Sorry about the lack of updates yesterday. I had a cold and was away from my computer the entire day except for when I was working. I feel much better today, but it is still lingering around a little bit…

Updates from last week. Last Friday I just hung around the apartment and got a few different things done. I was a little tired from the night before…
Saturday I met up with Todd at the Brooksider to watch some college football. I kept up to date with the Bearcats score that was scrolling at the bottom of the screen. I couldn’t believe it, but they actually lost to Army. Army hadn’t won a game in 19 tries, but somehow UC lost to them. Unbelievable. I hung out there at the bar most of the day. Kim called to let me know that she was going to give up her seat on her flight to take a later one and get a $200 voucher. Can’t beat some free delta dollars. After that news I went home to kill time until I could pick her up from the airport. Nothing else too exciting really happened.
Sunday we ate at the Cheesecake Factory for lunch and went down to Brush Creek which runs along side of the plaza. A couple weeks before we bought a $5 duck that would race in the duck derby. If you’ve never seen one of these, they dump thousands of rubber ducks into a river and let them race to the finish. Well the genius that setup this race had the ducks going against the current. The wind was blowing from east to west and had the current of Brush Creek going opposite what it usually does, so I guess it wasn’t completely their fault. They should think about having the race some place else though. I use the term Creek very loosely. There are parts of this stream that are less than a foot across, but the region they used for the race is pretty wide because of a dam they built. Anyway they use waverunners and a fire hose to get the ducks to move upstream. It was one of the funniest things I have seen in awhile. After that excitement we cleaned the apartment for hours and then I had a late night hockey game.

As I said, I was sick yesterday so I really didn’t do much of anything. I struggled through work the entire day, and when I got home I just collapsed on the couch for the night. We ate pizza and watched the documentary “Super Size Me” where a guy eats nothing but McDonald’s for a month. I knew there was a reason I never go there. :)

Hopefully today is a much better day than yesterday…

This will have to be quick, I’m late leaving work. :)

I didn’t go to the Texas Hold’em thing, but Todd and I tried to make plans to do it next week. I think we may check it out at another bar on Monday night. Well shoot maybe not, I might be playing hockey. I’m still trying to decide what leagues to play in. I don’t think I have the money to do them all…

I’ve been keeping busy working on the sql stuff for my site. I also met up with a friend of Phil and Todd’s last night who is looking for a website for the company he works for. They are a Sonic franchise. I guess the guy who Joe assists owns 14 of the restaurants. Pretty cool little deal. I’m gonna put together a template so that he can make his presentation. Maybe I’ll get to that sometime this weekend…

Good news on Kim’s side of things. She’s been in Cincinnati all week for work. Well yesterday they were in a meeting or whatever and she was called into Carl Linders office. To some of you that probably doesn’t mean much of anything. But if you are from Cincinnati or know anything about it, it’s huge news. He is the owner of the company she works for. Well I guess technically his dad is, but he is taking over. He is also CEO of the Reds, I believe he’s the primary share holder. So he is a very influential person in Cincinnati. So why is Kim going to his office? Because he has heard that she is one of the future leaders of the company. How cool is that? Needless to say I was pretty excited for her…

Well I’m gonna go try to find something to do on this Friday evening. Kim comes back tomorrow…

Well I lied, the Chiefs didn’t go 0-4, barely. :)
I also lied and said that we were joining the Ski Club, well on second thought it seems as if we aren’t going to be doing that. They want a copy of our marriage certificate so we can get the couple rate. What a bunch of crap. We didn’t need a certificate for the gym, just had to pretend to be happily married, and actually the guy was really cool with our pretending. It is worth it for the savings. :)

Tonight I may head down to the Brooksider to watch this Texas Hold’em tournament that they have going on. I may actually try it out if I get ballsy enough. I honestly don’t have a clue about it, other than the combined 15 minutes of it I have seen on ESPN. Todd played last week and did pretty well apparently. Maybe I’ll just watch him for awhile…

In nerd news I finally got mysql installed on my machine. What does that mean to the non-nerds? Not much really. I can now have a database driven site though, which makes me happy. The first thing that I’m gonna be doing is putting all of the concert stuff into a database. It will be easier to maintain, and I can run cooler queries on it, to see all kinds of cool things like what venue I’ve seen the most shows at or what city I’ve seen the most shows at, etc. That’s about all I’ve been working on since Kim has left town. Hopefully you’ll be able to see some results soon…

The end of last week was very typical, all work and no play. We did join the Kansas City Ski Club though. I think we are going to be heading to Winter Park, CO in very early December. It’s a weekend trip that will allow us to go and not take any work off. Sounds good to me!

On Friday Kim, Mike, and I headed down the American Royal. Stepping off of the bus and into one of the lots the smell of smoked meat was everywhere. It was as if all the lots surrounding Kemper Arena were one giant smoker. We pay the admission price, and immediately get a map of the place. I was amazed at how big this event really was. After walking for what seemed like miles and miles we find Phil & Todd’s space. They’ve got a few kegs, although I think they were on the last one by the time we arrived, and they even rented a port-o-potty for the weekend. Everyone was hanging around the fires to keep warm, and trying not to spill beer on their hands. :) Eventually we wandered around the whole complex in some sort of hippie parade, taking in the sights and smells. I’m not sure I would eat most of the stuff that was cooking, but it did smell good…

Saturday we watched Men In Black on the TV, I was shocked to find out that Kim had never seen it, so I made her watch it. Afterwards we ordered some pizzas and went down to Mike’s apartment to watch the Ohio State game. It was kind of an early night for us since I had to drop Kim off at the airport the next morning. After dropping her off, I spent most of the day at the Brooksider watching all of the football games. Then later on I had my own hockey game in a new league. A guy I play with on Wednesdays asked me to join his A league team. I think I might like playing all of this good hockey all the time!

Kim is gone all week in Cincy, so I’ll be bacherloring it up again. The Chiefs are on Monday Night Football tonight, so I’ll likely be entertained watching them become 0-4. :b

In one last desperate attempt to get reimbursed for the camera, Kim wrote a letter to the Hyatt. I would have written it, but a few things stopped me. 1. I’m lazy. 2. I think she can write better. 3. She’s more threatening than I am. All of those meant in the best way possible. Anyway, we sent the letter off a week ago or so and just the other day I get a phone call from the Director Of Security with the Hyatt. He apologized for all of the crap we have had to do before and said he has full intentions of reimbursing us, as long as his investigation is ok. I thought quickly and didn’t say that I was in Weeba’s room, and instead said I was in another friends rooms that weekend. If he found out I was in Weeba’s room at first, and then we all got thrown out of that room, he might be a little hesitant to reimburse. I’ll keep you updated…

I got my new nomad in the mail late last week. No problems with it so far. I also sent the broken one back to Circuit City, so I should be getting that $300+ gift card in the mail soon. If I get my camera from the Hyatt, I’ll have some extra money to play with at Circuit City. If you have any ideas let me know. :)

We haven’t done much of anything so far this week. I was able to run my normal 3 miles yesterday without much of a problem though, so that’s good, I guess. I’ve got hockey tonight, I’m looking forward to that especially since we aren’t playing on Monday’s for the time being. I guess Monday’s will pick back up in a couple of weeks. This week is going pretty fast actually, I just hope the same is true for the rest of the week. I’m really looking forward to the American Royal this weekend!

I get home from work on Friday and Kim instantly has great news. The insurance check came for the break-in, something like $700. Take the $180 we paid for the window out of that, and we still have a bunch of extra money. I’m searching eBay for a new stereo, I’m not really sure what I should get. I’ve been thinking about getting one that is satellite radio ready, just incase we decide to go that route in the future. Problem is those are all the newer ones, and therefore more expensive. Oh well, no rush…

We decided to head down to the Oktoberfest that night. Kim’s friend Amanda that we met up with a month ago or so decided to come along as well. This was more like a carnival than any other Oktoberfest I had gone to before. There were tons of kids rides there. The lines for the bratwurst were longer than the lines for beer. There were pig races. Old ladies dancing on the tables for beer money and then stuffing it down their shirts. Port-o-lets that looked like outhouses. The most redeeming part of the whole event were the fireworks. At first I thought they were just alright. There was no music to go along with it, but then I realized that if there were music I wouldn’t be able to hear the crowd’s commentary. I was rolling on the ground by the end of it…

Saturday we lay low for most of the day. Ended up meeting Mike at the Granfalloon and then walking through the plaza art fair for awhile. Nothing too exciting about the night, besides the Mojito I had from ReVerse. Kim had to wake up the next morning really early to drive to Iowa for a golf outing so it was an early night…

Yesterday I went over to a meat smoking party. The American Royal is this coming weekend so Phil, Todd and their college buddies were warming up for the competition. I had some smoked chicken that was pretty darn tasty. Next weekend should be a good time…

Back to work for this week however…

I have two confirmed referrals for the freeipod, so I cannot give up yet. :) I just found out that the Infone offer is incredibly easy to do, all you need is a credit card. You do not need to cancel the account, just don’t use it and you won’t be charged. In fact I think they give you 5 free trials of it, and also a $10 amazon.com gift card just for signing up. Apparently this offer is only available on the freeipod site during the morning, so check it out then!
Please use my link and sign up for an offer!

I ran last night and it didn’t feel too bad. Still a little sore in the leg, but I was able to run just under 3 miles, so that’s a good start. Then we made some dinner and tried to meet up with Doni & Phil at the Brooksider, but they had already left by the time we got up there. It was only 8:30, what the heck? :)

This weekend is the Plaza Art Fair as well as the KC Oktoberfest. I’m sure we’ll have a fun one, we just need to keep it cheap, if that’s possible…

Another year another trip to NYC for the weekend after Thanksgiving! I just booked a flight to go back for the annual OAR shows in NYC. Last year was too much fun not to do it again. I’ll be flying on US Airways, my first time using them. Reason is that they were the cheapest. I got a flight for $225 that goes out of Columbus, OH into NYC and out of NYC into Indianapolis, IN. This works out great since I’ll be in Columbus on Thanksgiving with Kim’s family. Then we need to be driving back to KC on that Sunday, so Kim can just pick me up in Indy and we’ll continue on the way. The only part that doesn’t sound fun right now is the 11AM flight out of NYC. Maybe we should just stay up all night. :)

I’m leaving work now and heading to the gym. I’m gonna attempt my first run since I quit last week. Hopefully these new shoes help out…

I can’t believe I forgot to mention this earlier. VACO‘s new CD is out! I believe you can find “Ok To Go” in stores like Best Buy all across the country. Be sure to pick up a copy. I’ll put a song or two in some upcoming songs of the moment…

So the window was replaced in the car, and I put the factory stereo back into the car. This ancient piece of hardware is equipped with a cassette tape player and no CD player. We picked up a few tapes from the flea market later in the day, just to have something to listen to.

McGonigles was skipped since we ran out of time. Instead we went to Gates for dinner. You have to have KC bbq if you come out here right? :)

Last night we went spinning since my hockey game was once again cancelled. We are playing tonight instead. Two nights of hockey in a row! So after spinning I attempted to fix the car speakers. I tried to take off the entire interior door panel but was unsuccessful when the door handle baffled my mind. I struggled with the window crank for awhile, and even woke up my dad for any pointers. After messing with it for a few more minutes I finally realized that you had to squeeze a ring together and then slide the ring away from the handle. This then allowed for the handle to come off of the post. I felt like I just solved the rubix cube, well until the handle gave me a fight. It then got too dark out and I was too frustrated to get anywhere. So what do we do? We have Tweedle Dumb and Tweedle Dumber come out today to fix it. Tweedle Dumb was the guy who originally came out to replace the window, and he brought along his partner Tweedle Dumber this time. Tweedle Dumb apologized for not hooking the speakers back up and started taking the screws out of the door panel. I figured he would have taken the window crank off and then showed me how to get the stupid handle off. Well he didn’t, he just took the screws out, and felt around inside the door. He said that he didn’t disconnect anything. I assured them both that the speakers worked before the window was replaced. Then Tweedle Dumber decides that it could have been when the CD player was installed that the wiring was messed up. The wiring wasn’t messed up, and why would it work with one and not the other. He then shrugs and says he doesn’t know anything about electronics, just windows. Haha, I tried not to laugh and told them that something must have gone wrong. Finally, after what seems like half of the day, Tweedle Dumb feels a loose connection and pushes the two pieces together. Click! Wow, it works now, amazing. It really only took less than half an hour, but I swear it was longer. At least I can now listen to my new CC Music Factory and Color Me Badd tapes through all of the speakers…