I finished up NOW That’s What Ed Calls Music 2004 and I will be spending the next couple days making a bunch of copies. You can download all of the tracks from the site yourself, or ask for a copy and I can likely get one to you. I think they turned out pretty nice and the quality of music on there is great!

Today marks the last live performance for The Shantee. What a sad day. I wish I could be there…

So yesterday at lunch I went out and got a new camera, the Nikon Coolpix 3200. The phone call in to get the gift card number worked just fine. I didn’t buy a memory card since I was trying to compare and they only had a few left. I’ve decided to get the gig card though, it is so cheap right now. I think I’m gonna go out and pick this up today. It’s one of the few cards they have left, maybe because it is the largest. Pretty nice to get this whole package for just over $300 (with a service plan and new batteries), especially when the card was worth around $300.

Last night I got all of the tracks for NOW 2004 finalized and normalized. The only thing left to do is finish the back cover. Hopefully it will all be done by the end of the weekend. Then I have to mass produce them, woohoo!

It has come to my attention that I missed a very important event from this week. Monday we went to Doni & Phil’s to celebrate Doni’s birthday! The girls made cookie trays for work, while Phil and I watched football on their new bigscreen TV. We also had some Breckenridge Brewery beers that were quite good.

The show last night was a great time. I was really impressed by Megan Slankard. What a voice and she plays guitar as well. Oh yeah she isn’t bad looking either. :) Mission19 were great as well. Talked with one of the guys for awhile after the show. We stayed out later than we should have, but it was worth it for sure. We made it until 11PM, aren’t we crazy?!?!

This week has been pretty typical so far. Monday we just relaxed from the weekend, and spent most of the night working on NOW That’s What Ed Calls Music 2004. I’ve got just about all of the songs selected, and last night I started to work on the artwork. I’ve got a few ideas that I’ve been playing around with and I think I’m about done with the front cover. I’m hoping by the end of this weekend I’ll have it just about done. Then I need to make a bunch of copies of it. If you want one just email me, but I’ll also have it online for you to download, just like the ones in the past.

Tuesday we attempted to workout. I felt like I hadn’t done anything for a month. That actually isn’t too big of a stretch. With our week in Cincinnati, a week being sick, etc. I haven’t done very much. I struggled through 2 miles and decided it was enough. We are going back again tonight, so hopefully it is a little easier.

Last night I had hockey. It was the last night for the pickup league, but it is starting again next week. My only problem now is how to pay for it.

Tonight we are going to go to a show. Mission19 is back in town and playing at the Grand Emporium. Should be a good time!

What a weekend! I wish I had a new camera to share some pictures, but I’m still waiting on the stupid Circuit City gift card. It’s been like 2 months now.

Anyway, we get to Denver late on Friday night and go to pick up our rental car. We reserved a Dodge Stratus, but we ended up with a Jeep Liberty. Pretty nice little deal for the mountain driving we would be doing. So we head towards the mountains, with mapquest as our guide. We follow the highway to an exit for US 6, Loveland Pass. This small road takes us up a very windy snowy road up to the top of a mountain. We actually cross the continental divide, and then follow a similar course to the bottom of this mountain. Later on we realize that US 6 hits the highway in 2 spots. The other route makes you go further down the highway, but it provides a much easier and quicker route. This once again proves my theory that mapquest will get you there, but it won’t always be the quickest or easiest way. We did have a very scenic drive though, and since we weren’t in a hurry it wasn’t a big deal. After checking in we head out for a drink at a local bar. We soon realize that one of the great things about Keystone is they have free shuttle buses that run for all hours of the night. We enjoy a local band for awhile, but soon realize that we should be headed to bed for the big day of snowboarding ahead.

The next day we get our lift tickets for the two days and after a little time I get a snowboard rental for the two days as well. I guess the snow that they have been having isn’t very typical, so they weren’t very prepared. It took awhile to find the open stores, which were all at a different base than where we were staying. We then enjoyed the entire day on the slopes. Snowboarding must be kind of like riding a bike. At first I thought I was going to have to learn everything all over again, but I quickly remembered the basics and I was back to it. Keep in mind this is only the 3rd day I have ever snowboarded, and my first time ever in Colorado. The slopes in Colorado are quite intimidating, when all I am used to are the local Cincinnati and Kansas City ski areas. I took it easy at first, but after a while Kim was having a hard time keeping up with me. :) Actually she did say that I was riding at a level which took her a year or two to get to. Obviously she doesn’t take nearly as many falls as I do. After 4PM we headed back to the room to get changed for the night. We went to see The Swing Crew, a band that we had seen before with Doni. I guess they spend their winters in Colorado and their summers in Wisconsin (I think). Between the two seasons they play many shows along their route from the once home to the other. It was a really good time seeing them again, in a not so crowded bar. After they were done we headed to a local Italian restaurant for a big dinner and some wine. It was definitely one of the best restaurants I have been to in a long time. We headed in much earlier this night so we could be on the slopes for a full day on Sunday.

Although we were both sore, we spent hours and hours on the slopes Sunday. I don’t think I fell as often, but each fall hurt worse because of the pain from the day before. Kim was getting overly confident and was riding with the opposite foot in front. She actually caught onto it pretty well until one nasty fall ended our day on the slopes. She wasn’t really hurt, but the both of us had enough of it. We headed in and left Keystone even though we didn’t want to.

Hopefully we can get back there sometime soon, it was so much fun. I need to get Kim to work on a transfer to Denver. :)

So I’m back in Kansas City, back at work. I sure didn’t miss this very much. I’m very tired still from the weekend, so I’m just hoping that the day goes by fast. NYC was a blast! The shows were excellent and the setlists were amazing. I ate so much pizza, it doesn’t get much better than that. As we expected the hotel was a dump, but the renovated rooms were actually not too bad. Since they ran out of double bed rooms, they gave us two adjoining rooms for the price of one. We did a few touristy things like going to central park and visiting ground zero. The time we were there flew by. Unfortunately I missed my return flight. It was a combination of over sleeping and then the cab I was in broke down. In the end I just rerouted my trip to Kansas City instead of Indianapolis. I guess it worked out, but I was tired of airports by the end of it all…

Well we made it into work today. We got to Lawrence around 8 last night, when the doors were supposed to open, but in typical Granada style they were not and someone was still soundchecking. I should have realized this was the first sign that nothing was gonna happen on time. VACO was supposed to play at 9, but it was obvious that wasn’t going to happen when the first band still wasn’t on at 9. This band didn’t start till near 10. A pop punk band that wasn’t bad to listen to for 5 songs or so, but by their 7th or 8th I was ready to pack up and leave. They were trying way too hard. VACO finally made it on the stage at 11, 2 hours later than scheduled. They played for around 45 minutes or so, and sounded really good. I wish they could have played longer though, I haven’t seen a decently long show in awhile. Pomeroy took a long time to get ready to play, so it was getting very late. We stuck around for 3 or 4 songs and then headed out. I think we were home by 2, but I really wasn’t paying attention, all we needed was bed. We had to be rested up for the drive tonight. I’m now counting down the hours until I can leave here…

Good news though, US Bank is finally agreeing that they screwed up, and all 7 overdraft charges should be off the account tomorrow!

I did get a couple things done over at sonic.edpaffjr.com. I need to change the font colors for the site text, but that will have to wait for a little while. Next up is probably putting in an application form. Shouldn’t be that bad…

Last night we actually took a run outside. It seems like it had been forever since we did that, and it felt like it too. The hills wore us out pretty quickly and so we only did 2 miles around the track, which I guess is really only 1.6 miles. We then thought about going to the vaco and pomeroy show for awhile and decided not to go. The show wasn’t going to start until 10:30, and with it being an hour away we wouldn’t have been home until 3am at the earliest. We will be going tomorrow though, and the show is a little closer this time and earlier. Steve Christy will be going to the show as well, so it will be more fun than last night. I just realized that the two bands are playing in St. Louis on Friday. I’m gonna think about maybe stopping there for the show and spending the night as well. It would break up the drive, and we will still get to Cincy in time for the wedding.

Speaking of which, if you didn’t already know my cousin Jeff is getting married this Saturday. I’m sure it will be a really good time with all of my cousins there. The reception is right down the road from my parents house, so it couldn’t be more convenient. Kim and I will then be spending the entire next week in Ohio (well I’m going to nyc next weekend) so we should have lots of time to catch up with everyone. As I just mentioned, I will be heading to nyc for the annual Thanksgiving OAR shows! I’m sure I’ll have lots of good times in the next week and a half, I’ve only got to get through 3 more days of work…

Edit: I lied. We cannot stop in St. Louis on Friday. We already made plans to be at Kim’s brothers soccer game on Saturday morning. I’m sure it will be just as much fun! :)

This thing is finally working again, sorry for the delay.

Let’s see, work must have once again read this because I can no longer get on hotmail or gmail. Those seem to be the only things that I normally go to that I cannot get on, so I guess it isn’t that bad. I guess I shouldn’t use those emails as much as normal since I can hardly check them. So if you need to get a hold of me while I’m working use my work address.

I took off a little early on Friday so that we could catch our flight. That was the first step towards a good weekend. We got into Cincy and our friend Amy picked us up from the airport in her brand new Jetta. It’s pretty similar to the one that I cruise around in, but it has all of the features like automatic windows and a sunroof. We headed out to my parents house for a bit. I knew that I wouldn’t have much time this weekend, so getting in a couple of quality hours was on the top of my list. I also needed to pick up the Mazda, so I could get all around town. Man I miss that car, 264 thousand miles and still going strong! I picked up a group of friends from Chicago at the airport later that night and headed downtown to the hotel. We dropped everything off real fast and headed down to the Hofbrauhaus. We only had an hour or so down there, but we made the most of it. Liam and Fighty met up with us down there, and even made a little guest appearance with the polka band. Good night out in Cincy, besides the fact that the bar was dead.

Saturday we had lunch at RockBottom and later on ended up in the hotel bar. All of our friends began arriving and we had quite a party going on in the bar. Some came and went, but a group of us stayed there until show time. The show was at the Taft Theatre, a older theatre right in downtown. We had great tickets in the second row, and most of our friends were all within the first 10 rows. I got the band to play a song for me including a little shout out! They were a little rough but that is expected since it was the first show in months. We had fun being so close to the action!

Sunday I went to Skyline, and even drug most of the Chicago crew along. They did not like it though, but at least Liam and I did. Afterwards we drove up to Columbus for the next show. I borrowed a pair of big blingy earrings from my friend Noelle, and that completed my costume. The paint on the shoes didn’t last too long, but it did the trick. Only a few of my friends dressed up, but it was fun regardless. Of course we hit up Chipotle that day. Free burritos yesterday if you went in and bought one on Sunday! This show was all general admission, so we would of course be hanging out in the back of the venue. The Shantee opened the show and were great as always. I just found out that they are breaking up soon, so that might have been the last time I see them. At least I saw them play in front of a large crowd once. OAR came on the stage dressed as pirates, and played a good set. I could hear this show much better, but that was probably just because of location. We went to a cheap bar afterwards and soon called it a night.

Monday was my travel day. I drove back to Cincinnati and dropped the car off to my dad. My mom picked me up and we went out to meet Kim and her mom. From there I went over to visit with some of Kim’s family for a little bit and to get everything packed and ready. We flew out later that night, although we almost got bumped to the next flight. Maybe next time. We had dinner back in KC at Flat Wok which is a Mongolian bbq place. I loved it! Kim has wanted to take me to one of these, and I’m glad we finally went. I tried to find a website for this place, but haven’t had any luck. I would highly recommend it…

Yesterday we had to go back to work. It was a pretty quick day however and we followed it up with a quick workout. Later in the night we went to Todd’s for an election party. I think everyone just was looking for an excuse to throw a party. I tried to stay up last night to watch all of the results, but ended up passing out on the couch. I’m kind of glad the election is over, now we don’t have to deal with the protestors and all the political discussions that have been popular lately.

Today has been very uneventful. I finally got the stereo that I won on eBay, so I’m going to hopefully install that tonight. I need to make sure it all works before I cancel my complaint. I’m still waiting on the check from the Hyatt. Is 2 weeks too long? I may call towards the end of the week if nothing shows up. I need my circuit city gift card as well. Maybe all of our mail is just getting lost somewhere…