Saturday afternoon I headed downtown to meet up with a friend who was in town for the weekend. After some lunch, we decided to walk over to the Great Divide Brewery for their 14th birthday celebration. I first heard of the party when reading one of my most recent blog discoveries, Foam on the Range, toward the end of last week.

After paying $10 to get in, we were treated to unlimited beer samplings, food, and local music. One of my favorite offerings of the day was a Belgian IPA, which was completely gone before the event was over, so I must not have been the only one. In addition to the special brews, they also had every other beer of theirs available for tasting, so it was an incredible deal and to top it all off the proceeds went to an environmental charity.

When I read the above mentioned blog once again today, I was shocked to see myself in one of the pictures from their latest entry. That’s me in the green shirt and my buddy Hadgis in blue, follow the garage door in the background down toward the front of the image until you see us basking in the sun. The article also goes on to mention some new labels and packaging that will be going out in the next couple months. Things are looking good for one of my favorite breweries in town.

I apologize for neglecting my site today, but it’s been one of those days. On the positive side I am working from home today, and will be again tomorrow. Yes, I finally worked out the details for telecommuting and I will be doing so on Monday and Tuesday each week. Then I’ll spend Wednesday through Friday in the office. This should be a nice split between the two.

As for the crappy part of the day, my boss is out again so I’m filling in for him. And another from my team is out as well, so I have to fill her shoes as well. This has led to a stressful and busy day. And to top it all off I’m fighting some combination of allergies and/or a cold. Though I’m starting to feel better as the day goes on, I just hope I’m back to 100% soon.

Kim took a flight out to Utah this morning, and since I’m not joining her on this trip like I did last year, I decided to take my bike on the light rail with me this morning. Since I can only take the bike with me on days I’ll be using the light rail for both ways of the commute, I haven’t really done it too many times. However for my trip home today I’m considering skipping the train and biking the full 20+ miles home. I’ve mapped out a ride combining two bike trails to make it nearly all the way to our house. I’m just not sure if this is too much to do after work figuring that I’ll be in jeans and a polo shirt still. I guess it will depend on how I feel as the day nears its end.

Update: I only made it about half way before getting on a train for the rest of the ride. It was a little hotter out than I originally thought. Next time if I decide to do this I should be prepared with a change of clothes at least.

We had another game in our summer hockey league the other night, and once again another loss. That’s three in a row for those who haven’t been keeping track. Though it’s true that we are still learning to play as a team, I would have figured that some things would have started clicking by now. Many people are blaming it on our goalie, but besides our second game we’ve only scored one goal per game. If were going to win any games it’s almost guaranteed that we need to score more than once. Honestly, we looked as outplayed as the Penguins did against the Red Wings in the Stanley Cup finals, which ended last night with Detroit taking the cup back to “hockey town” once again.

The only shows I’ve seen recently have all been provided by SoundRabbit. I’m not saying that’s a bad thing at all, as I love their music, but I just haven’t been getting around to as many shows as I once did. And that’s pretty surprising to me since the music scene out here is nearly as good as it gets. Hopefully I’ll start getting out more with the warmer weather and abundance of summertime shows.

Anyway, I’ve uploaded a few recordings of recent SoundRabbit shows to archive.org. The first one available is the show from the Mercury Cafe, which I wrote about previously. Second is a short but sweet set from Herman’s Hideaway just a couple of weeks ago, available here. Both of these have a great cover of Life During Wartime by the Talking Heads.

In completely unrelated music news, the first single from O.A.R.’s upcoming release All Sides can be heard here.

What is one thing I wish I knew more about? Stocks. Over the past year or so I’ve definitely thought about branching out and “playing the stock market” a bit, but honestly I really don’t think I understand all that goes into it. For instance, take my employers stock, HRS, which rose as high as $66 a share over the past week or two with speculation of a merger or buyout from a larger company. We received an email from the CEO yesterday saying that we are not seeking either. Once that was released the stock fell to under $56 a share. I own nearly 200 shares as part of my 401K, meaning that I lost over $2000 since the start of the week. There goes my retirement!

Saturday we went out for a little bike ride that eventually took up most of our day. We headed out around 11 with a quick stop for some breakfast/lunch at Einstein Brothers. From there it was my goal to make it out to the Cherry Creek Reservoir and State Park by following the Cherry Creek trail. Along the way there we made a couple of quick stops at the Cherry Creek farmer’s market and later at the bike shop so we could get our bikes looked at and adjusted for the first time since buying them a couple of months ago.

Around 3:30 or so we finally made it out to the reservoir. I’ve often seen the dam walls that create the reservoir, but I had never actually seen the water before. I was surprised to find a fairly large sized body of water complete with a beach area, and a marina that offers rentals of all sorts. Now that we know this is so close to our house, we’ll definitely be back to enjoy it more often.

Now that we made it all the way out it was time to make the trip back. I wanted to mix it up though and take a route different than what we used to get there. I consulted a local bike map that I have to route us back along a few different streets and the Highland Canal trail. We only made one wrong move which probably added a couple of miles, but overall this route was just as enjoyable as the way out.

We stopped for a couple of drinks and dinner as we got closer to home at a place called Reiver’s, which is just on the opposite side of Wash Park from where we live. The menu was full of many good looking sandwiches, and the two we tried were definitely tasty. I’m sure we will head back that way in the future after a long bike ride or possibly just a short ride across the park.

Kim estimated our distance at thirty-two miles, and after mapping it out online she wasn’t too far off! The route I drew out measures at thirty and a half miles, and I think I got most of it pretty much exactly as we followed. I guess that would help explain why I’m fairly sore in the legs today. And I also have some pretty good sunburn on my upper arms and the tops of my knees. It was all worth it though, at least I think so.

Good news at the end of this crazy busy week, my application for our company’s telecommuting program has finally been approved! What does this mean? Simply that I will once again be allowed to work from home just as I was doing since we moved to Denver until a month or two ago. I’m not sure why it took so long to get approved as I was working from home full time before, but this time the approval did have to go beyond our small work group.

Unfortunately it’s not a full time telecommute this time, now I will only be permitted to work two days from home and then the rest of my time is spent in the office. We haven’t settled on the days yet, but I know that Friday’s are likely out of the question. We have a weekly meeting that day and my boss really likes us to be in as few locations as possible. So I’m leaning towards Monday instead, and then I can hopefully get Tuesday as well. We’ll see, as I mentioned my boss is on vacation this week, so I may have to wait another week before anything is finalized.

As I mentioned earlier, the first stop of our honeymoon is in Cannes where we are also planning to see Monte Carlo and Nice. The second stop of our trip takes us to port town on the western coast of Italy called Livorno. Just like with Cannes, I don’t think there is much to see or do in Livorno so I am planning some self exploration of a couple other cities.

First we will take the train out to Florence, the capital of Italian Renaissance. I think it would be easy to fill multiple days with the number of things there are to do in this city, so we’ll have to pick and choose what we do. I definitely want to see the Santa Maria del Fiore, known as the Duomo, which is the domed cathedral. There are also a few other sites nearby that are likely worth seeing.

Florence also has many museums, of which the most popular are the Uffizi Gallery and the Accademia dell’Arte del Disegno. The Uffizi is said to be one of the most famous galleries in the world, likely just behind the Louvre in Paris. I’ve heard that lines can be terrible here, but I’ve found a site to reserve tickets online. However, I’m not sure Kim and I are artsy enough to enjoy it. Has anyone been before? The Accademia houses Michelangelo’s David sculpture and can also been swarmed with crowds. Tickets can also be bought in advance, so these are still up in the air.

Once we’ve seen as much of Florence as we can squeeze into an afternoon, we’ll take the train back towards Livorno with a stop in Pisa along the way. Just from the name of the city it should be obvious that the goal here is to see the Leaning Tower, and hopefully climb to the top of it. There are also a few other surrounding structures that I’ve read are worth visiting. However this stop will not be nearly as long as the time spent in Florence, and once were done here it is back to the ship and onto the next destination…

Our second game of summer hockey went better than the first, but it still provided another loss for our team. This time it was just a 6-5 loss, and we easily could have won the game if we played the whole game like we did in the third period. I scored one of our five goals and likely should have had an assist or two. I’m sure once we all adjust to playing with each other we will start doing well. Hopefully some more things start clicking in our next game.