I took advantage of Kim being out of town to fix up my office. I’ve always liked the color blue, but the light blue color in the office wasn’t my favorite. Plus it’s the same color as one of the bedrooms upstairs, so I felt that there was a need for a change. So, I was lucky enough to find a can of paint in the basement that looked better to me, a nice gray color. Once the paint dried I realized that this very well could be the same color as our bedroom upstairs. Oh well, I like the color more than the light blue.

Once everything was completely painted, I started hanging up my posters and other office goods. I used Google Sketchup to draw the room and then layout where I wanted everything to go. I was then able to visualize how everything would look, and make adjustments, before putting a single screw into the walls. The colors may look similar in these photos, but they really are different. Check out this photo gallery to see pictures of the entire process.

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.

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…

I think I spoke too early yesterday. I woke up to around a half foot of snow on the ground this morning, and it isn’t showing any signs of slowing down! There goes all the flowers that have been blooming lately. On the plus side, we have plans to snowboard this weekend which could be our last time of the season. Fresh powder will definitely be a bonus for us. It is currently 28 degrees outside, welcome back to winter I guess. The funny thing is that weather.com is still reporting high pollen counts for our area. It also says there is a chance of thunder this afternoon. Is this the apocalypse?

I commented on the weather a week ago, and since then it has been wonderful outside. Most of our Sunday was spent outside in and around Washington Park. I think all of Denver was there with us, but the park is so big that there is plenty of room for everyone. Looking forward, the weather looks like it will continue to be just as nice, with most of our high temperatures in the 60s. In addition, it doesn’t look like the temperatures will dip below freezing again anytime in the near future.

I noticed some flowers popping up in the front yard. I just went outside to snap a couple of pictures of them, but found the yellow one had wilted already. Fortunately the purple ones are still looking great! I noticed some other purple ones growing in the grass, but I think they are weeds. I also snapped a couple pictures of some of the house plants, which are mostly bouncing back from the move. Spring is in the air!

We took another weekend off from snowboarding so that my ankle can fully heal, but that didn’t stop us from heading into the mountains once again. This time we chose a route other than I-70, and ended up on US-285 for a couple of hours ending at Buena Vista. I was hoping to stumble upon some good spots to view bighorn sheep. Fortunately, we did run into a group of sheep even though it wasn’t in an area that I had researched. I guess we are lucky most of the time.

Besides all of the wildlife we saw along the way, we also ran into some beautiful scenery. The South Park Basin was incredible, despite the frequent high winds. Next time we go there, I hope the winds are calmer and then I will stop to take some more pictures. Buena Vista was another incredible stop along the way. Mount Princeton and the other collegiate peaks (Columbia, Harvard, and Yale) provide an incredible background to the town. We went close to the base of Mount Princeton trying to see some more sheep, but were not successful this time.

Just as we turned around to head back home, the moon started rising and became big and full. I guess we were too far west to view the lunar eclipse, but the view of the moon was still incredible. We made it back to Denver, after a quick stop in Colorado Springs for dinner, hours after we left. Hopefully the next time we take a trip like this, we can couple it with some hiking.

Well it looks like I may have jinxed myself with all of these tales of snowboarding every weekend. I’m sitting at my desk today with my ankle wrapped and iced. To get around the house I’m relying on a pair of crutches that we just picked up from Walgreen’s. I’m thinking that it’s just a bad sprain, but I’ve also been reading up on “Snowboarder’s Ankle” or Fracture of the Lateral Process of the Talus (LPT). I’m hoping that Dr. Kim can come up with the proper diagnosis later today.

Contrary to how I feel today, the weekend started off great! Two of Kim’s brothers, Chris and Chip, came out to Denver for a visit. Early on Saturday morning, we took them up into the mountains and headed toward Keystone. This is where things went bad. The Colorado Department of Transportation forced an avalanche as we were driving out which dumped eight to ten feet of snow on I-70. We decided to stop at a gas station and wait for the road to re-open, which they finally did a couple of hours later.

Once we finally made it to Keystone, we enjoyed a half day or boarding. Chris and Chip are both still learning to board, but they both seemed to pick it up really quickly and easily. Once we were good and tired we headed to our hotel to rest up for a second day on the mountain. The second day would be the bad day for me. We were about four or five runs into the day when Kim and I went down a steep blue trail named Star Fire to meet up with Chris and Chip at the bottom of the hill. I hit a small ball of snow which caused me to lose my balance, catch one of my edges and slam down the hill. I hit my head pretty hard, but thankfully I had my helmet on. Then I quickly realized that my ankle was fairly sore. I made it down to the bottom on my own, but once I made it there I quickly decided that my day was done. Since then the pain and swelling has gotten worse, but I am starting to feel better today, at least better than I felt yesterday.

Keep your fingers crossed that this is just a sprain…

One of the hardest adjustments I’ve had to make involves the liquor laws here in Colorado. Back in Missouri you can buy anything you want at the grocery store, even full strength liquor. Therefore we often had various bottles on our grocery list, and thus a fully stocked bar. Since we’ve moved our bar has gone downhill quickly.

In Colorado you cannot buy liquor in the grocery, you must go to a liquor store to get it. Even tougher, you can only buy 3.2% beer in the grocery store. I’m not sure about gas stations, I’ve yet to go into one looking for beer. There are lots of liquor stores around, but I still wish I could make one stop to get everything. Now we need two weekly stops, one for food an done for drink. And to further complicate matters, the liquor stores are closed on Sunday, which is the day that we typically do our grocery trip.

If you want to give us a housewarming gift, liquor will gladly be accepted!

My site is back to being hosted from one of my home PCs. This means that the gallery is working once again! Now that brings me to a new dilemma, and I am going to rely on all of you to help me decide on the future of the site.

I’ve really enjoyed my experience with Flickr, but I’ve often heard complaints of slowness and have actually experienced them myself. Another thing to consider is that I would probably have to upgrade to Pro account to host everything.

I probably don’t have much room to complain about speed, since my site is hosted locally via cable modem service. However, I do think the site is faster than it was when I was using Time Warner. The 8 Mbps package from Comcast appears to be working very well so far (although my download speed is not nearly as fast as I was hoping).

FYI, I’m leaning towards going back to Gallery, since that is what I am most familiar with.