Category: Life News

The Great Outdoors

I’m sitting right now on my outdoor furnitire – the wonderful patio furniture we had shipped from Texas [since everything here was either too cheap or too expensive]. Laura and I [mostly Laura] have just finished up the yard work for the week – cleaning, pruning, cutting, mowing, etc. It all looks so nice now.

I have just finished booking our travel to Spokane and arranging our rooms for the week and weekend we will be there. The company pays for the weekdays, of course, while I get to pay for the cabin in the woods over the weekend.

I’m getting pretty excited about it, actually. It’s been a while since Laura and I just went out to the wilderness. It’s been since we had Thanksgiving at my sister’s in Wyoming since we’ve taken a few days to ourselves and nature like that.

Trip Alert: Spkane, WA

Looks like instead of going to sunny Florida for my training class, I’ll be headed to Spokane, Washington in a couple of weeks. Laura will be coming with me, of course.

Spokane itself is not very exciting, but its location is. Just a couple of hours away is Glacier National Park and the area is surrounded by national forests and mountains. We will be skipping out over the weekend to find a small cabin in the mountains. We will definitely be bringing cameras for this event.

Arranging flights for this was difficult, but it looks like we will be flying Northwest [a Continental partner] and actually be getting seats together. Gotta love those Membership Rewards.

Gallery

Some of you have pointed out some difficulties with my photo gallery and with good reason: it seems to be not performing very well at all. So, I’ve decided to migrate to Gallery 2. I’ve tried this before and didn’t like it, but I’ve had so much trouble with the old version that I’m ready to give it a try.

I’m currently in the process of importing the Gallery 1 albums into Gallery 2, so please be patient as performance on the site will be slow.

And, yes – once this is done, I will begin to post some of the pictures that I have been long in processing…

4 Years

Yesterday, Laura and I celebrated 4 wonderful years of marriage. So, obviously I didn’t have time to post anything!

I can say that I feel that I am the most fortunate man in the entire world and I sometimes wonder how all those other men make do with sub-standard women… 😉

Here’s hopin’ for 50 or more years of the same!

For The Greater Good?

Sometimes, bad things happen and good comes of it. Take for instance our banking situation. For several years, we have been using BMW Bank as our primary bank – great interest, no fees, even good service. However, they are closing up shop. I guess having a customer base of less that 2,000 wasn’t good for business. So – off to find a new bank.

Enter ING. ING is a Dutch bank that has expanded into many other countries and now the US. They used to only provide savings accounts [I looked into them just last year] but have recently branched into checking. Now, they provide great online banking at EXCELLENT interest rates. So, we’ve converted. After the last few scheduled transactions go through, we’ll close up shop and finish the move to ING. And, yes, that means that I’m finally going to use online banking – forget those paper checks!

Now if our local bank Wachovia can be convinced to not charge us any fees for downloading transactions to Quicken like they have threatened, we’d be good.

Home

We are back from Vegas, and let me tell you: it’s good to be home. One can only stand so much of the visual/moral assault – not to mention that not only did I have to be in my conference sessions all day, but also spend time with Laura as she wanted to explore several things in the evenings. Anyhow, the flight home was long and arduous as well. We took a red-eye back from the West: departed Thursday night arrived home early Friday morning. I couldn’t sleep the entire flight, except for maybe half an hour and I think Laura was the same. So, we spent all day recouperating.

I almost can’t wait to get back to work…

Viva Las Vegas

Laura and I will be travelling to Las Vegas Today. I’m going to attend a conference, while she’s going to hang out with me. This is a perfect excuse to see Las Vegas without choosing to vacation there. The cool part is that tere will likely be some great picture-taking opportunities – so we’re both bringing our cameras!

Management Change

Those of you who’ve talked to me recently are aware that my work-life is changing a little. One major part of that change is that my current manager has resigned and will be gone in a week.

The best part is that I just had a meeting with my second-line manager in which he was very encouraging and even said that he would recommend me for a promotion in the next round! Yee-haw!