I’m beginning to think that all it ever does in Denver is snow. Everyone we talk to says differently, but there has been snow and ice on the ground since we moved nearly a month ago. And guess what? It’s snowing again today. Residents claim that when it does snow it almost always melts within 24 hours. I don’t believe it, though, as there is still tons of ice and snow in the back alley behind the house. I know first hand because I got the Jetta stuck once again last night.

We haven’t been using the alley (although that’s where the garage and parking spaces are) since we moved in because the Jetta got stuck the very first day we tried. After we pushed it out, we decided to just park on the side streets around our home. That was until we left for our ski trip last week. I didn’t want to leave the Jetta on the street for fear of it being reported as abandoned, so I moved it shortly before I left. Fortunately, I had no problems getting it into one of the parking spots.

The problem came when I wanted to go to the grocery store last night. I attempted to back out of the spot and then both of the back tires slid into one of the trenches that currently runs down the alley. These aren’t supposed to be there, but have been carved in the ice by weeks of cars (bigger cars I guess) driving down the alley. These trenches are a couple of inches deep. Once both back wheels were in the trench, I could not get the car to move at all. The front tires tried to pull up the weight of the car, but instead they just spun on the ice underneath. I tried for hours to dig the car out and finally just waited for Kim to get home so she could drive as I pushed it out.

It’s official, we are now second time home owners! Late yesterday we finally closed on the house I talked about long. Our furniture was delivered today and therefore we’ll be pretty busy the next week or so. It’s nice to have all the worries and troubles out of the way. I’m finally really excited about the house once again!

I do have one more issue to figure out, cable service. Fortunately Time Warner doesn’t exist here, but unfortunately Comcast does. So far I’m not sure which is worse. Anyway, I’m pretty sure we’ll end up with digital cable package and DVR. So the question now remains, what about internet service? It appears that they try to get you to lease your modem for $3/month, at least Time Warner gave you one to use for free. So now I’m thinking of buying my own cable modem, the Motorola SURFBoard SB5101 or SB5120. Does anyone own either of these? Once I get that, the service should be pretty good. Their standard connection is 6 Mbps and you can pay $10 extra for 8 Mbps. I’m still undecided on that as well. I better make up my mind soon as my home office depends on it.

I ordered an item from RoadID.com for my dad for Christmas on the 13th of December. Why am I bringing it up now? Because it still hasn’t arrived! At the time of purchase I opted to pay extra for USPS Priority Mail service which should have delivered it between the 20th and 21st. The item was shipping from one suburb of Cincinnati to another, so I didn’t think there would be any problems with regular mail, but I wanted to be sure it was on time.

My choice obviously backfired, and since shortly after Christmas I’ve been in constant contact with the people at RoadID. According to them the delay is all the postal services fault, as the item shipped on the 18th. Even with standard mail service the item should have shown up by now, so is the package lost? They are asking that I wait until next Wednesday, the 10th, and hopefully it will show up by then. We’ll see…

2007 certainly should bring much excitement to my life, and the changes have already started. This post is being written from a room at the Embassy Suites in Denver, Colorado. Kim and I made the drive from Kansas City to Denver yesterday and surprisingly had very little troubles. We closely monitored the road conditions for a couple of days prior to our drive, and fortunately we picked the right day. Yesterday was the first day since a second winter storm hit the area that all of I-70 was open. Along our 600 mile path, we only hit one area of rough conditions near Colby, Kansas, and that only lasted for 20 miles at most.

My first resolution for this year has to be to keep focused on work even though I’ll be working from the hotel, our next home, or other remote locations. So far so good, but I’m about to head out from the hotel in search of lunch. Hopefully I don’t get sidetracked.

Today is a big day for the Hais family, that’s Kim’s family if you didn’t already know. They are adopting a six year old boy named Nick. I may have mentioned his name on here before and he is definitely been in quite a few pictures on the site. Anyway, they have been his foster family for about the past year, and today the adoption will be official. This will be the fourth child that the Hais’ have adopted and will be Kim’s sixth sibling.

Hopefully everyone had a nice Christmas break, I know I did. We made the 600 mile drive from Kansas City to Cincinnati for the last time, so that we could celebrate with our families. The next 600 mile drive we make will be on Monday, January 1st, when we head out to Denver. Keep your fingers crossed that the weather will be good for our trip. The snow in Denver is already causing a few problems with finalizing a contract on the house I posted earlier.

In addition to all of the gadgets, clothes, etc. that I received as gifts for Christmas, I also added a championship to the list. I made it to the final game in both of my fantasy football leagues and actually came away the winner in one. It might have been the lowest scoring game of the season, but I prevailed 77-62. I think I could have won the other league too, if I didn’t make some dumb decisions with my lineup. Oh well, I cannot complain with one first place finish and one second place finish. If I only could be happy with the Bengals performance…

We had some luck on our last house hunting trip in Denver this past weekend. We didn’t find as many potential places as I was hoping, but I think we found one that would work perfectly for us. As long as the inspections and everything else goes through okay, we should be moving into this house sometime after the new year.

A few of my favorite things about the inside are the exposed brick in various rooms, the completely updated kitchen, and the fact that there are three bedrooms. Yes, one of them will become a guest bedroom for all the visitors we are expecting. This leaves the other one to become an office for me to work out of. Even the rabbit can have his own room out back in the sunroom.

The location of the house is perfect. Some might consider the busy street that it’s on to be a downside, but it shouldn’t affect us as our parking spots are all accessed through an alley in the back. This is very typical of most neighborhoods in downtown Denver, at least from what I saw. The nearby streets provide very easy access both onto and off of I-25. The house sits about one mile west of Washington Park and only a couple of blocks from a Light Rail station.

Originally I didn’t want to post this until it was a done deal, but I couldn’t wait any longer…

I may need to come up with a solution to my phone dilemma quicker than I originally thought. Currently I have 3 anytime minutes left on my plan until December 26th. Yes, 3. That number may not even be completely up to date either. I’d love to up my limit for this month, but I think the only way to do that is to sign a new contract with Sprint. I don’t want to do that though, since I’m considering getting a Denver number with Verizon after the move, or hoping for a new cell phone from work. Either way, I probably won’t answer your calls for the next couple of weeks, so be sure to leave a message and I’ll call you back from another phone.

We had a white elephant gift exchange at work today and the best gift of the day was a shirt that said “Regift Responsibly” on it. The words were small and below a recycling symbol with a wrapped gift box in the middle. It definitely received a ton of laughs from the crowd. I may have to find one of these shirts for additional gift exchanges in the next couple of weeks.

With the upcoming move I’ve been considering how I will communicate with my colleagues back in Kansas City. I can easily forward my phone here to another number automatically, so everyone in KC should be able to call me just as before. However, I have realized that this could quickly eat up all of my cell phone minutes. Currently I do not use my work phone often at all, but I can see using a phone much more when I can’t walk down the hall to ask a simple question or have a longer conversation that wouldn’t work well in email.

I’ve come up with a few options to solve this. First, I could ask for a company cell phone just like most of the trainers out on the road all the time have. Obviously I wouldn’t have to worry about the minutes or the bill. The other option is to get another phone, but not a cell phone, one of those fancy internet phones. I’m not sure if the company would pick up the bill for this or not, but there are affordable plans, some even include unlimited minutes. I’ve looked at Vonage and Skype very briefly, but I’m still fairly new to all of this.

Are there any other options that I haven’t considered? If both options were free, which would you choose? I’m trying to keep my options open since I have no idea what will happen, but it’s never too early to start thinking about the future, right?