So the site is back up for now. If you did not already notice, we are back from our little vacation, here is a summary…

I left work on Tuesday and drove up to the airport. I caught up with Phil on the bus ride from long term parking to the terminal, and we quickly found Christina’s boyfriend Nick as well. The flights were rather uneventful. I did get some quality pictures of Salt Lake City from the plane. This was my first time in Utah, but I guess it doesn’t really count. Speaking of pictures, I took over 400 that I’m going to go through sometime soon, maybe tonight. We finally got to San Diego and took a cab over to the Hotel del Coronado which was quite large and beautiful. Kim’s national meeting was wrapping up, so we joined what was left of the group in the hotel bar to finish off the night…

Wednesday we woke up and headed to the beach early. We walked along the water and then had breakfast at a little cafe in town. Unfortunately we had to check out of the hotel del since even the discounted rate for the remainder of the trip was like $250 a night. We headed over to the Hilton on Harbor Island which I had won for all us on priceline. We arrived there early, way before check-in, so we checked the luggage and headed off to Sea World. We saved 20% on admission using our Southwest Rapid Rewards cards, which was a nice bonus. We rushed all around the park trying to take in all of the sights before they closed at 6PM. My favorite parts of the visit were the dolphin show, the penguin area and of course the Shamu Show. After rushing through one side of the park, we realized that we had lots of extra time, so we wandered over to the killer whale tanks just in time to watch some of the practice session. I got some of my best pictures during this, so it was definitely worth the visit. After seeing the Shamu Show, we left the park and headed back to the Hilton to get checked in. After quickly cleaning up we headed over to a local restaurant called The Boathouse. It was primarily a seafood restaurant, but they had some chicken dishes that we were quite good as well. After the long day, we headed back to the hotel to rest up for an even longer day…

Thursday we headed over to the Zoo as early as we could since it too closed at 6PM. Everyone went along for this trip: me, Kim, Phil, Doni, Christina and Nick. If you have not been to this zoo, it is huge. We took advantage of the guided double-decker bus tour so that we would not have to walk all the way out to the furthest parts of the zoo, and could still see most of everything. From there we walked back to parts that the tour missed or that we wanted to see once more. They are very proud of the Giant Pandas they have since there are only six or so in the U.S. We waited in line to see them, but once we got in the viewing area could hardly see the lone panda that was hidden in a tree. I guess the others were behind the scenes somewhere. I tried to get a picture, but I doubt any of them will come out. I really enjoyed the zoo though, and my brother would have loved it too. The elephant exhibit was quite good, and they had three or four of them out and about. I also got some great pictures of the two hippos that they had on display. At first they were far from the viewing area, but as we waited for a few minutes they began feeding them and then the water in their habitat came alive. Definitely the closest I have been to one of these huge animals. Anyway enough about the zoo. We planned ahead of time to stay the entire day in downtown, since going back to the hotel took so much time the day before. We then decided to go to a part of town called the gaslamp quarter. We started off at an Irish pub called Patrick’s II. The bartender was a little grumpy and we were getting a little hungry so we then headed over to Maloney’s. After some drinks and dinner it was off to another more exciting bar, this time the 5ifth Quarter was our choice. They had a cover band playing that entertained us for a little while. And then to round out the night, we found The Shout House a dueling piano bar. This was not quite as much fun as I’ve had before in a bar like this, but it was good enough. Kim, Doni and I even ended up on stage doing the O-H-I-O during ‘Hang On Sloopy.’ This was enough fun to end the night for sure…

Friday Kim and I headed to Tijuana Mexico. Kim and Doni also went to Mexico earlier in the week so Doni and Phil decided to skip it this time. It took absolutely no effort to get into Mexico, all we did was walk in. First thing we noticed was the Tijuana River which we walked over. Not much water in it, but it smelled horribly and was very dirty. That was just the beginning though. I read so much about going to Tijuana, but nothing can actually prepare you enough. I was shocked at the poverty of the entire area. It was pretty depressing at times. We did make a few buys however. I got a pair of Foakley’s for $15 and a couple bottles of tequila. Before we knew it we were ready to head back to the good old U.S.A. The line at customs was not too bad and we got in with no trouble at all. All you need is a driver’s license and then the simple answer of “U.S.” when asked your citizenship. They didn’t even check out what we bought, guess I should have bought more liquor. :) From there we met up with Doni and Phil at a place called The Fish Market and then headed back to the hotel to clean up again. We decided that we would head to Old Town for a nice Mexican dinner. We ended up at Casa de Bandini which was an excellent choice. They had large margaritas and amazing food! From there it was back to the hotel to enjoy one final night of vacation…

Saturday we had to wake up and get to the airport to catch our flight back home. It was sad to leave, but I think we made quite a contribution to San Diego and were financially ready to leave. :) The flights were once again rather uneventful. When we got back into town we met up with Mike at our favorite plaza restaurant, Tomfooleries, to reminisce on the trip…

Yesterday was full of the typical errands, but I’m glad we made the choice to fly back on Saturday and not on Sunday so we had a whole day to adjust. Mike and I did go over to Doni and Phil’s to check out some dogs that they were thinking of adopting. They did settle with a cute little pit bull, hopefully they get some pictures up soon. I learned quite a bit about the breed and found out that they often have a bad reputation. This little guy is so much fun so far…

Edit: Phil has updated his blog and included pictures of the new puppy!

My router is really pissing me off lately. It keeps thinking that my computer has a virus when clearly it does not. Netgear support is worthless as well. Have I said this already? Well it is worth saying it again…

Vacation time has arrived! I’m leaving work at 4 today to head to the airport and then it’s off to San Diego. Kim has been there since Sunday, but I guess they have been doing a bunch of work stuff. Our itinerary as of now is this:

Wednesday (aka tomorrow) we are heading to Sea World. I was hoping to get in for free since I am baby shamu’s godparent and all, but I forgot that the real baby shamu resides in Florida not California. This may sound really funny to most of you, but it is a true story. When we were younger my mom would encourage us to enter tons of these contests and we won all the time. One time I made a birthday card for the first baby shamu’s birthday. The card I made won my entire family an all expense paid trip to Sea World Orlando. Mom, if you read this, have you ever seen the card online or any of the pictures???

Anyway, back to the plan. We are then going to the zoo on Thursday. It has been awhile since I’ve been here and I am really looking forward to it. I wanted to do the wild animal park as well, but I do not think we will have time…

Friday we plan to head to Tijuana Mexico. I’m excited to do this since I’ve never been to Mexico. I know this probably doesn’t even count, but it should be fun either way!

I’m sure we’ll throw dinners and bars into the mix late at night, but that is the plan as of now. We will be flying back sometime Saturday (unless we can get bumped). Have a good rest of the week…

Well I started my bidding for San Diego and had success very early on. We ended up getting the Hilton San Diego Airport/Harbor Island for $56 a night plus taxes. The total for two rooms came to $385.46 with all charges add in. If we would have booked this hotel through their site it would have been at least $774.15. We saved just about 50% looking at the minimum price! I’m pretty excited for this trip now, I even got my vacation days into work already…

So we drove out to the airport to reserve my flight to San Diego, and we get there 15 minutes after the ticket counter closed. You are probably thinking we got there around 10PM or so, but NO we got there at 7:45…The counter closes at 7:30! The last Delta flight out of KC is at 7:15 or so. Unbelievable. So we find a nice guy who points us towards a not so nice lady at the baggage office. Eventually she gave in and allowed us to pay for my flight (as long as it didn’t involve cash). I got my flight to San Diego for something like $30. :) The total was around $230 but we had $200 from the last time Kim volunteered to be bumped from Cincinnati to KC. Can’t beat that! I will be in San Diego on the night of April 5th and we are flying back on the 9th. Should be a quick but enjoyable trip! Now I have to figure out the hotel accommodations…

Remember the free iPod deal from a long time ago. Well today I got an email that my free iPod has shipped! I’m still leaning towards selling it, especially since I hardly use the Nomad that I already have (besides for recording). The best part is that I just got done selling my old Canon Elph battery charger. I got $30 dollars for the charger, looks like I need to start searching for more junk to sell. The positive feedback I get form the sell should convince people to bid freely on my auctions. We’ll see what I decide when it actually gets here though.

I also finished up the sonic website today. Check it out at www.northlandsonic.com!

I guess the talk of San Diego before pushed Doni & Phil to book a flight so Kim is also working on ours. We still have a voucher to use from Delta, so we have to drive out to the airport tonight to use it since we do not have any ticket offices here in town. Guess I should narrow down the hotel decisions…

After work Friday we picked Bobbi and Chris up from the airport and headed back to our apartment for some drinks, checkers, music, darts, etc. Doni and Phil stopped over as well. This led to a brief discussion about our April trip to San Diego. I am now incharge of getting our hotel figured out. I think I’ll start bidding on priceline sometime soon. The rest of the night was a good time. It ended with the GCL (Chris and me) beating the GGCL (Kim and Bobbi) 2-1 in a few games of darts!

Saturday Kim and I made a big breakfast consisting of waffles, turkey bacon and goetta that Chris brought from Cincy. Doni and Phil came over again since they had never had goetta before. I too am relatively new to this stuff even though I lived in Cincy for quite some time. I must say that it is not bad stuff though. After breakfast we shopped on the Plaza for a few hours. Later in the day we headed down to Southwest Boulevard to have a late lunch at one of the authentic Mexican restaurants down there. Another good meal there, we have yet to be disappointed by any of the restaurants there. We then went to Union Station to see the train displays and we also watched a movie on natural disasters on the Extreme Screen. From there I took everyone on my own little tour of Kansas City. We first drove by Kauffman Stadium and Arrowhead Stadium. Next was a trip to Independence, MO which is the home of Harry Truman. I was pretty much out of ideas from there, but I knew that Bobbi and Chris needed to at least visit Kansas. I drove down to the most logical place I could think of, the Sprint world headquarters, haha. I guess Kansas really isn’t that exciting of a place. We finally decided to go to the Outlaws hockey game at Kemper Arena. They got killed by Kalamazoo but at least it was a good time. Pictures are now up from the day…

Sunday we had to drop them back off at the airport, but first we had lunch at Gates BBQ. I told them they had to have Kansas City BBQ before they left, and this place is quite the experience. After dropping them off, we had quite the typical Sunday. Grocery shopping, cleaning, etc. Later in the night we went over to Susans for tacos and Sopranos. That marked the end of another good weekend!

Well I made the drive without too many problems. It normally should take 9 hours but this time it took me 12. This is after making great time all the way to Indianapolis. From there to Cincinnati it was like driving on a 100 mile long driveway. I don’t think I went above 35 or 40 mph the whole way. Most of the time I was going about 20 or 25. I was stuck in non moving traffic for an hour and a half at one point, but I made it. I immediately met up with a few of my high school buddies and enjoyed a night out with them. My buddy Bill was back in town from California, so it was a blast hanging out with him again, as well as Ken and Jon.

The next morning I woke up early to get out to my parents place. I picked Kim up and we were on our way. My dad wanted to be sure to give a new digital camera to my mom so she could use it at the Christmas party later in the night. We decided to just open all of our presents at that time though. I showed everyone the brand new tires on the car, and still got a few more things to open up! :) We all stopped at the Hais house for a little while and then it was off to my aunt and uncle’s place (the other Paffs). We had a gift exchange there, and I got a shot glass checkers set. It will make checkers more exciting when Kim beats me the next time. We also had a stop over at Kim’s grandparents house for yet another party. After that it was back to the Hais’ where we opened even more gifts. I eventually fell asleep in the middle of all of this and was left on the couch for the night. What a long day!

The next day we did a little sledding with Kim’s brothers. Later on it was time for my grandparents Christmas party. Yet another gift exchange. This time I got Chipotle gift cards that my brother brought, and Kim took the Cheesecake Factory cards that I brought. We love food! The night ended with a game of Texas Hold’em that involved 14 of my cousins, uncles, etc. I made it to the final table but was one of the first out from there. I can’t compete with the pros…

Sunday I met up with my buddies once again to pregame for the Bengals game. Can you believe it, a week ago I had never been to an NFL game and now I was going to my second one. Ken had a free ticket for me to use, so I couldn’t pass it up. We all had a great time down at the game, besides the fact that most of our toes froze. The Bengals pulled out a victory too! I’ve been to two great games! Afterward I was picked up and we were off to Kim’s aunts house for the last of our Christmas parties. Yet another gift exchange, and this time around I ended with some Panera gift cards. Kim got a bottle of Baileys and some lottery scratch offs (we won $22)!

Yesterday we drove back home under much better driving conditions, and here I am back at work. It’s only a 3 day week though!

Steve is letting me leave an hour earlier today so that I can get an even bigger head start on the drive home. I’m hoping that they have most of the roads cleared now, especially since the snow has mostly stopped and I won’t be in the snowy areas for at least 6 hours from now. With any luck I’ll be in Cincinnati early enough to meet up with some friends or something…

Happy Holidays to you all!

Sorry about all of the downtime lately. I have been trying to install a router so that I can hook up the ReplayTV box. This has given me nothing but troubles, and so therefore I have removed it until after the holidays. I still believe there is something funky going on with my web server, but I’m keeping a close eye on it.

Not much has gone on this week. Kim left yesterday and headed back to Ohio. They are getting killed with snow right now, and I really hope the roads are ok for my drive tomorrow afternoon. I have burnt about 20 copies of NOW 2004 so far, and I’ll probably be making copies until I leave tomorrow morning. Hopefully some of you have been able to download it and are enjoying it.

Tonight I’m heading over to Doni & Phil’s for a little party. A group from the Brooksider go caroling every year, and their house is on the list of places to stop. I can’t stay real long though since I have hockey tonight at 9. In the meantime I’m burning CDs and packing my bags for tomorrow!

What a weekend! I wish I had a new camera to share some pictures, but I’m still waiting on the stupid Circuit City gift card. It’s been like 2 months now.

Anyway, we get to Denver late on Friday night and go to pick up our rental car. We reserved a Dodge Stratus, but we ended up with a Jeep Liberty. Pretty nice little deal for the mountain driving we would be doing. So we head towards the mountains, with mapquest as our guide. We follow the highway to an exit for US 6, Loveland Pass. This small road takes us up a very windy snowy road up to the top of a mountain. We actually cross the continental divide, and then follow a similar course to the bottom of this mountain. Later on we realize that US 6 hits the highway in 2 spots. The other route makes you go further down the highway, but it provides a much easier and quicker route. This once again proves my theory that mapquest will get you there, but it won’t always be the quickest or easiest way. We did have a very scenic drive though, and since we weren’t in a hurry it wasn’t a big deal. After checking in we head out for a drink at a local bar. We soon realize that one of the great things about Keystone is they have free shuttle buses that run for all hours of the night. We enjoy a local band for awhile, but soon realize that we should be headed to bed for the big day of snowboarding ahead.

The next day we get our lift tickets for the two days and after a little time I get a snowboard rental for the two days as well. I guess the snow that they have been having isn’t very typical, so they weren’t very prepared. It took awhile to find the open stores, which were all at a different base than where we were staying. We then enjoyed the entire day on the slopes. Snowboarding must be kind of like riding a bike. At first I thought I was going to have to learn everything all over again, but I quickly remembered the basics and I was back to it. Keep in mind this is only the 3rd day I have ever snowboarded, and my first time ever in Colorado. The slopes in Colorado are quite intimidating, when all I am used to are the local Cincinnati and Kansas City ski areas. I took it easy at first, but after a while Kim was having a hard time keeping up with me. :) Actually she did say that I was riding at a level which took her a year or two to get to. Obviously she doesn’t take nearly as many falls as I do. After 4PM we headed back to the room to get changed for the night. We went to see The Swing Crew, a band that we had seen before with Doni. I guess they spend their winters in Colorado and their summers in Wisconsin (I think). Between the two seasons they play many shows along their route from the once home to the other. It was a really good time seeing them again, in a not so crowded bar. After they were done we headed to a local Italian restaurant for a big dinner and some wine. It was definitely one of the best restaurants I have been to in a long time. We headed in much earlier this night so we could be on the slopes for a full day on Sunday.

Although we were both sore, we spent hours and hours on the slopes Sunday. I don’t think I fell as often, but each fall hurt worse because of the pain from the day before. Kim was getting overly confident and was riding with the opposite foot in front. She actually caught onto it pretty well until one nasty fall ended our day on the slopes. She wasn’t really hurt, but the both of us had enough of it. We headed in and left Keystone even though we didn’t want to.

Hopefully we can get back there sometime soon, it was so much fun. I need to get Kim to work on a transfer to Denver. :)