Monday, June 30, 2008

Proud Owner of a 3 Year Old















Yes, indeed. Bennet turned 3last weekend, and we celebrated in style. I'm still a little in shock that he is 3, but he's so much fun I can't complain too much about how fast he's grown up. You'll notice the dinosaurs in the picture...calling Ben obsessed with dinos might actually be an understatement! In fact, just today we rocked out to a dinosaur soundtrack that Jodi was kind enough to lend me. I'm wondering what's next??




It turned out to be a perfect day to be outdoors, so I made a last minute decision to move the party outside. There's a great park near my house called Ella Bailey which has gorgeous views of the city, a brand new play area, and a huge grass field, plus multiple picnic tables.








Bennet and his cousin Aidan got some frisbee time while I was grilling the dogs...













Jason is getting educated on all the dinosaur names by Bennet. :-) I let him play with the cake toppers before putting them on the cake.















The wind picked up right at cake time..so it was a team effort to get that candle lit!














Success! The candle stayed lit (the second time) long enough for Bennet to blow it out. Woo hoo!















Lucky I've got helpers (thanks Makayla & Lara)! We're serving up home made cake (chocolate with chocolate, Ben's request) and triple chocolate ice cream (also chosen by Ben).













Bennet (and I) have so many ladies in our lives.....


















And here is a kid that is so happy to be 3!!! Happy Birthday Bennet!

Saturday, June 28, 2008

I love my SUV!

This is a weekly occurence!  Ouch.

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Tuesday, June 3, 2008

Cannonball Run

The mission: Drive friend Makayla's BMW 330xi from Chicago to Seattle.
Constraints: Can't leave before 12pm Monday morning (when the moving truck gets packed and goods signed for). Have to get to Seattle by 12pm for my 1230p doctor's appoint.

Can we do it??!! So far, so good! We departed an hour early yesterday from Chicago..about 11am. We promptly burned up that extra hour by sitting in TONS on construction traffic. My earlier Google searches for I-94 construction failed to yield complete results. Doh! So we began falling behind schedule...it looked like we had a lot of miles to make up and little time to do it! Finally in Minnesota we broke loose of the construction and made up some time on the way to Minneapolis. Unfortunately we hit Minneapolis right at rush-hour so were once again slowed. We stopped for coffee, Caribou Coffee of course!, I called into a meeting, and we got back on the road. From Minneaplolis to Fargo we averaged a solid 95mph (I love German engineering) and steadily made up ground. We gave some back by stopping for dinner in Fargo (not on my original plan), but decided to push for another 200 miles before bedtime. We left Fargo at about 10p, and rolled into the town of Bismark right around midnight. Sweet!

Accomplishments yesterday: 4 states (Illinois, Wisconsin, Minnesota, North Dakota). Hours of sustained speeds north of 100mph, 857 miles traveled, multiple cups of coffee, and no less than 12 Harley Davidson store sightings!

On the books for today: Wrap up ND, cross Montana, Idaho, and enter Washington. About 1,000 miles, test the speed limiter on the BMW, and find the Starbucks off of Exit 157!

Why did I title this post "Cannonball Run"? There was a great movie made back in the early 80's about an illegal cross-country road race with that title: link


Cheers from North Dakota...

Tuesday, May 27, 2008

Survived Mt. Whitney!















I went straight from Vegas to Atlanta for work, so no time at the mo' for the full post that this epic trip deserves, check back in a day or two for that! In the mean time, here is a picture of the 6 of us 1.9 miles from the summit, which is as close as we got. Disappointing, but absolutely the right decision given waist deep (or higher) snow covering the trail, and the fact that it took us more than 4 hours to get down off the mountain after this shot was taken.

Click here to see the full set (194) of pictures on Flickr for any who are curious.

Cheers..

Wednesday, May 21, 2008

The Mt Whitney Trip Begins!

We're on the way to the Lone Pine ranger station from Las Vegas via Death Valley.  4 of us flew into Las Vegas this morning (me, Dan, Shawn and Kevin).  2 more guys, Hank and Andy, are driving up from California.  We're buying our passes, leaving 1 car at the ranger station (our end point) and driving the other car to the trail head, about 40 miles away.  We plan to summit on the 24th, 14,495 ft elevation.

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Monday, May 12, 2008

Wrigley Field


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Sunny Chicago

Who says work can't be fun too?  I'm attending a 5 day dork-fest, I mean data warehousing and business intelligence conference in Chicago this week, and its a great time!  I'm here with the two biggest drinkers on my team, which ensured we had a great time Saturday night!  We ended up at a popular bar and grill called Rockit and closed it down.

Last night I had dinner in a pizza place that is at the site of the famouse Valentines Day Massacre.  Tonight we're going to a Cubs game at Wrigley field.  Oh, and I've learned the two philosophys of data warehouse architecture (Inmann vs Kimball), and what core competencies are required for a successful BI implementation program.  What more could I ask for???

Back to class...
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