I’m spending some quality time with my good buddy, Snow, this weekend before he heads north for the summer. Today I went skiing at Afton (the finest skiing the Twin Cities has to offer) and tomorrow I plan on starting my day with a snowshoe along the Mississippi River. I love my winter sports; I think I’m destined to live in the mountains.
I’m finally engaged to the love of my life, Ms. Cynthia Bush. I popped the question where it all began at her family cabin down by the lake at sunset. I wanted to do it yesterday on our seven year anniversary, but scheduling conflicts kept us from being at the cabin this weekend. Expect a wedding sometime next summer (hopefully). Today we went to the Science Museum to see the Star Wars exhibit and had dinner at Ruth’s Chris.
Pictures: Star Wars pictures have been posted. Yes, they’re dorky.
School’s out for summer! Well, as much as it can be for an adult working full time. Updates should become more frequent now that session is over and summer is here. Pictures are still basically up to date.
Session: The end of session was a bear as usual, with me pulling a 20 hour shift at one point the final weekend. (When you’re leaving work with the sun rising to your back you know you’ve been there a long time). I almost had my 40 hours in for the week just in the last weekend of session.
Tests: I wasn’t allowed much of a reprieve, however, as I had to kick my studying into high gear right away since I was getting ready to take the Comptia A+ certification tests. I had to take two tests and they weren’t bad as I passed both of them pretty easily on the first attempt.
Kids in the Hall: In the middle of April the Kids in the Hall were here on their Live As We’ll Ever Be! Tour. It was their third live tour and I’ve kicked myself in the past for not seeing them live. The material was basically all new and it was really great to see that the five of them still have the ability to be funny together. Was five years of their show really enough? Maybe they don’t need to try going back to the format they had before, but how about some straight to DVD or miniseries stuff? Maybe another movie? Anyway, the point I’m trying to make is that they’re still great. The Kids in the Hall Megaset is a great buy; for $80 you get a 20 disc set of their entire TV show. I’m thoroughly enjoying it at present.
Band Concert: In the beginning of April we made our annual pilgrimage down to Madison for the UW Spring Band Concert. It’s always a good time and Mark Pender (from Conan O’Brien) was the featured guest and rocked much like he did when he was there three years ago.
Alumni Stuff: As usual I’m still plugging away on our alumni stuff up here. We had our annual Founders’ Day dinner at the beginning of May at the Edina Country Club and it went very well. Our speaker was a Professor of Food Science and his talk was entitled The Science of Chocolate. He had chocolate goody bags for everyone in attendance, which worked really well with his interactive talk.
Bike: After being on bike withdrawal between college and now I finally have something decent to ride again and have been thoroughly enjoying seeing the Twin Cities through a different lens. I bought a Trek 4500, which is a middle of the road mountain bike. I have a 2007 and I’m kind of bummed to see that the 2008 has a Dart3 fork now. Oh well. I’ve got the most beautiful ride to work, which starts out with me riding north along the Mississippi River and then following Summit Ave all the way east to the capitol. Since I’m doing a good amount of pavement riding I swapped out my knobbies with some Continental Travel Contact tires and some Slime Lite tubes. I’ve made a number of other changes, including lights, computer, new seat, bar ends, etc. I think I finally have it the way I want it for now.
With the limited amount of time I’ve had lately posting in list form seems like a great idea. Here’s what I’ve been up to in the past two months.
- The state of Minnesota entered the 2007-2008 Biennium, Eighty-Fifth Legislature. Yay for long hours.
- Brett Favre retired.
- I turned 26.
- I went skiing in Aspen.
- I celebrated St. Patrick’s Day by cooking a boiled dinner and drinking Irish beer.
- The Badgers made it to the Sweet Sixteen and were beaten handily by Davidson.
- I bought a new mountain bike. (Trek 4500).
- Brewers Opening Day is this week.
I’ve posted a bunch of new pictures going back to July so check it out. Also, being that this is the first post of the year everything from 2007 has been moved to the Blog section. Updates have been few and far between lately. With session only a few weeks away things have gotten really busy at work. I’ve also assumed the role of president of our alumni chapter. I’m studying for a computer certification, too. With all of that going on I’ve still managed to find time to finish up my HTPC (Home Theater PC), which is a project I’ve had cooking for almost a year. For now I’m running GB-PVR on XP since it was the path of least resistance to recording TV and accessing my video and audio files, which are stored on a different Windows machine. I do have MythTV installed on a second hard drive, but I haven’t had the time to get it fully configured. Other than that I’ve been out skiing a few times, strummed the guitar a little bit, and haven’t been playing Twilight Princess as much as I would like. I’ve seen two really good movies lately, one of which, Juno, might have made it onto my all time favorites list. I saw Atonement today, which is one of those best picture heavy drama types of movies. It’s a great piece of cinema, but it really has a way of reminding you about how unfair and depressing life can be. I generally like to escape from reality when I go to the movies, not be reminded of how brutal it can be. On that note I think I will go escape with the Wii. PS – A new season of Aqua Teen has started. Watch it.
I’m back to something of a normal life now that the football season is over. As much as I love Madison and Badger football I’m just not sure if I want to have season tickets for next year. This season was particularly rough because there were so many ups and downs and so many close games. I was really hoping for a BCS game, but finishing 9-3 with a shot at Tennessee in the Outback Bowl isn’t a bad season by any means. We’re going to skip on the bowl game this year because we’ve already been to Florida twice this year, with one of the times being for the Capital One Bowl. I just can’t justify spending the money on a third plane ticket to the same place in such a short amount of time. I think I might try to attend a few select games next year and use the extra time to get to Lambeau. Speaking of which, the Packers just destroyed Oakland to improve to 11-2 on the year. By Favre standards it was a pretty average day, but the defense and special teams really stepped up and made some huge plays. Ryan Grant keeps looking better and better and our receivers are so hard to stop and are leading the NFL in yards after the catch. I could write pages about the team, but suffice it to say it has been one hell of a year so far and I can’t wait for the playoffs. With the holidays coming up I’m hoping to find a day to devote to encoding all of my videos to DVD quality and posting all of my pictures from the fall. In other news I went skiing for the first time this season at Afton Alps. I’m really glad I went out because with the foot of snow we’ve had and the freezing cold weather they had most of the place open, which is pretty good for the beginning of December. I’ve also been playing Starcraft quite a bit lately and would just like to thank Blizzard for making such a great game, which is still enjoyable after 10 years.
Time flies when you are dealing with unpacking all of your stuff! We have been at the new place for about three weeks now and I am still trying to get things done. In the midst of moving football season started, which further complicates things because it means we are down in Madison a lot. I was also without Internet for a while at the new place. The Badgers so far are looking……ok. At times they play great defense and at times they play great offense, but they haven’t been able to play a complete game yet. The next two weeks against Iowa and Michigan State at home will be a good way for the team to start conference play. I will try to post more as the season goes on, especially after these next two home games are over because then I will be back in the TC for two straight weekends.
I love Milwaukee; it is such an underrated city nationally and full of a lot of fine schmeckers to boot. Nothing beats Milwaukee and the lakefront in the summertime. I went to German Fest (pictures soon) this past weekend, which is the largest German festival in the country. Not that it is a big surprise given Milwaukee’s deep German heritage and expertise in brewing and sausage making. Did you know the Usinger’s company is over 125 years old and that Sprecher brews a beer called German Fest? It is all true. You cannot make this stuff up. I play up my Irish heritage a lot because obviously I have the name for it, but I am actually half German so it is fun to explore that side, too. Obviously the food and beer are two important parts of German Fest and they did not disappoint. I found myself alternating between Sprecher and Miller Lite and managed to put down three plates of food and a brat. My first meal was some pork schnitzel with sauerkraut and potato salad. For my next meal I had some kartoffel (potato pancakes) with applesauce and sausages, and for my last meal I had a giant pork shank with potato dumplings. We listened to the band Chikeria later in the evening until we left and they were a lot of fun. They played a lot of covers, but it was fun just the same. I will be heading back to the Brew City in less than three weeks for Irish Fest, which is also the largest Irish festival in the country and the world. Two years ago the President of Ireland attended for the festival’s 25th anniversary. Take that St. Paul Irish Fair. As I was thinking about my weekend on the drive back up here I realized that Minneapolis and St. Paul have no character. Ouch. I am sorry, but to me it is true. What things do you identify Minneapolis with? I have lived here for two years and I still do not know. A giant shopping mall? Maybe Milwaukee will always be thought of as a blue-collar town, but so what? I would rather identify Milwaukee with beer, sausage, and motorcycles than nothing. Milwaukee is a hell of a fun town. Pass me a cold one. Prost!
I just got back from the cabin. It is warm out. I have a pool and Fridays off. I will be out enjoying myself over the next few months and I suggest you do the same. 
Check back for new pictures, though. I will post them if I can tear myself away from the pool.
I have been on a little hiatus from my website because I have been busy with work, out of town, and sick.
Baseball season is here and the Brewers are dominating the NL Central and it is about time. We have a good young team and I hope they can make the playoffs for a few years before players like Fielder and Hardy realize they can make more money elsewhere. Speaking of sports, the draft was last weekend. Joe Thomas was the third overall pick, which was not a huge surprise. After that, though, the Badgers did not have much of a presence in the draft. Zalewski and Rodgers got deals towards the very end and Stocco was not picked up by anyone. Stocco did manage to land a tryout with the Packers, though. I do not have anything against the players drafted by the Packers because let us be honest, I do not know much about any of them. What I do not like is the fact that they do not seem to have filled the offensive gaps made by the departures of Walker and Green. Here is to hoping for the best.
On April 21st we headed to Madison for the spring band concert and football game. What an awesome weekend. I have seen better band concerts, but it is still always fun. The weather was perfect and we were able to spend a lot of time at the Terrace. I had never been to the spring football game before so it was kind of cool to finally check it out. Jon and Nick were in town, too, so we met up at the game. I started feeling kind of lousy on the way back on Sunday night and by Monday I was sick. I never went to the doctor, but it seemed like I had bronchitis. Two weeks have gone by and I am feeling better except for coughing a little here and there. I have not worked out in over two weeks and I am going to try to get back at it tomorrow. Session will be over soon and I will be able to go back to having Fridays off. I cannot wait.