Days go by

Another week in the books here in Illinois – the farmer’s fields are slowly transitioning from brown to green as the corn and soybean plants have started pushing their out of the ground. It has been nice and warm during the day, but still cool enough in the evening where we haven’t had to turn on the a/c or the heat. That makes our natural gas and electrical bills very low for the past month.

Speaking of bills, our last natural gas bill was so low that without all the stupid accounting fees, delivery fees, postage fees, flux capacitor fees, employee pension fees, printer toner cartridge fee, and all the other crap they tack on, we would have only owed $1.87 for the natural gas that we used. Instead, the bill was 10x that with all the other crap tacked on to it. Crazy, right?

We run into this every month for our house in Georgia that we still haven’t been able to sell. A house without power can’t be shown to possible buyers, so we have to have that active. The water has to be on in case someone needs to use the restroom while they are there… so we end up paying a bunch of stupid fees just to keep the utilities active for very, very little usage. It is so annoying. I wish someone would buy that house!!!!!!!!!!!! 

I finished planting our veggie garden last weekend, now we just need some rain to help the plants get established. I might have to build another rain barrel like I had in GA, so that I don’t have to use keep using water from the faucet for the garden. Why should I pay for water for the garden if I don’t have to? Yes, I am being a bit of a cheap-a$$, but does that really surprise any of you?

The Spring semester is over, so the CFO is on “vacation” until her summer class starts in late June. Even though she isn’t teaching, she still has a ton of writing/research to do, but that won’t keep her from heading out of town a few times… leaving me home alone. It must be nice to have so much time off!  She’s going to Virginia, the beach in North Carolina and Vegas, all without me. Not fair!
The good news for me is that the Indy 500 is next weekend and I will be there to see it in person… Finally, something to look forward to!

I played the 9 hole course that is near out house last night... I'm still hitting wildly inconsistently, but having a lot of fun doing it.  After one particularly crappy tee shot on a par 4, my second shot from the fairway was very nice for a beginner and it ended up on the green. Since it was my best shot of the evening, it (and the setting sun) got to recorded it with the iPhone... Tiger Woods I am not (yet).

I'm a winner!!!

In case any of you were wondering, I’m a winner.  Seriously, I am.  A couple weeks ago, I received a call just after getting to work.  “Congratulations, you won the B104 Extreme Golf Makeover” a woman said.  “I did?!” I replied, followed by “that’s pretty cool.”  She then told me that I should go by the radio station to pick up the information on how to claim my prize. 
 

How did I win this?  By listening to the radio 8 hours a day while sitting on my duff at work.  The station has daily code words that you can enter on their website to acquire points.  You then use the points to purchase raffle tickets for various drawings.  Tedious?  Possibly.  Worth the effort?  I think so.  A couple months ago, I won a set of 4 tickets to see the local arena football team.  Those were used when my parents were in town.  Now I’ve won this… pretty cool I’d say.

You might then ask, what is included in the Extreme Golf Makeover?  Turns out, it is a $2000 package including: 

Lots of golf:  30 Tokens for Driving Range balls, a SEASON PASS for Highland Park Golf Course, plus 4 Rounds of golf with cart at The Den at Fox Creek G.C. and 4 Rounds of golf with cart at Prairie Vista G.C. (all three courses are run by the city's park's department)

4 Lessons with a PGA Professional and one Personal Club Fitting Session

And some gear:  A Cobra Titanium Driver, Sun Mountain Stand Bag, FootJoy Golf Shoes, Two Footjoy Golf Gloves and a Den at Fox Creek Logo ¼ Zip Sweatshirt

Pretty sweet, right?  This is a lot for someone like me who is just starting to play the sport, but I’m hoping the lessons and the golf course passes will allow me to get a lot of practice in.  I went out Tuesday night with some friends and played my first round at a local par 3 - 9 hole course.  The good news:  I made par on the 3^rd hole and just one over on another hole.  The bad news:  I totally tanked the other 7 holes and left several balls behind, some lost  in the rough and some in the pond.  It was fun though and I’m ready to get out there again.

In other news:  Last Saturday night, Karen and I made the trip 45 minutes west to Peoria, IL to see Bill Cosby do some stand up comedy.  He talked for two hours and it was really, really entertaining.  Over the course of the show, he drifted off on a bunch of  humorous tangents, but always circled back around to what he started with.  If he ever does a near you, I would definitely suggest going to see him.

Fore!

My apologies, ya’ll

A friend recently pointed out that I had fallen off the blog wagon lately… I had been doing so well for a while and then I fell into a boring weekly routine that didn’t seem interesting enough to write about. It seems like I’ve been spending a majority of available daylight (outside of work hours) battling the weeds that are trying to take over the area in our yard where I seeded native grasses last spring.  The coneflowers are putting up the best fight, followed by the native grasses. The black eyed susans don’t seem to be coming up at all… I was hoping they would germinate this spring, but it isn't looking good for them so far.  Hopefully the natives will gain some size this year so I don't have to fight so hard for them next season.

A few weeks ago, Karen presented at a conference in Denver, CO and I tagged along as a vacation. We were there Wednesday through Sunday and had a nice time. She has a couple friends who live there and they were kind enough to show us the sights and good restaurants. We ate so much food, I was stuffed every night (including some Chick-fil-a!). Denver is a cool town that I would seriously consider moving to if we ever had the opportunity. Lots of bike trails, good food and mountains a short drive away… what could be better than that?

A friend of mine has gotten me hooked on the instagram app for my iphone and I took these shots using that app while we were there. I took a lot more with my DSLR, but I haven’t felt motivated to go through them and pull out the best ones to post online. Perhaps I’ll do that this weekend as the weather people are predicting rain… not that we can really trust their judgment, though...

The famous Red Rocks Ampitheater

View of the mountains across a lake where we went "hiking" (quite possibly the only flat hiking trail in the Rockies!)

REI Denver store, how freakin' beautiful is that location?

An evening at Coors Field, the home of the Colorado Rockies.