived, we had a couple of drinks, did some catching up, and then headed to bed with the others.

Friday morning came quickly.  Even though we had already setup nearly a dozen tents, we continued to have more and more friends arriving at the campground every hour.  I spent some time getting my tent ready early that morning, and decided not to put the rainfly on to let air flow through the tent to keep it cooler.  Besides, there was a zero percent chance of rain on Friday when I had checked a day or so earlier.  By early afternoon all of our friends had arrived and we spent the rest of the time before the show playing cornhole, ladder balls, tossing footballs, etc.  It was awesome to catch up with everyone, many of whom I hadn’t seen since our wedding nearly two years ago, and some even longer than that.

That takes us right up to just before six in the evening, when the doors of the amphitheater opened up.  We all headed over early to check out an amazing band, Elmwood, who were playing the side stage.  Many of my friends had seen them play before, in fact some where in Indianapolis the night before attending their show, but I had yet to see them.  Right away I was blown away by the amount of talent that was on display.  I already have one of their albums, and would highly recommend checking them out.  From there we moved to the main stage as Robert Earl Keen started their opening set.  This band doesn’t fit into the mold of music that I typically listen to, but I still recognized their talent and abilities.  It was neither great or un-great.

Just as DMB was scheduled to take the stage a little after eight, an announcer got on mic and let everyone know that there was a storm about to hit and that the show was going to be delayed.  Just after the announcement, the skies unleashed their fury on the lawn.  Fortunately my friend Fighty and I had seats in the pavilion so we remained dry.  However, I realized that I had left the rainfly off of my tent and that nearly everything I brought was going to be soaked!  The show was delayed for quite some time, but eventually the band was allowed to play and they still performed a full length set.  The energy that started the beginning of this set was amazing.  It all started with a crowd sing along of Sublime’s “Santaria” launching into the band taking the stage with “JTR.”  I believe it rained through much of the show, and that trend continued all night.  We walked up the lawn on the way out and it was a swampy mess.  Back at camp, some friends of ours had a large enough tent for a group of us to sit in for the remainder of the night.  And fortunately some other friends had an extra tent that I slept in that night.

Saturday was essentially a repeat of the prior day for the first part: more games, more conversation, and more drinks.  My brother and his friend Nick joined us for most of that afternoon, and also met us at the sidestage to see another Elmwood performance.  If it was even possible, I think their performance was even better this second day.  Toward the end of their set DMB touring musician, Rashawn Ross, was even there to catch the talented band play.  We skipped the majority of Robert Earl Keen’s set this second day to hang out at the sidestage area.  DMB’s set was not delayed this night, and it again started off great.  So great in fact that this is probably one of their better shows I have seen in many years.  Highlights for me include Stay or Leave, Recently, Warehouse, heck nearly the entire show.

The entire weekend was awesome, even though I now have a destroyed library book that I’ll have to replace as it didn’t survive my flooded tent.  By the end of the second night my tent and most other possessions had finally dried out and I was able to use the gear that I lugged with me all the way from Denver.  Even the storms couldn’t ruin our trip and it was so great to see so many friends again and catch up with all of them.  With DMB not going on tour next summer it sounds like we may have to find something else to do for our gathering.

The weekend is finally here, well at least for me. I am flying out of Denver tonight to Indianapolis and taking off tomorrow. After missing the Dave Matthews Band tour last summer, I will be catching back-bo-back shows this weekend at Deer Creek! I haven’t been to Deer Creek since 2007, but I don’t think much has changed. The area around the amphitheatre certainly has developed, but our group still camps at the Sleepybear Campground and always arrives a night early.  In fact some of my friends are already at the campground, holding spots for others.  I think in total we will have near twenty people in our group.  I haven’t seen some of these friends in years, so it will definitely be a great time.  Only three more hours of work and then the fun can begin!

Besides the obvious cravings for Skyline Chili and LaRosa’s Pizza, occasionally I miss a restaurant back in Cincinnati called Penn Station.  Penn Station serves “east coast” subs, think cheesesteaks and such.  I’ve long been a fan of their chicken teriyaki  and chicken parmesan sandwiches.  Fortunately I think I’ve found a replacement in Denver that is nearly as good, Cheesesteak Connection.  Including last night’s visit, I have visited twice and have sampled both their chicken teriyaki and pizza Philly (with chicken).  I would definitely have to choose Penn Station’s chicken parmesan over Cheesesteak Connection’s chicken pizza, which was the first sandwich I tried.  Luckily I gave the restaurant another chance, and I must admit that their chicken teriyaki is definitely a good sandwich, different from Penn Station’s, but equally as good.

Now I’m not claiming to be an expert on Philly sandwiches, in fact I’ve never even visited Philadelphia, but I’ve read that the Cheesesteak Connection serves the best Phillys in Denver.  There are a few other restaurants in town that also have the same distinction from other reviewers, so I’ll have to give them a try sometime as well.  One thing that the Cheesesteak Connection could improve on would be their fries.  I always enjoy waffle fries, but I think fresh-cut skin-on fries are best served with Philly sandwiches.  It is still refreshing to know that I now have someplace to fulfill my occasional chicken teriyaki Philly craving.