2007 March Archive at Jeff Billimek’s Journal

Monthly Archive for March, 2007

Mar 1st 2007

wine tasting

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I left work a little early today in order to get home in time to leave with Jen for the wine pairing dinner so that we don’t encounter too much traffic. I was pretty tired all day long and was dragging quite a bit.

Jen came home and we headed up to Towne Lake parkway way up of I575. Traffic was thick but we actually got up there a little early so we went to Tuesday Morning to do some shopping. While we were in there Jen spotted some really cool glasses. They were the kind that has a glass container inside of another glass container. This is to prevent condensation. They look really cool and are something that I’ve been looking out for a long time now. I really hate condensation when I have a cold beverage so these are perfect. We bought these glasses and then headed over to Benni’s Chophouse for the wine pairing dinner.

Terri was already there when we arrived and we sat down in the special room they set up for this purpose. We grabbed some seats and then Katie, Chris, and Lisa arrived too. The wine pairing dinner was really good. We had low expectations and were pleasantly surprised.

They offered three wines. The first was a white, the second was a merlot? and the last (with desert) was an earnest & gallo cabernet. For dinner we started with a corn-dog type breaded shrimp, next we had a salad. The main entree was steak medallions with mashed potatoes. Desert was a chocolate cake with raspberry sauce. It was all very good. The wine distributor this time was different than before. The girl talking about the wine was really knowledgeable. The owner of Benni’s Chophouse said that she is rotating distributors every event to get more variety.

Mar 2nd 2007

a new car!

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I got up early with Jen and we both left at the same time today - what a nice change of pace to get to work earlier than usual. I had a few meetings and also talked with Alonzo about progress with the promotion effort and things are going well.

Since late October I’ve been doing a ton of research on getting a new car and did a little more research today and found out that a Ford dealership in Union City has two Edge models in stock that has the configuration that I’m most interested in. I decided to drive down there after work and do a test drive since that’s what I’ve been wanting to do for a while now but never got around to it.

So after work I drove down to Union City and went to the dealership. A salesman named Paul greeted me and I told him that I wanted to take an Edge on a test drive. I told him that I was interested in one with the ‘vista roof’. He said that they didn’t have any of those, so I took another SEL-Plus out for a test drive.

I’ve done so much research on the Ford Edge that I already knew pretty much all there is to know about it. Test driving let me get a feel for the car and I definitely liked it. After I got back from the test drive, Paul told me that a car carrier just pulled up with some more Edges on it. We went over and took a look as they were rolling off of the truck.

To my delight, one of them was the exact same one that I saw online - it had the same VIN number. I was pretty happy about this and took that one on a test drive too. I love the vista roof sunroof. It’s so huge. So we went back to the office and he showed me the invoice sheet along with the ‘X-Plan’ price. It was as I expected it to be. So I wanted to know what I could get for my Explorer trade-in.

We went over to take a look at it and he drove it over to the service center to be checked out. He came back and told me that they could give me $8,000 for it. I said that I was actually looking for $10,000 for it. He had to go talk to his manager and then had me come outside with him where the manager was looking at it. The manager guy went on and on about some paint stains on the running boards and wheel wells. He seemed really upset by this and said that it would need to be repainted. I don’t know about it.

So we went back inside and Paul told me that they could go up to $8,500 - maybe $9,000. When I checked the trade-in value on Kelly Blue Book, it valued in at about $9,250. I knew about the paint problem and the cracks on the rear hatch so I expected to get a little less. So I decided that if I could get $9,000 for it, we would have a deal.

I called Jen and she was excited about it and was on board. So I made the deal. After a lot of paperwork, all was completed. They had to take the new car to get cleaned up since it was fresh off of the truck. I transferred all of my stuff from the Explorer to the Edge and was on my way! This deal was nice because I got a brand-new car (purchase) with a $60-less car payment.

When I was leaving I called Jen and she invited me up to Marlow’s Tavern where she was having drinks with Rashmi. I drove up there and the valet guy asked me what kind of car I was driving because he’s never seen it before.

I had a nice time with Jen and Rashmi. For being an Indian woman she seems really independent but maybe I just has a poor notion of how Indian women should be. We hung out there for a couple of hours and then headed home and went to bed.

Mar 3rd 2007

improv dinner party

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Jen woke me up around 9am and convinced me that we should both go to the gym today. I drove in my new car. While Jen and Katie were in their class, I ran on the treadmill and lifted weights. I got a pretty good workout. After their class they wanted to go to the sauna, so I left and went home.

I wasn’t home very long (not long enough to take a shower) when Jen called and said that we are going to be meeting at Willy’s for lunch at noon. So I had to change real quick and head out right away. I went to Willy’s off of Barrett Parkway and had lunch with Jen and Katie.

After lunch we showed Katie my car and then I got my haircut at Studio 8. Tami cut my hair and she did a great job. We talked about how teenagers these days refer to 80’s music as ‘oldies’. It’s really sad.

While I was getting my hair cut, Jen was shopping. Among some of the items she bought were some different teas. When I was done with my haircut we drove up to her parent’s house and showed them my car and hung out with them. We went over to Cherokee Closeouts. It seemed to be a thrift store. I got a new flag to hang out front and Jen got some other things.

After this we headed towards home but stopped at the Costco near us first. We bought some soil and a few other things before heading home. We weren’t home very long before Scott called and invited us to join him at Umezono for sushi. At first Jen didn’t want to go but I convinced her otherwise. We met Scott at Umezono.

While we were waiting for at table, Harold and Peggy walked in so they joined us. We all had sushi and talked. It was a nice time. After dinner we showed Scott the new car and then went home. Jen and I finished doing laundry and completed packing for the trip tomorrow. I was pretty worried about us not making it out on the flight tomorrow morning. We didn’t get to bed until pretty late.

Mar 4th 2007

destination: keystone, colorado

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Jen and I woke up at 6am and got ready to head out for the airport. We left the house at 6:45am and made it down to the ‘Parking Spot’ twenty minutes later. Checking in for the flight and checking our bags was not a problem. Neither was getting through security. We made our way to the gate and things looked grim. Despite me listing us at an S2, we were still at 5th and 6th place on the standby list. There were only two seats unclaimed on the plane, but eleven sold seats not checked-in yet.

As they went through the boarding process things did not look good, but at the last minute the eleven non-checked-in seats started decreasing the the unclaimed seats increased. Jen and I made the flight. I assume that there were some mis-connects or no-shows which caused this to happen.

We were seated together in the rear-part of the plane. The flight was pleasant enough. The in-flight movie was the ‘Rocky’ movie. It was very slow and boring.

The flight was on-time and we landed in Denver at 10am. I coordinated with Mom and Jim and they picked us up outside after Jen and I claimed our bags. They were driving a mini-van so there was plenty of space for our bags.

We drove towards Denver and stopped to have lunch and also so I could rent some skis. We ate lunch at Red Robin and I rented skis from Sports Authority (formerly Gartt Brothers).

Next we drove west on I70 to Dillon, Colorado where Keystone resort is. Once we left the highway we stopped at a local grocery store and bought a bunch of food and supplies to keep in the condo. We got checked-in to the condo and drove over to our building. It was in a great location and the accommodations were great. It was much like the place we stayed at in 2004.

We unloaded the car and unpacked. I turned on the laptop and discovered that there is an open WiFi access point which gives me Internet access. I also verified that the OpenVPN works.

Jim was interested in hitting the slopes this afternoon so we suited up and walked over to the base. Our condo is so close that it’s not too long of a walk to get over there. We each bought a night skiing lift ticket, put on our ski boots and headed up the mountain.

It was approximately 4pm and still quite light outside. We went up and down a couple of times before Jim wanted to call it a day. I continued to ski for a little over another hour until it started getting too dark. Despite the lights being turned on, it was still a little too dark for me, and it was also getting cold.

I put my hiking boots back on and hiked back to the condo. Once there I changed out of my ski gear and we went out for dinner. We drove over to the River Run Village area, parked, and walked to the restaurant. Tonight we decided to have dinner at a place called ‘Fritz Alpine Bistro’. It’s a tiny French-themed place. We ordered a bottle of wine. I had the meatloaf and it was pretty good. After dinner we went back to the condo and went to bed.

Mar 5th 2007

skiing isnt for everyone

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I set the alarm this morning to wake us up at 7am but it was unnecessary. I woke up a little before 7am and Jen got up around the same time too. After getting ready, Jen and I each had a bowl of really good oatmeal for breakfast. I also had a glass of orange juice and a banana.

(The view of the mountain from the condo)

I wanted to get over to the ski area early to get Jen signed up for a lesson as well as to rent her a set of skis and boots. We made it over there at about 8:30am and I signed Jen up for a full-day group lesson. Next we went to the ski rental place and got Jen some skis and boots. She did not like the feel of the ski boots at all.

Jen’s class wasn’t scheduled to begin until 9:45am so she had about thirty minutes to wait. Jim and I wanted to get skiing since the lifts open at 9am so I made sure that Jen was situated and ready to go for her class and we headed out.

As we were getting our skis on, Mom came over (she walked from the condo) and talked with us briefly before heading inside to keep Jen company.

Jim and I skied up & down two times before I parted ways to go do the blue runs. I made my way to the back of the mountain and skied around there for a while. I called Jegan to see how things are going at work and he reported a build problem that Sameer was having. I tried to diagnose the problem over the phone but was unable to devise a fix.

All day long I skied on blues and had a fantastic time. The weather was great – it was warm outside and partly cloudy. As the day progressed on the cloud cover grew a little thicker until it was overcast. It was still bright and warm outside, but there wasn’t any blue sky or direct sunlight. It was good portrait photography weather. I was also borrowing Jennifer’s iPod Nano and this was a boon for my skiing alone. It’s so much fun flying down the mountain with great music blasting in my ears.

(empty slopes & fun skiing)

At one point I skied down to the ski school area to see how Jen was coming along with her group lesson. I saw that the instructor was having them walk up the hill and wedge down a little bit. I took some pictures of Jen doing this and she didn’t seem thrilled to see me photographing her at that moment.

(Jen learning how to ski)

At around 1:30pm I stopped for a bite to eat at the summit area. I ordered a chili cheese dog and bag of Doritos. I ate those along with the granola that I packed this morning. Because it was after the main lunch rush, it wasn’t so crowded.

After lunch I continued to ski for a couple of hours all over the mountain (all blues) until finally around 3pm I called it a day. I was pretty tired and sore.

I went over to where Jen’s lesson was and decided to ride the little kiddy lift up to the ‘top’ of the bunny hill. As I was getting onto the Lift, I saw Jen walking away from the area (I guess she was about to leave). I called out for her to wait and I skied down to her and we walked back to the ski rental place together. We turned in Jen’s skis and boots and talked about her lesson. She said that it was fun and informative and she’s looking forward to skiing next trip but for now she’s happy not skiing tomorrow.

I changed into my hiking boots and walked back to the condo with Jen. Once there I had a bottle of water with some ZipFizz added. I took a shower and got ready to head out.

We decided that we would have German food for dinner. As we headed out we stopped at the grocery store to get another pallet of water since we went through it so fast. We also picked up a bottle of pino wine.

Next we drove over towards the town of Dillon but were unsuccessful in finding the German restaurant. Instead we went to a place called ‘Pug Ryans’ for dinner. This was actually the same place that we went to last time in 2005.

After dinner Jen wanted to get a pack of cards so we stopped at a little store and bought the last pack. We went back to the condo and played a variation of Hearts. I prefer Skip-Bo.

I used the Gorilla Pod that I brought along to take some night-time photos in bulb mode of the mountain and sky.

Before bed I used Jen’s laptop to upload photos from my camera and took some notes on my journal. I also checked email at work and looked into a problem that Sameer was having with builds in ClearCase. I wasn’t able to reproduce what he told me so I’ll have to take a look at it on Thursday when I get back in the office.

Mar 6th 2007

tearing up the slopes

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I didn’t have to use the alarm this morning and woke up at about 7am on my own. It’s great getting nine hours of sleep last-night and the night-before-last. Before getting out of bed, I used the laptop to reconcile some transactions in Microsoft Money. Jen was able to help categorize most of the transactions which helped quite a bit.

Jen and I had a breakfast of oatmeal with yogurt and strawberries again this morning. Jim and I prepped to go skiing this morning but this time we made arrangements to meet Mom and Jen over at the gondola at the other base area at 10:30am.

(Me and Mom at the top of the mountain)

We were able to only do one run down the mountain before it was time to meet the ladies. We met them at the gondola and all rode up to the summit together. Once at the top we took some photos and climbed to the top of the lodge place and went out onto the balcony overlooking the mountain and surrounding area. Once there we took a bunch of pictures and Jen got a poppy-seed muffin to share along with some hot apple cider. It was really good.

(Jen outside of the restaurant)

(A view from the top of the restaurant)

After this we decided to grab a bite to eat. I had a bratwurst dog which was very Jen-unfriendly. By this time it was close to 12pm and people were starting to pile in for lunch so we decided to head out. Jen and Mom went back down the mountain on the gondola while Jim and I skied down to the Montezuma Express lift.

(An obligatory foot-shot that Jen likes to take on every trip)

After we got to the top again I parted ways with Jim and headed over to the back-side of the mountain where all the fun blue runs are.

Unlike yesterday I wore my fun new fingerless gloves and wore my camera on the outside of the jacket for easy access. So I did many runs listening to Jen’s iPod, holding both poles in my left hand, and my right hand on the shutter of the camera (using the 17-40mm L lens @17mm with the polarizer on).

(Chilling on the ski lift)

It was fun to ski really fast and snapping photos at the same time. I stopped-down all the way to f/22 in order to get some slowish shutter speeds to convey a sense of speed. We’ll see how it looks.

(A cool action shot while skiing fast down the hill - some people thought I was crazy to be skiing with the Canon 5D this way)

(A beautiful grove of trees at the beginning of a black run)

I skied until about 2:30pm at which point I called it a day. I had a voice mail from Jen saying that they were going to go on a sleigh ride and would be at the Keystone Lodge for a wine tasting at 4pm.

So I made my way to the condo and took a shower and changed. Then I went over to the Keystone Lodge just in time for the 4pm wine tasting. The bartender (Doug) poured two whites and two red wines. One of each was an ‘old-world’ wine from France and the other two were from Napa.

Overall it was great. In addition to the four wines, there was a wide selection of cheese, crackers, and fruits. I had a great time.

Doug told us about a great restaurant that the locals like. It’s run by the former head chef at Keystone. He gave us some rough directions and we headed out. The place is called ‘Food Hedz’.

It looks very unassuming from the outside and the style is such that you order first and pay and then they bring the food out to you.

I had a really delicious pork & cornbread type entrée. I would go back there. After dinner we made our way back to the condo. Jen wanted to play another card game. This time we played Rummy 500. We opened up the bottle of pino from yesterday and I drank more than anyone else. I still prefer to play Skip-Bo.

Before bed I used the laptop to take some notes for my journal.

Mar 7th 2007

loveland pass

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Once again I got a healthy nine hours of sleep last night. I decided that I wouldn’t try to ski today because there wouldn’t be a lot of time for that given that Jen and I are flying back to Atlanta this afternoon.

(Jennifer looking mischievous while we pack)

Instead we had breakfast and began to pack up. We all drove over to Loveland Pass which was awesome. The weather today was spectacular. It was super sunny and clear and somewhat warm outside. I love it.

(A view from Loveland Pass)

We took a bunch of photos at the top of the pass. Some other guys were there who were going to be doing some extreme skiing. They were hiking into the backcountry with their skis strapped to their backpacks.

(A photo of Jennifer taken with the fisheye lens)

(I love the fingerless gloves)

After this we went back to the condo and finished packing. Jen and I changed into our airplane clothes and we checked out. The drive back to Denver was uneventful. We stopped at the Sports Authority so I could turn in my skis. Next we drove to the airport where Mom and Jim dropped us off.

Jen and I got checked-in for the 1:30pm flight to Atlanta and were cleared for seats 44F & 44G. This was nearly at the back of the 767-300 aircraft. The flight wasn’t completely full, but there were just a few open seats.

Strangely there wasn’t an in-flight movie. I worked on my laptop and listened to music while Jen read her book.

We arrived in Atlanta at 6pm, got our bags, took the shuttle to the car, and headed towards home. As soon as we got home, Jen and I checked the online menu for the ‘Curry Curry’ Thai restaurant nearby. We ordered a couple of basil rolls, vegetable stir-fry for Jen, and tofu basil fried rice for me.

I went out, picked up the food, and came back. We watched an episode of ‘24′ while we ate. I busied myself with getting some things installed on the computer while Jen unpacked.

Mar 9th 2007

game night

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Work was pretty good today. I actually completed a status report again this week - I’m on a roll! In addition to other ‘work’, I cleaned out my email inbox and organized my task list. I have a lot of work on my plate right now.

Alex D, James E, and I went to Blanchard for lunch today. We drove in Alex’s new 2004 Saab 9-3 convertible car. He loves it. I did notice that it’s a lot smaller on the inside than Jen’s 2001 9-5 turbo.

I left work at about 5pm and headed home. I’m still glowing about my recent car purchase and love driving everywhere. On my way home Jen called and we chatted a bit. She barely beat me home.

We grabbed a quick bite to eat and headed out to Lynne’s apartment in midtown. I already looked up her address in my GPS unit and we used that to navigate us to her place. It was only supposed to take twenty-five minutes to get there but because of awful downtown traffic, it took twice as long.

Jen and I were the last to arrive and we all settled down to play trivial pursuit. We randomly broke into teams and I was on a team with Chris and Dana.

Trivial pursuit was fun but it took a long time and most of us were pretty tired by the time we stopped playing (about 11:30pm). Jen and I went home and got ready for bed. I stayed up a little later installing Vista on Jen’s IBM/Levono T42 laptop. It went well and there were no big issues.

Mar 10th 2007

klinker brick zinfandel knocks your socks off

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Because I was up late last night I woke up later than normal - about 11am. Jennifer, being the amazing person that she always is, cooked us breakfast this morning! She fried eggs, toasted bread, and fried bacon. We sat in the dining room and ate breakfast together. It was really nice.

Jen wanted to go shopping and decided that she would call her Mom instead of dragging me around.

She got back at about 3pm and showed me all of the clothing that she bought. She was particularly excited about a new dress and denim jacket.

We got ready and headed up to Jen’s parent’s house at 4:30pm. Jen was wearing her new outfit and she looked stunning. The new dress looks great on her. On the way we stopped at Tuesday Morning off of Towne Lake road to see if they had any more of those cool ‘bodum’ glasses - they did not.

Next we went to Jen’s parents house and picked her her mom. We drove up to the ‘Mustard Seed’ restaurant using the help of my new GPS unit. I certainly love driving in my new car!

The Mustard Seed is an unassuming small restaurant. We met Jen’s Dad there and Katie and Chris arrived shortly afterwards. Katie just got back from a week-long trip to Chicago and she looked great.

The place doesn’t have a liquor license (although I saw an application for one posted outside), so we brought our own wine. We opened up a white for Jen and her Mom. Next we opened up the Klinker Brick Zinfandel - one of my favorites. Katie and Chris brought along another red that we opened once the Zin was empty.

Dinner was great. Everyone had the beef tenderloin but I broke the mold and had a really great salmon entree. It was delicious! After dinner we all had desert. Jen and I shared a slice of key lime pie. I had most of it.

When I came time to pay we found out that they only take cash and check! How old-fashioned! We never pay with anything but credit so it was fortunate that Jen happened to have our checkbook in her purse.

After we went our separate ways from dinner, Jen wasn’t ready to go home. I was pretty tired. She called up Tom and invited us over there. We drove to Tom’s house and hung out with Tom and Terri for a little while. Finally we went home.

Jen and I got ready for bed but I had to stay up tonight for the DST effort at work. I was actually really tired. However as soon as I went downstairs and sat in front of the computer, I woke up like I just had a shot of caffeine. It is weird how that works.

I was on a huge conference call from 1am till about 5:30am tonight participating in the DST effort. My actual work was about 30 minutes worth, but I had to monitor things. There were over 100 people participating - many of whom were in the office.

Personally I think that the DST effort was much ado about nothing. If you look at the actual things that needed to be changed or patched, it is a very small list with very small changes. The sheer number of man-hours involved in this effort seems like overkill.

Mar 11th 2007

fire!, fire!

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I slept in very late this morning, not waking up until about 1pm (counting for the clocks being changed). When I woke up I adjusted the clocks. I checked the tivos and noticed that they were still an hour behind. Thinking that they need a software upgrade, I plugged the phone line into them and forced an update. This still didn’t fix the clock. I’m worried that they will not correctly record shows.

Jen and I went to the silver comet trail today at about 2:30pm. It was absolutely awesome weather out today. It was in the low 70’s, sunny, and big puffy clouds. I loved every minute of being outside. We drove in my new car with the huge sunroof open. It was great!

Because Jen is feeling a little sick (She’s getting a cold), we just walked. It was nice walking a few miles each way with Jen outside. We talked and enjoyed the warm sunshine and fresh air.

We made plans to go to Costco to get some groceries for dinner. We had to stop by the house to get Jen’s purse since she is the only one who can enter Costco (I don’t get my own card).

As we pulled into the neighborhood we saw an ambulance driving by. As we reached our little street (Mony Stone Ct.), we saw a bunch of people standing around. I then saw a lot of water running down the otherwise dry street. My eyes followed the water up the street to two large red fire trucks! Uh oh! As I slowly drove up to our driveway, Jen and I surveyed that the grass across the street from us was all black like it had been on fire.

We parked and walked over to where all of the other people were (This was probably the first time we’ve seen most of our neighbors). Jen inquired to one lady about what was going on and we found out that somehow the dry grass caught on fire and spread quickly because of the gentle wind. Part of the plastic white fence separating two of the townhome buildings was melted as well as a telephone box being meted at the base as well. It looks as if the fire may have started at the telephone box actually.

While we were watching this, a guy in a car pulled up and I think he was a fire investigator CSI type person. He was doing ‘investigative’ type stuff.

Jen and I went inside to change out of our workout clothes. I put on some shorts, a t-shirt, and sandals. It’s so nice outside it is great to wear summertime clothes.

We drove over to Costco and bought some supplies for dinner tonight an the rest of the week. We also picked up an already-cooked rotisserie chicken.

After we got home, we fired up the grill and I began to grill a bunch of veggies which included onions, red & yellow peppers, squash, and zucchini. Jen cooked up some rice and we had a wonderful dinner which we ate outside. I loved being able to sit out on the deck in the sunshine.

A little while after dinner I worked on the computer and finished prepping Jen’s laptop with vista. I also began to clean up the study. I went to bed a little while later.

Mar 14th 2007

chateau phelan segur

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Jen and I opened up one of the bottles of wine that Scott gave me for my birthday recently. It was a 2003 French wine from Chateau Phelan Segur and I think from the Saint-Estephe region. It was pretty good.

Mar 15th 2007

wonderful fried rice

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After work today Jen and I went to the Dollar Store to buy some supplies for Lisa’s upcoming suprise birthday party. As we drove out there, we passed by the ‘Curry Curry’ Thai restaurant and it made me think about the wonderful Fried Rice we had from there recently.

So while we were in the Dollar store and Jen was shopping, I used the WAP browser on my cellphone to look-up the phone number for Curry Curry just in case we needed to make an emergency order for Fried Rice.

After what seemed like hours of shopping, Jen was done and it was time to go. I suggested that we order takeout tonight and she was game. So I called up ‘Curry Curry’ and placed the order.

On our way home we stopped and got the order or fried rice, vegetable stir-fry for Jen, and some basil rolls. We went home and had this wonderful Thai dinner while we watched an episode of ‘24′.

Mar 16th 2007

query tuning

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I spent pretty much all week working on a really tough application problem in system test. It wasn’t my code but took ownership of the problem because I wanted to make sure that it got resolved. I think we got the problem fixed this morning after pretty much all week working on it. I was up till about 3am last night working on this.

It turned out to be a problem with the result-set size from a database query. The dataset was basically too large for what we were using it for. We tweaked the query to just return one column (that’s all the app needs anyway) instead of everything and this fixed the problem.

I got home before Jen because she went to the gym. After she got home, Jen told me that we were going to be meeting Katie out for dinner tonight. We wanted to have Thai. I did a quick google maps search and offered up four different options. Jen chose a place called ‘Lemongrass’ off GA-120.

We got there and got a booth. Jen and I ended up waiting a while for Katie. When Katie finally arrived she explained that she went to the wrong place first and that’s why she was late.

Dinner was nice and it was fun to catch up with Katie. I had tofu Pad Thai and it was pretty good.

Mar 17th 2007

surprise birthday party

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This morning Jen made salsa and cookie pizza fruit things. Later she left to go to Katie’s house to help prep for the party tonight.

I went over to Hooters to meet up with Chris, Clint, and Clint’s future father-in-law. We had lunch and then went over to Clint’s house to watch Basketball. Erin’s dad is pretty cool. He gave me some good advice on treating car-seat leather.

Later I went home, changed, and headed out again. On the way up to Katie’s house I dropped some stuff of at Mom’s house. We had a surprise birthday party for Lisa at Katie’s house and it was pretty fun. There was a decent turnout of people.

Mar 20th 2007

wonderful spring time

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Around noon today Jen and I both went to the dentist - Jen likes the one I go to over by my office. Afterwards we went home. Jen worked from home on her laptop upstairs and I worked from home on the desktop downstairs. Later Jen got bored with work and started looking at houses online. She showed me a couple that she liked. It’s too bad that all of the houses we like are double the price of the house we currently live in.

Later we went driving around the area to look at some houses (from the outside) and then went to Muss & Turner for dinner. We sat outside. It was fantastic spring weather. I love this time of year. Atlanta may have its faults, but spring and fall weather are not it.

Mar 21st 2007

emergence plan

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Delta’s bankruptcy plan was unveiled today. They are basically awarding a cash portion and a stock portion based on your 2006 earnings. This is pretty crummy for me since I was only with Delta for about six months in 2006, so my awards are half of what they would normally be. But it is pretty good for everyone else.

Mar 23rd 2007

tax man

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It was a ‘work from home’ day for me today. I was on conference calls most of the day. At lunch time I went to Unezono to have lunch with Katie, Chris, Scott, Jan, and Jen. After lunch we all went to the accountant to do our yearly tax thing. It’s always so stressful for me.

Afterwards we went home and Jen went to the gym while I continued to work. When Jen got home later we had some dinner and then I went over to Clint’s house to watch some basketball games for about an hour.

I was up pretty late working on organizing stuff in MS Money.

Mar 24th 2007

who killed the electric car?

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Jen went to the gym this morning for her weight lifting class and then went shopping with Katie afterwards. I spent pretty much all day working on MS Money stuff while Jen was hanging out at her parents house.

Eventually she came home. I had also finally hung up the seagrass bullitent boards in the study. I think it looks pretty cool:

Later we watched an excellent documentary titled, ‘Who Killed the Electric Car?‘ After the movie we both went to bed. I wasn’t feeling that good and threw up - I think I might be getting sick.

Mar 25th 2007

hiking at desoto falls

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After waking up early today we had an ‘eggie’ for breakfast then to the grocery store to get some supplies. Jen packed up a picnic lunch for us and then we headed out. We drove up to Jen’s parents house to pick up Chloe and then drove a couple of hours north to DeSoto Falls.

While we were driving, I had a slight pain in my side that felt very suspiciously like the same type of pain I had from the kidney stone. Fortunately I had my meds with me. Later on the pain went away and I think it must have been a very tiny kidney stone.

Jen, Chloe, and I spent all day hiking at DeSoto Falls. The weather outside was perfect! Chloe loved it too. We had a great time.

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(Jen and Chloe)

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(DeSoto Falls)

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(me and Jen)

Afterwards we drove back and stopped at the Dawsonville outlet stores so Jen could do some shopping. I remained in the car with Chloe and we listened to my audiobook. Jen gout me some polos and some shirts for herself.

We dropped Chloe off and visited with Jen’s parents for a while. Jen and I assembled some bar stools while Jen’s Mom made pizza for dinner. Katie and Chris showed up and we had a party. We all had dinner and hung out - it was a nice time.

Eventually we went home. I drove about 200 miles today. That’s too much driving - I prefer to fly. I processed some photos from the trip and went to bed.

Mar 26th 2007

kidney stones

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Today I got to participate on a conference call with Gartner to talk about Natural & DBMS. It was pretty interesting and educational. It’s nice to expand my base of knowledge and do things other than just straight development.

The whole gang and I (Bob, Alex, Casey, and James) went to lunch today to a local Mexican taco place. Everything is in Spanish and they don’t speak very good English - and the food is wonderful!

I also think that I passed a tiny kidney stone that I thought I had from yesterday, but I’m not completely sure. I also did a little research on kidney stones and found out that contrary to my prior knowledge, cranberry juice may not be useful to help prevent them. Some of what I read suggests that cranberry juice can actually help cause kidney stones!

As I left the office today I photographed a car covered in the yellow pollen:

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In the Atlanta area every spring the pine trees fill the air with yellow pine pollen and it gets all over everything. This lasts for about five weeks - it’s pretty horrible!

Mar 29th 2007

microserfs

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Today we had our book club meeting hosted by Lisa. This month’s book was ‘Microserfs‘ by Douglas Coupland. I personally liked this book quite a bit. The book club wasn’t a bit turnout. It was just Jen, me, Katie, Chris, Lisa, and Alan. Alan has a gigantic fish tank that he showed us. We had a decent time and by the time we went home I was pretty tired.

Mar 30th 2007

the best thai food

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I did a little research on activities for our trip to DC tomorrow and found some good food reviews. I concentrated on the Georgetown and Dupont circle area. After work I went home and then drove up to a bowling place off of Cobb parkway near Dobbins AFB to meet Jen for a work-related social event.

I bowled with her, her co-worker Lisa, and her boss Viktoria. Lisa’s husband Chris arrived too. We all bowled a few games. It was pretty fun but I’m not too good at bowling. Lisa and Chris made arrangements to have dinner with Jen and I at Thai Diner. I love that place so I was pretty excited to be able to go there.

Once we got over there we had to wait about twenty minutes for a table. Jen had the spicy basil fried rice and I had the pad thai with tofu. It was all extremely good food. Thai Diner is my favorite Thai place!

Mar 31st 2007

cherry blossom festival

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Today was a great day! We woke up at 4:30am, grabbed our backpacks and headed down to the airport. We checked-in with no problem and made the first flight out to DC which went wheels-up at 7:20am. Jen and I sat in 10C & 10D - the best row in coach! It was a nice flight. I had Jen look over the restaurant research I did yesterday so she could pick out a place for lunch and dinner.

We made it into DC with no problem. This time we didn’t have to change our clothes because we were in coach class and were wearing jeans and tennis shoes. We bought a day-pass for the metro and took the train to the Smithsonian stop. We walked over to the Washington Monument. It was awesome weather outside today. The skies were a deep blue and it was very pleasant out. It appeared that some people were flying lots of kites - probably in relation to the festival. I took some photos of the area.

(Washington Monument)

Next we headed over to the tide pool. There were white cherry blossoms everywhere. It was awesome! We walked the circuit of the pool. Naturally there were a lot of people and many more as the day went on. We stopped at a grove of pinker cherry trees as well as the Jefferson memorial. I had not seen the Jefferson memorial before.

(Jen at the tide pool)

(White cherry blossoms)

(Jen looking happy)

(Another view of the tide pool)

(Pink cherry trees)

(Our ritual: photograph of our feet for every trip)

(Jefferson memorial)

By this time Jen wanted some coffee and we couldn’t find a coffee shop nearby (this was before I had the iPhone) so we decided to get some lunch and hopped on the metro and went toDupont Circle. The place we went to for lunch was closed so we chose another place from our list: an Italian bistro place. We sat outside on the patio and it was so nice. It was so pleasant outside I couldn’t have asked for anything better. We had a great lunch!

After lunch we went to a nearby Starbucks for Jen to get her coffee fix. And then we went back to the metro and made our way to the Smithsonian stop again. It wasuber crowded by this point and we ducked into the castle to get a map. Based on our map we decided to go to the Air and Space museum. It was, of course, really crowded. We didn’t stay there long but before we left we saw an upcoming commercial aviation exhibit under construction which should be really cool. I can’t wait to see that.

Next we went to the metro and headed to the Renwik museum. It wasn’t as good as I remembered from last time but nice nonetheless. After that we took the metro to Union Station and from there walked across the street to the Postal Museum. It was in a brand-new building and mostly empty. About half of the postal museum was dedicated to how proud the postal service is of junk mail - excuse me, I mean ‘direct mail’. It was quite disturbing actually.

After the postal museum we went to Dupont Circle for an early dinner. We went to an unassuming tiny Polynesian place where we had some wonderful appetizers. I had chicken like ‘General Tsos’ but different. Jen had a huge soup. Following dinner we went to a wine bar to have a glass of wine. It wasn’t as good as I would have liked.

Finally we took the metro to the courthouse stop and walked over to the Hilton Garden Inn, checked in, took a shower, and went to bed. It was a very long day with a lot of walking and we were both quite exhausted.

I’ve been wanting to go to DC to see the cherry blossom festival for several years now, so it was great to finally be able to do it.