Jeff Billimek’s Journal

I woke up a few times last night but still got a lot of sleep and it felt great to be adequately rested.

Jen and I both left around 8am for work. When I got to work I started going through my emails and noticed an invitation to a three-hour meeting with a vendor for a DB2 performance solution product. Carole explained that she wanted me to participate since we indirectly use DB2. I was honored that I was asked to participate.

I made an appointment with Collie at Three 13 for a haircut. $60 for a haircut still seems very expensive to me, but I supposed it’s necessary.

Bob M, Brian S, Alex D, and I went to the Greek place for lunch today.

I built code for a deployment to integration and production and then requested a deployment. I think I need to transition some of these tasks to others. It’s hard to give it up because I know it all so well but one cannot grow if they continue to do the same thing all the time.

The last part of this afternoon I attended the three hour meeting. I was pretty underwhelemed with the presentation and the product didn’t even appear to be an appropriate solution for what we need. I spoke with Jegan after the meeting and he has the same sentiments.

I left work around 5pm and drove straight to Three 13. I got there at 6pm even though my appointment wasn’t until 7pm. They fit me in early. I was approached by a well-rounded girl who turned out to be Collie’s ‘assistant’. I guess they charge so much that they can afford to have ‘assistants’. She introduced me to Collie and then gave me a shampoo along with the fabulous paraffin wax treatment on my hands. I love that part of the whole experience.

While I waited for Collie to finish with up her current client I got a page from the TCC to join a bridge call regarding a production issue. I used my cell phone and joined the call in progress. There were a lot of big players on the call include managers from most of the groups as well as directors. Brent (a VP) was also present.

I requested that someone get Jegan on the call too since he was still at work. When he joined I dropped off to get my haircut but assured Carole that I would come back.

Collie gave me a great hair cut. Jen has been going to her for literally the past ten years so she knew a lot about me and we talked a little.

After the haircut I tipped Collie (it turns out that you’re supposed to put the tip in an envelope and not give it to the hairdresser directly) and left. As I drove to Jen’s house I got back on the call for an update.

It turned out that there was a major DB2 problem. Two indexes had ‘broken pages’ which basically means that the whole index is screwed. The DBA’s attempted to repair the indexes but it didn’t work, so the only solution was to rebuild it. This takes a long time because the table in question has about 250 million rows.

We all decided to end the call until the rebuild completes. Jegan went home and I assured him that I would take care of things once we get back on.

Jen still wasn’t home but arrived a little while after I got off the call. We had some wine together while we cooked dinner (salmon and rice). Dinner was great. I’m so thankful that Jen likes to eat healthy because it’s good for both of us.

While we were finishing dinner, I got a page to re-join the bridge due to the index work being completed. I joined and assisted with the restart of the system. Everything seemed to be fine and we all concluded the call. It was a pretty fun production problem because of all the visibility.

Jen and I were woken up at 5am by the alarm I set the night before. We quickly took a shower and got ready. I packed a few things in my backpack and we left my house around 6am.

After parking and waiting for the shuttle bus, we checked in for our flight and made our way to the security line. To my great disappointment the security line was very long, going back to the end of baggage claim. Fortunately we only had to wait about twenty minutes to get through security.

We saw Scott and Katie at the gate area. Our seat assignments were already given so we all boarded the flight. Jen and I sat in seats 18A and 18B. During the flight I read my book and worked on my laptop. Jen read her book.

We arrived in Minneapolis and linked up with Scott and Katie. The airport was pretty easy to navigate as we made our way to the rental car area. Scott reserved a car through Avis.

The four of us piled into the car and drove into the city. We got off around 7th street and had a late breakfast at a place called ‘Hells Kitchen’. All of the waiters dress up in goth-like nighttime clothes. I ordered the Huevos Rancheros which was an excellent blend of hard tortilla, eggs, bacon, beans, rice, salsa, and other things. It was pretty good and I ate all of it.

Jen and I shared a cup of their special porridge stuff which consisted of brown rice, blueberries, strawberries, maple syrup, and other things. It was also pretty good. Lunch with Scott and Katie was enjoyable and we had a relaxing time eating and talking.

Afterwards we walked around the touristy-like downtown area before getting back into the car and driving east out of the city.

We drove over to a small town east of St. Paul where our hotel, the Holiday Inn Express, was located. Before checking in, we went over to Sam’s Club to buy some wine for the wedding reception.

When we went to the hotel (at 2:15pm) we were told that no rooms were ready yet and that it would be at least thirty minutes. We waited in the lobby area and played cards to pass the time. We played a game called ‘Spades’ which was actually pretty fun.

Once we got our rooms, I took a short nap while Jen read her book. Before I knew it, it was time to go. I changed into my long-sleeved button-up blue shirt. We drove over to the wedding site which was about twenty minutes away in farm country.

When we arrived at the farm I saw a lot of cars already there. The four of us didn’t really know anyone else from Madeline’s family other than her dad. We walked around towards the ceremony site which was near a windmill in a beautiful garden. We took some photos and then got seated for the ceremony.

(Jen, Scott, and Katie)

(Jen and I)

The wedding was a non-denominational ceremony with a judge conducting. Madeline wore a beautiful renaissance-style dress and all of the bride’s maids wore matching dresses which was cool. At the end of the ceremony they lighted a ‘unity candle’. It was a very nice ceremony.

(Madeline and Peter)

Afterwards there was a receiving line in which all of the guests walked down a line and spoke with the wedding party. We then made our way over to a barn area for appetizers and iced mint tea.

The four of us pretty much stayed together and walked around the grounds. Scott and I walked through the adjacent cornfields. It reminded me of the movie ‘Signs‘.

Eventually we made our way to the huge reception tent and found a table with the best-looking wine. All of the tables had one bottle of wine and we were worried that there wouldn’t be enough wine for us. After a while everyone got seated. For some reason, no one joined the four of us at our eight-person table. This was probably because we didn’t know anyone there. The dinner was great. They had everyone bring in either a bottle of wine or a dish in lieu of gifts. As a result we had a lot of food - very good food.

I piled my plate full of good-looking stuff and ate to my heart’s content. One other thing they did for this unconventional wedding was to collect recipes for all food brought in and made handy recipe books for guests to take with them. I really liked the concept of this wedding.

One bottle of wine for the four of us was simply not enough. Katie corrected this by covertly lifting an unopened bottle or two from nearby tables for us to consume. To ensure that we didn’t look like a bunch of drunks, she replaced our now-empty bottles with the ones she took. Very clever!

As people wrapped up dinner and desert, Peter and Madeline (and others) made the requisite speeches typical for a wedding. Eventually a live bluegrass band came in and set up. The lead vocalist was wearing a Madonna-like microphone and corralled people together for a mass square-dance style interaction. Jen, Scott, Katie, and I participated for one dance and then sat back down.

After another glass of wine, Scott asked another woman to dance. Katie and Jen watched with amusement at his interactions with her. Unfortunately with Scott, the choreographer-lady instructed everyone to go through a series of complicated maneuvers which forced everyone to have a new partner. Instead of dancing with the girl he wanted, Scott was forced to dance with someone’s grandma. This provided much amusement to Katie and Jen.

(Jen, just before sunset)

The night went on and so did the dancing. Finally some people came to talk to us. It was Madeline’s sister and her boyfriend. Scott and Katie engaged in conversation with her boyfriend and Jen and I talked with her sister. She told us all about bike riding cross-country and how much fun it is. It was an interesting conversation.

At one point I got a call from Craig on my cell phone. I noticed that he called once before earlier today so I walked away from the reception tent and took the call. It turns out he needed some assistance with his computer-purchasing decision. I tried to help as best I could.

When I got back to the table I didn’t see Jen and Katie anywhere. So, I spent a little while in conversation with Scott. He’s a pretty cool guy.

(Jen and Katie just before we left)

I finally found Jen and Katie who were standing off in the shadows talking - I’m not sure about what. Around 10:30pm we decided to call it a night and headed back to the hotel. Before going to bed I gave Jen a foot massage because she had been wearing and standing in her dress shoes all day.

Today is labor day but I had to go to work. I woke up and got ready for work while Jen remained snuggled under the sheets of my bed. She looked pretty comfortable.

Before I left, she woke up and we talked for a couple of minutes. She’s heading up to her house today in order to get some things done. My drive into work was very easy as there was hardly anyone on the road today.

I managed to get quite a bit done this morning particularly because it was so quiet in the office today.

There were no meetings and a few of us went to Burger King for lunch today. I left a bit early.

Once I got home, I didn’t stay very long other than to change and get some things packed up for tomorrow. I then headed over to Jen’s house. Once again traffic was very light - despite it being 5pm in the afternoon.

When I arrived at Jen’s house, she was sitting in the living room with Lynne - each had a glass of white wine.

They were watching a ‘Monk‘ marathon on television. Jen suggested that I fix myself a drink since they are having white wine (I don’t like white wine). I made a chocolate martini on the rocks.

Jen went shopping today and was very excited about her purchases. She got a lot of cool stuff on clearance and bought some things for me too. She got me a cool wooden organizer thing to put on the shelf area between the kitchen and hallway where I currently stack a lot of papers. This will be a big help and it looks nice. She also got me a frame for work as well as some photo album things to put some of my 4×6 print in.

It was very nice of her to get all of these cool things for me. I rarely do that for her because I rarely know what to get her - partially due to my lack of imagination.

We watched television while I did some work on my laptop, processing some photos from Craig & Erin’s trip as well as polishing a journal entry.

Eventually we had dinner. Lynne made her special rice & bean sausage stuff which was very good. Jen also made grilled cheese and turkey sandwiches. It was a tasty dinner.

After dinner I suggested that we have some cookies because Jen and I bought some slick & bake cookies a while back. It turns out, however, that they had all been eaten already so I volunteered to go to the store and get some more.

I drove over to Publix and got a package of cookies as well as some cleaning supplies for my house.

We made cookies and ate them with milk while Jen and I copied the ‘Dune’ audio CD so she could have her own copy to listen to in the car. It’s pretty big (20 discs). Actually it’s very fun to listen to. Craig lent it to me on his recent trip. It’s an unabridged audio-CD version of Dune and is done quite well. I’ve forgotten a lot of the small details in the book but now it’s all coming back to me (and more) while listening to the book again. It also makes my drive to/from work so much more enjoyable.

Lynne went upstairs for studying and bed while Jen and I continued to work on our CD copying and watched CSI. While we were doing this, Scott called up Jen to see if he could come over

Jen got some water boiling in anticipation of serving hot tea and a while later Scott and Katie showed up. They had not seen Jen’s new living room furniture yet so they finally had a chance to see it.

Scott is going to Tokyo on a business trip for a month or two and is leaving tomorrow. One of the reasons he came over was to get some music from Jen before departing.

They didn’t stay too long and left around 10:30pm. Shortly after that Jen and I went to bed.

Today was a very busy and exciting day at work. The first thing I did was activate a new version of code in production. This took a little longer than normal due to me activating with the system flow still running.

As soon as I finished that, I dashed to 11 East where the all-day-long OMNI meeting was already in session. I grabbed the last free chair in the back of the room.

Last week I was honored to find out that Jegan and I were asked to go help out on a performance problem with a vendor product on the OMNI project. It’s under a different director so this assignment gives me a unique perspective on another project as well as some much-needed exposure. Previously Jegan worked to help with another projects’ performance problem. When the call came for more help this time, Carole insisted that I participate as well. I’m deeply in debited to Carole for all of the opportunities she’s given me.

Yesterday Jegan and I spent a lot of time up in the certification facility lab to observe some of the problems in an integration environment.

The first part of the meeting was for the vendor to talk about their take on the problem and what they have tried so far to fix it.

Then we broke for lunch which was catered by Rising Roll. During lunch, the OMNI director, MaryAnn, knew me by name and was very nice. I vaguely remember meeting her before.

After lunch Gus and MaryAnn led the meeting and focused on identifying the core problems instead of random ideas to improve performance. Jegan asked some questions to prod things along and so did I. Brent came in at one point for a short while.

In all, it was a productive meeting but as Jegan pointed out afterwards, we didn’t come away with some very concrete tasks to do and only a couple of people were responsible for doing work.

I left work pretty late and rushed home. I cleaned some things up and Jen came over shortly after that.

Together, she and I got things ready for dinner. Fortunately we did a lot of prep work yesterday so it didn’t take a lot of time to get things ready for dinner.

Around 7pm Mom and Jim showed up. I invited Mom over to have dinner in celebration of her birthday. We had pretty much everything ready when they came over. I showed them the new bed and some of the new pictures that Jen and I hung up on the walls.

I also gave Mom a photo album with some of the pictures she asked me to get prints of. She seemed to like this.

We visited and talked while I got some of the food ready for the grill. I grilled up corn on the cob as well as some shish kabobs from a recipe that Jen found on the food network. We did both beef and chicken with lots of good vegetables. Everything was marinated in its own sauce and it came out pretty good.

I think I undercooked things at first so I had to put it back on. This made me a little frustrated but I understood that it’s part of the learning process. So I baby-sat the remaining food on the grill while Mom, Jim, and Jen ate. Eventually I joined them and had some dinner too. It was pretty good!

After dinner Jen and I got desert ready. We made some low-carb strawberry cup jello things. I put a candle in one for Mom and we all had desert. It was pretty good.

Jim and I talked a little while Jen and Mom cleaned up some of the dishes. In all it was a good night and we had a great time entertaining. I think we like it best when we keep it low-key so things are more personal and intimate instead of a larger group of people. Jen and I seem to do a great job together in this.

Today was the third anniversary of 9-11. I TiVoed several shows about the event three years go.

Jen had plans to hang out with Christen today so she left her house early to go do that. I remained behind to do some work from her house. I worked on some of the things related to the MAFI Lite migration and discovered that we were not running on the latest version of the IR7 reference model.

Many months ago when we migrated to the IR7 reference model, we were given a list of components and versions. Today, however, that list is different. No one bothered to tell us that it was updated. One of the changes was significant: It changed from Oracle 8 to 9i.

I ended up spending about four hours working on this change to get our application to compile against the new Oracle client libraries. I made a lot of progress but decided to continue on Monday.

Around noon I left Jen’s house and drove over to her parent’s house. As I pulled up to their house, they were backing out of the driveway. I showed up just as they were about to leave.

When we all got out of our cars I asked them if I could talk to them about something.

We sat on the back porch and chatted about some things. After we got all of the small-talk out of the way, I told them that I’ve been dating Jen a long time and would like their blessing to marry Jen. They both gave their blessing and welcomed me to the family.

Shortly after that I left their house and stopped by Target. I bought Jen a card, a bath robe, and a dozen red roses. I got home and put the roses in a vase along with the card stuck in the roses. I also placed the robe in a gift bag to give to Jen.

I called Mom, worked on my laptop, and caught up on some shows recorded on the TiVo.

Jen came over in the early afternoon. I gave her the roses, card, and robe. She was very happy and it put her in a terrific mood.

We went over to Publix to buy some supplies. After shopping at Publix, we stopped at the liquor store for some tequila.

Back at my house we got the food marinated and everything ready for dinner. Lisa and Alan came over around 6:30pm. Jen and I had fun entertaining them. We had salsa and chips while we talked.

Jen made some extremely good mango margaritas. I got dinner ready (beef & veggie shish kabobs) and grilled them outside. It was a nice night outside and we ended up eating on the deck.

Alan and I played on the Xbox while Jen and Lisa talked outside. We played Need for Speed as well as Samurai Shodown. Alan played as Earthquake and ended up beating the game. It was a lot of fun.

Lisa and Alan left around 11pm. Jen and I went to bed shortly after that.

It was a very nice night.

My drive into work today wasn’t that bad even though I was going from Jen’s house way up in Woodstock. It was pleasant because I’m listening to the unabridged version of ‘Dune’ on audio CD which Craig lent me.

The 8:30am team lead meeting was rescheduled for 9am. We talked about plans for releases during the rest of the year and the rough schedule for each release.

I had to leave the meeting early in order to attend another meeting at 9:30am to discuss the use of PRM resource management within the HP tuxedo environment. I originally thought PRM would be un-invasive, but it seems that all commands must be ‘wrapped’ inside a PRM command. That is a pain in the ass. We did talk about moving the wrapper to inside another wrapper script we already use for all startups. Alternatively we can attach PRM to a running PID.

The rest of the day was pretty standard work day. I called Travis and actually got a hold of him. It turns out that he was out of town last week. We set up a time to meet this coming Wednesday afternoon. He told me that several other townhouses in the property had similar leaks after the hurricane.

Jen came over and we made pasta together. It was fun. We also opened a bottle of wine and finished it off. While we cooked and ate, we watched an episode of ‘In a Fix‘ and ‘What not to Wear‘.

It was a great evening and I certainly enjoy every moment I get to spend with her.

Jen and I woke up at 5am today. Normally we would sleep in because it’s a weekend, but today we have to leave around 6am in order to catch the 8:30am flight to Chicago.

After each taking a quick shower, I quickly packed up some things in my backpack. Because we’re only staying one night it was quite easy to pack. I sort of like day trips and quick weekend trips because it’s so easy to pack for them and I don’t have to carry much.

The flight to Chicago was quite uneventful and pleasant. Jen and I sat next to each other and read our books.

When we arrived in ORD, Jen and I changed out of our airplanes clothes and into more comfortable clothes for walking around in the city. While I was waiting for Jen to return from the restroom, I saw Mallick H. disembark from our plane. It turns out that Mallick only came to Chicago for an hour to pick up his passport from his wife who is working in Chicago at the moment. Mallick will then return to Atlanta on the next flight out in an hour, fly to JFK, and then fly to London tonight. What a long day!

Jen and I took the ‘L’ train (red line) from the airport into the city. It was a 45-minute train ride and Jen read her book most of the way.

We arrived at a train station downtown and walked around some. It was a beautiful sunny day outside. Because it was still close to morning-time (around 11am), it was still a bit chili outside, but nothing that bad.

(Jen walking across a bridge)

Around 11:30am we were both pretty hungry since it was 12:30pm to our eastern-time-zone-adjusted bodies. We went to lunch at the same pizza place that we went to last time with Scott and Katie. It was a nice relaxing time and we had brochetta as an appetizer. Our lunch was a deep-dish Chicago pie-style pizza which was absolutely delicious.

I took a picture of the back wall near where we sat because it was really fascinating. The whole wall was covered in fronts of various wine cases. I only recognized a few of the wines, but one stood out to me: Silver Oak. This is a wine that Larry used to have quite often when I would go visit him in San Diego.

After lunch we walked around in the general vicinity. We were close to the Chicago River and Michigan Avenue. Jen really wanted to go on an architectural boat tour of Chicago. We went to the ticket booth of one company she researched on the internet only to find out that they were all sold out until tomorrow afternoon. That won’t work.

Dejected, we decided to walk to Navy Pier. On the way, Jen noticed another boat tour company which looked familiar. We investigated and it turns out that it was the same company she used years ago when she was here before. She was very excited because the next tour, the 2pm tour, was still open. We bought tickets (about $55) and waited for the boat.

While we waited, we sat on a park bench and I used my macro lens to snap some photos. I was so happy with how sunny and clear it was today. The sky was a deep blue and it wasn’t hot at all. It was a very good day today.

We boarded the boat and decided to sit downstairs instead of the upper deck. This decision proved to be a good one because we got some great seats at the front of the boat which will afford great views.

The boat tour lasted about 1.5 hours. We had a hard time understanding the guide who as up above and pointing to the buildings as she spoke. Since we could not see her, we had no idea what she was pointing out. Nonetheless we saw some great sights.

Chicago is a pretty cool place - especially with the great skyscrapers all around. I made good use of my fisheye lens to take a lot of photos of the different buildings. Jen was very excited about the boat tour and was happy we did it. I’m glad she liked it so much.

After the boat tour, we walked over to Navy Pier to walk around. I don’t think it’s my cup of tea - it seems way too commercialized, like a theme-park. We did ride the ‘Navy Pier Ferris wheel sponsored by McDonalds’ ($8). Before we boarded, they forced us to get our photo taken by a girl with a Nikon DSLR. I noted that it was the D1X and she seemed confused. The ride was nice.

We walked to the end of the pier which was a bit nicer. They had about ten flagpoles with American flags flying in the wind. I knew immediately that it would make a great photo, so we spent some time there while I took lots of pictures.

From there we walked along Lake Shore Drive to Millennium Park. Neither of us had been there before so it was a new experience for us. It reminded me a lot of a concert park place because they had a stage at the end of a long lawn. We sat there for a bit but decided to head to the hotel.

On the way out of the park we stopped at a strange half-doughnut looking metallic sculpture. A lot of people were congregated around it so we walked by. It is actually the Kapoor Sculpture. I wanted to take a fun mirror-shot picture of us standing in front of it. It took me a few tries to get it just right, but I was pleased with the results.

After Millennium Park, we walked a few blocks over to our hotel. It isn’t a ‘normal’ hotel because I booked through priceline. In fact, it was very European-looking on the inside. Our room was the same.

Jen and I were pretty tired so we took a nap for about an hour. We also made reservations for dinner at Francisco’s. Jen and I changed and then headed out to dinner. We took the red line train about fifteen stops north into a northern part of town.

It actually looked to be a bit shady part of town but the restaurant was nearby. We had a salad and bottle of red wine. Jen noted that she believed this was a restaurant frequented by gay couples as most of the ‘couples’ in there were of the same sex.

We had a lot of food - so much, in fact, that we couldn’t finish it all. It was a nice & romantic evening together and we had a great time. After dinner we managed to have desert. We shared it and it was so delicious!

After dinner we headed back to the hotel. We were both pretty tired. While we were riding the length train ride back to downtown, a well-dressed guy next to me struck up a conversation. He was quite outgoing and talkative. It turns out that he is in Chicago from Florida visiting friends. Down in Florida he is a newscaster. He explained that there is a large Greek community in Chicago (he is Greek himself). And that he was going out to a Greek nightclub.

Back at the hotel, Jen and I gave each other feet massages and then went to bed.

It was a beautiful day outside today. The sky was clear and blue and the temperature was cool. I certainly do love fall!

At work today I tracked my shipment from amazon and saw that it was indeed delivered to Jen’s office. She also confirmed receipt to me by way of an instant message.

When I got home from work I opened up all of the windows. It felt great to have the fresh cool air come in from the outside.

To my surprise Jen came over after she got off work today. I was considering heading up to her place in order to see her tonight as well as to get my hands on the new toy!

When she arrived, she was in a great mood and we opened up a bottle of red wine to drink together. I eagerly opened up the amazon.com shipping box and got the camera out. I quickly went through the menu and custom functions to configure it to my liking and then took the very first picture with the new camera:

For dinner Jen and I had sandwiches and sat outside. It was so nice out - we had a great time.

Craig called and we got caught up on some things. Jen had to leave so I remained home by myself. I spent what remained of the evening playing with the new camera.

Jen and I slept with the windows opened last night. I woke up during the middle of the night a couple of times thinking that the alarm was going off. Instead, it turns out that it was just the sound of an air conditioner compressor outside.

I woke up around 7am and did some work. Jen woke up too and had some breakfast. We each took a shower and then I started doing laundry.

Jen left my place around 9am. She needed to go home in order to get some things taken care of and to do some laundry.

While she was away, I got a lot done. I continued with laundry, I got up-to-date with my finances in MS Money, I ensured that my property taxes were paid, I added the new 20D and 100mm macro lens to my personal articles floater policy, and I cleaned up around the house.

Travis came by while I was on the phone with USAA. He had a sheetrock guy with him and I explained that I would be leaving in about an hour. He showed the guy some things and then left.

Jen came over and we packed up my large duffle-bag with items for the trip. We originally planned on packing up everything in Jen’s suitcase, but it wasn’t large enough.

Once we got everything packed up, we left my house and headed for the airport. Before going to the airport, we stopped by the Delta general office ticketing center so I could purchase Jen’s ticket.

We still appeared to be doing well on time and I was starving because I didn’t eat anything yet today. We decided to drive down to the local Chick-fil-A for a quick bite to eat. Once we got there, we found out that they only take cash. Jen didn’t have any money on her and I only had four dollars. We decided to get something in the airport instead.

I decided to be clever and park in my office parking-lot since we’re going to be gone for a while. I already had to go through the lengthy process of signing in Jen at the main office so I figured that she should get into my office with no problem (she was given a visitors pass). No. The visitors pass was only good for the general office. I had to sign-in Jen all over again for the A3 building. What a waste of time.

Next, I tried to look for a parking space. I dove past the dozens of recently-created empty ‘car pool’ parking spaces up front that are never used only to find out that there wasn’t a single empty parking space in the entire parking lot! I was so furious. They created so many car pool parking spaces (which are never used) that there isn’t enough parking for everyone. What a complete and inefficient use of space!

Instead we parked outside the gated parking lot into a public lot where car thieves run rampant. We walked over to the hotel to catch a shuttle to the airport. While walking up to the front, a shuttle bus came flying by, stopped for an couple of seconds at the front - about twenty yards away from us, and then sped away.

When we finally reached the front of the hotel I went inside and asked if they could make sure another shuttle bus would come. The lady radioed the shuttle and asked that she loop back around to pick us up. She never showed up.

Eventually I went back inside and asked again. The told me that another was on the way. Fifteen minutes later a guy came outside (a limo diver) whom we struck up a conversation with earlier. He offered to give us a lift to the hotel since the shuttles were not coming.

He was very nice and was well-traveled. He explained that he used to fly all over the world to collect orchids.

Once at the airport we had to stand in the long international check in line. I was worried because our flight leaves at 4pm and it was already 3pm. We had fifteen minutes to get checked-in or else we would miss the 45-minute check-in cutoff. We barely made it.

The security line was long given that it was a Thursday afternoon. We made it to the gate about ten minutes prior to departure. Fortunately they were running late boarding the plane but we barely made it there in time. We never had a chance to get some food. I was so hungry by this point that I felt a little sick. I was relieved to find out that this flight to Salt Lake City does the ‘food available for purchase’ program which means that I’ll be able to get something to eat on board.

Jen and I were seated in seats 24D and 24E. Once we made it on the plane, things got a little better. We ordered some food which was quite good. Jen and I shared the mixed nuts and I had a ham and cheese sandwich on tasty bread made from tomatoes and onions. My seat was in pretty bad shape. The tray-table was broken, the window-shade was broken, and the audio coming out of the arm rest was broken such that only the left channel of audio would play. The in-flight movie was Harry Potter 3.

I read my book and watched the movie. The flight to Salt Lake City was about 3.75 hours long. During the flight I took some photos outside of the window.

We had about an hour layover in Salt Lake City. Jen had some really great yogurt. We got cleared for the flight to Calgary and were seated in seats 10A and 10B.

The two-hour flight to Calgary was uneventful. I read through my hiking book and selected some trails for us to try. I also read some of my book. Jen was busy reading the second book in the Dune series, ‘Dune Messiah‘.

When we arrived in Calgary, we had to wait in line for a long time to pass through customs. After that we got the rental car and headed for Canmore.

I drove and Jen navigated. The map that Avis gave us was a piece of trash. We had a hard time getting to highway 1 which would lead us outside of the city. Instead we went too far south. We stopped at a grocery store for some snacks to eat on the trail as well as some water. I also asked for directions.

We were both a bit hungry and looked for a place to eat. It was around 10pm (it felt like midnight to us) by this point and nothing appeared to be open.

I got lost trying to find the highway. Jen tried to help with directions but was frustrated too by the inadequate map. We had a challenging time dealing with the situation but eventually found the right road and also a place to eat. We stopped at a Subway for some sandwiches.

With some food in our bellies we were doing much better. The 1.5-hour drive to Canmore was tough because I was very tired but we made it without incident.

We drove over to the Bed and Breakfast where I previously made reservations. It was close to midnight at this time. Out hostess, Roberta, was awake waiting for us. She showed us our room: A bright-yellow room with a queen bed. I told Roberta that we would not need breakfast tomorrow because we’ll be leaving early.

Jen and I quickly unpacked and went to bed.

We woke up at 6am this morning and quickly got ready. I’m pretty obsessive about catching the elusive morning light. Like yesterday we stopped at the coffee shop so Jen could get her morning fix and I got a bagel with egg, cheese, and bacon.

Instead of eating there, Jen drove while I ate. We drove up to Lake Louise and parked near the lake on the lower level. We walked over to the lake and proceeded to take some pictures in the very early morning light.

After I got everything set up on the tripod and prepared to take some pictures with the Sigma 15mm fisheye lens, I encountered a problem with my camera. It would not focus and the aperture showed ‘00′. I thought, perhaps, I was experiencing the infamous 20D ‘lockup’ bug. I removed the battery and put it back in - no change. I put in a new battery and still no change. I took the lens off and put it back on - no change.

By this time I was growing increasingly agitated and frustrated. I couldn’t figure out what was going on. The camera was not working. It would not attempt to focus and it wouldn’t recognize that a lens was connected. While all of this was happening, Jen didn’t know what was going on. She was having a great time and took some photos of me struggling with my camera system.

I determined that the problem did not occur with other lenses - but I was still baffled because I used the fisheye lens all day yesterday with no problem. Jen suggested that it might be with the temperature.

We departed from the lake and drove over to the Moraine Lake area. I was in a foul mood. After we parked I stayed in the car and played with the camera & lens some more. After further experimentation I was able to determine it to be a problem only when the Sigma 15mm fisheye lens focuses close to the infinity-side of the focus ring. It doesn’t matter if this happens manually or automatically - once it reaches some threshold, the camera says ‘00′ for aperture and refuses to work. It’s a very frustrating symptom but at least there is a bit of a workaround. I won’t be able to determine if it is related to the camera of the lens until I get back home.

Once I had the problem identified I was in a much better mood. We took some photos of Moraine Lake. I decided to get a better view and climbed up to the top of a large rock pile serving as a natural dam for the lake. The view up there was much better. There were a few other photographers up there taking pictures as well.

(Moraine Lake)

The light was good so I set up shop and with my camera securely fastened to the tripod, I took many photos - most of which were ones intended to be stitched together for a panorama.

While I was busying myself with photographing the beautiful scene, another photographer chatted me up. It turns out that he was using the 10D and didn’t even know the 20D was out yet. He commented that I was on the ‘cutting edge’.

Once I finished all of that, I climbed down and re-joined Jen. We began our hike which was for the Consolation Lakes trail. They had some silly restriction in effect that all hikers on that trail must be in tight groups of six or more - something about bears. We didn’t want to wait around to form some lame group so we went ahead anyway by ourselves.

It was a pretty nice trail compared to yesterday. I specifically picked it out because there is only about a 250-foot elevation change, unlike the trail yesterday which had a 3,300-foot elevation change. The trail was pretty level.

Along the first part of the trail, we were in the trees and saw some pretty interesting fungi and moss specimens. We went along a couple of side trails down to the river to see the awesome mountainside speckled with the golden-yellow larch pines.

As we continued, we talked about some of the details of our future together. We talked about Jen and I living together. Jen would move in with me and we would combine our collective assets. She would sell her house. We also talked about wedding plans.

Eventually we made it to Lower Consolation lakes. Strangely no one else was around. The lake area was basically a huge rockslide with little trees. I’m more of a meadow & tree guy myself. Nonetheless it was pretty cool to see all of the huge boulders.

A little while later a large group of people arrived. They were mostly retired-looking people and seemed a bit European. Jen and I ambled along the boulders towards the shore of the lake.

I worked my way alone towards the lake itself. It was cool to climb through all of the huge boulders. I found a spot to climb up on and set up my tripod. Then I took some more pictures of the surrounding lake area. It was still a bit cloudy in certain spots so today wasn’t nearly as good as yesterday weather-wise.

Jen sat about fifty yards away on another boulder and I saw her eating some trail mix. I joined Jen a little while later and the two of us walked back to the beginning of the boulder area.

Another large group arrived and the first group left. We waited a few minutes and then headed back too. We didn’t want to be trailing too close behind this huge group.

Actually we eventually passed them up and crossed with another large group on the way out. I guess most people take this six-person rule pretty seriously.

When we made it back to the trailhead we went down a side trail to an overlook looking out at Moraine Lake. We took some photos and enjoyed the afternoon views. It was pretty nice.