I've decided to take a quick break at work to jot down a couple things about April that I think are note-worthy.
1. At the beginning of April I was asked to get some Audit work together for our year end internal audit. It turned out that a question the auditors had couldn't be answered easily because after asking I discovered that what I had submitted was wrong. To sum up what could be a long story, I stayed at work for 30 straight hours to correct a mistake(s) made throughout the 2011. The stress and lack of sleep I experienced was terrible. It was actually the first time in my life that I had the urge to vomit from stress. I wanted to make a note of this so when I read it in the future, I'm reminded to do things right the first time so I don't EVER have to go through this again.
2. I had been planning for several months after my last trip out in the pop-up camper to buy the heavy duty extension cord that we had lacked for the air conditioner and lights. While getting my oil changed at WalMart (because they were the only place on Sunday) I happened upon the exact cord I needed. It was pretty exciting b/c I thought I was going to have to drive out of my way to Robertsdale to buy one from a camper city store for $70. I ended up getting one from Wally World for $50 and spent the difference on a Camper designed water filtration system. Booyah!
3. Probably the most important one for last: Jillian and I went to Ware's in Spanish for last Saturday to look at engagement rings. I thought it was somewhat uncommon for a couple to go ring shopping before the proposal, but I want her ring to be perfect when I choose it and only she knows what she really wants. It gave us both a really great opportunity to learn more about rings; my own knowledge was very limited. The trip was especially useful for me because I got a much more specific picture of the type of ring she would like. Step 1: Find ring - Almost complete.
Monday, April 23, 2012
Thursday, April 19, 2012
Dauphin Island Vintage Bike Competition 2012
Jillian entered her bike in it's second vintage competition... and should have placed!!
The first weekend of April we put the bike on the trailer and hauled it out to Dauphin Island for the show and made a nice little day of it right off the beach. We actually entered it in the correct category this time and I thought it had a great chance at winning at least 3rd place (there were some really nice bikes). It was a bit of a slap in the face at the end b/c the bike that won first place was a piece of garbage. It was rusted throughout and didn't even run. It was almost like the guy pulled it out of a trash pile and propped it up. It only won b/c it was really old and uncommon. Anyway, Jillian has recently ordered some additional stock parts online and hopes to have them on the bike for the next show. I really think she has a good shot at winning at the next time we go to Forte Conde.
Here are a couple shots of the show:
The first weekend of April we put the bike on the trailer and hauled it out to Dauphin Island for the show and made a nice little day of it right off the beach. We actually entered it in the correct category this time and I thought it had a great chance at winning at least 3rd place (there were some really nice bikes). It was a bit of a slap in the face at the end b/c the bike that won first place was a piece of garbage. It was rusted throughout and didn't even run. It was almost like the guy pulled it out of a trash pile and propped it up. It only won b/c it was really old and uncommon. Anyway, Jillian has recently ordered some additional stock parts online and hopes to have them on the bike for the next show. I really think she has a good shot at winning at the next time we go to Forte Conde.
Here are a couple shots of the show:
First paddle of 2012 / New Kind of Suit
Paddle:
My brother Andrew and I decided to go on a paddle down Black Water River in Florida before he heads off for Army basic training in June. I've included a couple pictures. There wasn't much to the trip. We did run into a bunch of drunks and rednecks... and drunk rednecks which wasn't the most fun when your trying to enjoy a peaceful float but it wasn't too bad. Also, I guess the local fire department was doing to river training... b/c they were flying up and down the river in a 10ft john boat, with very little regard for their wake. Anyway Enjoy the pictures.
New Suit:
Jillian bought me a pretty badass motorcycle jacket for our upcoming trip to Gatlinburg, TN. We plan on renting a CanAm Spyder and riding along the famous "dragon's tail". I went ahead and bought a nice helmet to go along with it.
My brother Andrew and I decided to go on a paddle down Black Water River in Florida before he heads off for Army basic training in June. I've included a couple pictures. There wasn't much to the trip. We did run into a bunch of drunks and rednecks... and drunk rednecks which wasn't the most fun when your trying to enjoy a peaceful float but it wasn't too bad. Also, I guess the local fire department was doing to river training... b/c they were flying up and down the river in a 10ft john boat, with very little regard for their wake. Anyway Enjoy the pictures.
New Suit:
Jillian bought me a pretty badass motorcycle jacket for our upcoming trip to Gatlinburg, TN. We plan on renting a CanAm Spyder and riding along the famous "dragon's tail". I went ahead and bought a nice helmet to go along with it.
The Garage Sale / Snowboarding Trip
I've been meaning to post a few things for about a month so I guess now is as good a time as any.
GARAGE SALE:
In the first weekend of March (last month) Jillian and I had a garage sale to try and raise a couple hundred dollars for our Snowboarding trip the following week. I'll admit, Jillian did pretty much all of the prep work; Advertising, making signs and organizing the garage. I was mainly there to collect cash and look pretty. We took the road less traveled with garage sales in the area and made it Fri - Sun.
Friday morning, the rush began... around 6:30. It was shocking. I did not expect that many people to be out and about before I would have even been awake for a normal workday, but that was definitely the case. My lawnmower was purchased within the first couple hours and some "professional yardsaler" went through Jillian's items pretty quick. I had a guy go through the records I was getting rid of and pull out just first additions. He definitely knew what he was doing as well.
Friday and Saturday stayed pretty busy for us until about 2 or 3 in the afternoon and we ended up selling about 80% of what we had available. TVs, dvds, games, clothes, lawn equipment, my karaoke machine, a pinball machine and some furniture. You name it and we probably had it. We even had a fussball table for sale that sold early, the lady said she would come back for and is to this day sitting in Jillian's new game room.
In the end the two of us split about $1500.00 which I thought was pretty amazing.
SNOWBOARDING: (might be long)
Luckily, Jillian kept a pretty detailed journal of the trip, so I haven't really had to rely heavily on my extremely sub-par memory. I had originally decided to make a video log of it but, as you'll see, that lasted all of one day.
March 14:
Jillian and I woke up around 2am to drive from Daphne, AL to New Orleans, LA for a 7am flight. The traffic was light but the fog was pretty awful. Definitely not safe driving conditions but Jillian's a pro behind the wheel. We made it to the airport with a good amount of time to spare even though we had some slight difficulty finding our way to the extended stay parking lot we were using. Check-in was quick as was our first screening of the day. Our flight was on time and we took off for Salt Lake City, Utah (our first and only layover). I didn't step foot outside the airport, mainly because our layover was short, but from what I saw of Salt Lake City, I was not overly impressed. It looked like an incredibly boring place to live. I don't even recall seeing trees.
Anyway, we hopped on our second flight of the day and made it into Bozeman, Montana around 12:30 were I had to make a short... 20 minute stop in the restroom to pay for abusing my body with a Taco Bell feast the night prior. It's also where I shot this video... NOT in the bathroom... but in the airport.
AND... that was the last video I shot on my phone. We did happen to have a new GoPro Hero 2 HD camera for the slopes so there will be a video from that later.
So, after the airport bathroom we hopped on a bus that drove us to Big Sky Resort, which was 1.5 hours away. The bus drive was pretty knowledgeable about the area and had a number of fun facts for us. We even drove by Ted Turners ranch and saw some of his horses and buffalo. I think we would have learned a lot more about the area, but some guy from Michigan kept asking him questions about the hunting in the state.
We showed up about 2:45 and found out that our rooms weren't going to be ready until 5, so we decided to go ahead and grab our snowboard gear from the rental shop. We lucked up and happened to rent our gear from probably the biggest pot-head in Montana, who accidentally charged us half price for our boards and boots. We walked around a bit more to get familiar with the place and then headed back to the lobby to pick up our room keys.
I should preface the rest of this story with the fact that Jillian has mentioned on numerous occasions that she is one of the unluckiest people on the planet, but I think something about the altitude seemed to change that. If you ignore the half price snowboard rentals, her luck started when the guy at the front desk gave us an extra set of breakfast vouchers. After unloading our stuff, I started feeling a really nauseous and like I had a fever. It was pretty awful, but after I laid down for a while the feeling went away so I tried to ignore it and Jillian and I went out for a nice dinner.
There was a place at the ski resort called the cabin which had been talked highly of by a few people we had spoken to, so we had to check it out. Unfortunately, it was on the third floor of a building with no elevator and , later realizing that how I was feeling earlier was the result of altitude sickness, making the trip up the stairs basically made me feel like crap again during our nice dinner. I couldn't even enjoy my first taste of Elk meat. After that lovely experience, I just went to bed hoping I was over it by morning.
March 15: (I'll try to keep the rest of the days shorter)
My free breakfast was pretty awesome, although I didn't realize the voucher said "tip included" so I made a bit of an ass of myself when I told the waiter I was sorry but I forgot to bring my wallet with me and I'd have to catch him later. While I ate, Jillian was in her first Dental Conference meeting, which I failed to mention was the reason why we were there. Afterwards, I sat in the hotel room watching ABC family's week-long Harry Potter marathon (which was awesome) until Jillian got back with the great news that she had won a $50 gift certificate door prize for restaurant called Buck's T-4. After a short celebration for her first ever door prize we headed out to the bunny slopes outside our hotel room.
For never having been skiing or on a snowboard, Jillian did really well. She didn't think so because of the falling, but she did a lot better than I did when I was an athletic 17 year old. Now being a chubby 30 year old fart, I was struggling to stand up from the sitting position so it was a bit of a learning/relearning day for us both. We did end up going down a couple of the green slopes before we called it an evening. Later on we took a bus down the mountain to a place in the town center called Choppers. It was a nice little sports bar where I found it necessary to get a big ol' glass of Guiness. Afterwards we tried to go shopping but only came across a local's bar and a small grocery store, so we picked up a few snacks for the slopes and hotel room and then headed back up the mountain.
March 16:
Jillian's luck continued in the morning as she was given a prepaid lift ticket that had another two days left on it, saving us over $100. We ended up spending the majority of the day on the bunny slopes again b/c for some unknown reason, everything we had learned the day before had leaked out of our brains and onto our pillows as we slept. That afternoon, Jillian and I went to her dental convention's meet and greet where I was introduced to a fellow dentist, named Cindi (and her husband Bill), she had befriended during their morning meetings and this lovely fellow (in a bottle). It won my heart almost instantly... the rest of the evening is a blur.
March 17: (St. Patrick's Day)
Being Saturday, we had planned to make it our big day of snowboarding so we started out on what was one of the longer green slopes called the Pacifier. It turned out to be exhausting and aggravating as the majority of our time was spent falling down a rather large hill, so we took a break and went back to the "smaller" green slopes later that afternoon. Before we called it quits for the day, I actually went down my first blue slope (accidentally) of the trip.
We had originally hoped to have stayed up and partied a bit for St. Patrick's day and went to a local bar called Whiskey Jacks who was supposed to have an Irish folk music band playing around 9:30. It was about the time we sat down at the bar that we realized just how much a day of snowboarding had taken out of us, so we didn't make it long enough to hear any music. I wasn't really upset at all. We were both pretty exhausted.
March 18:
We did a lot of snowboarding. I foolishly went up to the top of one of the mountains and not halfway up the lift, a mini blizzard rolled in essentially making any object more than 3 feet in front of me invisible. After some very slow moving down the hill, the snow falling snow ceased and I gained just enough speed to crash violently and hit my head hard enough to convince me that my snowboarding day was over. We used Jilllian's $50 gift card at Buck T-4s and agreed that it wasn't that great. We slept.
March 19:
Jillian won another door prize. This time a $25 gift certificate to a souvenir shop nearby which vanished almost as quickly as he had received it. We had decided against buying another day of lift tickets based on our near physical inability to stand without aching. Instead we (and by we I mean Jillian) did some packing and then hit up the hot tub for several hours. Afterwards we got back in our snowboarding clothes to go make snow angels and a four foot snowman. That night we went back to the Cabin to enjoy our last dinner on the mountain.
March 20:
Flights are never exciting on your way back home, and such was especially the case this time. A few tornadoes had been moving through Texas and ended up rerouting our plane, putting us back in New Orleans around 10:30pm. To make matters worse, traffic just outside of the airport was at a stand-still due to road construction/cleaning/something... so we had to take a 30 min detour to get moving again.I was unable to stay awake in the car so thankfully Jillian was driving yet again. We ended up making it back to Daphne around 2am.
End of Trip. Enjoy the snowboarding video we made:
GARAGE SALE:
In the first weekend of March (last month) Jillian and I had a garage sale to try and raise a couple hundred dollars for our Snowboarding trip the following week. I'll admit, Jillian did pretty much all of the prep work; Advertising, making signs and organizing the garage. I was mainly there to collect cash and look pretty. We took the road less traveled with garage sales in the area and made it Fri - Sun.
Friday morning, the rush began... around 6:30. It was shocking. I did not expect that many people to be out and about before I would have even been awake for a normal workday, but that was definitely the case. My lawnmower was purchased within the first couple hours and some "professional yardsaler" went through Jillian's items pretty quick. I had a guy go through the records I was getting rid of and pull out just first additions. He definitely knew what he was doing as well.
Friday and Saturday stayed pretty busy for us until about 2 or 3 in the afternoon and we ended up selling about 80% of what we had available. TVs, dvds, games, clothes, lawn equipment, my karaoke machine, a pinball machine and some furniture. You name it and we probably had it. We even had a fussball table for sale that sold early, the lady said she would come back for and is to this day sitting in Jillian's new game room.
In the end the two of us split about $1500.00 which I thought was pretty amazing.
SNOWBOARDING: (might be long)
Luckily, Jillian kept a pretty detailed journal of the trip, so I haven't really had to rely heavily on my extremely sub-par memory. I had originally decided to make a video log of it but, as you'll see, that lasted all of one day.
March 14:
Jillian and I woke up around 2am to drive from Daphne, AL to New Orleans, LA for a 7am flight. The traffic was light but the fog was pretty awful. Definitely not safe driving conditions but Jillian's a pro behind the wheel. We made it to the airport with a good amount of time to spare even though we had some slight difficulty finding our way to the extended stay parking lot we were using. Check-in was quick as was our first screening of the day. Our flight was on time and we took off for Salt Lake City, Utah (our first and only layover). I didn't step foot outside the airport, mainly because our layover was short, but from what I saw of Salt Lake City, I was not overly impressed. It looked like an incredibly boring place to live. I don't even recall seeing trees.
Anyway, we hopped on our second flight of the day and made it into Bozeman, Montana around 12:30 were I had to make a short... 20 minute stop in the restroom to pay for abusing my body with a Taco Bell feast the night prior. It's also where I shot this video... NOT in the bathroom... but in the airport.
AND... that was the last video I shot on my phone. We did happen to have a new GoPro Hero 2 HD camera for the slopes so there will be a video from that later.
So, after the airport bathroom we hopped on a bus that drove us to Big Sky Resort, which was 1.5 hours away. The bus drive was pretty knowledgeable about the area and had a number of fun facts for us. We even drove by Ted Turners ranch and saw some of his horses and buffalo. I think we would have learned a lot more about the area, but some guy from Michigan kept asking him questions about the hunting in the state.
We showed up about 2:45 and found out that our rooms weren't going to be ready until 5, so we decided to go ahead and grab our snowboard gear from the rental shop. We lucked up and happened to rent our gear from probably the biggest pot-head in Montana, who accidentally charged us half price for our boards and boots. We walked around a bit more to get familiar with the place and then headed back to the lobby to pick up our room keys.
I should preface the rest of this story with the fact that Jillian has mentioned on numerous occasions that she is one of the unluckiest people on the planet, but I think something about the altitude seemed to change that. If you ignore the half price snowboard rentals, her luck started when the guy at the front desk gave us an extra set of breakfast vouchers. After unloading our stuff, I started feeling a really nauseous and like I had a fever. It was pretty awful, but after I laid down for a while the feeling went away so I tried to ignore it and Jillian and I went out for a nice dinner.
There was a place at the ski resort called the cabin which had been talked highly of by a few people we had spoken to, so we had to check it out. Unfortunately, it was on the third floor of a building with no elevator and , later realizing that how I was feeling earlier was the result of altitude sickness, making the trip up the stairs basically made me feel like crap again during our nice dinner. I couldn't even enjoy my first taste of Elk meat. After that lovely experience, I just went to bed hoping I was over it by morning.
March 15: (I'll try to keep the rest of the days shorter)
My free breakfast was pretty awesome, although I didn't realize the voucher said "tip included" so I made a bit of an ass of myself when I told the waiter I was sorry but I forgot to bring my wallet with me and I'd have to catch him later. While I ate, Jillian was in her first Dental Conference meeting, which I failed to mention was the reason why we were there. Afterwards, I sat in the hotel room watching ABC family's week-long Harry Potter marathon (which was awesome) until Jillian got back with the great news that she had won a $50 gift certificate door prize for restaurant called Buck's T-4. After a short celebration for her first ever door prize we headed out to the bunny slopes outside our hotel room.
For never having been skiing or on a snowboard, Jillian did really well. She didn't think so because of the falling, but she did a lot better than I did when I was an athletic 17 year old. Now being a chubby 30 year old fart, I was struggling to stand up from the sitting position so it was a bit of a learning/relearning day for us both. We did end up going down a couple of the green slopes before we called it an evening. Later on we took a bus down the mountain to a place in the town center called Choppers. It was a nice little sports bar where I found it necessary to get a big ol' glass of Guiness. Afterwards we tried to go shopping but only came across a local's bar and a small grocery store, so we picked up a few snacks for the slopes and hotel room and then headed back up the mountain.
March 16:
Jillian's luck continued in the morning as she was given a prepaid lift ticket that had another two days left on it, saving us over $100. We ended up spending the majority of the day on the bunny slopes again b/c for some unknown reason, everything we had learned the day before had leaked out of our brains and onto our pillows as we slept. That afternoon, Jillian and I went to her dental convention's meet and greet where I was introduced to a fellow dentist, named Cindi (and her husband Bill), she had befriended during their morning meetings and this lovely fellow (in a bottle). It won my heart almost instantly... the rest of the evening is a blur.
Being Saturday, we had planned to make it our big day of snowboarding so we started out on what was one of the longer green slopes called the Pacifier. It turned out to be exhausting and aggravating as the majority of our time was spent falling down a rather large hill, so we took a break and went back to the "smaller" green slopes later that afternoon. Before we called it quits for the day, I actually went down my first blue slope (accidentally) of the trip.
We had originally hoped to have stayed up and partied a bit for St. Patrick's day and went to a local bar called Whiskey Jacks who was supposed to have an Irish folk music band playing around 9:30. It was about the time we sat down at the bar that we realized just how much a day of snowboarding had taken out of us, so we didn't make it long enough to hear any music. I wasn't really upset at all. We were both pretty exhausted.
March 18:
We did a lot of snowboarding. I foolishly went up to the top of one of the mountains and not halfway up the lift, a mini blizzard rolled in essentially making any object more than 3 feet in front of me invisible. After some very slow moving down the hill, the snow falling snow ceased and I gained just enough speed to crash violently and hit my head hard enough to convince me that my snowboarding day was over. We used Jilllian's $50 gift card at Buck T-4s and agreed that it wasn't that great. We slept.
March 19:
Jillian won another door prize. This time a $25 gift certificate to a souvenir shop nearby which vanished almost as quickly as he had received it. We had decided against buying another day of lift tickets based on our near physical inability to stand without aching. Instead we (and by we I mean Jillian) did some packing and then hit up the hot tub for several hours. Afterwards we got back in our snowboarding clothes to go make snow angels and a four foot snowman. That night we went back to the Cabin to enjoy our last dinner on the mountain.
March 20:
Flights are never exciting on your way back home, and such was especially the case this time. A few tornadoes had been moving through Texas and ended up rerouting our plane, putting us back in New Orleans around 10:30pm. To make matters worse, traffic just outside of the airport was at a stand-still due to road construction/cleaning/something... so we had to take a 30 min detour to get moving again.I was unable to stay awake in the car so thankfully Jillian was driving yet again. We ended up making it back to Daphne around 2am.
End of Trip. Enjoy the snowboarding video we made:
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