Jeff Billimek’s Journal

We woke up a little late at 9am and were running a little late.  We originally planned on leaving for the Renaissance Festival at 9:30am but didn’t make that.  Katie and Chris came over and brought some bagels for us.

We headed out to the Georgia Renaissance Festival south of Atlanta.  Tom & Terri met Jen, Katie, Chris, and I there.  We had a great time.  I’ve never been to one before so it was a fun new experience.

(Me and Jen)

(Terri, Tom, Jen, Chris, Katie)

(Chris and Katie)

(me and Jen)

It was a clear, but hot, day outside and we did a lot of walking around.  It was interesting to see the glass blower and the other acts that they had going on.  My favorite part was the jousting competition.  It was pretty crowded.

Afterwards we went back to our place and went out to the pool.  Next we went to Costco to get some groceries and then grilled out at home.  The gas grill ran out of gas so I had to go get it filled up.  For dinner we grilled-up mushrooms and veggies.  It was really good.

We sat outside and enjoyed one of the French wines that Scott gave us, the 1999 Chateau Lalande-Borie.  It was wonderful weather outside this afternoon.

(1999 Chateau Lalande-Borie)

Unfortunatelyit was a cold and dreary day outside today.  Jen and I went to go visit Scott and to also check out the new sofa that he is very proud of.  We also got to see his refurbished kitchen (still under construction) - it looks fantastic!  Scott was trying to figure out where to have the microwave installed.

Jen saw that Scott had ‘Bejeweled’ for his Xbox 360 and wanted to play that.  Scott also demoed ‘Gears of War’ for us.  It looks like a really cool game.  We went home and had lunch.  I had leftover fried rice from last night and Jen had split pea soup.  We also opened up a bottle of the 2003 Pelissero Nubiola.  It was great!  Jen went to the home show thing with her mom.

We are hosting an Easter Sunday brunch at our house today. So we cleaned up around the house and got things ready for brunch. I also added the new Deth Cab for Cutie album to our music library and updated the XBMC music library. I noticed a problem with duplicated songs and think it may be related to the build of XBMC I’m using. I’ll have to upgrade.

People began to come over. Katie, Chris, Sydney, Scott, Adi, and Jen’s parents. We had brunch which consisted of ham, two different types of quiche, French toast, and fruit kabobs. It was all fantastic!

Mom & Jim came over. We hung out and listened to music. Larry called and I chatted with him for a while.

At around 1pm everyone left and we cleaned up. After waiting about thirty minutes we went to the gym to work out. Jen ran on the treadmill and I split my time between the treadmill and lifting weights.

We got home at about 2:30pm and relaxed some. Then we showered and got ready to head back out again. We drove up to the Woodstock area to Jen’s parent’s house for dinner. Everyone was there except for Scott. I brought my camera along and took some photos.

(Katie doing her grandmother’s nails)

(Jennifer)

(Bob cutting the pork roast)

For Easter dinner we had a pork roast with horseradish sauce, wine, salad, mashed potatoes, asparagus, and cake for desert. It was all excellent! Jen and I left around 8pm and stopped by her house to look at the paint job. When we got home Jen went to bed early I stayed up for a while working on the XBMC upgrade.

I was feeling pretty sick today and opted to work from home.  As Jen was leaving for work this morning she discovered that her car battery had died.  I gave her car a jump and then gave her the portable battery jumper thing that we have.

For most of the way I worked on the laptop upstairs in bed taking naps when I could - I really felt like crap.  Jen worked a half-day and had battery died again so she went to an auto parts store to get it replaced.  When Jen came home she got changes and headed back out for painting.  I worked the rest of the day and did some housekeeping in the afternoon.

Jen met me at home at about 5:30pm.  We drove up to my Mom & Jim’s house for dinner.  On the way we stopped at the Crackerbarrel off of Delk road to drop off the audiobook from our 12-hour road trip on Sunday.  It was raining very heavily outside and I got soaked just going from the car to the restaurant.

At Mom’s house we had dinner.  It was really nice.  We had some terrific appetizers, grilled steaks, salmon, veggies, salad, and desert.

We woke up extremely early again today at 4:30am.  After catching a taxi to the airport, we checked-in and headed to the gate.  The first flight out to Atlanta at 6am was oversold and they were looking for volunteers to give up their seats.  This didn’t bode well.  The same thing happened for the next four flights.  It was turning out to be a pretty bad travel day.

I used my cell phone to check flight information and things didn’t look good.  Basically it looked as if we would not be getting to Atlanta by plane today.  So we bit the bullet and decided to drive.  We rented a car from National (no Avis like we would normally do because they were all sold out).  Most of the car rental companies were getting sold out.  For some reason it was turning out to be a very bad weekend for travel.

So Jen and I began the lengthy 12-hour drive to Atlanta.  This is the first time in my nine years of traveling that I’ve had to drive to get home.  We didn’t wait until tomorrow because Jen really needed to get to work on Monday.

Shortly after we began our drive we stopped at a Cracker Barrel to rent an audiobook for the drive.  We rented ‘The Thirteenth Tale‘ by Diane Setterfield.  It was pretty good and made the time go by very quickly.  We also stopped at a staples to buy a USB car charger to charge our cell phones.  And we also stopped for dinner at a little Mexican place I think somewhere in Virginia.  It was mediocre.

Jen actually drove the bulk of the time.  She’s a real champ!  We finally got home at about 2am and went to bed.  Before going to bed I checked the rest of the flights from DCA to ATL and saw that we did the best thing by driving - we would not have made it out today.

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!

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:

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!

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.

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.

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.

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′.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.  Fo