My favorite album of the year has to be Grand National by the John Butler Trio. I swear that it even gets better with each listen and I would highly recommend the album to anyone. I cannot wait to see them again next month at Red Rocks with Michael Franti & Spearhead. It is going to be a concert to remember, that’s for sure. Anyway, to suck you all in to JBT here is another song of the moment titled “Good Excuse.”

I think I have determined what is my favorite nearby restaurant to our house. My definition of nearby is about a mile or so away from our house, which would make it walkable if needed. Anyway, the name of the restaurant is HandleBar & Grill, and it is just a bit over a mile from our house. We had dinner here for the second time this past Sunday. The menu has so many options, including a dozen or so different chicken sandwiches, the best BLT in Denver according to 5280, and so much more!

I ordered the BLAT, which adds avocado slices to the award wining BLT. Delicious! I had a side of mashers with stout gravy, which might have been even better than the sandwich! Kim had the Chicken Tuscano sandwich, which was equally as good from the couple of bites that I stole. She had the side of fries, which I would also recommend. In my two dining experiences I have yet to have anything that I didn’t like. Oh yeah, the beer selection is very good as well! Next time I may try one of their southwestern specials to see how those measure up.

Kim and I spent Saturday in Boulder, mostly at the Boulder Reservoir for the Kinetics competition. Kinetics is an annual competition that involves teams who have built their own craft to traverse both a water and land obstacle course. In addition to the race, it is also a huge party and concert. The concert is what caused me to buy tickets at first as Robert Randolph and the Family Band were playing this year, along with Los Lonely Boys.

However, the concert took a backseat, at least for me, as the race was unlike anything I had ever seen. It was very entertaining to watch these teams struggle through the course, and it appeared to be much harder than I was initially expecting. And to make it even better, beer and food could be purchased for enjoyment along the course. I took lots of pictures from various points on the course, and put many of them online in this album, although I’m not sure the photos will do the competition justice.

Yesterday I finalized my purchase using the $200 in gift cards from the Circuit City screwup. I decided on buying two Sansa Express 1GB mp3 players and one pair of Sennheiser CX300 headphones. I got all of this for $199.25, after using a $15 off coupon. So far I am extremely happy with my selections and I think Kim will be as well.

The Sennheiser headphones aren’t nearly as expensive as what I was first looking at, but they are amazing! They were the highest rated headphones available in the $90 price range. The medium sized adapters fit into my ears perfectly and form a tight seal that not only blocks out noise, it also provides amazing bass. I don’t have much to compare them to, besides crappy ear bud headphones like the ones included with the mp3 players, but these are going to be tough to beat!

The Sansa Express mp3 players have just about every feature that Kim or I wanted. They have a digital FM tuner. They also require no software to transfer files, and as an added bonus, the end cap comes off to reveal a USB connection that can plug directly into the computer. No extra cables are needed! It also has an expansion slot featuring microSD, which will be great if we ever decide we need more than the 1GB of internal space. The entire package is about the size of a small pack of gum, the packs with 5 sticks in it not the ones with 25+. I just loaded Kim’s up with tracks to keep her entertained on her business trip to Montana next week.

I’ve tried getting back into running the past couple of days. Before yesterday the last time I ran was while we were living in the hotel waiting to close on our house. After that it was too cold to run outside, and then the ankle injury prevented me from doing much until now. My ankle still has a little stiffness in it, but I am definitely able to run. Now I just need to build up my lungs again and adjust to the altitude. For starters Kim and I have just been running out to Wash Park and then back. It’s approaching two miles, which is enough for now. Ideally I’d like to get back to regularly running three or four miles a couple times a week. We’ll see…

Our first major project that we hired out is now complete, we have new windows! We started the search months ago and finally decided to go with the Toyota of the group. If that analogy doesn’t make sense, click the link above to refresh your memory. We no longer have any 100+ year old windows in our house (well at least not ones to the outside, there are a couple between the dining area and sunroom)!

Colorado Window Source installed six Amerimax windows for us and I couldn’t be happier. Their pricing was very fair and they even offered things that the other companies didn’t. I also couldn’t have asked for a better team of installers. The same guy who took the measurements for the windows installed them and already knew most of what I wanted. We had a couple of the older windows wrapped just like the ones that they were installing, some of which was done for no charge. I would highly recommend this company to anyone else in the area, and we may use them again for other projects.

Here is an picture of the front of the house before, and here is one after. Additional pictures can be found from around the house in this photo album.

What started off as cutting the grass and doing some weed eating quickly turned into a full day of work on Sunday. Once the yard was looking good again, we decided to start working on our landscaping. There were some huge bushes on the front of the house that were completely overgrown and appeared to never be properly cared for. We tried trimming them down but they looked worse than before. With no options left we decided to take them out. After lots of hard work including blisters, scratches, and one broken shovel, we had successfully removed 3 large bushes. We also transplanted a couple of tree like plants that were taking over the front of the house.

I’m guessing that this weekend, if not earlier, we will get started on landscaping the front of the house. I would like to make the planting beds a little more defined and possibly make them a little bigger. I have no idea what sort of plants we should get, but I’d like for them to stay small or grow slowly if possible. Feel free to leave any suggestions or send an email with ideas. Whatever we do I’m sure it is going to look much better than before. See for yourself by viewing the pictures I’ve added to the gallery from before and after…

This past weekend started off with a little golf. Kim bought a card that gets us buy one get one free at all of the South Suburban golf courses. Since we had already played at the Family Sports Center a couple of weeks ago, we decided to try someplace new. I quickly ruled out Lone Tree, as it appears to be the most expensive, and probably the nicest, of the bunch. We should probably play a few more rounds before we make huge fools of ourselves. From the remaining two, I picked Littleton for our first adventure.

Since we didn’t start until after work, we only played nine holes once again. One of these days we’ll try for the full eighteen, but for now nine seems to be enough. The guy at the desk told me that the back nine was his favorite, so I asked if we could get on that. He hesitated at first but in the end that’s exactly where we went. It started off a little rough, like it typically does, but by the end I think we finally figured a few things out. The beer probably helped too! I am still slicing the ball on my longer shots, so I’ll have to head to the driving range one day to see if I can figure out the problem.

The time has finally arrived; Pig-Fest invitations have gone out! It was hard to pick a date for the fourteenth annual Pig-Fest with so much going on this summer. Hopefully this date will work okay for you to take a trip to Loveland, Ohio. The theme for this year revolves around this year, 2007, being the Chinese year of the Pig. The future of Pig-Fest was a little uncertain after the events of last year, but there was no way we could let this tradition end. I have not finalized musical entertainment for this year, but I am working on it as I write this. Regardless, be sure to add this date to your calendar as this continues to be one party that you don’t want to miss. If you didn’t get an invitation, and would like one, just let me know.

I’m not sure how many people have heard Rodrigo Y Gabriella before, but their song “Tamacun” gets tons of play from a local radio station. Truthfully it’s the only song of theirs that I’ve heard, but dang is it catchy! Their guitar playing is incredible on the song but I never realized how quickly their fingers were moving until I saw this video today. I was speechless after seeing this…