Tag Archives: poquettes

General, Uncategorized

Dispatches From Colorado Springs

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We have sort of a long layover in Colorado Springs, so I thought I would get caught up on the rest of our vacation adventure–

Wordy & Jessica’s wedding was great.  The location was beautiful, the food was phenomenal, and we had a great visit with all of the guests.  Their ceremony was exactly what I would have expected; it was colorful, and had their collective personality.  We were both very happy to have been able to attend, and we’re looking forward to visitng again as soon as we can.

Earlier in the day on Friday, we took a ride to Zuma Beach with the Poquettes and Lorch.  It was a really nice spot, but the water was COLD.  I guess it is the ocean.  I didn’t swim much, but preferred to stay on the beach soaking up the sun or throwing the football.  Michelle renting a boogie board and boogied hard for a couple hours.  I don’t ever remember seeing her more delighted for such a sustained length of time.  She had so much fun, she barely noticed that her skin was getting red from the cold water…

We finally hooked up with Devin after the beach, when we went out for lunch at a place called Islands.  It was a sit-down burger joint.  I had a ‘Bleunami’ and it was pretty tasty.

Saturday, we slept in, seeing as we’d been up until all hours the night before.  When we finally got up, we decided we wanted to take a ride to a beach further south, like Santa Monica, so we could check out some different sights in L.A.  Michelle wanted to do a little more souvenir shopping in Hollywood before leaving town, so that was on the docket as well.   Lorch wanted to go with us and catch lunch at In N Out, so he rode along.

Leaving the hotel at about 11:45am, we followed the Garmin to the In N Out it instructed us to drive to, about 8 miles north on the 101.  That seemed like a long way to go for a burger, but we were all hungry.  When we arrived, some 25 minutes later, the restaurant was not there, and we bought some gas instead.  We decided to proceed south, avoiding the freeway, which was PACKED.  We thought we could just eat lunch some where along the way…

The drive down the 1 to Santa Monica took us nearly 2 hours.  And this was about a 25-mile trip.  We did make a short pit stop at Topanga Beach, but we quickly discovered that one was for surfing and not swimming (what with the rocks and lack of sand).  We finally pulled into a parking garage off the 3rd Street Promenade in Santa Monica at 2:39pm.  We hadn’t eaten or done much with our day other than ride in the car up to that point.  We were all a little annoyed at how our Saturday was turning out, but we tried to make the best of it.  We had Mexican for lunch, strolled around the Promenade a little, then walked down to the Santa Monica Pier and the beach.

It was amazing how much warmer the water felt, less than 30 miles south along the shore.  Michelle and I went in, but Lorch hung out on the beach, wanted to avoid exposing his severely sunburned back and chest for a 2nd consecutive day.  It was a lot of fun “swimming” around as much as we could.  There were SO MANY people at the beach, it was hard to do much other than sort of float or tread water and ride the waves as they rolled in.  Still had a great time.

Unfortunately, there wasn’t any time left for other things with all the traffic that day.  After the beach, we headed back to the hotel, on the freeway this time, and we arrived back at about 6:30 or so.  Lorch left for the airport within an hour (his flight was at 11:30pm, but the south-bound traffic looked awful), and Michelle and I ended up having a quick dinner at California Pizza Kitchen just minutes before they closed at 10.

We were up bright and early on Sunday (about 4:30), and left the hotel shortly after 5.  Our flight left at 8, and we were both surprised that (A) there was not a lick of traffic that time of day, so we got all the way to the airport (about 35 miles) in just over a half hour, and (B) checking in and going through security at LAX took a grand total of 20 minutes.  It wasn’t even 6:30 by the time we arrived at our gate.  We were able to have a relaxing breakfast before getting on the plane…

Once again, keep an eye out for pictures!  I haven’t had time in the last day and a half to sift through all the shots I took, but I’m planning to do so this evening.  It was another great vacation.  Michelle and I always have a wonderful time on our trips, seeing new things and visiting with old friends.  We’re looking forward to doing it again soon.

lists, Uncategorized

Constant Updates

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I’m really tired and I should have been in bed an hour or so ago. I had to finish a movie first.

I haven’t had much that was very blogg-o-riffic the last couple weeks. Work has been really busy. I haven’t done much in the evenings, and I probably oughta change that.

Here is a quick list from the weekend:
– I saw the Brewers loss on Friday with Dave, but they did have a winning weekend
– I had to go to work for a while on Saturday. It was OK.
– I went to Kilian’s 3rd birthday party, but since my ‘work’ had run late, I rushed over there without my card or my camera. A couple pics from my phone are on the Flickrs.
– I slept way too late this morning after not being able to sleep last night
– I have converted the last Windows holdover that I had in my house (the laptop)– I am now a linux-only sorta guy (which was a long time coming), and only interesting to the geekiest among you, I’m sure
– I started reading John Hodgman’s book, The Areas of My Expertise. It is funny.

OK. Bed time.

General, Sports, Uncategorized

Report on the Basketballs and Whatnot

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My basketball team had its regular-season-doubleheader-finale last night– we were supposed to have this 2-fer evening early in February, but a snow day @ Fond du Lac pushed it back to the “make-up week.”

Last week Monday, we got killed by the best team in our division, by something like 25 points. I mean, we were annihilated. We turned the ball over a LOT, and they must’ve scored 15-18 points on transition turnovers. It was pretty sad. By the last 5 minutes we were just chucking up 3s to try to get back in the game.

With that performance in mind, I fully expected to have a rough go of it playing two games in one night. But it was actually probably our best week of the season. We beat the “kids” in our first game (this team of all 19- and 20-yr-olds, a lot of them former students of my teacher peeps on the team), putting our season record against them at 1-2.

In our second game, we played that best team again, and it was a really close, hard-fought match all the way through. The difference, once again, was a couple stupid turnovers down the stretch in the first half that let them turn a 3-point deficit into a 3-point lead. They ended up winning by 3. We had a chance to take a 1-point lead with about 20 seconds to go, but the shot rimmed out. We missed a 3 at the buzzer that would’ve sent us to OT.

So it was a pretty good last night of hoops– come to find out it wasn’t actually the last night. Apparently, all 5 teams qualify for the “playoffs,” so we have play the kids again next week, and if we win that, we play the #1 team again the following week. There is at least one, and at most three weeks to go.

In my review of how that season went, I guess I wish our team would’ve had more time to sort of “get to know each other,” and play together more often. I think we could’ve been more successful if that were the case. I also feel I could’ve shook some more rust off my game personally if we practiced, or something.

I don’t really anticipate playing in an organized league for any sport again, but it was definitely interesting to try it as an adult and just see what that’s like (it’s like high school, but just hurts more).