But Winter was over last week...

A couple of people have been asking me about the snow that Colorado has been getting today, so I thought I would post a few pictures.

Click on the house to see them.

Now remember that on Sunday it was about 80, and today... think it was about 20 when I took these pictures

Jody says that I am wrong...

Jody said that I actually did so something fun this week. Last Sunday (3/22) I flew a kite in the backyard with Dez, Tim and Caelum.

I'm not sure Caelum was really into it that much, but I enjoyed it. It was a beautiful day, the sun was out, and it was about 80 outside...

Not much going on....

Well, it is tough to keep up a blog when all you do is work... Since, you want to have something good to write about to keep people coming back, at least occasionally.

Lately, all we have been doing is keeping up with things. Jody has been dealing with 200+ work emails a day and all the other things like hiring people, filling classes, and finding instructors. Oh, if you have 18hrs or more of graduate level Mathematics and want to teach online, contact Jody, she might have some work for you.

I've finally got some funding to do some development work on my project. Doing support is rather dull, especially when it is working well, and being able to create some of the things that I have had on my list makes the days go much faster. Lately, I've been writing additional user interfaces for our content authoring system. The program is all web based so everything is done thru a browser. I write the backend code in Perl and that Perl code writes code in javascript so that the user has a rich and fast experience on their end. Yes, that is me writing a computer program that writes another computer program in a different language, I think it is kinda neat. We have to do this cause the Perl code runs on the server and the javascript runs on the client (browser) side. Eventually, what this means to the user is that when you click things, it responds fast, since it does not have to ask the server for more information, since slow sites suck. And with how our people are organized, latency (the time to request and respond to a click) is more expensive timewise than sending a lot of data one time.

So that is what we are doing, maybe we'll have something more exciting next week.

Yogi's water dish

Jody's brother has a dog named Yogi, he is a 3yr old red/yellow lab and is a pretty good sized dog that likes to chew stuff up. So Jody decided that he needed a new water dish since he wrecked his old one. So about a week or so ago we took it over to him.

Unfortunately, Yogi used it as a dish for about 5 mins and then decided it would make a better frisbee. Now remember that this is a softish rubber dish that weighs around 3-5lbs and he was carrying it around like it was nothing.

Yogi playing keep away with it

Yogi trying to get Doug to throw it

Racing back from fetching it

So we are glad that he loves his new dish, but I don't think there will be much water in it, ever....

Weekend Adventures

On Friday, I had a conference in downtown Denver…so I talked Kevin into going with me. We actually went Thursday night, and then stayed till Saturday. It was really fun.

Here is our room:


The drapes are closed, but this is a huge rounded window overlooking the cityscape. I love big cities and this was a good view.

The conference on Friday was productive and I was able to do some networking, I think I was able to recruit a few people to come teach for me! :)

Friday night Kevin and I went to see Confessions of a Shopaholic and then went to the Paramount Café for dinner….The movie and food were both good, and the company on our date night was wonderful!

Saturday, we wanted to do some shopping so off we went. But the real excitement for the day was lunch. We had lunch at Casa Bonita! For those South Park fans, they did an episode once on the famous restaurant. We enjoyed our lunch, the all you can eat sopaipillas, and the entertainment. We also watched Black Bart lose to the sheriff and over into the water he went. We saw the “500 lb” gorilla escape, and we watched the cliff divers. Yes all that in one lunch time special :)

Here is the famous pink building......

This was our lunch...we both had the chicken dinner....chicken taco, burrito and enchilada, with rice and beans, it was yummy!

Here is the Sheriff, shooting Black Bart....when will Black Bart learn..... Kevin and I also had a chance to walk through Black Barts Cave...yikes that is scary! :)

From our table we could not only see the stage above, but we could see down to the pool below as well.

The Sopaipilla area....they were making them as fast as the wait staff could take them out.

What fun decor don't you think?

It is a fun place to go and if you ever come to visit we will take you ;)

Slumdog

Went to go see Slumdog Millionare at the local theater last night. First impression of the theater was that they have improved it alot since we were there last (probably 5 years). So with the renovations the 3rd and 4th screens are not like watching a big screen TV any more.

The movie was great, interesting story and the way it was told was both entertaining and somewhat sad at the sametime. I would recommend seeing it, even if you go to see it to try and understand how some people live in India. I'm sure some people live better, but with my coworkers I talk to, I find that India is a dynamic place, but also has its share of rough places.

Grilled Pizza

Not long ago I saw a chef on TV grill a pizza. It looked really cool and yummy so I decided to try it. When DiDi was here this summer, we tried it out and it works really great. In fact, this summer we each made our own mini pizzas with our favorite toppings.

Recently Kevin has wanted to try it with a white sauce. So I decided to make Grilled chicken garlic pizza......

First I put the dough on the grill to cook it on one side:


Once it is brown on one side, you flip it over and now you are ready for your toppings. Starting with the white sauce:

The chicken....

Bacon....

Garlic....

Some cheese to melt on top....

Here is the final product....The crust is so good when cooked this way. My mom said she could just cook the bread this way and eat it without any toppings.

This was really good. Watch out CPK!

Geese Galore

Yesterday Kevin and I went to town to do some errands. It was such a nice day, we decided to drive through the park. This is what we found:


That is a lot of Geese.

When we got home, we played Frisbee with the dogs. Picked up some tumbleweeds that had blown into the yard, and then just relaxed. What a great Saturday!

1234567890 seconds from the Unix epoch

So where were you today around 4:31pm Mountain Time today? Me, well I was watching the count up to 1234567890 seconds from the UNIX epoch (Jan 1,1970 at 00:00 UTC).





Pretty pathetic huh...

Super Bowl

Well, I have to say that was a pretty good game. I think both teams were playing pretty well, but at times it seemed that AZ's defense could have played a little better. At the party I went to most of the people were rooting for AZ (since they were the underdog), and most people there didn't have either team as "their" team. So, Jody decided that she would root for Pittsburgh since no one else was. The end of the game was quite exciting and had us all watching closely.

Thanks Kim and Curt for hosting the party!

There is no place like home

I am home. Yea!

I reconnected with many colleagues I knew and met many more wonderful people. Connecting with those I only talk to via email or phone is really nice. We had a wonderful hotel, amazing food, and all our needs were met. In fact, this morning I said to Kevin, "How come the table isn't set for breakfast? Where is all the wonderful fresh fruit, and waffles? How come no one is bringing me coffee?" :)

None of that matters when I can sit at home, completely relaxed with my family and puppies.

So I am glad I clicked my heals and now am home where I belong.

HS Friends

I've been helping my friend Jim get in touch with various classmates for my 20th class reunion (egads). So far it has been really fun, although I'm still not a big fan of the cold call. I have about five more people to talk to, to get thru my list.

Greetings from Miami

Hello....it is 5 am ET and it is only 70 degrees here :) Yah, it is warm. Should be a high today of 84. I so hope I get a break in meetings to at least see the sun and feel the warmth.

Last night it was really nice outside and we (my boss and some coworkers) walked to Gordon Biersch. It was very yummy.

Today is a day of many meetings from 8:00 am - 8:30 pm. I think it might do me in....I am not good with meetings that long :)

Diploma

The Diploma arrived today! Here is a pic......it is official....

Doctor of Philosophy in Education and Human Resources Studies with an emphasis in College Leadership.

Cold....

It is much colder here this week than it was last week. Last week, we had record highs, with one day 70 degrees. Today, it is 5...but feels like -5 out. The forecast is that we won't see above freezing again until later tomorrow, and possibly another small snow storm on Thursday. But I won't be here to see it.

Tomorrow I head out to Miami....should be 80 there on Thursday! I am only hoping I get a break from meetings long enough to get outside and enjoy the sunshine.

Marshmallows...

Have you ever made marshmallows... you know those white things that come in a bag and last forever? Well Jody saw a recipe the other day and decided to try it...

So we put the stuff in the mixer and ran it for about 15mins.


After that was done, we coated a pan with powered sugar and put the super sticky stuff in the pan and let it sit out on the counter overnight to dry out...


The next day, Jody cut it up into cubes and tossed them in powdered sugar to cover all the sticky edges...


And then as a final flourish, she dipped them in dark chocolate and let them sit in the fridge overnight...

They turned out really good and even the plain ones are hard to skip eating...

Happy New Year! 2009

Happy New Year!

We had a fun and uneventful new years. We went to a small party at a friend's house out of town and then stayed at a motel overnight.

We would like to raise our glass to all our blogger friends with this toast: Here's wishing you more happiness, prosperity, love, and health than all our words can tell. Not just alone for New Years Day, but for all the year as well.

Here's to a great 2009!

Stormy's Christmas presents

For Christmas our puppies (Deogi and Stormy) got new beds from Kevin and me. Also since our family(s) have so many dogs, we actually exchange puppy names for gifts too. This year uncle Doug (my brother) had Stormy...so he thought she needed a stuffed duck that quacks. Well she wasn't too sure about it at first...but I think she likes it and her new bed now:

Granite Boulders

On Christmas Eve along with everything else that goes on, the landscapers decided to deliver a load of 16 granite boulders,which is a whole semi load....

There were more of them than I actually expected to get, since we already had 12 smaller ones in the back, but I am not complaining. If you click the picture of the truck it will take you to the gallery that shows the rocks in place around the house.

The only problem was that they dumped them in the street so we had to set up a light and some cones so that our neighbours would not crash into them.

Happy 3rd Birthday!!

December 24th is Caelum's birthday. Caelum is my great-nephew, this year he turned 3! We went to Dez's house for a party and he (we) had a good time with his party hats and blowers....



With uncle Kevin (said Kevvvviinnnn)
With Silly Aunt Jody...check out those cool spiderman Pjs......they were new :)

this is his "angry" face....or so he said after we took his picture and he looked at it in the camera

winter wonderland

A few days before Christmas we had a small snow. The next morning everything was white crisp and frosty. I love to see the frost on things. This is the puppy run fence:

This is the neighbor's house (we don't have trees to frost yet....)

cleared.....finally

So, I know Kevin posted a picture of my graduation, and said I should blog more...well I was waiting to be cleared for graduation... That is right, I was just cleared this week, even though graduation was the 19th. I couldn't be cleared until my last credit hour and grade (an A of course) could be recorded. So I am cleared. What is next? Well it takes 6 weeks till the degree shows on transcripts and 6-8 weeks until the diploma actually arrives. Small steps I guess :)

Anyway here are the pictures of the big day....this is actually before the ceremony(click on the picture below to see all graduation pictures):



One of the things that is really cool is that when they announce you, they also announce your advisor. The graduate hands their hood (the long thing that hangs down the back), to their advisor and the advisor "hoods" the graduate. Even though it is a little blurry, here is my advisor hooding me....see how he chokes me? I am sure that it has nothing to do with having to take my signature page around to my committee for me 3 times :)



This is afterwards, with my parents. My parents never take pictures.....
One of my pleasures of the entire program is that I was in a cohort of students. We took all our classes together and they became life long friends. They were there to support me, they understood the struggles and together we were shoulders to lean on. Two of my cohort members were also graduating with me. Here we are left to right....Scott, Jody, and Larry.

And everyone must have a picture with Cam the Ram. CSU's mascot :)

Happy Christmas Eve

I got a call from my Uncle Phil this morning and it was great to hear from him. He was asking how much snow we got and so I thought I would post some pictures. We don't have near what April has, but it will still be here on Christmas. So this is this morning about 7:45am with the temperature at about 7F.


When the snow was coming down yesterday, Shadow was out in it. I'm not sure what she thinks about it (Shadow does not have very many deep thoughts), but she seemed perfectly happy.


So I guess it is time to get out the shovel... or maybe the broom, I'll have to see how wet it is.

Look what Jody did...

Jody decided that she would get all dressed up and go pick up her diploma today...


I'm proud of you sweetie, and I love you very much.... Dr. Jody

But I'll let her blog about this more.

The book is done...

We finally got back to "The Book Binders" in Loveland to pick up Jody's dissertation...


Jody is glad it is done, and I am proud of her for completing it. I think she might even let you check out a copy of it if you would like to read it in book form.

Office Party

Jody and I both work at home and because of this we don't get a lot of the typical office activities. So this year we decided that we should have a Christmas office party with everyone in our office... you know me and Jody. So on the 12th we went to our favorite Chinese place in Loveland (we were there doing other things as well)


We both had the Sesame Chicken for Lunch, which is really awesome

And of course you have to have a gift exchange... We drew names and Jody got me and I got Jody... amazing huh..


The presents...


I got the chocolate and the pens and Jody got the wrapping paper cutter...

It was a great time and hopefully our office can have more parties in the future.