We are back from our trip to New England.  I have plenty of pictures to post, but that will have to wait for future days.  We didn’t get in until late last night and I am already back at work with no time for picture processing.  Instead I’ll provide a brief recap of our trip and then elaborate more when I have some pictures ready.

Last Thursday morning we caught a very early flight out of Denver and over to Nashville.  Here we had a three-hour layover which nearly bored us to death, before catching another two-hour flight to Providence, Rhode Island.  We flew for free on Southwest Rapid Rewards, so we couldn’t be too picky about our flights.  The important thing is that we made it, and were somewhat rested.  The second flight was a bit delayed, forcing us right into hush hour traffic around Boston.  Fortunately my phone helped us to avoid some major traffic spots, allowing us to arrive in downtown Boston just before the Red Sox were set to take on the Cleveland Indians.  After meeting up with some of our friends, we rushed off to Fenway Park to take in the game at this famous stadium.

That pretty much took care of our first night in Boston.  On our second full day we got an early start out on the Freedom Trail, and walked through many historic sites.  The trail is only supposed to be two and a half miles, but it felt like we walked a lot farther than that.  We didn’t make it all the way out to Bunker Hill, but we did visit the nearby USS Constitution.  After touring the old ship, we stopped for the first of many great meals at the Tavern on the Water.  From there we decided to take the ferry back over to Boston, specifically Long Wharf.  It was a short ride, but worth not having to backtrack on foot to the hotel.  Later in the evening we stopped at a variety of places: The Tam for $3 beers, Rabia’s Ristorante for an excellent dinner, and Cheers where everyone knew our name.

Saturday we all headed out of Boston and toward Newport, Rhode Island with stops along the way to check out Harvard and MIT.  Harvard was cool to see, but I feel like we could have skipped MIT.  After we eventually made it down to Newport, it didn’t take long for us to start exploring Thames Street.  After walking the full strip, we decided to get a reservation for ten at the Brick Alley Pub & Restaurant.  I think this was my favorite meal of the trip, and I bet others would agree.  After dinner it was off to the Gas Lamp Grille to see the wedding party and have a couple of drinks.

Sunday was the big wedding day, but before that event, we took a tour of Newport’s most famous mansion, The Breakers.  This “summer-house” was incredible!  I especially liked seeing the billiards room and the large kitchen.  It was an amazing house.  Some others in our group decided to tour another mansion, but I had my fill of lavishness in just one.  Kim and I decided to have a nice lunch overlooking the harbor at the Marina Cafe & Pub.  Before too long it was time to get ready for the wedding out at the beautiful Belle Mer.  Needless to say it was a lovely wedding and a great time with wonderful friends.

Monday was a bonus day for us along with our friends Tracey and Kevin.  We left Newport before noon and took the long way over to the town of Mystic, Connecticut.  I was hoping for a scenic ocean side drive, but it didn’t quite work out that way.  It was still neat to take our time through a variety of small villages and towns.  Our first stop was for lunch at Mystic Pizza.  I will admit to never hearing of the movie with the same name before last week, but we decided to check it out anyway.  It definitely wasn’t the best pizza in the world, but it is fairly good and definitely a popular place.  After that we visited the Mystic Seaport, which took up the rest of the day.  I was blown away by the amount of things to see at the Seaport.  Later in the evening we had another great meal at the The Captain Daniel Packer Inne.

Tuesday we explored the boardwalk in Niantic, Connecticut enjoyed one last meal at Dad’s Restaurant, and were back on our way to the Providence Airport.  This wrapped up a tiring, scenic, and fun vacation, adding three more states to my visited states list.  Congratulations again Karen and Aaron.  I hope you are enjoying your honeymoon!

I love these short work weeks!  Tomorrow I will be catching an early flight out of Denver up to New England.  The reason for the trip is that my friends Aaron (Weeba) and Karen are getting married.  I’ve known Weeba since late 2001.  Back in the day we both made many trips to various cities and states to see O.A.R.  In addition he was even the manager of our college band, DuckFood.  We traveled together to lots of different places and have tons of great memories.

With this trip I will be adding even more to my list of visited states.  Rhode Island will become number forty-four, Massachusetts will be forty-five, and Connecticut will be forty-six.  I’ve really been looking forward to this trip for awhile.  I will finally visit Boston and spend a couple of nights there.  We will also spend a couple of nights in Newport, Rhode Island and finally near Mystic, Connecticut.  After this I only have four more states left to visit before seeing them all.

Over the weekend I played my first round of golf in a long while, likely since last summer.  My good friend Ken turned 30 on Saturday and a group of us decided to play a round of eighteen on Sunday to celebrate.  I woke up on the west side of town, at Kim’s parents’, just before six that morning.  That’s my normal wakeup time for a work day, but it wasn’t a work day and the time difference made it four in the morning Denver time.  Fortunately I had planned ahead, and already had a borrowed set of clubs and shoes from my dad in the trunk, so I just had to drive to the other side of town to the Hickory Woods Golf Course.

I arrived ten or fifteen minute before the supposed tee time.  It turns out that Ken and his brother-in-law Bryan had told everyone a time twenty minutes ahead of the real tee time.  Well guess who the only late ones were?  That’s right, the birthday boy and the event planner.  I quickly found another good friend, Jon, and then met up with others who would be playing in the group.  Soon enough we were on the tenth tee and were on our way.  I quickly realized that this course was going to be a little tough for me, and I was glad I brought along plenty of extra balls.  The fairways were all pretty narrow and the holes were filled with rolling terrain.  I had some decent shots, and managed to escape the back nine feeling alright.

From there we moved onto the front nine holes, and immediately I was struck with how different the two were.  The front nine was very wide open and relatively flat.  This suits my playing much more, as I was able to lose very few balls, and I even managed a couple of legit pars.  I even had putting attempts for birdies a couple of times.  My worst hole was number one, which I had a quadruple bogey on, but the rest were all triple bogeys and lower.  Compare that to the back nine, where I had numerous quadruples, and nothing close to a par the whole time.  Regardless of the score, I had a great time, and I was excellent catching up with all of my old friends over a nice morning and afternoon.

I attended my first baseball game of the season on Friday evening as the first place (central) Cincinnati Reds took on the first place (east) Atlanta Braves.  My mom bought a group of tickets earlier in the week, which was fortunate since the game did sell out.  It turns out that it was many of the group’s first game of the season, and the first for my mom in years.  I think she has only been to Great American Ballpark once before, and it’s been open now for over seven years.  I’ve been to more games than that, and I haven’t really lived near Cincinnati since shortly after the ballpark opened.  Either way, we all had a blast rooting for the home team.

We arrived at the stadium in the second inning, and after watching the scoreless second, the scoring started in the third.  Atlanta went on the scoreboard first, but the Reds quickly countered with three runs of their own in the bottom of the third.  The Braves added a couple more runs in the fifth and followed it with another in the sixth.  Down 4-3, Joey Votto came to the plate in the eight inning to deliver a solo home run to tie the game.  Things were looking up for the Reds, including a great catch by Chris Heisey that robbed Brooks Conrad of a home run of his own to end the top of the ninth.  After a scoreless bottom of the ninth, we were off to extra innings.  The tenth started off great for the Reds, and they quickly had two outs on the Braves.  But that’s where it all went south, as the Braves eventually scored a couple of runs before getting their third out.  The Reds managed to get a couple of guys on base in the bottom of the ninth, but eventually two strikeouts and a pop fly were enough for the Braves to claim victory.

The Reds went on to win the other two games of the series.  Unfortunately, St. Louis just won three in a row, and the Reds are now half a game out of first place behind the Cardinals.  I’m hoping to catch another Reds game next month when they come to Denver to take on the Rockies.

In years past I made a trip back to Cincinnati nearly every other month or so.  We always had weddings and parties to attend.  This year has been a little slower for us, and I actually haven’t been back to Cincy since Christmas.  That will all change tonight.  Kim and I are taking the late flight out of Denver tonight and flying to Indianapolis.  This is our preferred way to get to Cincinnati, for cheaper flights, dirt cheap rental cars, and we get to fly on Frontier, our favorite.  When I was working in my old position I often worked from Cincinnati, but I will actually take tomorrow off from work and spend even more time with family.  We have lots of events planned already, but let me know if there is something that we shouldn’t miss.  I’m excited to see everyone!

Today I’m taking a break from your regularly scheduled blog postings to contribute to kimandedjr.com:

Lately Kim has been soliciting advice from many of her female friends, family, and coworkers who have kids. She is asking them what items they couldn’t live without when starting to raise a child. The response has been great so far, with lots of advice ranging from strollers, car-seats, and furniture all the way to toys, playpens, and even nursing supplies. While some of this has been really interesting to me, especially the stroller and toys, I can’t help but wonder if there are some items that the moms are missing from their lists. What items do dads find necessary for raising children? With few friends having kids of their own, I’m forced to rely on the wisdom of the Internet. 

I missed the third game of the hockey tournament I mentioned yesterday due to the annual Flipcup’alooza flipcup tournament and party.  You may remember this party from many years before.  This time was a little different from past years, as Kim didn’t attend.  Obviously she couldn’t play in the tournament, and she decided to skip the drinking centered event altogether.  The guys on our team remained the same as last year: myself along with our friends Ken and Pulli.  We relied on Ken to provide some girls for our team, and he did eventually come through, even though one participant didn’t show up until a minute or two before the games started.  I guess that was better than last year, when we pulled a random out of the bar to join our team.

Despite some changes, the results were much the same for our team as years past.  The tournament was setup as a round-robin style at one of sixteen tables.  At each table there were five teams all competing for a single spot in the sweet sixteen elimination style bracket.  My team, Sunday Morning, started off with a couple of losses right away.  We did eventually win our third game, but were quickly back to losing the fourth.  We finished 1-3 in the round-robin with no chance of advancing through to the next round.  Despite the results, we had a good time with many of our friends from Denver.

Over the weekend I participated in a hockey tournament as a fill-in for the Dawgs.  I used to play against one of the Dawgs teams when I played in another league at the different rink, but I think this team was down a level from my normal level of play, thus I didn’t recognize many of my teammates.  There were a couple of other players from my current team also on the roster, and one guy I had played with in an earlier tournament.  Our first game was after 10pm on Friday night against Blueline.  I ended up playing on a line with another guy from my normal team, so at least I had someone on the ice with me who I connected with.  Our team came out strong and there was no looking back.  Then final score was 9-2 and I talied a couple of goals and probably some assists as well.

Our second game was on Saturday at just past noon.  Our opponent for this game was the Knights, a team that I knew nothing about.  During warmups I quickly realized that this team was much better than the team from the night before.  It was a good game through the first period, but by the second my team was really struggling to keep up and our opponents quickly built a sizeable lead.  Some of the players on our team thought that the team had dropped down a league from where they should have played, but I felt that our team was nearly as good as they were and that it could have been a differnent game.  The end result was a 5-1 loss.  My team also had another game at three that afternoon, which I had to miss due to prior obligations.  I’m told it was a nailbiter, and it went all the way to a shootout, which my team won finally after around a dozen shooters from each side.

The two wins (and presummably some tie breaking) sent our team into the championship game on Sunday morning.  I didn’t know who we were playing, but I sort of guessed it would be the Knights again.  And I was right.  This time the game started a little better for us.  We actually built a 2-0 lead by the end of the first period.  But after that it was another brutal second period.  Our team allowed five goals in the second and once that started happening, we ended up in the pentalty box rather frequently, just like the first time we played them.  We had a better third period, but couldn’t find the back of the net.  The final score was 5-2, as we finished in second place.  After losing to them twice, I guess the Knights were just a better team.

Today at work was another day spent nearly entirely in our lab.  That means limited access to the internet, close working quarters with others, and lots of things to do.  Normally I’ve written my blog during my lunch break, but today that was interrupted by some critical issues that were happening at one of our client sites.  With all of that said, I am still enjoying working on this newer project.  It does mean lots of hours at work, but at least I feel like I’m accomplishing something useful and the challenges have been very rewarding once solved.  With that said, it’s late on a Friday.  Time for me to get out of here and enjoy the weekend.

For breakfast on Sunday, Kim and I headed to the Krameria Cafe.  I think she found it through a brunch suggestion in her email, and after checking it out online we decided to give it a shot.  It was a little further from our house than we typically drive for breakfast, but they did advertise the best breakfast in Denver on their website.  We arrived to find a mostly deserted restaurant save for a few tables of people inside and one out on the patio.  Not exactly what I expected to see from the self-proclaimed best breakfast spot.  We were seated right away and looked over the menu while we waited for a server.  Well we waited and waited.  Finally Kim caught the attention of one of the servers, who immediately apologized and took our order, after we had sat there for ten to fifteen minutes.

Fortunately the food came out really fast.  I was starving, and a little under the weather from the previous night’s pub crawl, so this made me happy.  I don’t think I could have waited much longer for food.  If I remember correctly, Kim had an omelette of some sort.  While I ordered the biscuits and gravy (on the “sides” portion of the menu) along with some hash browns.  Immediately I was thrown off by the lack of sausage in the gravy, but at least it appeared to be homemade.  It was okay, but definitely not the best biscuits and gravy in town, that title belongs to Lucile’s.  The side of hash browns was an entire plate of potatoes, which helps explain the nearly $4 price tag.  Again, not the best food in town.  I think Kim pretty much agreed with me as far as the food goes.  The service ended up being good, but I doubt we ever go back as the food just didn’t cut it.