After work yesterday I played tennis with a couple of fellow coworkers. We did not play any matches since we are all at different skill levels, but it was fun to get out and just hit back and forth for awhile. We are hoping that this develops into a somewhat weekly outing and that more people coming along in the future. I know that I would benefit greatly from playing on a consistent basis. I know the fundamentals of the game and now I just need to get more practice.

From there I went home to eat dinner and watch TV with Kim for the rest of the night. Our DVR was quickly filling to capacity, so we attempted to free up some space. I think that we deleted enough shows to account for another day or two of recordings. Perhaps we’ll have another TV night ahead of us tonight. To those of you with DVR equipment, especially those from cable providers, how much space do you have? I believe that our ReplayTV has a capacity of around 40 hours of record time. I’m considering my other options as we move into our new house.

Yesterday was not only my brother Tim’s 24th birthday, it was also the three year anniversary for Kim and I. We celebrated just like any other normal day, I made an excellent dinner and we shared a couple of drinks. We thought about going to a movie or something, but I figured it was better if we saved our money for the upcoming house purchase.

Speaking of the house, I think we have officially signed the last paper before we close on May 11th. The pressure and anxiety has died down a little and now we are just wishing we could move in sooner. T-minus 22 days and counting…

One reason that work has been so busy lately is that our company has recently been acquired by Harris. It’s a case of “if you can’t beat them, join them,” since we had previously been picking away at their client list. Now we’ll have the opportunity to convert all of their broadcast clients to our software. That means busy times for us in the very near future, and it has already somewhat started.

We’ve been promised that we won’t lose our small company feel, even though we are now among 13,000+ other employees of Harris. I hope this remains to be true, but at the same time I’m pretty excited to eventually have a big company benefits package. Only time will tell, I guess.

Other links:
Lee’s Summit company will sell for $32M – Kansas City Business Journal
Harris Acquires Traffic Vendor – Broadcasting & Cable

Sorry for the delay, but a busy weekend has fed right into a busy work week…

We flew into Cincinnati and arrived about dinner time on Friday night. My dad and Tim picked us up and we drove downtown to our hotel for the night. My mom is/was on a cruise with her sisters, but she kindly reserved a couple rooms for us. The first stop with Ed Sr. and Tim was for some food at RockBottom Brewery. It seems like I always end up here for dinner when downtown, but who can go wrong with good beer and good food!

We then made the nearly two mile walk over to the Beer Sellar. Originally we were going to take a cab over but since we ended up walking there we arrived at the bar a little later than we wanted to. Weeks earlier we had sent out an evite to friends and family to join us at the bar to celebrate my dad’s 50th birthday. We kept it a secret from him, and when we walked into the bar about 50 people we had invited stood up and shouted, “Surprise!” In the end I was glad that we were late, the surprise was great.

We spent the rest of the night at the Beer Sellar and it was a great time. Our friends in the band Greenstreet were there to provide some great music and of course the 60 beers on tap did not disappoint. Be sure to head there throughout the summer when Greenstreet is playing again. I know I will if I’m in town.

Saturday was spent out at my parents’ house relaxing and recovering from the night before. Later in the day I took a couple of rides in my dad’s new Mazda 3. I even rode on the highway in the car! Remember that my last car was an almost identical Mazda 3 and that I no longer have the car because it was totaled on the highway just outside of St. Louis. Anyway, my dad and I hung out at the Hais’ house for a few hours after dinner and from there I headed to bed knowing that Sunday would be an early morning.

I awoke to the sounds of banging pots and pans on Sunday. I guess that Kim had convinced some of her family that this was the best way to wake me up. I then began searching their house for my Easter basket and found it a half hour or so later. The Easter Bunny gave me all sorts of weapons (aka tools) that airport security would have loved. Everyone then got ready and before too long many of Kim’s aunts, uncles, cousins, etc. started showing up for their annual Easter party. The good thing about west side Cincinnati Easter parties is that you can still play cornhole! The party was a great time and it was good to see all of Kim’s family again. Just as things were wrapping up, we got a ride down to the airport and flew back to KC. I’m still a little exhausted from the weekend’s events, but I have my first full week of work in while to rest up.

Yesterday’s high temperature in Kansas City was 92 degrees, a record high for the area. Today’s predicted high is right around there as well, 89 in Lee’s Summit this afternoon. Somehow we skipped spring and went straight into summer. It’s unfortunate that we have to leave this weather today and travel to Cincinnati just in time for the severe storms that ripped through Iowa yesterday. I could be playing golf all weekend, trying out some new clubs from Kim’s manager, Steve, or just lounge around in the sun. Luckily, there are lots of things going on in Cincy over the weekend that should make the trip well worth it.

I started looking for online calendar applications about a month ago knowing that Google Calendar would soon be coming out. Well that day has arrived, Google Calendar has been released as a public beta. It’s simple to sign up, especially if you already have a Gmail account. You only have to answer one question and you are on your way to a better organized life (we hope).

Kim and I started using 30 Boxes after my research a month ago. Overall it works pretty well and we were able to get enough events in our calendars to make our life look like a mess. But now that Google’s product is out I’ll have to re-evaluate my decision.

Thus far I like the fact that with Google multiple people can edit the same calendar. This is a huge advantage when our primary goal is to know what each other are up to. I also like the layout of Google’s much better especially dragging and dropping events. One thing that I liked about 30 Boxes was that it would automatically repeat birthdays every year after they were entered. I have not had any luck getting Google to do this, but it can be added manually by editing the event via a form. I think after only a few minutes of using Google that I will slowly start migrating toward it. Imagine how great it will be when the calendar is fully integrated with Gmail. I can picture simple adding of events that are discussed in your email conversations.

The pictures from our weekend in Utah are up! I sorted through the 100+ pictures and selected the best 48 to share with everyone. I hope you enjoy them. Utah is really a sight to see with your own eyes, it is very beautiful. In addition, I think that Utah has the best skiing/snowboarding mountains in the country. I think I can safely say that now after spending time in Colorado and on the east coast in Vermont. I hope to return sometime during the peak time of the season, to experience Utah at its best.

After getting the pictures online last night, we spent some time catching up on some TV shows. We watched an old episode of The Amazing Race in addition to the American Idol contestants butchering some Queen songs. If you are into the show, then check out DialIdol.com. I don’t use their application for voting, since I’ve never voted, but I find their predictions to be fairly accurate and interesting to read.

My face still hurts! “Well it’s killing me,” my dad would likely say.

The top layer of my sunburnt face has mostly peeled away. However, the next layer of skin below that is still bright red. Hopefully this goofy new look fades away soon. I could take my boss’ advice and get some of that fake tanning cream, but I think I’ll just wait it out. There have been multiple picture requests, so here ya go…

This was taken on the second day of boarding during a break at the Summit House, which is nearly 10,000 feet above sea level! You can easily see the “tan” lines on my face, and I think they are even more noticeable now.

I was hoping to get all of my pictures from the trip online last night, but I spent my free time working from home to update a client’s software. Hopefully I’ll have some time tonight to finish going through the pictures and then get them online. There should be some really good ones.

The pain I’m experiencing today is a little different than I was expecting. In the past, I would come home from a snowboard trip with bumps and bruises all over. After this trip, however, my sunburnt face is what’s hurting the most. All it took was one day on the slopes, and the lower portion of my face and nose got fried to a crisp! The second day I wore sunscreen, although it didn’t matter much at that point.

The flight to Utah was the first time I’ve been on Frontier airlines in awhile, and I must say that I am very impressed with their new planes. Each seat has an individual television screen with 24 channels of DirecTV service. Of course this doesn’t come free, the fee is $5 per flight leg. Yesterday on the return flight, I bit the bullet and paid for just over an hour of TV. The time on the plane literally flew by! Hopefully more airlines begin to offer this service (and hopefully for free).

Back to the weekend trip. Thursday night in Salt Lake City was relaxing. We didn’t want to be up too late, since we would be getting up early to go out to Park City the next day. We decided to walk around downtown for a bit and then wandered into Squatter’s Brewery for a couple drinks along with dinner. I would highly recommend both their food and their beer!

Early Friday morning we made the drive to Park City and immediately hit the slopes at The Canyons. The ski shop that I rented my snowboard and boots from recommended this resort, so we decided to do one day here and one day at Park City. The powder left from the recent snow storms was amazing! I don’t think I’ve ever boarded in conditions like these. On one run, the powder was so think we couldn’t make it down without the boards getting buried over and over again. As the day went on, it got warmer and warmer outside. Some of the runs turned to slush, so we decided to spend as much as time as possible at the top of the mountains. The warming also led to the previously mentioned sunburn. I have learned my lesson, and will definitely wear sunscreen at all times, if my skin will be exposed.

Later that night we took rode on the free bus system to historic Main Street. We had dinner at Buona Vita, which was excellent and a good value as well! From there I got us a guest membership at The Spur, so we could have a drink. Utah has some of the strangest liquor laws. Restaurants can serve alcohol but only to customers intending to eat. These private clubs can serve alcohol to anyone, regardless if they are eating or not. I guess you can think of it as paying a cover to get into the bar. Fortunately, The Spur was giving away free memberships!

Saturday we headed to the slopes at the Park City Mountain Resort. The early conditions on the mountain were fairly similar to the previous day, although some of the lower lying area had turned to ice from the previous day’s slush. Again we tried to stay as high on the mountains as we could. I think that overall I liked Park City better than The Canyons, mainly because Park City had more intermediate runs. These are still the runs that I enjoy the most.

After spending the entire day on the slopes, we again went to Main Street for dinner. This time I wanted to go someplace with TVs so we could watch the end of the frozen four. We decided on the Hungry Moose Pub. We had some good beers on tap from Wasatch and good bar type food. After the game, we headed back to the hotel. By this time both of our sunburns had gotten the best of us.

Early on Sunday we drove back to Salt Lake City and had a little tour of the city. We first drove by the Capitol building and stopped in at the nearby visitor center. From there we drove past Temple Square, which is the main temple for the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints. If we had more time, we could have taken a tour and then maybe I would have more to add about the center of downtown. After just a few minutes there, we drove out to the Olympic Cauldron Park, where the cauldron and stadium still stand from the 2002 Winter Olympics. We were then out of time so we returned to the airport and flew back to Kansas City. Not only was this a great trip, I have now visited 33 states!

Park City on Dwellable

With most of the house stuff out of the way, at least on our end, we should be able to relax this weekend. And what better way to do that then by visiting wonderful Utah. Actually I don’t know if it’s wonderful or not. I’ve never been there before, well besides a previous layover in Salt Lake City, which looked amazing from the flights in and out. I guess I’ll find out shortly after 7:45 tonight, when I land there and actually leave the airport, thus visiting my 34th state!

Kim is already in Salt Lake City doing business, so I’ll meet up with her tonight. Then after spending a night in downtown Salt Lake City, we will head up to Park City early tomorrow for two days on the slopes! When we first booked this trip we were concerned if it would be too late in the season. I guess this is not the case, since they just got 10 inches of snow in the last day. The weather for the next couple of days should be sunny (or at worst partly cloudy) and fairly warm. The conditions are perfect for me to return to Kansas City in serious pain!