New bike

This cartoon (from http://xkcd.com/1070/) made me think about my childhood and I got a good laugh out of it. I remember when it was time for cookies, I would ask "how many can we have?" and the parental response would typically be “a couple.” To which I would reply, “how many is a couple?” Being part Cookie Monster, I was obviously hoping to hear an answer of "three" or "four" or more.  Anything but the usual "just two."  Evidently, I’m not the only one who thinks a couple could equate to more than two.


Karen is back from her Las Vegas trip with friends and she is now working to prepare to teach her summer class. Sunday evening, she was lamenting that her summer vacation was almost over, evidently expecting to get some pity out of me… of course, that did not happen. You’d think she’d learn by now that someone who only gets 10 vacation days per year is not going to provide moral support to someone who just had a month off and took two trips during that time period. Suck it up and get back to work and make us some money!

Even though I am still a bit disgruntled about being left at home during those past two trips that she took, I did surprise her with a new bicycle. I really shouldn’t reward bad behavior, but some would argue me buying her a bike was actually a gift to me. You see, I’ve been trying to get her on a bike for years now, but we’ve never found one that met her aesthetic requirements (of course it must be pretty) and my technical/equipment requirements. While she was out of town, I found a bike that I thought would meet both sets of requirements, so I made the executive, man of the house, decision to purchase it. I then parked it in the garage for when she returned home from the airport.

Unfortunately, she didn’t notice the bike sitting in the garage, even after multiple trips in/out of the garage. I didn’t put it right in front of where she pulled the car in, but I thought the girly, bright green bike would be an easily noticeable addition to the garage. Late Saturday afternoon, I moved the bike to a much more obvious location right next to the recycling bins and waited for her to go out into the garage again. She never ventured out there again, so when it was time to go for our evening exercise (typically a walk around the neighborhood), I handed her a pile of newspapers and asked her to put them in the recycling bins before we left. She walked into the garage, put the papers in the bin and walked back into the house. She didn’t even notice the shiny new bike that was sitting less than one foot away from her.

So much for the element of surprise… I made some smartass “you’re unobservant” comment and told her to go back out and look again and she finally saw it… I guess it is nice to know that I can probably hide stuff in “plain sight” and not have to worry about her finding it. We adjusted the seat and rode around the neighborhood so she could reacquaint herself to riding a bike. Once she is more comfortable on it, hopefully I’ll get her out on the local paved multi-use trails soon. Ideally, I’d like to be able to pedal to downtown to the Saturday morning farmers market (with a stop at the donut shop along the way!).
 

Paintball'n

A few months ago, the local newspaper’s “deal of the day” was for a rent one/get one free offer at a nearby paintball course. I’ve never played paintball before, but I’ve always wanted to. I sent out an email to some friends and we all decided to do it. We also decided that it would be fun if our wives/girlfriends would participate, although we weren’t sure if they would. The ladies went back and forth on the idea (they were afraid of getting hurt) but they finally decided to participate and six couples purchased the deal. Everyone’s schedules were really busy, so it took some long range planning to pick a date.  We were finally able to play last Sunday, June 10.


During the final days leading up to the 10th, some of the girls (my wife for one) began to mount a fresh campaign to get out of participating. They were seriously concerned about how getting shot would feel... We offered their spots to a few other friends, but everyone declined, so the girls were committed to participate. We arrived at the site after lunch to find a metal building and 3 fenced in fields full of random walls, dirt mounds, barrels, truck camper tops stuck into the ground, and other assorted large debris to hide behind and maneuver around. Upon arrival, Karen’s response was less than enthusiastic. The rest of the group filtered in after us, all the guys were pumped up and ready to go. The ladies, on the other hand, had attitudes that varied from excited to play down to “let’s just skip playing and go to the winery that is 3 miles up the road.” In the end, everyone decided to play and we went through the safety talk, a walk through on the gun operation and out on the field we went.

The site

Some of the obstacles

I guess the feel of a gun in their hands made the girls gain some instant mojo, because they decided the first match would be guys vs. girls, 6 on 6. The guys, heavily motivated by the need to “not get beaten by the girls,” won the first round relatively easily. We then split up into mixed teams and played another couple games. Then we were put up against another group of 10 people (which contained several experienced players) and we were promptly mowed down by the experienced players. We didn’t stand a chance. Once the referees (yes the matches are officiated) realized that we weren’t going to be able to compete with that group, they split up the two groups and created two teams containing a mix of experienced and inexperienced players. We played several games with those teams, which was pretty enjoyable. During the games with us mixed in with the other group, some of our wives started dropping out and then they quietly disappeared and headed over to the winery to relax.

Our group

The remainder of the ladies and the guys from our group ended up moving to a smaller field and we played several games of 4 on 3, which was the highlight of the day for most of us. The combination of the smaller field and the smaller teams made it a much faster paced game with nowhere to hide. The adrenaline definitely gets pumping when you are crouched behind a barrel and you hear paint balls whizzing past you.

After we had shot through our group’s allotment of 6,000 paintballs (500/each), we changed clothes and headed over to the winery to meet up with the early departers. While there, we talked and laughed about the day’s events and spent some time comparing wounds. Yes, paint balls do leave a more than just paint when they hit you. Since the outside temperatures were around 90 degrees (luckily there was a breeze), most of us opted to forgo an extra layer of padding in order to stay a little cooler. That lack of additional padding lead to some colorful bruises. The ladies contended that it was really painful to get hit; I’d say it was more like getting stung by a bee. It really wasn’t that bad, however I will say that some parts of your body are definitely more sensitive to it than others.

Over the course of the day, I was hit in the hand/arm (3-4 times), legs (3-4 times) back of the head (once) and the most painful were two shots to the left side of my torso from less than 10’ away. Those two shots to my side have bruised up pretty badly (see below), but only hurt if you poke at them. I also managed to bruise my chest by diving for cover during one of the final fast games. That is the injury that seems to be bothering me the most today. Hopefully it will go away soon so I can go swing a golf club again.

Shot to the back of the head, yellow paint splatter

Nice bruises on my side, I should have held up a quarter for scale...  they are between quarter and half dollar size.

Would I do it again? Most definitely. I can see how some people get hooked on it, is an interesting mix of strategy and exercise. Will Karen ever do it again? Probably not, although if it was colder outside where a couple extra layers could be comfortably worn, I might be able to talk her into doing

"Bachelor" weekend #2

Week 2 without the wife is winding down to a close. She should be on a plane now, flying back from visiting her 2 week family visit. I had absolutely no plans scheduled for the weekend, so I tried to take advantage of the opportunity to do whatever “I” wanted to do. It turns out; I probably keep myself busier when she is gone then when she is around.


The lists of things that I did over the weekend ended up being pretty long. I pulled weeds on Saturday and Sunday (and still have more to go, not sure where they are all coming from!), planted a new tree and some bargain find knock out roses. Our lowes keeps a clearance section full of plants that they have seen better days. A majority of them usually look pretty rough, but sometimes you can find some diamonds in the rough. These plants can usually be had for 75% (or more) off of their regular price, so, if you can find some that look halfway decent, it is a worthwhile attempt to save them. These roses were priced at just $3 each and the only problem with them is that they had stopped blooming. With a little encouragement with the hand pruners, I think they will bloom all summer, so I grabbed 5 of them.

During my first golf lesson last week, the instructor challenged me to be able to hit 7 out of 10 good shots next time we meet (today). Considering the fact that I’m a very inconsistent beginning golfer, that seemed like quite the challenge. I managed to hit the driving range on Friday, Saturday, Sunday and Monday and got some good practice in. Thankfully, I won a bunch of range ball tokens, so all this practice isn’t costing me much money. I showed up today for my lunch time lesson and was greeted with, “what are you doing here?” Followed by, “I thought you texted me and rescheduled for tomorrow?” After some discussion, it turns out that he has more than one student named Scott and he mixed us up. He had already scheduled another person for my time slot, so I’m now scheduled for a lesson on Saturday instead. The good news is that this gives me more time to practice. He also felt bad about the mix up, so he gave me a bucket of balls to hit so my trip to the course wasn’t totally wasted. Free bucket of balls? That works for me (I’m easy, what can I say?).

I was also able to get a couple of bike rides in on Saturday and Sunday. Saturday’s ride was a leisurely ride on the paved bike trail with a couple of the curling guys. At the one hour mark in the ride, the skies darkened up and we decided it would be wise to head back. As we headed back, it started getting darker and darker and then we started to feel drops. The guys turned off the trail at different places to head towards their homes and I hammered back towards my car that was parked at the trailhead. I made it back to my car as it started to really rain and was just able to attach the bike to the bike rack and slide into the driver’s seat before the bottom truly fell out of it. On Sunday, I wasn’t feeling super motivated to ride, but I knew that I needed the exercise, so I rode to the RedBox DVD rental kiosk to return a movie. It is only a 5.5 mile ride each way, but that’s better than no exercise. It also gave me a chance to try out an iPhone app that was suggested to me called Endomondo. The app tracks your exercise (walking/running, cycling, golf, etc) and shows you a summary of the session. It worked pretty well and gave me a summary of the ride (speed, route, time, calories burned, etc) at the end.  I'd recommend playing with it if you want to track your activities (it's a free app![my favorite kind]).

Speaking of movies, one of the ones that I rented this weekend was Contagion. If you are the least bit paranoid about germs, illness or anything along those lines, do not watch this movie. It will make you second guess touching anything in public ever again. In my mind, door handles, gas pumps and shopping carts all seem to have giant bio hazard signs on them after watching the movie. I have also become super aware of how often I touch my face during the day… that is a big no-no when a killer plague is on the loose, consider yourself warned.

As if all of that wasn’t enough, I also finished a small rehab project that I had been plotting for a couple months. The wife and I were out walking the neighborhood one Monday evening (the night before garbage pickup) and we noticed a neighbor at the other end of the hood had put an outdoor table and chair set out with their garbage. The table had seen better days, and so had the chairs… however I still saw possibility in the chairs. We discussed it on the walk back home and decided to make a covert run under the cover of darkness to pick up the chairs. After the sun went down, she drove us across the neighborhood and I quickly collected the stack of chairs, threw them in the trunk and we headed back home. While we weren’t humming the mission impossible soundtrack (or wearing all black) while we were doing it, we were still added our own sense of adventure to the trip. That definitely made it seem like more fun than just raiding someone else’s trash pile.

As you can see, the chairs have a metal frame with a tightly woven back and seat.  The woven material is a multicolored plastic band about 1/4" wide. The fronts of the seats on all of the chairs had worn down from legs rubbing against them or  a pet chewing on them, I'm not sure which. My idea was to remove the bottoms, attach some cedar slats to the frame for the seat and then put the chairs down by the fire pit. I waited for the cedar to go on sale at Menards and then stock piled the materials for a rainy day. Since the rain chased me home after the bike ride, it was the perfect time to spend some time working on the chairs. I made good progress and was able to wrap them up on Sunday evening.

I drilled holes through the metal frame and then ran screws up from the bottom into the wood so you wouldn't see the fasteners.  The cedar should turn grey as it weathers, at which point it should match the back material.  For what we have in them, I think they turned out pretty good.  Even better, now I don’t have to lug the heavier metal patio chairs down off the deck (unless we have more than 2 guests).  Who's ready to hang out by the fire pit?

Memorial Day Weekend

Its that time again… school is out and the CFO of our household is off travelling and enjoying some time away from work, leaving me alone at home to fend for myself. As I always say, “it must be nice.”


Luckily for me, I had plans of my own for the long Memorial Day weekend. My good friend from GA, Shawn, flew up on Friday and we drove east to Indianapolis for the weekend. I had already purchased tickets for the Indy 500 months ago, but the trip was sweetened with the opportunity to be “guests” of a major motorsports supplier. We ended up with a hotel room for the weekend and access to that company’s suite at the race track (AC, food and drinks!).
We arrived in Indy late Friday night and settled into our hotel room. Saturday morning we had a leisurely breakfast and then headed to the speedway to visit the hall of fame museum. The museum is packed full of past Indy 500 winning cars, from the early years to last years winning car (driven by the now departed Dan Weldon). This was the 96th running of the race and the collection of cars definitely runs the gambit. It was very cool to see how the racing technology has changed and evolved over the years. While in the museum, we ran into Tim Suddard, the owner/publisher of two of my favorite magazines, Grassroots Motorsports and Classic Motorsports. We met Tim in 2009 when we did the Grassroots Motorsports $2009 challenge, so it was cool to run into him again.

 Vintage Indy Cars

The Museum

After the museum, we rolled through the manufacturers and vendor areas, in the search of free swag (t-shirts, stickers, or whatever else they are willing to give away) and souvenirs from the race. In my own typical fashion, I decided what I wanted to buy before we even started shopping, I wanted a hat with "Honda Racing" on it. This is all well in good, except for the fact that such a product might not even exist. We ran into this problem while visiting Denver earlier this year. I wanted a colorado rockies shirt that just said "rockies" on it, but I wanted it in long sleeve. We found the shirt in short sleeve everywhere we went, but no one had it in long sleeves. Ugh. Because of my picky-ness, souvenir shopping with me can become a trip in search of the “holy grail” of souvenirs. We went through many shops, tents, displays and I kept holding on hope that we might find it… I’m sure Shawn was getting tired of the quest, but we did eventually find what I was looking for at the very last set of trailers halfway across the infield area. The track is 2.5 miles around, so we walked a long way. Did I mention that it was 94+ degrees and sunny outside? It was cooler in Georgia than Indy!

This was a cool military tribute Camaro that was on display:

After shopping, we headed back to the hotel to rest before dinner. Our host took us to dinner at Fogo de chao, a Brazilian restaurant that is not vegetarian friendly. Luckily, I don’t mind a plate loaded up with red meat and pork, so I was right at home. You have a disc with a red and green side, green = show me the meat and red = no thanks. The servers walk around with different cuts/meats on large skewers and they slice off what you want. Ribeye, bacon wrapped fillet, parmesan crusted pork, sirloin, the list goes on and on. The meal was really good, but I’m not sure it was worth the high price per person that our host paid.

After dinner, we rolled out of the restaurant and walked a couple blocks to monument circle, where the cars from the Gumball 3000 road rally were stopping after an all day, high speed run. The participants in this event are travelling from new York to LA and are required to check in at check points along the way. This was an amazing collection of cars, from Ferraris, Porshces, Lamborginis and many other supercars. There was even a Bugatti Veyron, a $1 million plus car with 1000 horsepower. I was excited to see this car in person, as it isn't a car that you are going to see very often. Shawn is a huge follower of the event and he was able to meet some of the participants that he has been following for years. Picture a kid on xmas morning and that would about describe it.

 Bugatti Veyron

 Mercedes SLS

Lamborghini with a roof rack! (and cool building lighting behind)



Sunday morning we rolled out of the hotel at 6:45 am for the 5 mile trip to the speedway. That drive took almost 1.5 hours because of all the traffic. We arrived at the suite and were greeted by our hosts and a table full of pastries. By the time the race started at noon, the suite was full of people and we headed outside for the start of the race. From the seats outside of the suite, we had nice view of the pits and the front straight. It was another 94+ degree day, so having an air conditioned place to retreat to to eat lunch was nice. After the race, we were stuck in the infield for about an hour before they started letting cars exit the infield. Once outside the track, we continued on a painfully slow procession towards the interstate. You'd think after having this race 96 times, they would have the traffic thing figured out!

 Pushing the cars to the grid

 Pre-race activities on the front straight

 Military fly-over

 Race winner Dario Franchitti (Mr. Ashley Judd) [He was my pre-race pick for winning, I was right!]

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.