Vegas here I come!

YEA for Jody! Today, I was accepted to do a presentation at the E-Learn 2008 conference (World Conference on E-Learning in Corporate, Government, Healthcare, and Higher Education) in Las Vegas! The conference is not till Novemeber (17-21). I am doing a presentation with my co-chair, my department operations manager, and the assisstant dean of faculty.

This will be my first ever conference presentation. We have also submitted to the Sloan-C (International Conference on Online Learning Nov 5-7, in ORLANDO) conference and a work conference as well. I may be presenting a lot late this year!

Curly

Yup...she did..

Euro Mickey

Yea!!! Look at my haul....

Yesterday I was having a rough day, and in the mail, I had two great things. First was a little Mickey with a Cambridge sweater all the way from London (you can see him and the London post card in the picture). Our exchange student from last summer, Nadine, had taken a school trip to London, and bought me a Mickey.

The other great thing was a slip for a package at the post office. Kevin went to get it today and I had a package from my friend Valerie who lives in Paris. She sent us some yummy chocolate, some cookies and some small things from Disneyland Paris.

You see a package called Curly in the picture. For those of you who don't know...When we were in Paris for our honeymoon, we had Curly. The look and texture is like Cheetos, but it tastes like peanut butter. I know it doesn't sound good...but I really like them. I may have to break a bag open right after I hit "publish post"......

First Look at the finished exterior

Yesterday (Wed) we got our first look at the exterior of the house and how it is going too look. I have to say I'm pretty happy with it..


Hopefully, today we'll see the paint color inside in the basement.

Silly Max

Next door we have a golden retriever "puppy" named Max. Max is very sweet. He however, spends most of his time outside alone. I feel bad for him, so I always try to give him a little attention in my comings and goings. Today, while cooking dinner I looked out the window and there was max sitting on his dog house. He looked at us, so we snapped this picture.

Weather Map

You have to admit this is pretty impressive...

Sun, rain, thunderstorms, and snow all on the same day....


The map covers about 150miles top to bottom and about 300 miles left to right.

Colorado Tornadoes

So far today we have not been affected by any of the tornadoes or other severe storms here today. So we are ok at this point. The big tornado in Windsor, CO was about 60 miles to the west from us.

Picture of the Windsor Tornado from 9news.com

In the picture, that is Highway 34 on the left (the light strips at an angle near the horizon)

At 1 point this storm was about 1 mile wide and was producing golfball and baseball sized hail. They are estimating it as an F2 or F3 at this point.

Thunderstorm

Last night from about 10:15pm to about 11:30pm we had a pretty large thunderstorm roll through. The lightning was pretty intense and we even had a couple of them pretty much right over the house. I just missed getting a bolt on film. The dogs did not like it one bit. As always I am fascinated by lightning, but I was good and didn't go outside with a big metal stick.

Any ideas on how to take good lightning pictures??? I tried raising the ISO on the camera pretty high but all I got were blurry pictures.

Storm Chasers

There is a show on Discovery called Storm Chasers. Today as we were driving to the house we saw the storm chaser car and all the support vehicles pulling out of McDonalds here in Fort Morgan. I was to slow with the camera, but here are a couple of pics of the vehicles.


The storm chaser car is really that odd looking in person as it is in real life. I'm guessing they are on there way to Nebraska from here. Although we were at the edge of the Severe Thunderstorm Warning tonight.

Ok I admit it I stole the pictures from the Storm Chasers blog and so all the pictures have their copyright.

staying in touch with Adam

So those of you who blog may relate to this comic, in today's Adam . For those of you who don't read Adam regularly, he also works at home (like us) and he many times has funny things we relate to. Anyway, sometimes you know you should post something on the blog and entertain your readers, and let your friends and family know what is going on, but yet, you don't know what to say. Adam catches it perfectly here.

Welcome Abigail!

My sister and brother-in-law, Kim & Matt, welcomed another baby into their family today. Her name is Abigail and she was 18" long, 6lbs 2oz and is doing well...


Congrats Kim, Matt and Kassidy...

House Status

Not really a lot has been going on at the house this week. Last Monday (5/12) the stucco guys where out there, but the color they were going to put on, was just not right, it looked grey when it should have had greenish tint to it. So they left for some reason even though there was work to do and they have not been back since. Hopefully, they are out there today. On the interior progress is being made with all the doors and window sills being installed. Hopefully, paint will start this week.

I guess I'm starting to get a little stressed that stuff is not getting done.

Picked a camera

Since my Kodak camera broke I did some research on cameras out there. I liked the Canon SD890 (as seen on the web) but nobody at the big box stores had one. So we looked at a few and found the Olympus Stylus 1010. The price was ok, the zoom lens was huge at 7x and 10mp was right where I wanted it. The size of the camera is great as well, with it being about the size of my cell phone. So far the few pictures I have taken with it have come out well. I'll take it out to the house later today and take some outdoor pictures with it.

Bummer...

My camera's view screen on the back no longer works... was thinking about getting a new camera but wanted to wait a bit longer...

Any recommendations? I was thinking a Canon or Sony and I want 4x optical zoom or more and at least 10 megapixels.

We can still take pictures, but can't review them until we get home.

Salsa Anyone?

So you saw a few days ago, that I bought some white corn tortillas. Last night I made chips! I made some plain with just a touch of seasoning, and I made some with white cheddar seasonings. Kevin really liked the Doritos Naturals that they used to make. Since we can’t get them anymore I made these for him.

Day of Indulgence

Yesterday we decided to go to Hacienda Colorado, really yummy Mexican restaurant in Westminster. We went with my parents because we (the four of us), had received a gift card from Santa.


We started out with some yummy Queso to go with our chips and salsa.

The drinks are really big there:

Then I had a quesochanga….this is basically a chicken Chimichanga with queso cheese.

Kevin had a steakchanga with green chile on top

My mom also had a steakchanga but she choose the queso sauce

My dad had a burrito with the spicy jalapeño sauce.

Here is the aftermath….we had leftovers because the meals were so big….

No dessert here…because after lunch we headed to the Chocolate Festival

One of the really cool things at the festival were these gorgeous cakes they had

This one is my favorite:

This is a bonsai tree made out of chocolate…I have the feeling I couldn’t keep it alive either….because we would eat it!

There were some special guests at the festival…there was Willy Wonka (aka Brian Dowling)

And Denise Nickerson….she was Violet Beauregard in the original Willy Wonka film…you remember her, she was the one that was a gum chewer and turned purple from chewing the “dinner” gum, and the blueberry pie.


So it was a good day....we had a great lunch, and lots of yummy cholcolate to sample. Even Kevin said "I think I have just about had my limit of chocolate" For those who know him well, this is saying A LOT!

I Did It!!!!

April will be so proud!

Tonight Kevin and I decided to walk ALL the way to Subway for dinner, all 0.8 miles of it. We shared a Foot Long Subway Club sandwich. Subway has a deal for $5 footlongs, so we basically ate for $5.30. Yum.

Here I am with my sandwich:

And here is Kevin....we took this one for Gregg...

On the way to Subway, we stopped at this little place called Delicious Bakery. It is a small Hispanic bakery. They have some interesting things, and they are very cheap. We decided to try a couple of things. We got a small loaf of bread and two of these dessert empanadas. The one in the middle was supposed to be Apple and the other one is (hopefully) strawberry. We decided to share the apple one....but it wasn't apple....it was something red....we guessed it might be strawberry....not sure :) It was yummy. The bread and the other empanada we haven't tried yet... We also bought some homemade white corn tortiallas, I am going to make chips out of those....stay tuned for pictures of those...

So, we had a short walk, a good dinner and a small dessert. We are set for the night!

April....how did I do?

Dinner?

Last night we wanted a quick dinner and we wanted to start heading home. So we picked Taco Bell. This the one we went to above....Just for April I wanted to share some pictures....

I had a Bean Burrito.....and it looked just like this:


I Kevin had a Big Bell Box meal and it looked just like this:


Ok the real story is April keeps picking on me to show pictures of our meals out. (I may give her a hard time a little too..... ), and on her blog, she showed me her fish tacos....sigh. I really didn't take the above pictures.....But Kevin did have a Big Bell Box Meal...and I had a bean burrito kids meal....I vow to take good pictures when I next go out to a good meal.....

Surfing and Driving

About a year ago we got a Sprint Broadband card so that we could have some kind of internet when we were traveling for Jody's dissertation work. We've also found that we could go from Longmont to Fort Morgan and stay on the internet and one of us could work while the other drove. We've done this on numerous occasions. With either Jody or I on the phone and then doing email as well. I almost had to give a presentation this way once, but luckily that fell through.

Here is Jody working in the car

So last night we went to get adjusted by Dr. Kari. Jody did some email for awhile but things for her were kinda slow. And so she went to the NBC website and started watching Monday nights Tonight Show with Jay Leno. So we got to watch (well, I listened as I drove) to the monolog and headlines (which is one of my favorite bits of Jay's). It was a little choppy at times but it did work.

Hereeeeees, Jay Leno!

Yup that is right, we were using millions of dollars of technology (when you count the cell network) to watch TV on the road.

The Bruiser

Yesterday we went to Longmont. While we were there we saw my friend Kari. Kari is a chiropractor, and so we had her set us back in place.

See how broken Kevin's butt is.....


So Kari starts to work.....

Final step a sanding and a buffing....

My turn....I am broken also......

My head pump is always broken...so Kari fixes it for me....she is the best :)

It had been 2 months since we had seen Kari for an adjustment. And in that time we moved and now here at this place we sit in strange places to work....so we needed her.

THANKS KARI!!!

Mark your Calendar

The antique tractor show is expanding.....

June 7th....I am going to dress like Laura Ingalls. Kevin, will dress like Pa.

Here is the info.

Now where do the glasses go????

How will I ever organize it all?

Our cupboards were all delivered this week! WOW there are a lot. This is the whole house, kitchen, laundry, wet bar, bathrooms etc....

They also started the stucco process...this is the first coat...it is gray, but the final coat of color will be a moss greenish look....

Yea! Dinner

On Saturday we went to the big city so that we could meet with our friends Kim and Ron for dinner. Kim was our realtor when we sold this last house and the house before that. Even though we do business with them, we still have great time just enjoying their company. Anyway, when the house closed we had planned to go out for dinner to celebrate the sale of the house, especially in this awful market. Kim decided that it would be more fun to break her ankle a week before closing. So we felt maybe we should delay the dinner until Saturday.

We decided that the Village Tavern was the place to go and so since Jody and I were coming from Ft. Morgan and it is about an hour and 15 minute drive there, we decided to make an afternoon out of it. So we did the normal Costco/Sams run and we also picked out a refrigerator for the new house.

The meal was great, we started off with a Bruschetta and a martini and then for dinner Kim had the Pork Chops, Ron had the Prime Rib, Jody had the Filet and I had a Proschutto and Cheese Ravioli. Everything looked great and tasted good as well. For dessert, creme brulee, apple cobbler and chocolate torte hit the spot.

Sorry April, the pictures I took were awful and would not due anyone or the food justice. You'll just have to take my word for it.

Yesterday's snow

Ok, you can just see a dusting of it here. However, what you don't see is the 65MPH wind that we had. It was blowing so hard I though that it was going to blow the car off the road.

Now, I am thankful that we didn't have the really bad tornadoes and wind issues that other states had from this same storm.

So while it was not fun, we got off easy.

The really sad part is that the rental we are staying in, is draftier than the new house. And the new house has no ceiling insulation and part of the roof (over the deck) is still open to the air.

Wind and Snow?

Yes that is right. Today is May 2nd, and we have A LOT of wind...we are in severe high wind warning today. We also have had a few snow flakes. Not enough to stick or even make the ground wet, but there were flakes!

Not too far from us (farther north east), there is a Blizzard warning in effect.

Spring is so strange here sometimes. Wednesday it was about 80 here...and today....maybe 40.

For those of you out of state. Here is the local news item on this storm: 9news.com