Chicago

Published on by Casey Category: Travel, Work

Hi everyone, I’m back from Chicago!  Yea!  After getting up before the sun on Friday to make sure I had pleanty of time before my flight, I get to the airport and discover that it was delayed 90 minutes resulting from the massive thunderstorm that flooded the area the night before.  One of my co-workers was supposed to fly out on Thursday and ended up on my morning flight.  That made sitting around at the airport more enjoyable.  Additionally, she had a rental car so now I had an easier way to get to the hotel!  Or so I thought.

 We landed around 1:20pm local time.  It took an hour to pick-up the rental because no one at Alamo had their head screwed on straight.  Oy!  Then we got lost, got lunch and got lost again.  It took 2 hours to find the hotel!  We ended up finding Toyota Park and doubling back from there with the directions we had.  Google maps is not the best map source for Chicago, I can tell you that much.  By the time my co-worker dropped me off, my boss had already made it back to the hotel from the Board meeting, which was held downtown.  I was at the hotel for about 30 minutes before my boss and I headed to Cominsky Park (US Cellular Park) to watch the Red Sox play the White Sox (the Red Sox kicked Chicago’s butt 10-1).  Did I mention I had a migrane?  No?  Well I did, so most of the night I spent staring aimlessly down at the field.  The game was fun though.  All of Munster and USA Rugby were in attendance.  After the game, it was back to the hotel (an hour away) and I was in bed by midnight. 

Nigel (CEO) had called me right after I got into the hotel the 1st time and said he wanted me downtown for the Congress meeting at 8am.  That meant leaving the hotel at 7…ok, I’ll get up early.  Well, that was true.  Because of the migrane and I think because I only ate lunch on Friday, I was up every 10 minutes throughout the night feeling sick.  It sucked.  My boss had set the alarm for us to get up at 5:45, but when she was setting the alarm she accidentally pushed the hour up on the time, so our 5:45 alarm was actually at 4:45 (or 3:45 Mountain Time).  We just decided to stay up.  It was raining too that morning, so I got to drive the rental (a convertable PT Cruiser — that’s another story) into downtown in the rain.  Yes!!!  So excited about that!

I was able to get to the building (on the river) downtown by 8:20.  Not too shabby, especially since I made several wrong turns in the city.  Several of us driving around Chicago over the weekend became Queens of Illegal U-Turns.  Lol!  I was one of them.  Apparently in Illinois, it is illegal to make a U-Turn unless it is posted that you may do so.  The meeting went well with the Congress & Board in attendance and I was able to escape around 5:00pm.  I headed back to the hotel in the rental, my boss stayed with the Congress/Board for dinner and to ensure they didn’t miss the bus to take them back to the hotel.  I then went to dinner with two good friends from CA that moved to Chicago 2 years ago.  Hung out with them for a bit then it was off to bed…this time around 11:00.

Sunday was game day.  We had to be at Toyota Park by 6:45am, so it was another early morning.  That makes three in a row with one night of decent sleep.  Oy!  Funny story from Sunday…my boss and I had to make a water run to buy 20 cases of Aquafina (the stadium sells Aquafina, so that’s what we brought in).  We bought out a CVS and most of a Walgreens.  As were pushing the carts to the car (which was parked in front of the store) my boss’s makes a weird noise and stops.  We were both confused, thinking she ran over something, but there was nothing under the cart.  Ok…whatever…we continue on…kinda.  I push my cart and after a couple of inches it too stops.  Those stupid magnetic wheel locking devices buried in the parking lot were behind our car…so even though we were parked right in front of the store, we couldn’t get the carts to the SUV.  We tried to move the carts away from the magnetic line area, but even that didn’t unlock the tires, so we hauled the 20 cases to the SUV.  Oy!  Once everything was loaded we didn’t want to leave the carts stuck in the lane and behind other cars so we literally dragged them to the front of the store.  I think maybe one wheel was working on my cart.  It was very funny, but perhaps you needed to be there.

The match with Munster on Sunday was great fun to watch…even though we lost in the 2nd half of the game.  Boo!  We were doing well too!  Almost scored on a try but the player dropped the ball as he was touching it down.  Our only scores were from rugby’s equivalent to a field goal.  The final score was 10-6 Munster.  After the game Jen and I didn’t stick around long, we didn’t want to get lost and miss our flight.  We didn’t.  Landed in Denver around 9:30, then Noah and I took my boss home, went back to our house and I then I was out.  Got up at 7:00 this morning, into the office by 8:10 and was the first one here.  I think there are 4 of us total in the office right now (CEO, CFO, me and someone down else…probably NCAA).  Anyway, I’m pooped and finding it had to stay awake, despite my Red Bull & Coke loaded with caffine.  Regardless it was a long, quick and exhausting weekend but a lot of fun!

Sorry, no pictures or souveniers (unless you count my Munster flag that a nice Irish man that works for Munster gave to me, or my credential that allowed me to wander anywhere around Toyota Park), there just wasn’t any time.

Planning…

Published on by Casey Category: Travel

California here we come…we’re flying to SoCal for a wedding in October.  We will get in midday on the 12th and fly back to CO midday on the 16th.

We’re also going to head out to SoCal again for Turkey Day.  The tentative plan is to drive out Tuesday night and come back the following Sunday.  As this is a longer stay we will be bringing the pup with us and plan on staying with Noah’s parent’s in Ojai.  My parent’s house will be too crowded with relatives coming in for the holiday (2 aunts, 1 uncle, 1 cousin-in-law, and 1 cousin, plus 3 Joneses and 2 Baileys).

If you want to see us while we’re in the area, let me know so we can try to work something out.

Breaking News!

Published on by Casey Category: Travel, Work

It’s final now.  I spoke with my boss and with the CEO in regards to the verdict on France.  It has been decided that I will remain at the National Office during the World Cup to ensure it does not fall apart while 1/2 the staff is in Europe. 

Promotion!

Published on by Casey Category: Work

When we got back from vacation (pictures to be posted soon) Noah was given a promotion & a raise!  He went from being a Crew Chief on a sanding crew to being the Bid Estimator.  Now, Noah drives around all day, in a company car, going from house to house telling customers what it would cost to have floors installed/repaired/upgraded, etc.  Yea!

Our (involuntary) experience as a storm chasers

Published on by Casey Category: Colorado, Weather

This will probably come out very long when written, but it was quite an experience…

Tuesday nights we play softball in Boulder. After our game (in which we kicked major butt by winning 19-2) Noah and I hung around for quite a while afterwards talking with Stanley & Melina. While chatting, Melina notices so lightening off in the distance. No big deal, that happens all the time around here. We continue to talk. We all notice a few more flashes, count the distance between the flash and the thunder and determine the storm is about 8-10 miles away. We continue to stand around and gab. Meanwhile, the storm moves closer, 6 miles, 4 miles, 2 miles…you get the picture. Then, without warning, it’s ontop of us. Well, not really without warning, we did know it was getting closer. A huge bolt of lightening blasts to the ground about 1 miles from us, followed by a couple more really close blots and extremely angry thunder. The ump calls the game that’s going on behind us in the 3rd inning. We decide at that point that we should all go home.

The four of us start walking towards our respective vehicles as the rain starts to fall in drops the size of quarters. We walk a little faster. By the time we were to the parking lot it was almost a torrential downpour. Thankfully, I had our keys handy and we jumped in the car while hearing Melina yell to Stan, “Where are the keys?!” Poor guys. We got in the car right before the hail started to fall. Woo! Being caught outside in a hailstorm is NOT fun. We head off towards home. Neither us or the other couple live in Boulder. We live about 15 miles away and Stan & Melina are probably around 30. Of course the road we take goes through ranches and has no street lights (well, all the roads that go to Lafayette from Boulder are like that).

As I’m driving the rain is coming down in sheets intermixed with hail. Thankfully the hail was small, hard, but small, so no damage done to the car. The lightening was striking the ground all around us. It’s a good thing that being in a car is one of the safest places you can be during such a storm. Because of the snow, the roads do not have raised reflectors, but instead use a semi-reflective paint. However, the rain was so thick and blowing around us probably at like 50 mph that it was EXTREMELY hard to see the lines, Noah helped as my navigator in that respect. The drive home, I think, was the longest in history! I was so tense while driving, trying to see where I was going and not drive off the road or into another vehicle. Using highbeams was not an option due to the intensity of the rain, they created too much glare. So, one good thing I have to say for the lightening was that it was very productive and illuminating the road in an eerie blue blast of light. Not comforting mind you when you see it hit the ground in the field on the other side of the road. When we finally made it home the storm was still directly over us, this HUGE blob of red (if you know radar readings you understand the RED).

There was so much rain our gutters could not handle the massive influx of water. Granted, I’m sure there is a mass amount of cotton fuzz in the gutters too, but it was A LOT of rain. We made it inside (thank goodness we always park in the garage!) and I checked the rain gage. By the time the storm was over we had almost 1-inch of rain! Oy! Of course, anytime we come home Lava needs to go out, but she would not go outside because the sounds of the storm were too frightening for her. It doesn’t bother her when she’s inside, but with the door open she kind of freaked. We wanted her to just pee on the patio and we’d clean it up, but she wouldn’t even go out there. Finally Noah got her to go outside and get soaked while he stood under an umbrella. I stayed inside to unwind from the oober stressful drive.

The rain finally let up but the intense lightening and thunder stuck around for quite a while. Normally all those really fun storms bypass Lafayette by traveling to the North or South or even developing East of us, but this blob formed over Boulder as it came over the mountains and headed South East…towards Lafayette…the same direction we were headed. Oy! What an experience! What a night!