We took it pretty easy on Friday night. Kim was a little tired from her trip to Minneapolis, and I was equally tired from a busy day at work. Neither one of us wanted to cook nor were we very hungry, so we decided to walk down on the plaza for appetizers and drinks. As soon as we stepped outside, we knew we were not going to make it far. It was freezing outside and the wind wasn’t helping. We settled on M&S Grill, mainly because it is the one of the closest places to our apartment. I had never been inside, but I knew that it was related to McCormick & Schmick’s so I wasn’t expecting much. If you didn’t already know, I’m not a fan of seafood. I like my fish in a tank and not on my plate. The little food that we had wasn’t bad but it wasn’t really good either. I was happy to have a few rounds of beer though. Mike, Christie, and Christie’s parents also stopped by for a few drinks. Her parents were really nice and I wish we could have hung out with them more.

We took a little road trip to Omaha on Saturday with Doni and Phil. After arriving at the hotel we quickly walked over to the Old Market area. We had a round at Upstream and then headed to Jobber’s Canyon (another microbrewery) for dinner and some of their beers. I think I’m a bigger from of Upstream, although I will rarely complain about a microbrew. Next stop was the Civic Auditorium to watch UNO take on Michigan. We had great seats for the game (center ice, less than 10 rows up) thanks to Doni! It was a great game that ended in a 4-4 tie. Of course I would have liked to see someone win the game, but at least we got to see a good game with a bunch of goals. After the game was over, we continued on our tour of the Old Market bars which included T. Henry’s, Mr. Toad’s, and finally the hotel bar. Another great trip to Omaha!

After the long drive home on Sunday morning/afternoon, we decided to be lazy on the couch and watch some Olympics coverage. We did eventually head to the grocery and get some dinner, but it was a pretty lazy day. Late last night, the Kansas City Moose won yet another hockey game to remain undefeated in 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.

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.

Our flight to Newark got slightly delayed because of fog but we still landed before noon. From there we took a new jersey transit train to Penn Station, which cost a little more than I remembered ($14) but was very easy and pretty quick (less than a half hour). Once at Penn Station we met up with Fighty and Sharkey and headed over to the hotel, La Quinta Inn. We were a couple of hours ahead of check-in time, but luckily our room was ready. We dropped off our luggage and began day one of the tour.

Fighty led us most of the day and did a great job. We first walked down Wall Street, an area I had never seen before despite two previous visits to NYC. Next up was Battery Park, which is supposed to have a nice view of the Statue of Liberty. We knew walking over that we weren’t going to be able to see it because of the fog, but we went anyway. At the waters edge we couldn’t see more than 20 feet in front of us, I would say. Slightly disappointed, we headed off to the World Trade Center area. Not much has changed there since the last time I visited, but Kim hadn’t seen it before. After some time there we moved on to Chinatown and then over to Greenwich Village to have dinner and drinks at Torilla Flats. By this time we were joined by our friends Pat and Kristen, and the margarita pitchers were flowing. We polished the night off at a couple of other bars, including the hotel’s roof top bar.

The fog was gone on Saturday, but the rain had arrived. We tried not to let this ruin any of our plans, so we headed out to Times Square and then over to John’s Pizzeria for lunch. We ate a bunch of pizza while in town, but this is the only place I can remember the name of. From there we walked over to 5th Avenue and Rockefeller Center, where we caught a glimpse of the Stanley Cup and Mark Messier. From there we walked through part of Central Park, but by this time we were getting pretty soaked so we headed back towards the hotel. Soon after the pre-gaming began and before we knew it show time had arrived, a sold out show at that! The show was absolutely amazing! I’m sure I will never forget it, and can only hope for shows to come close to matching it. Words really cannot explain it, so hopefully I’ll get some of my pictures up soon.

We spent the rest of the time in NYC hanging out with so many of my friends. It was great to see everyone, although I wish I had more time to talk to everyone. It’s hard with such a large group though. Before we left we did take one last trip back down to Battery Park, despite the freezing temperature, and this time we could see the Statue of Liberty! With that my trip to NYC was complete and I could head home.

Of course I have my busiest day of work during my last day of this work week. It’s all good though because this time tomorrow I will already be in New York City taking in all of the sights. I have alluded to this trip before but I’m not sure I ever announced it. O.A.R. is playing an almost sold out show at the world’s most famous arena, Madison Square Garden, on Saturday. I will be there (in the third row, thanks to a generous user of oarsa.org) along with a ton of my friends from around the country. Every time we have gone to NYC it has been quite a trip and I don’t expect this one to be any different.

We took all of tomorrow off so that we could get into the city early and do some of those touristy things that everyone does. If you have any last minute sights to see, leave a comment and we’ll do our best to check it out…

The drive to Cincinnati was uneventful, and we arrived around 2AM EST. We quickly got some rest, in preparation for a busy weekend.

Friday morning came too quickly, but there was much to be done. We started off at Sears where Kim and her sister Bobbi had arranged to get a group photo of the six Hais children. It was going to be a Christmas gift for their parents, making it even harder to coordinate. Overall it went pretty smoothly, and turned out to be a great gift!

From there, we spent the afternoon at Perfect North, our first snowboard outing of the season. I picked up where I left off at the end of last season, and went an entire day without taking a painful fall. I still fell pretty often, but never had one of those sudden falls that makes you wish you never even attempted to snowboard. I cannot wait to get back out and do it some more.

After Kim’s brothers were sore enough, we dropped them off and then headed over to my parents house. We had a lovely Christmas dinner provided by Chipotle and then opened gifts. :) Afterward, my dad, brother, and I headed down to Paxton’s where my buddy Ken was bartending and Jon was drinking. We closed down the bar and then headed home to rest up.

Saturday started off with a little last minute shopping that Kim needed to do, along with lunch at LaRosa’s. We then headed over to my Aunt Stef’s house, to hang out and watch the Bengals game. Of course my goddaughter Emma was there. She is getting so big already, and can almost walk all on her own. It was a great time! I just wish the same could be said for the Bengals game…

My dad and brother were both at the game, along with just about all of my cousins on the Paff side. This made for a very interesting Christmas party after the game, one that will be remembered for years I’m sure. :) We went from this party to another one over at Kim’s parents’ house, for the Hais family Christmas. Since only a couple of people had been at the game, this party was much livelier. We even had some air hockey and ping pong tournaments going on in the basement.

Christmas morning was spent opening gifts with Kim’s immediate family. Later on in the afternoon we headed to my Grandparents’ house for a kegger…I mean Christmas party. My family had an extra keg that was still leftover from Pig-Fest and it made a very welcome addition to the Busch family Christmas party. We had to leave in the middle of the gift exchange there to make it to yet another party. This time it was at Kim’s aunt and uncle’s house for the Diersing Christmas, which was another great party!

Yesterday morning we woke up and soon enough we were back on the road to Kansas City. The nice thing about this drive was that it was completely free. We got so many gas gift cards for Christmas that we should be set, at least until next year!

My mom has some pictures of the various parties on her site.

We woke up on Thursday to about a foot of snow. We couldn’t let this stop us from making our trip, since we had booked a hotel on priceline and could not get a refund. We did wait until after rush hour and then started the drive. The hardest part was just getting out to Interstate 35, which would take us all the way to Oklahoma City. We eventually made it there around the middle of the afternoon, and quickly checked in to the hotel. From there we walked down to the memorial and walked around the outside. We got there just before sunset, and stuck around to see the lights come on throughout the various parts. We were too late to enter the inside museum, so that would have to wait until the next day.

From there we walked back over to the Bricktown area. We had dinner and drinks at Coach’s and then headed over to the Myriad Gardens to check out all of their Christmas light displays. After we were completely frozen we headed back into Bricktown and went to our second micro brewery of the night, Bricktown Brewery. The beers here were much better than at Coach’s, at least in our opinion. Not wanting the night to end there, we headed to one last bar, TapWerks and then called it a night.

We got up pretty early on Friday to go back to the memorial, this time to check out the inside museum. We had heard that you could walk through all of it in about an hour, but we found ourselves still on the first of two floors two hours after starting. There is so much to read and see inside that you could easily spend half of your day there. The entire memorial is very well done and truly an amazing thing to see. I’m not sure that my pictures of the outside will do it justice.

From there we made the hour or so drive down to the Wichita Mountains Wildlife Refuge, the oldest refuge in the U.S. I found this place online before we left for Oklahoma, when searching for places to see buffalo in the wild. Sure enough we saw plenty of American bison (what is often called buffalo), sometimes they were only 10 feet or so from us. We also saw many longhorn cattle and a few rocky mountain elk. The bison and longhorns were not afraid of cars or people at all, but the elk were more like deer and would flee the instant they were spotted. Besides all of the wildlife, we also drove to the top of Mt. Scott, the third tallest mountain in Oklahoma. The scenery in the preserve is beautiful, I can only imagine what it would look like in some of the warmer months. We were both really glad that we made the drive down to the refuge.

After a few hours there we headed back to Oklahoma City and went to see the Blazers hockey team defeat the Fort Worth Brahmas pretty easily. It was one of those “we went to a fight and hockey game broke out” type of games, especially in the third period. It was nice to see a game this season, since I probably won’t see another one.

We then spent the rest of the night out at Bricktown. We tried to go to a place called Half-Time Sports Grill, but quickly left after a fight broke out. The hockey team must have made their way over to the same bar. :) We then made our way over to the Biting Sow, the only place to have live music seven days a week. It turned out to be a Blues Bar, but it was pretty entertaining for an hour or so. We finally ended up at City Walk, one of those megaplexes of bars where they try to offer something for everyone. After paying an $8 cover we made our way to the dueling piano bar, only to realize that no one else was there. It was nice being able to request every song we wanted to hear, but I think it cost us quite a chunk of change. I still haven’t found a place that compares to Crocodile Rocks down in Myrtle Beach.

We made the drive back to Kansas City on Saturday and spent the rest of the night watching movies. We watched Cinderella Man first, which we both enjoyed a bunch, and then Mr. & Mrs. Smith, which was okay. I fell asleep towards the end of the second, but I was pretty exhausted from all of the driving. Kim said that she had already seen the movie before, but couldn’t remember it, if that tells you anything about it.

Yesterday we did some more Christmas shopping and we now have just about everything done. We then went over to Doni & Phil’s so that the girls could make cookie baskets for their agents, while Phil and I watched the Chiefs blow it in the end. We later ate some Stroud’s, which ended the weekend well. Well I shouldn’t say it completely ended the weekend, since I did have a hockey game at 9PM last night. We won the game, even though one of our better players was playing for the other team. I scored the game winner! :)

I updated my visited states map to include the 30th state, Oklahoma.

Once again I’ve been waiting for Johnson County Parks to update the standings to reflect last nights matches. They must be having a snow day today. We faced off against one of the worst teams in the league last night, supposedly. I think they were one of the better teams we have played, especially the two guys who absolutely killed the ball. They lost the first game because only one player was on time, and they almost had to forfeit the entire match. Instead, we ended up playing four people from their team. We played pretty well overall, had some bad serves, and still could only split the remaining two games with them. They must have had an attendance problem all session.

That was the final match for this session, and our final record was 11-13, almost 500. We should be in at least 6th place overall, if not better. I guess we’ll know where we stand once they update their site.

It is currently nine degrees outside, and I am watching a “winter storm” out my window. The snow started falling very lightly as I was leaving for work. The intensity has gone up considerably since then, and we are actually under a winter storm warning. I’d say there is already a couple of inches on the ground and the weathermen are calling for five to seven inches by tomorrow morning. This should make for an interesting road trip tomorrow.

As I mentioned earlier we are driving down to Oklahoma City tomorrow for a couple nights. I think we’ll be pretty busy while there, and I’m not sure that I’ll get around to updating this while I’m there, so have a nice weekend and try to stay warm.

Once again, we lost two out of the three volleyball games last night. The surprising thing was that we won the first game. It was the best game that we have played yet, but a few crappy calls from the ref ruined the second game. Once we started worrying about him and his calls, our play went downhill fast. If we can just ignore him and let him do whatever it is he does, then maybe we could actually win a few more games. We now stand at 9-12, still in 6th place overall. Our last match is next week against the second worst team in the league, hopefully we can win the majority of the games. Maybe we can even overtake the 5th spot held currently by The Banchees.

There is talk of continuing to play volleyball in the next session. I’m not too sure about it, but I said that I would play just as long as we changed our team name. Instead of Dig This I would like to be known as Off Each Other. That way at least when we lose the other team has to say, “We just beat Off Each Other.” Note: This is stolen directly from another guys blog. When I read this yesterday, I about spit water all over my keyboard.

We are working on plans to visit Oklahoma City in the next couple of weeks. Our original plan of a ski trip before the end of the year just isn’t working out. I still had a couple of vacation days to use up though. Since neither of us has been to Oklahoma before, and it is fairly close to us, we are thinking this is place to go. I’m not sure there is a ton of stuff to do, but I’m sure that we can fill up at least a couple of days. Feel free to leave any suggestions here…

The drive to Ohio was as eventful as always. We originally considered stopping somewhere along the way to rest up, but instead we drove all the way to Hueston Woods on Wednesday night. Besides a minor confrontation with Johnny Law, we had very few problems and got in sometime around 2 or 3 in the morning. Johnny must have been out searching for drunks on the road, because we escaped with just a series of warnings from him.

I slept in on Thursday, and when I finally awoke I found that the troops were being assembled in the hall. I quickly put on all the clothes I had with me and headed out to the paintball field. What a way to start off Thanksgiving, with a good ol’ family war! I was only shot once throughout the day. Some of the bystanders said it was because I was hiding, but little do they know just how good I am at this “game” called paintball.

After I was completely worn out, we headed in to a giant buffet style dinner in the lodge. They had just about everything you could ask for on Thanksgiving, and it was very good. I had to stop after my third trip to the buffet line. I might have continued to stuff myself, but a hockey team had arrived and cleaned out the remaining food. The rest of the night was spent visiting with Kim’s family.

On Friday we took care of some small errands and things, until it was time to head to my Aunt Barb’s new house in Indiana. They moved quite some time ago, but this was the first time I had seen the new place. It is really nice, and actually not too far away from civilization. We had a great time visiting with all of my family and later in the night we headed down to Paxton’s in Loveland, where my buddy Ken was finishing up his bartending shift. My other buddy Jon was there, as well as Ken’s sister and her new husband, Bryan Shova, who we used to play hockey with. Once Ken was done with work, we headed over to The Works to finish off the night. It was great seeing my buddies again!

We thought about doing various things Saturday afternoon, but never really got off of the couch at my parents’ place. Later on in the night we finally decided to head down to the Silverton Cafe to check out The Rusty Griswolds. I don’t think I’ve seen them in years, but they were just as I remembered. Jon came out to enjoy the packed bar as well. We left before the band was finished since most everyone with us had to get up early for the Bengals game the next day.

Yesterday was just as exciting as Wednesday. We left Cincinnati earlier than we ever have, and still didn’t get back until after 8PM. I had a hockey game at nine that I barely made it to. We lost again, but I had a great game. I think I had a goal and at least three assists. When our team scores nine goals in a game, I expect to win, but the other team scored eleven somehow.