The move has been pretty stressful on us so far, even though Kim’s company is taking care of many of the details. This weekend we needed to get our minds off of it for a little while, so we took a little road trip. I’ve often found that nothing clears my mind like a little time out on the road.

We woke up fairly early on Saturday and decided to make the drive down to Branson, Missouri, the “family-friendly Las Vegas.” It has this nickname because of the many shows that take place on the strip along with the flashy lights and slow moving traffic. What they don’t tell you is that it’s a retiree’s paradise. They bring the elderly folks in by the tourist bus load. I’ve never seen such a slow moving city in my life!

We got into Branson just before dinner time and quickly decided to head down to a local Italian restaurant called Rocky’s. We attempted to drive down the strip to get all the way to the historic Branson downtown, but quickly detoured around the traffic on one of the outer routes. Luckily our dinner tasted excellent and arrived very fast. From there we decided to head back to our hotel and relax for the evening. The traffic we experienced earlier was enough to make us hide in our room all night long.

Tomorrow I’ll give you day two our adventure…

Branson on Dwellable

We spent the weekend house hunting in Denver. My parents joined us for the marathon search and for good times in the mile high city. The majority of Saturday morning and afternoon was spent touring 15+ different properties in various neighborhoods near downtown. Ideally this is where we would like to end up, someplace near the Highlands or Uptown area are at the top of the list.

It still amazes me how much more places are selling for compared to Kansas City. Our house would easily sell for over $200,000 in a similar location in Denver. Monthly rental fees don’t seem to be too bad, but I don’t think it would be possible for us to rent again after owning a house of our own. As of right now there are a couple of town homes that interest us more than anything. We may have to raise our price limit a little to see what else that brings us. Keep your fingers crossed…

PS Happy 27th Birthday to Kim today!

I traveled to Cincinnati once more this past weekend. Lately Kim and I have been flying into Indianapolis and renting a car from there. This makes it so much cheaper, especially when you get a rental car for $9 a day on priceline! The drive from Indianapolis to Cincinnati is around an hour and a half, so it could be much worse.

Our flights this weekend were on Southwest, which I had not flown in over a year (thankfully rapid rewards credits are now valid for two years). During my hiatus I forgot how funny some of the flight attendants for Southwest are. The line that really got me (and many others on board) laughing came during the safety briefing, when one of the flight attendants informed us that the plane had a smoking section out over the wing.

Southwest has a blog where more of these jokes are discussed, along with many other entries from various employees of the airline. For the most part, it’s a pretty good read.

We spent the past weekend back in Cincinnati. It was nice to be back and to see my family and friends again, although the trip flew by and I was back on a place to KC before I knew it. We arrived late on Friday and went immediately to the Hais house. We spent an hour or so socializing with Kim’s family and then headed to bed shortly after that.

Saturday we headed down to the University of Cincinnati campus for the Battle For The Bell I mentioned last week. My parents met up with us there along with some of Kim’s cousins and other family. Luckily we were there to witness the Bearcats victory and thus the return of the Victory Bell to Cincinnati. In addition to the game we also spent some time on campus. Kim’s brother Chris is a high school senior and is considering UC for college next year. I swear that every time I get on campus something has changed, and these aren’t minor changes. For one thing, new buildings just rise out of nowhere. It really is turning into a great campus.

Later in the evening we had dinner with my parents, Tim, and a couple of his buddies at Max & Erma’s. It’s been a long time since I’ve been there, but the food was just as good as I remembered. Maybe one day they’ll open a location in KC. Then even later in the night we met up with some of my friends at the Village Tavern. The downstairs was much noisier than I ever remember it being, so we spent the entire night at the upstairs bar. It was a good night out, and great to see some old friends.

Sunday we headed back to the Hais’ for Kim’s brother Nick’s birthday party. He turned six and among the items on his wish list was a laptop. Sounds like my kind of kid! We spent an hour at the party and before it was over had to leave to get to the airport. Luckily we will be back in a couple of weeks.

I hope everyone had a wonderful Labor Day weekend, I know I did. Here’s a summary of what we did while in Washington.

We arrived in Seattle pretty late on Wednesday so we found the hotel and rested up for the next day. Thursday started with a trip up Queen Anne Hill for coffee and views of the city. Both the view and the drinks were great. I only hope that my panorama shot turn out as good as this one.

From there we headed down to the Pike Place Market. It was still pretty early in the morning but the market was already fairly crowded. We didn’t want to spend too much time there and couldn’t really buy anything so we just watched the guys throw some fish around for a few minutes. From there we walked down to the water and bought tickets for a Argosy harbor cruise along with the aquarium. I’m really glad we took the cruise. It provided great information and wonderful photo opportunities.

Later in the evening we walked around Seattle Center and before too long called it a night. All the walking we did and the time change got the best of us. We still managed to see pretty much everything I wanted to see and did it all in one day.

Friday morning we left for the Gorge. The drive there was very scenic as we drove through the Cascades. After a couple of hours we arrived at the campsite. Getty’s Cove sits right on the Columbia River and there is even a bridge you can jump off of into the river. It’s a great place to stay when seeing a show at the Gorge. Speaking of the Gorge, it is everything you expect and more! The view from the seats truly is incredible. The shows were amazing and I’m so glad I can finally say that I’ve been there. When can I return?

Posting for the next couple of days will be sporadic at best. After work today we are heading up to the airport and flying to Seattle. From there we’ll spend tonight and all of tomorrow in downtown Seattle. I’m sure we’ll do all sorts of the touristy things, since neither of us have been to Seattle. Thanks for all of the suggestions before, it is going to help a ton.

Friday morning we are driving with a couple of friends to meet up with even more friends at Getty’s Cove. This will serve as our home for the following three nights as we take in a Dave Matthews Band and O.A.R. concert each night at the glorious Gorge Amphithetre! I’ve been waiting for years for a trip to the Gorge and it is finally here. I cannot wait any longer!

Has anyone been to Seattle before? I never have and neither has Kim, but that will change come the end of this month. We’ll be staying in Seattle for two nights before heading off to the Gorge and I need some advice. The most important thing is figuring out where to stay. I’ll probably use priceline to book the trip and therefore I’m betting that we’ll want to be in the downtown zone, but let me know if there are other places to consider. We also need to decide on what we should do while there, taking into account that we only have one full day there. Is the Space Needle worth going up? What about Pike Place Market? Someone help!

I’m sure the lack of posting last Friday went mostly unnoticed. Everyone was either busy preparing for this year’s Pig-Fest or on their way to Cincinnati for the party. After flying into Cincinnati late Friday afternoon I met up with others who had made the trek as well. We started off at Christie’s and after a dozen or so pitchers headed down to the Mad Frog to see Mike Perkins play. A couple notes from the night:

• I miss pitchers of beer, especially when they are only $5.50.
• Potbelly needs to open a store in Kansas City.
• Papa Dino’s is only good after a few beers, luckily they are open until 3AM.
• Recording a show at the Mad Frog can be impossible at times.

Saturday was obviously dedicated to Pig-Fest The 13th! As always it was an incredible party even though the cops really tried to ruin it this time. It would be impossible to document the events of the party so I won’t even try. Thanks to everyone who came out and partied with us. We’ll have to be sure to do it again!

I was in beautiful Cleveland, Ohio all weekend long for one of my favorite weekends of the summer. As with any other year I met up with friends from all over the country and listened to some great music from many different bands. In addition to that I also attended a Reds and Indians game. The Reds won but we probably saw less than one full inning of the game. Instead we gathered our group together in the outfield bar to catch up and wait for more of our friends to show up. At least I only paid $5 to get into the game.

We also partied at the coolest dive bar two nights in a row. It’s pretty hard to beat $2 beers and karaoke every night of the week. I don’t think the staff of this place had ever seen their bar so crowded. When we left on Saturday night one of the ladies was giving us hugs and thanking us for coming back.

We talked about going to a “beach” on Lake Erie but instead we were treated to a party at the townhouse of Jay and Suellen. The food was delicious and so were the drinks. A huge thanks goes out to them for all of their hospitality over the weekend.

Luckily we had tons of fun all weekend because the airport was not fun yesterday, and I only experienced half of what some of my friends went through. Storms all over the east coast cancelled many flights and delayed flights throughout the country. I should have landed in Kansas City before 10PM but didn’t get there until around midnight. At least I made it home though, some were forced to stay in Cleveland for another night last night. I wonder if they went back to that bar for a third round.

After working a shortened day on Friday I flew out to Minneapolis and met up with Kim. She was already in town on business and had part of our first night planned. She decided that we should have dinner at Maynard’s on Lake Minnetonka after taking suggestions from the agents she met with. We arrived to find a two hour wait for the outside deck so we opted to eat inside and just have a drink outside while waiting for a table. The lake areas around the twin cities were especially crowded due to the unseasonably warm weather. The food was good but I was especially happy to stumble upon a beer that I loved, Summit Extra Pale Ale. I had quite a few of these throughout the weekend.

After dinner we headed to downtown Minneapolis where the hotel was located. After a quick stop by the room, we headed out to an area just north called Nicollet Mall. My favorite stop of the night was Brit’s Pub. In fact we liked it so much that we went back the next day. They have an incredible rooftop deck that includes a large grassy area where they play lawn bowling. When we arrived on the first night it was too late to see it being played. We went back the next day hoping that we would be able to play, but we were only able to watch since they had reservations already for most of the day.

I’m getting ahead of myself though. Early on Saturday we headed out to the Uptown area and Lake Calhoun, which is not nearly as far out as Lake Minnetonka. We had lunch at Figlio and then spent some time walking around the lake. There were tons of people out walking, running, rollerblading, biking, or just lounging in the sun. I guess Minnesotans really take advantage of the nice weather since they are likely cooped up all winter.

After getting a little too sweaty for vacation we explored some more areas of Minneapolis including the Metrodome, St. Anthony Falls and Heritage Trail, and the Warehouse District. While in the Warehouse District we had a drink at O’Donovan’s Irish Pub, followed by standard bar food from the Imperial Room. Later in the night we checked out the Shout House for an hour or two. The long day caught up with us though and we headed in before closing down the bars like we had done the night before.

Sunday we checked out of Minneapolis and into St. Paul. Before we did that though we headed to Minnehaha Falls for great sights and more trail walking. After feeling our legs burn once again we headed towards St. Paul. Once we were checked in, we finally made our stop at Mickey’s Diner for some good greasy food. From there Kim convinced me to check out Body Worlds with her. After getting over the disgustingness of the exhibit you can actually learn quite a bit about the human body, although I’m not sure I ever got past the almost puking stage. After that I was ready to get back to the normal routine. We made a couple stops for drinks and then had an excellent dinner at the Wild Onion. Once we finished dinner we were pretty worn out once again so we decided to retire for the night.

After checking out yesterday we drove around the Minnesota Capitol building and the Cathedral of St. Paul. Both were incredible sights to see and I hope that my pictures turned out okay. From there we drove back down toward the airport and made a couple of long stops at Ikea and the Mall Of America. This was my first trip to an Ikea store although I’ve heard lots about it in the past. We found all sorts of things that we loved, but unfortunately couldn’t take them back with us on the plane. We almost bought a new coffee table but decided that the extra charges wouldn’t be worth it. The Mall Of America is also an amazing place that words cannot truly describe. It is so large that I think we covered only one fourth of it and we were there for a couple of hours.

Obviously we had a very busy weekend but it was a great one. I really enjoyed spending time in the twin cities, especially in downtown Minneapolis, and hopefully I can do it again sometime soon. I have always counted Minnesota on my states visited list even though I only drove through the southeastern corner. Now I feel that I can truly say that I’ve visited Minnesota.