Jeff Billimek’s Journal

It was another hard day at work. I tried to be as productive a I was on Tuesday but I couldn’t get as much done. Nonetheless I was happy with everything I got accomplished today.

When I got home from work I spent some time working on the elliptical machine. How frustrating. The support people emailed Jen back and told her that we need to ‘adjust the reed switch’. That is housed in the back underneath some panels that aren’t really meant to be removed. I had a hell of a hard time removing the panels and ended up getting the screwdriver extensions stuck inside a tube because it was too deep. I’m not sure how to get it out now.

I was able to eventually locate the ‘reed switch’ and did my best to adjust it to what I thought looked like the correct setting. None of this fixed the problem. I decided to give it a rest until later.

Mom and Jim got back into town and invited me to join them for dinner at a cool little place called ‘Nuevo Laredo‘. It was somewhere I’ve never been before (but close to my place). I had to drive through a scary part of town (inside the perimeter south of vinings). I found it with little trouble.

Dinner was great and we had a nice time catching up. I want to come back here with Jen some time.

On my way home I stopped by the liquor store to get two bottles of Malbec for Jen and I to enjoy when she gets back home. I also stopped at the grocery store to get some flowers and a card for Jen.

I ended up staying up late cleaning the house and getting things put away and organized so Jen will get home to a happy house tomorrow.

I woke up at 6am and quietly slipped on my robe and headed downstairs. I turned on the laptop and logged into the TravelNet site to check the flight to St. Maarten. There were around 23 empty seats (4 in first class) and 12 revenue standbys. It looked like a done deal to me. I had some trouble with the printer not working (related to something getting messed up with samba on turing which I fixed).

Jen got up and took a shower. I brought her a cup of coffee and took a shower while she got ready. I packed the same set of clothes that I originally packed for this trip last weekend. After we got all packed up we headed out to the airport.

The weather this morning was much nicer than a week ago when we were in the midst of an ice storm. Indeed, it was clear and somewhat mild this morning. We parked at the airport park & ride.

To my great surprise, there was virtually no line at the international check-in. I suspect the recent schedule change has things such that our St. Maarten flight is no longer at the same time as many other international flights. As a result we breezed through check-in and the security line and had a lot of time to spare.

Jen and I had a bagel and banana from Starbucks and waited in the E-concourse food court area. After breakfast we stopped by a news-stand and I bought an issue of ‘Wired‘ to read on the trip.

We got to the gate and patiently waited. As they were close to completing the boarding process, the gate agent told me that there was going to be only one seat left if a late passenger arrives. He did arrive so she told us that we would not make it.

Jen and I were a bit dejected and left the gate area. As we walked down the E concourse I told her that we could go hiking today (since it will be sunny and in the high 50’s) and also deal with the broken elliptical machine.

As we were walking down the hallway an announcement came over the intercom informing Mr. & Mrs. Billimek to proceed back to gate E-31! The plane was almost at departure time so we double-timed it and got back to the gate. The agent apologized and told us that they were able to find seats for us.

The seats were, in my opinion, the best possible seats in coach class. They were both aisle seats in the emergency-exit row so Jen and I had a lot of room and were across from each other. We also were sitting in an optimal position for watching the movie.

The flight was pleasant. I slept a little and we watched the in-flight movie, ‘Sideways‘. What a depressing movie! At least it made the time go by faster. I also forgot that they feed people in the coach cabin on international flights. As such, Jen and I each had a salad with some great cookies.

We had a massive tail-wind down to St. Maarten and at one point the pilot told us that we were traveling at a ground-speed of 650mph. That’s pretty cool. We got into St. Maarten about thirty minutes early.

Jen and I deplaned and made it through immigrations rather quickly. We caught a taxi and went over to the Maho Beach resort hotel. I noticed that everything seemed a lot more crowded and there were a lot more people around than usual.

When we began the check-in process I explained that we didn’t have reservations and I wanted to inquire about rates & availability. The guy chuckled and said that they might not have anything. This isn’t a good thing to hear! I’ve never had a problem the previous four trips down here so I didn’t expect to have a problem right now.

He checked for us and fortunately they did have a room but it only had double beds. Then he told me the rate: $250 a night! I asked him about an airline employee discount and he explained that because of the high season the $250 rate was the best they could do. I told him that when I was here before at high season, the rate was $125. He said that this is an even ‘higher’ season and that is why the rate is higher. We accepted the rate and checked-in.

The room was a smoking room (I think they all are, not sure) and the toilet didn’t work. I called down to housekeeping to let them know about the toilet problem and then Jen & I changed out of our airplane clothes and headed outside.

Initially it was a bit cloudy and windy (the wind was pretty strong from the west). Jen and I headed over to the sunset beach bar. It was packed full of people but we found a spot to wedge ourselves in. I got Jen a pina colada (they don’t make Mojitos) and for myself I had the traditional Red Bull & vodka.

Since the last time we were hear (about a year ago), they have made a lot of renovations to the bar. A second, lower deck has been added. Throughout the whole bar speakers are set up broadcasting radio traffic from the airport control tower. The grill has been rebuilt and is much more massive. Waitresses come around to take your drink & food order. They were in the process of constructing what looks to be an enclosed theater-type room with a large screen inside. A large projection screen is set up outside and it comes on at night with images of planes landing - really cool. Lastly, there is a surfboard with a chalkboard on it listing all of the day’s arrivals and departures by time so people will know when to look for that large KLM 747 landing. It is pretty cool. I hope they don’t get too commercialized.

(The new Sunset Beach Bar)

(What a great way to track when to look for incoming flights!)

Jen and I stayed at the bar for a long while and had some drinks. The sun came back out and in no time there wasn’t a cloud in the sky. It’s amazing how fast the weather can change here.

I took a lot of photographs of planes landing and made heavy use of my little 50mm lens to take portraits of Jen. She also took a lot of pictures too.

(Jen)

(Me)

We ordered some cheese fries and chicken tenders while we hung out at the bar. It was pretty nice to have a waitress come around to take our order and bring us food & drinks.

(Low-flying Air Transat)

(Closeup of an incoming KLM 747)

We sat on the beach and watched the sunset. We both saw a hint of the green flash and that was pretty cool. After sunset we walked back towards the hotel. On the way we stopped at the little grocery store. Smokers and drinkers must love this island. A carton of cigarettes was about $11. A 1L bottle of franjelico was about $14. All liquor was super-cheap. We decided to try to get some from the duty-free shop in the airport on our way out tomorrow.

It was a bit chili outside with the wind so we went back to the hotel to change. I put my airport clothes back on (brown slacks and a blue button-but dress shirt) sans the shoes. I still wore my leather sandals.

Jen and I walked around the hotel grounds some more and then back over towards the sunset beach bar area. We went beyond that and explored a little around the area with the restaurants. Last time we came to St. Maarten we ate at a place called ‘Bliss’. It was very romantic last time to sit on a table overlooking the ocean, but we wanted to try something else this time.

We went to a place in the same area called ‘Bamboo Bernie’s‘. Casey recommended it before but I couldn’t remember the name of the place. It was really cool. We sat in a secluded little bamboo hut and had a very romantic secluded dinner together. Our waitress was a cut Dutch girl who was very nice.

Jen and I ordered a bottle of red wine and an appetizer. We took our time and then decided to get sushi. We ordered a huge ’sushi boat’ thing with tons of fish. Our favorite was some sort of eel roll with avocado on the inside. It was to die for. There were also some other wonderful pieces and we had a fabulous time at dinner together.

(Our magnificent dinner together)

Our waitress was wearing a cool shirt which said, ‘Sun, Sex, & Sushi’. That was the motto of the restaurant and we bought a shirt for Jen just like that. It’s a very good motto!

Like most things on vacation, dinner was expensive but it was worth it in my opinion. We had a great time together and the food was magnificent. From all of the alcohol today and especially the wine (wine seems to put my to sleep), I was pretty tired.

We made plans to go out after dinner to a piano bar called ‘Sopranos’. I had a great experience when I went there before. I was tired through and I wanted to stop back by the hotel room for a quick ‘power nap’. Jen wanted to watch some television while I rested my eyes. Before I knew it, two three hours had passed and Jen was asleep too!

I woke her up and asked if she still wanted to go out. She said that she would rather go to bed. I was pretty tired still too so I didn’t complain. We got ready for bed and fell asleep.

A little while later Jen woke up and couldn’t sleep. She was bored so she blew on me and poked me and said funny things to me. I think she was having fun since I was in a lucid, sleepy state. Eventually she fell asleep too.

I processed photos from our St. Maarten trip and uploaded them to a photo album on my website.

I’m running out of space to host files and am not sure what to do next other than moving all of the photo gallery to my linux server at home but it has a much slower connection than the 1&1 host. I’m still debating this.

Craig made some tentative plans with me to come out to Atlanta the last weekend of this month.

It was rainy and dreary out today. I hate this type of depressing weather. I require sunshine to be happy.

For lunch today Casey and I went to Panda Express. We didn’t go with the normal group because of a late meeting. When Casey and I got there we ran into Sameer and Anil so we ate with them. While we were eating the owner of the store came by to talk. He wanted to make sure that we were enjoying the food and then began conversing with Sameer and Anil in Indian! This was a bit surprising because he is Chinese. It turns out that he is versed in six different Indian languages and three different Chinese dialects. Pretty fascinating. I feel pretty dumb only knowing a little Latin.

This afternoon I met with Richard H. and then presented the Revenue Pipeline release 3.0 to the portfolio architecture team. It went quite well and there were no problems. I was pretty glad about this. It’s something I can check-off on my to-do list now.

Jen was handing out with Lynne tonight so I had some time to myself. I took the opportunity to play some World of Warcraft. I got a Crown & Coke, some cookies and was good to go! I also took a break to make myself an avocado sandwich. Those are quite tasty!

Craig hooked me up bigtime. I had an in-game letter from him with 70 gold included! He sent the money to me in order to help out with my mount purchase. I was pretty upset that I needed to come up with the staggering sum of 90g to purchase a mount for my character and had no idea how to make that much money.

Before getting help from Craig I wasn’t sure what to do. I never really bought things at the auction hall so I just didn’t know where the money went or how people save up. I was planning on collecting herbs to sell but that would take forever. I’m extremely grateful to Craig for his help.

I had a great time playing. I bought a black striped tiger as my mount and it’s so cool being able to ride around everywhere so fast. I also got up to level 42 which was another fun accomplishment. I picked up the ‘blade flurry’ talent and can’t wait to see it in action.

Around 11pm I went to bed. Jen was already in bed and was quite warm and snuggly. She’s fun to sleep with!

I barely made it into work this morning in time for an early meeting about use cases and testing strategy for the replay release. We went over a use case diagram that I gave input into creating. Carole said that it’s supposed to help with testing, but we didn’t go into much detail so I’m not so sure what will happen.

During the meeting I helped formulate a test plan for doing a good system-test of the replay functionality. I was also tasked to work with Mehdi to finalize the steps to copy a ticket out of production DB and put it into the system test DB.

Things got super busy at work today. I originally planned on leaving around lunch to go meet Jen at her closing. Instead I had to cancel because of all the work I needed to take care of. It paid off and I got all of the major things taken care of. I did, however, have to stay late.

Before I left, I spent a lot of time working on the path director tables by way of MS Access. The tables are on oracle but we can ‘link’ to them in Access via ODBC. It’s pretty slick and makes for an easy way to change & examine data.

I worked with Sameer and Veena to finalize the ticket replay changes. Everything seems to be going well for system test next week.

When I got home, Jen was already there since she just came back home after her closing. She was very happy to see me.

A little while after I got home, Jen and I headed out to downtown Roswell, GA for our dinner at Swallow at the Hollow. We’re meeting Ethan and Ellen for dinner tonight at 7pm. We were actually supposed to meet them last weekend but we got mixed up on the dates and were in St. Maarten a week ago.

We had a great time hanging out with Ethan and Ellen for dinner. Ethan has the cool Motorola V3 Razr phone so I had an opportunity to check it out first-hand. I can’t wait to get one - if I can only figure out how.

Jen and I shared a bottle of cabernet red wine and we also had the chopped beef platter. It was pretty good but a lot of beef.

After dinner we went back to their house to see some of the work they are doing. They are doing some major renovations and are replacing all of the floors with bamboo. It looks like an incredible amount of work. They are also completely re-doing the bathrooms too.

We also checked out Ethan’s new electrostatic speakers. They are gigantic and don’t use traditional drivers. Instead they create sound somehow through two sheets of transparent plastic using static electricity? I’m not sure how it works.

I was pretty tired out from the wine and we didn’t stay too long. On our way back home we stopped for gas and I got Jen a 1L bottle of water because she was super dehydrated. She drank the whole bottle.

I had a very hard time waking up this morning probably due to the fact that I was up last night watching that movie.

Jen was already up and about and decided that it was time for me to wake up too. She teased me and wrestled with me until I got up too. We had a fun morning together.

Together, Jen and I packed up the elliptical machine and loaded it into the car. It was a lot of hard work. The thing must weight like 350lbs!

We headed up towards Town Center mall and stopped at Willy’s for lunch. I sure do love their quesadillas! Next we went to our favorite furniture store, American Home Signature and ordered the chocolate tri-leaning bookshelves for the study downstairs. They were $300 which wasn’t that bad compared to how much they cost elsewhere. We also know that the quality of the furniture from that store has been excellent (particularly the ‘arts & crafts’ collection).

Next we went to Costco and returned the elliptical machine. As we were entering Costco I realized that I didn’t have my American Express card! I left it at Olive’s last night when I started a tab. That’s the card we used to purchase the machine with. We asked the store manager about returning it sans the original card and they opted to give us cash.

So we ended up with $870 all in 20-dollar bills. That makes a far roll of money! I felt like Larry coming home from Las Vegas.

We did some shopping inside Costco (we had a lot of cash to burn) and bought a lot of supplies. We ran into Jen’s manager, Viktoria as well as Katie. What a small world.

Before heading home we went to Sears to look at elliptical machines. Nothing in there jumped out at us. We also checked out a place across the street from Sears called ‘Bodyworks Equipment’. They had a large selection of elliptical machines but they were insanely-expensive. The low-end models started at around $1,500 & $2,000. The ones that Jen liked were around $3,000. That was a depressing experience.

At this point I was pretty tired and a little grumpy and we headed home. My back was a little sore from all of the heaving lifting today. Jen and I were both very relieved to have the elliptical machine out of the house and it all over with.

Jen encouraged me to take it easy so I sat on the sofa with the laptop and played a little World of Warcraft. I ended up joining a pick-up group to do an elite quest north of Southshore. We were supposed to kill this giant in the back of a cave. The group was full but we didn’t have a healer, just a druid. It was me, another rogue, two hunters, and the druid.

It wasn’t too hard getting to the main boss, but the boss fight itself was pretty tough. He had a massive 750hp area-of-effect attack which decimated my weak rogue. It took is about three tries (we all wiped) to finally kill him.

With that done, I’m almost done with the last of the stranglethorn vale quests. I’ve been using one-hit-wonder and it works quite well.

After this, Jen and I watched a couple of episodes of ‘Enterprise‘ and we also worked on cleaning up the house and doing laundry. Jen fixed a nice dinner which consisted of rice, beans, & sausage. She didn’t like it too much. It wasn’t as good as how Lynne makes it.

We went out again this evening to go grocery shopping. They had everything ready for valentines-day tomorrow with lots of roses around. It smelled great. We bought about $150 worth of groceries, went home and unloaded it all.

I worked on our finances with MS Money while Jen worked on thank-you cards. We lost track of time and went to bed around midnight.

Today marks my 28th year alive.

This morning Jen got up early before I did (just like yesterday morning) and then came back to bed. After I took a shower and was keeping her company while she took her shower, she suggested that I go downstairs to get a present.

I went downstairs and saw 5 beautifully-wrapped gifts sitting on the countertop. I picked one out and took it upstairs to open with Jen. I did this for three of the gifts and decided to leave the last two for later tonight.

The three that I opened were ‘Old School‘ on DVD, a replacement ‘firewood’ candle from Bath & Body Works (my favorite candle ever!), and a cool leather-wrapped candle-putter-outer-thing that one uses to extinguish candles.

Jen is quite creative with her gifts and I’m entirely grateful for all of the effort and thought she put into them.

I didn’t work a full day today but instead left early to go pick up the desk that Larry shipped out. I unloaded the large box containing the desk and unpacked it enough to ensure that the desk was ok. Larry only sent three of the four legs and he sent out the last leg in a separate shipment.

The rest of the afternoon I worked from home. At around 6:30pm I headed out to Houston’s to meet Jen, Mom, and Jim for dinner. They were already there when I arrived.

We had a pleasant dinner. I ordered the wonderfully-scrumptious veggie burger (with bacon) and fries. I’ve never had a better burger!

After dinner Mom gave me a gift bag with some presents inside. There were three birthday cards as well as two gifts. The first gift was a small silver flask. The second one was a special personalized bottle of Crown Royal. The trademarked blue bag had my name embroidered on it, how cool!

Jen also had a gift for me. It was Robert Jordan’s latest book, ‘New Spring‘, the first of a trilogy of prequel novels to the main line of books. It is the fancy hardcover edition and I’m very much looking forward to reading it.

When we got home I opened the last two of Jen’s gifts. The first one was a small chessboard that I can keep at work. The second one is really cool. It is a laptop ‘pad’ thing that has a sticky surface to keep the laptop secure and it functions as a heat shield and works quite well. When using it I noticed two other great side-effects. The power cord doesn’t dig into my leg anymore, and typing on the laptop feels very ’solid’ like I have it on a table.

It was a very busy day at work again today. The production problem continued and while I wasn’t in the middle of the work, I was assisting. We were activating the breakfix code in production at some point today and that is my job to do along with some other production activities.

I worked late and didn’t leave work until around 6:30pm or 7pm. Jen worked a little late too and we both got home around the same time. We didn’t stay home very long but headed out to our engagement tonight.

On the way to Jen’s parent’s house we stopped at American Signature Home Furniture to pick up our bookcases. It was a heavy box since it was mostly all hardwood for three book-cases inside.

We had dinner at Jen’s parent’s house to celebrate my birthday. I’m not used to so much birthday attention so it was quite a change. They even had presents for me. Jen’s parents got me an audio book and two shirts. Katie got me a cool travel pillow that is supposed to work great on a plane. Jen’s grandmother gave me a card with a $25 check inside.

We had a great chicken dinner and very tasty cheesecake for desert. Katie got the cheesecake from The Cheesecake Factory. I didn’t used to care for cheesecake but this was really good.

Casey paged me to check on the status of the production work. There was no news but he was worried about missing anything because he fell asleep. The poor guy was operating on very little sleep due to these problems.

We ended up staying late. I was extremely tired from the wine. Wine always seems to put me to sleep. As we were about to leave I got paged from work and knew that my work would begin in about 45 minutes. Jen drove us home.

When we got home, Jen went to bed. I logged into work and began my ’shift’. Even though I was dead tired earlier, sitting down at the terminal woke me right up. I don’t know why it happens but using a computer can almost always wake me up instantly - it’s always been that way.

It took a long time getting through the tasks I needed to accomplish and I was up until around 2:30am working.

I did some more work in the study this morning. I hooked up Jen’s old computer and backed-up & removed her files from it to prepare it for Katie to use. I also updated to the latest security patches and installed the MS Anti-Spyware tool.

When I was done with this, I began backing-up data from my computer onto our two external HD’s for off-site storage. Why have one off-site backup when you can have two? Jen doesn’t think it’s necessary to have TWO off-site backups but I think the redundancy is good. Even better is the geographic distances of our backups. The primary data source is at home (west-side of town). One backup will be in my desk near the airport, south of town and the other will be in Jen’s office on the north side of town. This way if there is a disaster to recover from we have a better chance of success.

Jen made some lunch using leftovers from a couple of days ago. It was quite tasty!

After lunch we began our epic shopping adventure for an elliptical machine. Our first stop was a fitness-equipment store near the 120 loop. Everything was expensive. The low-end crappy ones with barely anything to display started around $1,100. From there the prices only went up into the $3,000 range.

Our next stop was ‘play it again sports‘ near Town Center Mall. This place had a few elliptical machines. They looked like they were badly abused and not in very good condition. These were also very expensive!

After that we went to Sports Authority and while they had some better prices, Jen didn’t like any of the machines they offered. Next we went to Dick’s (formerly Galyans). They also had (what I thought were) good sales prices on their elliptical machines but Jen didn’t like any of these either. While we were there we said hello to Lynne (who was working).

The whole experience was pretty draining and I didn’t know what to do.

We went to Katie’s house to drop off the computer and then to Goodwill to donate some things we identified while cleaning out the study.

Next we went to Big Lots to do some shopping. I was pretty tired out from all of the running around and probably wasn’t such a fun shopping companion for Jen. We ended up getting a lot of frames.

After Big Lots we went to Target. I wanted some tea to wake me up. It did. We got a lot of stuff for the house. We got a wooden chair & pillow for the office along with a cool wire-mesh wastebasket (clearance).

For the bedroom we got matching table lamps which will match everything. There was also a chandelier on sale and was the style we were looking for. We snatched that up right away. It was a pretty successful shopping expedition at Target.

After Target we went to Jen’s parent’s house to drop off an old P3-800 computer for her Dad and to pick up some large bookshelf Klipsch ceramic speakers for the living room. I’m not sure how we’re going to use them but they are good speakers.

As soon as we got home, I started working on installing the new chandelier. Jen helped out and we had a lot of fun working together. The dining room looks so much nicer with the new lighting instead of that tasteless gaudy-gold thing we had before.

Jen started making a pizza and I worked on putting things away and setting up the lamps in the bedroom. I took the existing green desk lamp and put it in the office downstairs. It looks very charming now.

While eating dinner we watched ‘Starship Troopers 2‘ together. It wasn’t a good movie. Unlike the first one, it was very dark and gloomier.

I got home a little early today. Jen was supposed to go out with friends tonight but came home first.

We sat and snuggled on the couch together and talked about our day. It was a nice time. Later we made some leftovers for dinner. Actually Jen did most of the work. I had a crown & coke and Jen had a glass of wine.

Around 7pm Christin came over to pick up Jen. We showed her around the house since she hasn’t seen it since we did some work. She really liked the leaning bookshelves in the study.

Jen and Christin left for their girl’s night out. They went to a rock-climbing gym called ‘Escalade‘. It is ladies night and girls get in for free.

I spent my evening playing my favorite computer game: World of Warcraft. I took a break from Nokie the Night Elf Rogue and leveled up a Hunter from 1 to 10. It was pretty fun except that I don’t think I can get used to having to rely on ranged combat. I think I prefer playing a rogue.

Jen called around 9pm and said that she was coming home with Lynne to hag out. When they arrived we showed Lynne around the house. Jen and Lynne were doing their girlie things so I went back downstairs and played on the computer for a little while longer.

Lynne left and it was getting late so we went to bed. Jen was pretty energetic although I don’t know why. She was drinking some wine and when I drink wine I get knocked out & sleepy.

Jen and I woke up around the same time this morning. Craig was still asleep upstairs in the guest room.

Together, Jen and I were sitting in the living room doing something together when the power went off. This was followed by the normal ‘beeps’ from the two UPS’s. This particular outage lasted quite a while - 36 minutes to be exact.

After about fifteen minutes I used my laptop to log into the linux box downstairs and issued a shutdown command. Ideally it would shut down by itself when the UPS’s battery gets too low but I don’t have that set up.

When I shut down the linux box, the UPS gave a final loud beep and then shut off too. This is indicative that it has run out of reserve power. In unplugged the linux box from the UPS and tried to start it up again - no response. This means that the DSL modem and router were not getting any more power so I was knocked off the internet! I need another UPS for downstairs so the DSL modem and router can have their own independent UPS.

The smaller UPS upstairs also ran out of power and shut down. This one powered the TiVo and upstairs router. I’m not sure why the power went out in the first place - it’s a beautiful sunny Saturday.

I got Craig up around 10am and the two of us left to go play Frisbee golf with Brad. We’ve never played before but Brad is an avid player and it should be a good day for it.

We drove over to Brad’s apartment in Kennesaw and met him outside (he was waiting for us). The apartment complex looked brand new and according to Brad, it was recently built.

The three piled into his car and headed over to the Cobb County park off Dallas Highway. It’s pretty far out there (from where I live) but it is a great park and the facilities look quite nice!

When we got there, Brad’s friend (who’s name I cannot remember - it wasn’t a common name) was waiting for us. She was wearing a cool shirt which read, ‘-1 STR +1 CHA’.

The weather today couldn’t have been more ideal. It was sunny outside with a temperature around 60 degrees. There wasn’t much of a wind blowing and the sky was a deep blue. It was perfect.

The four of us (Craig, Brad, Brad’s friend, and myself) all play World of Warcraft so we were totally geeking out while we played Frisbee golf. Actually, the three of them all play high-level paladins around the same level so they had a lot to talk about. I gave them a hard time about the awesome paladin abilities. Brad’s friend’s (I wish I could remember her name) husband plays a level 60 rogue so she filled me in on some of his tactics and build info.

We played a round of Frisbee golf (nine holes). I had a really good time. My form is pretty horrible but it was still a lot of fun. Apparently there are different types of Frisbees to use depending on the distance you are from the hole. They have long-distance ‘drivers’ which go for a long distance and then there are mid-range drivers down to short-range ‘putter’ discs.

Two of Brad’s friends showed up (husband and wife) and played another round with us. They weren’t gamers so we toned down the conversation around World of Warcraft. Brad is a pretty good disc thrower. He had a way to throw them low and then they arch upward until they reach the intended destination.

As we finished up the second round of Frisbee golf, we all got hungry and decided to call it a day and go to lunch. The six of us headed over to a nearby Johnny’s Pizza. I got two slices of pizza with pepperoni, bacon, sun dried tomatoes, and garlic. It was delicious!

During lunch we talked about gaming some more. I felt a little bad for Brad’s two friends because they were pretty lost on the conversation. We changed topics and talked about skiing and other activities. Brad’s two friends recommended skiing in the Alps as they just got back from a skit trip there recently. They are next going to Whistler Blackcomb. Craig told a great story about the time he was cave diving and almost died.

After lunch we parted ways. Brad was still driving us and we went back to his apartment complex. The three of us stood outside for about 45 minutes talking about the online game. Actually Craig and Brad did most of the talking since they were comparing notes on paladins.

Finally Craig and I headed home. We relaxed for a while after we got home. Jen had gone out shopping today to look for elliptical machines. She didn’t find anything that she liked. She did come home with a NordicTrack and rowing machine from her parents. She also picked up a large UPS from that that used to be hers. I can’t wait to set it up.

We all got ready for dinner. I wore my new shirt and corduroy pants I got from Banana Republic the other day. When we were all ready, the three of us went in my car to Marietta Square.

I lucked out on a parking space and we weren’t too far from the restaurant: Efes. This is a Turkish & vegetarian cuisine restaurant and they feature belly dancing on Saturday night!

The atmosphere of this place looked great. We met Luke and then Lynne shortly after we arrived. Luke is one of Jen’s coworkers who is an actuary and she is trying to set him up with Katie (who is going to be late). He can also give Craig some idea what it means to be an actuary since that is the career path that Craig wants to go down.

We sat at a large table with pillows on the seats and ordered a wonderful sampler appetizer dish and a bottle of cabernet. The service was slow and European-like but we weren’t in a rush so it was all good.

Katie showed up pretty late. She was in a volleyball tournament that ran late. We all ordered food. I had the leg of lamb thing and it wasn’t that good. Jen’s veggie dish looked much better.

During dinner there were a lot of good conversations and we all got to enjoy the live belly dancing. The dancer was an older plump woman but it was entertaining nonetheless. The best part was when she balanced two swords on her head while dancing.

After dinner we all decided to go out for some drinks to a nearby Celtic pub. It was pretty smoky inside and we found a secluded spot in the back where we sat, had a couple of drinks, and talked.

Eventually we all went home after a long and fulfilling day. It was a very fun day.

Jen has Monday’s off from work and as such offered to drive me to work this morning since I’ll be out of town for a few days. I can get someone from work to drop me off at the airport.

Carole was out of the office today so it was a little quiet. I only worked half a day but managed to get some things done with regards to ticket replay.

Sameer, James, Casey, and I went to Willy’s for lunch. Afterwards they dropped me off at the airport. I checked in for m flight and found out that it was delayed about 50 minutes. I assume it was related to the foggy weather.

Because I had about an extra hour to spare, I met Mom & Jim at the gate for their flight. Unlike my flight, theirs was not delayed. I didn’t hang around there too long and went to my gate.

While I waited for my flight I called Jen. She was feeling pretty sick so it’s good that she didn’t come as she wouldn’t be too happy.

I didn’t have any trouble getting on the flight. I was #2 in the standby list and there were around 80 empty seats on the plane. What annoyed me was that they cleared me to the very last row of the plane (the one where the seat will not recline) and there were many empty rows much further up. I suspect that the agents are so overworked now that they don’t have the time they used to for proper stand clearing.

The flight to Denver was uneventful. I listened to some music on my laptop and tried to sleep. There was no in-flight movie today. I took along the ‘Squiish’ pillow that Katie gave me for my birthday. I had some trouble getting comfortable with it to sleep but maybe I wasn’t that tired.

I also read a little in my book. It was pretty fun to read a prelude for Wheel of Time.

When I arrived in Denver I called Mom and met up with her to help with the luggage since they had so much. I also grabbed my bag and we met Jim (who was in the rental car).

Next drove to GART sports so I could rent some skis and boots. After that we had dinner at a place just like TGI Friday’s.

By now it was around 5pm and the sun was over the horizon so it was getting pretty dark. I think it gets dark earlier in this part of the country. After dinner we went to a nearby Safeway to purchase lift tickets. They were $59 per day.

About two hours later we made it to the Winter Park ski area. It took about two hours to get there. Once we got there we checked into the condo place. The room wasn’t as nice as the one last year but it still wasn’t bad.

My room had two bunk beds so they were small beds. If Jen had ended up coming along it would have either been separate beds for us or very cozy.

I was pretty tired so I did some stuff on my computer and fell asleep on the top bunk of one of the beds. A little while later I woke up and prepared for bed for real. I slept in the bottom bunk this time.