Blogging about Life, Love, Having Twins, Boise State Football and lots of other crap.
We have just had the umpteenth snowstorm so far this winter. My car was again frozen in place this morning. I’m tired of snow. I’m tired of cold. I’m tired of scraping my windshield. I’m tired of gloves and hats and coats. I am so sick to death of winter I can’t even describe.
Luckily, we’ve done a little something about that. Jess and I have settled on our honeymoon destination. And is it a doozy.
Maui, bitches.
Last year around this time, I made my way to the valley of the sun.
This weekend, we’re swapping that around and instead heading off to Sun Valley. No, neither of us ski. We’re going to just relax… have some nice meals… do a little shopping. All the things a weekend getaway entails.
You’ll hear and see more about it when I return.
By the way, we’re driving, so if you don’t hear anything from me in the next few days, we could have slid off the road and are stuck in a ditch. Send the authorities.
I haven’t written in awhile. You may have noticed this.
It’s not that I haven’t had anything to write about. Quite the contrary. My head is busting with ideas and topics. The real enemy here is time. It is simply that time of year when events get ramping up and there just isn’t anything I can do about it. For example, here is my schedule since the day before I left for Vegas with Jess on the 28th of October.
For those of you scoring at home, that would be 3 separate trips, 7 sporting events (3 basketball, 2 football, 2 hockey), 3 dinners out (not counting travel days) and a grand total of 3 evenings of rest where I had nothing going on.
Of course, those ‘rest’ days weren’t even all that restful since they landed on weekdays and because in the midst of all this, work has been absolutely crazy. Not bad-crazy by any stretch, just super busy. Everyone is trying to get sites I’m working on done before the Thanksgiving holiday, and its putting a pretty good crunch on me.
To be perfectly honest, I’m kinda surprised I’m still fully functional. This does sort of resemble my previous life except for a few crucial differences. a.) Before, this sort of schedule would go on for weeks or months at a time. b.) Also, back then, most of the events we’re not ‘my’ things… All of this stuff I’ve been doing has been stuff I wanted to do. Not events to which I was committed and had no say at all, but was still expected to attend and have my game face on. That makes a big difference. c.) Top that all off with the fact that I really like my job now, and the whole world has changed.
So, yes, some things have suffered. The blog for one. Dad, your website for two. I ain’t seen Georgie or Hillman in weeks. There’s been a bunch of movies I’ve wanted to see, and my TV sports watching has fallen off dramatically.
At least, with ye olde birthday coming up, I should be able to catch up with just about everyone then. For anyone that hasn’t heard, I’m heading to Busters on Broadway on my birthday (6:30pm, Saturday the 24th) for finger steaks and beers. Anyone and everyone are welcome to stop by, even if only to have a drink and laugh at me for getting old.
And if you think I’m not looking forward to a most relaxing Thanksgiving, hanging out at the parents, watching football, drink in hand, before gorging myself on mom’s excellent dinner, you’re crazy.
Stay tuned. Maybe I’ll get a few spare seconds to write some more. No guarantees.
Tuesday night the Schwab Institutional IMPACT conference held their gala. Jess and I spent the afternoon wandering around seeing more Vegas, having another drink, and getting trapped in the M&M World, but thats a different story. We chilled out in the room for about 2 hours before we had to head down for the shuttle bus to the MGM where the gala was to be held.
Greetings from beautiful Las Vegas!
Yesterday, when Jess was in meetings I decided to go play some pai gow. For those that don’t know, pai gow is a pretty simple and very fun game. The basic premise is each player and the dealer is dealt 7 cards, and your job is to make the best 2 poker hands you can, a 5 card hand and a 2 card hand. The only rule is that your 5 card hand must beat your 2 card hand. (full wiki here). To win, both of your hands must beat the dealers 2 hands. To lose, both must be lower than the dealers. If you split, you push and get your money back. Very simple.
Anyway, yesterday I played for about 2 hours and did pretty well. I ended up about 40 bucks and got a couple of beers out of the deal. I was up almost $100 at one point, but hit a cold streak before I picked up.
No, “Vegas Home Vegas” is not a totally awesome spin on Home Sweet Home. It is actually my itinerary for next two weeks. Lemme explain.
A few months ago, Jess found out that the national Charles Schwab conference was going to be held in Las Vegas this year. She used to work for Schwab before her little company broke away and went independent. But, she still knows a lot of people over there and still works with them for her clients. Anyway, she also found out that the keynote speaker is none other than Bono of U2. For those that don’t know, Jess is a rather obsessed U2 fan and has seen them something like 9 times in concert. (despite the fact they’ve never been to Boise).
Obviously, she was geeked to go. Plus, since Vegas is one of my favorite places on the planet (I’ve been there like 9 times), it was a perfect match. So, she went to work on her boss to get the company to pay her way down for this conference. Needless to say, she finally wore them down and they agreed. She got her hotel and air paid for, and all I had to come up with to go down with her was my own airfare. No way was I gonna skip this one.
We leave Sunday morning (the 28th) and return Wednesday afternoon on Halloween. 3 days of Mandalay Bay. Of course, she will be in meetings and seminars a good deal of the time… I wonder if there is anything fun for me to do in Las Vegas… Hmmmm… I’ll have to check into that.
As many of you know, I started a new job in August with probably the coolest company on the planet, Wirestone. I had heard rumors, even before I started, that Wirestone has it’s own Las Vegas conference where they send all 200+ employees (from the various offices around the country) to Vegas on the company dime. Supposedly, the first few years they did it, they actually attempted to get work done. Well, recently all pretense of “work” has been thrown out the window and it basically turns in to 2 days of drinking. The words of advice I’ve received from those who have been before, “Bring your stunt liver.” Check and Check.
Not long after we got the go-ahead from Jess’ boss for her conference, I found out when Wirestone was planning their Vegas party at the Hard Rock Hotel and Casino.
November 4th through the 6th.
Basically, what this boils down to is I am in Vegas Sunday through Wednesday with Jess, am home for Thursday, Friday and Saturday, then head BACK to Vegas on Sunday to return home on Tuesday.
Either, this will be the greatest 10 days in the history of mankind, or I will return a broken empty shell of a man. I guess those aren’t necessarily mutually exclusive.
Plus, the first Boise State Basketball exhibition game is on Friday, the 2nd, and on Saturday is Boise State Football home vs. San Jose State. So, I guess technically, the title would be more accurate stated as “Vegas, Boise State, Vegas” which might well be the definition of heaven in my book.
You’ll hear from me again, provided I survive.
Wow… that wasn’t a whole lot of fun. The game, specifically, but pretty much the entire Saturday sucked donkey balls. Here’s the recap of my weekend trip to see the Boise State Broncos vs. the Washington Huskys.
Jess and I got on the road early on Friday. After a quick stop at McD’s for some road breakfast we were off. Drive was very uneventful, which is good. No blasting dirt storms or anything. It was nice to run into all the members of Bronco Nation who were heading up to the game (estimates said upwards of 10,000 made the trip). We were flying my Bronco flags on the car and saw many other people doing the same. We barreled through Ontario, Pendleton, gassed up in Yakima (where I got my first comment on my BSU gear from a guy delivering beer to the convenience store who said, “Beat them Huskys!”… he must be a Cougar fan.), and kept going through to Bellevue where we were staying at the Westin.
One can not describe a trip to California without discussing what is apparently their state animal, the automobile. The number of cars in that state is mind boggling.
Our Rental Car
Upon arriving in San Jose and taking the bus to the rental car park area, we found Hertz and got issued a car. It was a decent looking silver Toyota Camry. We loaded our bags into the trunk, when I noticed there wasn’t any navigation system. I really really wanted one of these things for two reasons actually. One, we were planning on driving all over the bay area and sometimes navigating by traffic signs really sucks hard. And two, I’m a gigantic nerd and wanted to play with it.
This is a continuation of my “To California” series… click here to read ‘Dining’.
Months ago when we were planning this little adventure, Jess scoured the web looking for good vacation rentals. We saw places in Monterey, in Carmel, in Santa Cruz, and all places in between. She wanted to be right on the ocean… that was her main goal. Eventually we found the place we did. We were a bit worried because on the website where she booked it, there were no pictures of the interior of the place. They were all exterior shots. The description said it had been remodeled recently, but who knows what that means. But the pictures of the outside looked good, so, what the hell. We gave it a shot.
Now… this is RIGHT on the ocean. We pulled up in the rental car and were amazed at it’s location. It sits on a cliff about 50 feet above the beach and about 100 total feet from high tide. When I say we were close to the ocean, it’s not an exaggeration. More on that in a moment.
Continue reading “To California – Accomodations (or “California Sleepin’”… thanks George)”
Instead of doing the usual old simple chronological “this is what we did then” method of telling the story, I’m gonna go a different route. I’m going to do different categories instead. So, first up, is our dining adventures, although this will in fact be chronological… go figure.
Pleasure Pizza – Santa Cruz
Jess was all geeked up to hit this place. It is her favorite pizza joint in the world, so it was our first stop. After getting to Santa
Cruz, we discovered that the place was just right up the street from us. So, we popped in for a slice. Lemme tell ya… it is good pizza. Highly recommended. But then again, I think I am addicted to pizza, so it has to be pretty bad for me to not like it (Papa John’s, I’m looking at you). This was right at pleasure point, and has a serious surfing motif. Boards and pictures everywhere. Nice old school feel.
Margaritaville – Capitola
We popped into what one might think as one of Jimmy Buffet’s signature chain bars. Where it has the same name, this one is not actually part of that chain. Apparently they were grandfathered in. Anyway, this was right on the beach, and in fact had water right out the back of the bar. It was a nice little joint, and we ordered a couple mojitos and had some chips and salsa. It was the nice start to the vacation.
