The Good Shepherd

We went to see The Good Shepherd tonight. It's a movie starring Matt Damon & Angelina Jolie (sort of) and is about the early days of the CIA. It's certainly not for everybody. In the reviews I've seen, people either loved it or hated it. In fact, the woman sitting beside me left after about 30 minutes and didn't come back for two hours until the last 10 minutes. It's very long (nearly 3 hours) and you must pay attention to catch the subtle twist & details. However, Laura and I were both part of the crowd that really enjoyed it. This movie is not your typical spy movie thriller. But, if you go into it with the right state of mind, I think you'll find it really enjoyable. I certainly recommend it - just not to everybody!

2006: Year in Review

It's been quite a year, so I thought I'd reflect a little bit on what has happened...

First, and most importantly, I got married. Although getting there was an experience in itself, there is nothing better than being married to your best friend. Sure, there are ups and downs, but I think that is just part of the ride. I wouldn't change it for anything in the world.

We bought our first house in 2006. After planning a wedding, I didn't think anything could possibly be more work. Boy was I wrong! It has been a lot of fun making this place our own, but I've definitely learned my lesson the hard way on several projects - mistakes I won't soon make again.

I hiked my first 14er in 2006. There are 50-some 14,000+ foot mountains in Colorado and my goal is to conquer as many of them on foot as possible. Ben and I whipped one of the easier ones over the summer and it's hopefully just the first of many more to come.

I encountered my first transvestite (bet you weren't expecting that one!). Read here for a recap :).

2006 brought us plenty of lousy movies, from Da Vinci Code early in the year to Nacho Libre & Talladega Nights at the end. I really enjoyed going to the movies until the last several months when I've realized that there are only a precious few that deserve to be seen on the big screen.

I started back to school in 2006. I've only taken one class so far (start another one in January), but so far I've learned a lot and don't regret going back. I need to be challenged!

Had a good year with sports. We started playing in a couple softball leagues and somehow ended up winning the league in Parker - still not sure how we pulled that off. We also won another flag football championship - I'm not sure if I'll stick with that "team" or not though. Finally, reffing went well - got to do a few varsity games, only got chased by a couple fans, and survived reffing a game after dark in Aurora :).

Finally and most recently, I survived my first blizzard. Sure, it snows quite a bit in Kansas, but I've never sat and watched 3 feet fall in a day. It's hard to complain too much, however. All that snow has meant very little work for me!

Here's to 2007...

Long Weekend

As expected, the snow started again today and they have already closed the base on Friday. It's hard to complain when I've only worked about 12 hours in the last two weeks (and it's only cost me about 7 hours of vacation time!), but why couldn't stuff like this happen when I've got a million things to do around the house?!

Enough Already

As if it wasn't enough that we got nearly 3 feet of snow last week, they are now calling for as much as another 16" by this time yesterday. It started off as just another dusting but now they think it'll be somewhere around 10" (and as high as 16"). That isn't too big of a deal, but considering that a lot of the side streets haven't even been touched yet, another foot could really dork things up. The base was posturing itself to be closed tomorrow so I'm guessing that if we get any sort of accumulation at all that I'll get another snow day. I wouldn't complain!

2+ Feet and Counting

As of this morning we had received 25" of snow and it continued on through the day. If I had to guess, I'd say we got somewhere around 2.5 feet. It's stopped for now at least and hopefully we'll get to make it home for Xmas (if they open I-70). We took some pictures if you want to see what we're up against.

Pictures are here.

Brrrr

On Monday, the forecast was for 3-6" of snow by mid-week. On Tuesday, that jumped to 6-10" of snow. This morning I wake up to find that the latest forecast is for anywhere from 20-30" (I heard as much as 36" to the NE of here)! Needless to say, I am basking in the glory of a snow day. I should start a pool and take bets on how much they think we'll have by tomorrow...

UPDATE: It started snowing this morning (there was previously nothing) and it's already up to the top of the porch in the back yard. If you look close then you can see the snow is even with the porch. Snow drifts are probably between 2 and 3 feet right now. How fun!

Before & After

As promised, I finally got around to taking some "after" pictures of the house. We've done a LOT of work around here (everything from painting to tiling to changing door knobs - you name it, we've tried it) and wanted to let those who couldn't be here have the chance to see for themselves. Hopefully the link below works. If not, let me know and I'll email it out. Enjoy!

Pictures of the house are here.

What a Week!

As you may have seen in Laura's blog, it was another whirlwind week at LM. I was given approval to start working on a new project on Monday. Originally when we started trying to get the funding to do it, we were told that it needed to be complete by mid-January. However, with the approval came news that they needed it "expedited" a little bit...it turns out that a "little bit" meant by the weekend. So, I worked basically around the clock trying to get it finished. I did get it finished, but the kicker is that on Friday afternoon, I got a call (after I was already finished, mind you) saying that they no longer needed it. WHAT!? I was less than pleased. As if that weren't enough, a totally separate problem popped up and I ended up putting in several more hours over the weekend. I don't know what my total was - somewhere in the mid-80's - but it was exhausting. I don't know how some people do that every week...I struggled to do it just this once.

On a separate note, we finally received our NOVA awards from Lockheed this week (the one we won over the summer for all the work we did last November). Anyways, thought you might be interested to see the excerpt from the write-up that was submitted:

"For responding to a premature hardware failure in a vital national asset by precisely analyzing the problem and developing and installing a software solution that transformed the platform from 'end of life' to '100 percent Mission Success'."

Chaos

It's been one of those weeks. I was given permission (i.e. they have money in the budget) to work on a long term project on Monday that I planned on finishing up sometime in January or February. In fact, I was told before we started that we were going to do some testing on it in mid-January, so I needed to have a fair chunk chewed off by that time. Little did I know that ten minutes after getting approval to start working on it that they'd also fill me in that they'd moved the mid-Jan test up to this weekend! So, rather than having six weeks, I had six days. Needless to say, I'm been working my tail off this week. The good news is that I think I'll get it done and it'll be a little Xmas bonus in the paycheck. The bad news is that I have been miserable all week and didn't get to enjoy my birthday at all. We are heading out to a steakhouse downtown on Saturday to celebrate, so hopefully I'll be able to put this crappy week behind me and enjoy it. That's my sob story I guess!

In other news, we only have one room left to paint! Once we're done with our bedroom (this weekend if it's up to me), there will be no more painting around here for a long, long, looooong time. But, it's finally becoming our home and we're both really happy with it. I wish we could afford to do everything with it that we wanted to.