I added some pictures to the site from our weed picking event at the nature center along with a few from the Royals game later that night. That’s about the most productive thing I did last night. I was hit with a little “stomach bug” about halfway through my work day and I never really recovered. I’m still feeling a little bit off today, but hopefully that will change soon.

While navigating through a newly opened route in the Triangle this morning an Elton John song came on my Sirius radio. After that song was over my “artist alert” immediately indicated that a different Elton John song was on another station. I tuned into that one as well and it finished up just as I was pulling into work.

What’s my point? Well I also have Billy Joel saved into my radio and I receive an alert every time one of his songs is on any channel. Typically I get more alerts for Billy Joel than I do for Elton John, at least at the times when I’m in the car. Does Sirius favor Billy Joel over Sir Elton or is it just coincidence? This led me to a little debate with myself over whom I thought was better. I know that Kim would obviously say Billy Joel, since he’s her favorite performer of all time. Although I enjoy various songs from each of them, I give a slight advantage to Billy Joel. It seems that he has created more songs that I enjoy than Elton John has. Regardless I’d love to see either one (preferably both) of them live someday.

The pictures from our weekend in Utah are up! I sorted through the 100+ pictures and selected the best 48 to share with everyone. I hope you enjoy them. Utah is really a sight to see with your own eyes, it is very beautiful. In addition, I think that Utah has the best skiing/snowboarding mountains in the country. I think I can safely say that now after spending time in Colorado and on the east coast in Vermont. I hope to return sometime during the peak time of the season, to experience Utah at its best.

After getting the pictures online last night, we spent some time catching up on some TV shows. We watched an old episode of The Amazing Race in addition to the American Idol contestants butchering some Queen songs. If you are into the show, then check out DialIdol.com. I don’t use their application for voting, since I’ve never voted, but I find their predictions to be fairly accurate and interesting to read.

My face still hurts! “Well it’s killing me,” my dad would likely say.

The top layer of my sunburnt face has mostly peeled away. However, the next layer of skin below that is still bright red. Hopefully this goofy new look fades away soon. I could take my boss’ advice and get some of that fake tanning cream, but I think I’ll just wait it out. There have been multiple picture requests, so here ya go…

This was taken on the second day of boarding during a break at the Summit House, which is nearly 10,000 feet above sea level! You can easily see the “tan” lines on my face, and I think they are even more noticeable now.

I was hoping to get all of my pictures from the trip online last night, but I spent my free time working from home to update a client’s software. Hopefully I’ll have some time tonight to finish going through the pictures and then get them online. There should be some really good ones.

My birthday weekend is now over. This 26 year old is back at work on what seems to be another typical Monday morning. Before I can say goodbye to the weekend here is my recap of the events.

After work on Friday I drove home to find boxes of wrapped gifts from Kim. She bought me all sorts of clothes and even a new pair of shoes. After opening all of the boxes we quickly drove down south towards Overland Park and Olathe (Kansas suburbs). We tried to get in a few different restaurants for dinner, but each place we went was packed and had hour long waits for a table. Luckily I remembered there was a Moe’s nearby, so we settled on burritos for dinner. Next up was a hockey game at Ice Midwest. This was not your typical game though, it was a “NHL rules” game that a couple guys from my team played in. This game had it all: big hits, nice goals, good goaltending and even a fight. The standing room only crowd was estimated to be 300 deep. Overall “Friday Night Lights” seemed to be a huge success, and the guys from my team said they would play again. From there we went back home to rest up for Saturday night.

During the afternoon on Saturday we preparred for a little party that would later take place in our apartment. Mike and Christie helped kick the party off shortly after dinner. We played a game of euchre before other partiers arrived, if I remember correctly the guys won! Todd stopped by early in the night, but had other events to attend. Doni, Phil, Maria, Christina, and Taylor all helped in celebrating my birthday. Later in the night we made a trip up to The Levee for some music and a couple rounds. All in all it was a very nice birthday party!

Sunday turned out to be a fairly nice day, so we started off at the driving range with Maria. I hit everything really well except for the stupid 6 iron. I could not get that one right, and I’m still not sure why. Hopefully next weekend we can squeeze in a round of golf. From there we had lunch at Ponak’s and completely stuffed ourselves. Next time we go, I’ll have to try one of their Margarita’s which I’ve heard great things about. After lounging on the couch for a few hours, I drove up north for the first round of playoff hockey. We faced off with the same team we beat up on just one week earlier. This must have got to them though because they came out flying and hustled the whole game. In the end we lost our second game of the season, and will be playing for 3rd place this coming weekend. I guess it was only a matter of time before we lost.

For your sake, I hope that tonight is a little more exciting than last night. I am totally fine with lying on the couch and watching outdated coverage of the Olympics, but it doesn’t make for much to talk about:

me: Did you know that the US men’s hockey team lost to Slovakia?
edpaffjr.com reader: Again? They just played on Saturday.
me: Not again. I just got around to watching the game last night. I’m still three days behind…

The most productive thing I did last night, besides cooking dinner, was adding our pictures from Omaha to the site. This took all of ten minutes right before I headed to bed last night. Usually it wouldn’t even take that long, but I was trying to get a video added along with the pictures. I thought that I could do it, but I haven’t had any luck yet. It’s pretty dumb anyway, just some guy doing a Napoleon Dynamite dance in between periods.

Pictures from this weekend are up! Our dress was not as complicated as some of the other teams, as you’ll see in the pictures, but I think it fit the best with our team name. A group of guys on the bus said that the winners from the year before were dressed as characters in Caddyshack. I guess if it was done well enough, that deserved to win, but personally I don’t think people like the pimps have what it takes. I’m a fan of something with a little creativity! Who knows if/when the results from this year will be posted on their website…

Oh yeah, happy Valentine’s Day!

I finally got to another show on Friday night, Robert Randolph & The Family Band. Mike, Maria, Joel and Amanda all met us at our apartment before the show, and after a couple of drinks we headed up to the show. They played one of the longest sets I have seen in awhile, it must have been over two and a half hours. I started my recording a little early, before they started playing, but they were still playing when I reached the three hour recording maximum. Oh well, there were a few other tapers there. I think everyone had a good time, although I did hear Mike comment on the length of some of their songs. He swears that one song was 45 minutes long!

Saturday we had to get up early to prepare for the Barstool Open, a pub crawl involving a miniature golf hole in each of the nine bars. Team “Hole In Juan” starred Mike as Jose, Christie as Rosa, Kim as Zita, and myself as Juan. We started the morning off at the Levee and then moved on to Mike’s, Charlie Hooper’s, the Brooksider, Lew’s, Tanner’s, Dark Horse, and finally Kelly’s. You might have noticed that the list is only eight bars long. The crawl was so popular, and the bars were so crowded, that we didn’t have time to make it to all of them. In fact, we only putted at six of these eight bars. Luckily, they only count your top six holes, so we made it to enough bars to qualify for the prizes. I think we only really have a chance at winning the “best dress” though, since our putting wasn’t that good. Wait until you see these pictures…

Speaking of pictures, I added Kim’s San Antonio pictures to the site over the weekend. Sunday was a relaxing day. I caught up on some Olympics action and messed around with the computers while Kim ran some errands and hung out with Bianca. Later in the night, I finally got to play hockey again. I think the last time I played was about a month ago, so it felt really good to be out there again. I’m happy to report that our team is still undefeated this session!

I really don’t have too much to write about today. Last night I sat at my computers and tried to get various things done. I still haven’t got windows XP setup on the old machine like I’ve been wanting to. Currently the machine is sitting on the floor, with the case open, and various parts missing. I’m not having much luck with it. Perhaps I’ll have more time tonight after volleyball.

Kim is still down in San Antonio with work. I’m still not sure why I didn’t tag on to the beginning or end of this trip like I’ve done a couple times before. Just look at the hotel they are staying at, and you’ll probably be asking the same thing. Adding further insult is the fact that I’ve never really been to Texas before. I have had a layover or two there, but I don’t count those. I think we decided that it was just going to cost too much, especially since I wanted to spend time in Austin as well as San Antonio. I guess we’ll just have to arrange for a different trip down south.

Last night was pretty uneventful. Kim is on her first trip to Salt Lake City (one of her new territories for work) yesterday and today, so I sat at the computer and caught up on all of the usual sites that I waste lots of time on. I treated myself to dinner from Chipotle, but I guess that I should have gone today and bought a gift card. I also put up the pictures from our trip this weekend, so the night wasn’t a complete waste.

The weekend was a blast and there was never a dull moment. Kim and I finally made it to Manchester, NH (31st visited state) a little after 9PM Thursday. We met up with Tracey and Weeba at the airport and then started the drive to Killington, VT (32nd visited state). Along the way we picked up sampler packs from both Long Trail and Magic Hat Brewing Companies. We then got checked into the hotel/condo and spent the rest of the night catching up over a few drinks.

We woke up pretty early on Friday to get a jump on the crowds. I guess the weather hasn’t been the best out there, but it was perfect upon our arrival. The temperature stayed right around freezing (while the sun was out) and snow was being made often. The only time it got bad was when the wind would gust and blow away all of the powder. Then you would be left with patches of ice to ski/board on. I only took one bad fall on Friday, hitting my toe right on one of these patches of ice. It was towards the end of the day, so I toughed it out and then iced it a bunch afterward. Friday was our relaxing night, since we still had another day on the mountain. We sat in the hot tub, had pizza from Pizza Jerks, watched some TV, drank some of the beers, etc.

Saturday was another early day for us. We needed to take full advantage of our time to make sure our bodies were full of pain. One highlight of the day was the burritos we had from the Baja Burrito stand at one of the bases. Another highlight was attempting to ski/board back to our hotel after a few rounds in the lodge bar. Thankfully we were not on a steep slope, it could have been ugly. We had dinner at the hotel restaurant, Sky Box Grill, and then headed out on the town. Our first stop was the Pickle Barrel, which didn’t last long. They had a $20 cover charge, per person! Instead we went over to the Upper Deck Sports Lounge. We had some drinks there, until they switched bartenders, and the new one wouldn’t let Weeba drink because of his paper driver’s license. We then headed to Moguls Sports Pub to finish off the night.

We had to be checked out at 10AM on Sunday, which was a little earlier than I would have liked, but the stop at Blanche & Bill’s Pancake House made it worthwhile. We then made the drive back to Manchester and arrived plenty early for our flights later in the day. I’ve never been extremely afraid of flying, but a few people on our flight must think that I am. Shortly after takeoff, I started to feel a little weak, sweaty, shaky, etc. I felt like I couldn’t breathe very well, but in actuality I was hyperventilating. A very kind doctor said that I might have had a low blood sugar level that triggered this, along with the anxiety of flying. He considered it a panic attack, something that I am familiar with but didn’t think I would ever experience. And now that I might have experienced one, I hope to never experience it or anything like it again.

Despite the craziness of yesterday, the trip was well worth it and everyone had a blast! We talked about doing it again next year, either to Killington again or somewhere else in the northeast.