Home life

Photo by: Andrew Coulter Enright

Home life isn't what it used to be. It's better, but busier. I don't spend as much time on the computer as I have in the past, partly due to the fact that Katie's little sister (Smitty Jankins, as I call her) is always in the computer room typing away to her friends on AIM (AOL instant messenger) and talking on the phone. She wants her privacy and I do too, so I let her have the use of the room... though we monitor and dictate her internet use.

On a side note, why do kids today laugh after everything they say online? My wife pointed this out the other day. A typical middle schooler's conversation online is as follows:

BrattyGURL034: You see wut Zoe wuz wearing @ skool 2day?
DisrespectinCutie0101: NO, she's such a dork LOL
BrattyGURL034: Yeah I know LOL
BrattyGURL034: brb
DisrespectinCutie0101: kk
BrattyGURL034: had 2 go get a drink LOL

Sorry, got off on a tangent there. Watching or listening to teenagers talking to each other is painful.

Lately, Katie and I have been trying to just relax. Work has really been getting to Katie over the last three weeks or so, even though one of those weeks included a vacation to Colorado. She has to get a certain amount of hours each week with a group of kids who have no interest in going to school, and whose families (for the most part) have no interest in having their kids meet with a counselor. So, she struggles to get hours and when she finally does, the kids (as old as 17 in some cases) are difficult.

This weekend we got some time to catch up on some maintenance around the house that's been overdue. Until Yesterday our second suitcase from the Colorado trip was lying open on the floor. I took care of the yardwork and lunch and Katie took care of the laundry and a large amount of other household cleaning items.

Today, as Katie spends a few hours working on her logs for work (another perk of the job), I'll be spending time on the computer and will probably end up washing the cars or taking care of some other somewhat interesting job that's been neglected lately.

I've got a lesson for which I should be preparing. Each week a different developer at our company takes a few units out of our study guides and prepares a hands-on lab for the rest of the developers to complete during 2.5 hours of exam prep time we set aside each week. This week, I'm up. I'll be covering advanced windows forms techniques. With that in mind, I need to stop procrastinating and get some work done around here...

We have vacated

Katie and I are in Colorado for a few days, having begun our vacation early Saturday morning with a flight out of Dallas... just after the tornadoes made a visit there.

So far the vacation has been great. The first day we were here, within 10 minutes of being in our condo I was taking a nap and Katie was watching TV. We shopped for groceries and ordered Dominoes pizza for the night and just relaxed all day.

Yesterday, the vacation really began. We're a mile or so away from the entrance to the Rocky Mountain National park, which was one of the reasons I was convinced this was where we should spend our vacation. I wanted to be in the mountains and have a good chance to get some pictures of wildlife and snow covered mountains.

So, yesterday we set out to get into the park for a few hours (on our anniversary) and we ended up being amazed at how much wildlife was actually in the park. We thought it would be somewhat difficult to find elk and deer (we're city folk, remember). They're everywhere though... we even saw an elk or two hanging out at a miniature golf course in town. We took a couple different trails to see what we could find, and after taking our fill of pictures for the day, we headed home.

For the big 1st anniversary night, we made reservations at a restaurant here in town called the twin owls steak house. It's been a low key vacation, so far... and that's how I'd prefer it to be. Today we're heading to Denver to see the town.

Check out our flickr page for a few of the pics we took yesterday.

Orlando, here I come

Today, shortly after lunch, I was called into my boss's office. I always prepare myself for the worst when I get called in to see the boss. Did I take too long of a lunch yesterday? Was that 30th visit to fatwallet.com yesterday the last straw? I never know what's going to happen in there. So, after sitting down in the office I was pleasantly surprised to find that I was being asked to go to Orlando for Tech Ed, a Microsoft conference, in June.

Two other programmers are also going, one who lives in Florida, and another hardware guy might go. From the Tech Ed website, I've found quite a few sessions I want to attend, mainly related to ASP .NET (a language for making dynamic web sites). The whole deal sounds like a good time. Last year the attendee party was at Universal Studios, so I'm hoping something cool goes on.

Katie won't be able to attend, since we're going to Colorado in April for which she'll have to take an unpaid vacation (she just started a new job). I'll be in Orlando "working" and using all my cell phone minutes to check on her while she's in town managing the tiny behavioral monsters of Shreveport. That stinks for her.

Anyway, I'm excited about the trip and excited about the ASP .NET sessions. I'll be sure to take the camera and take some pics.