Enthusiasm

So there goes my posting 3 times a week blown right out of the water. Missed 2 whole weeks of blogging due to my vacation.

We went on a big hiking, fishing, photo safari, camping trip for my birthday and since then we’ve been playing catch up. All the while the guild has not been doing well and I’ve been struggling to get us back on our feet. It’s been going ok, just not the sunshine and rainbows I had hoped for. Aric and Amanda ended up leaving on me which ended up being a pretty devastating blow to our raid force.

Anyhow the highlight of the month definitely was our trip and sadly so much happened including a 3 mile hike through the blue basin, catching 18 fish, and generally having an amazing time… I just am having a hard time with blogging about it all after our vacations. So one idea I had was that on future trips I would blog every night with the digital video camera and post those blog postings as video blogs when I get back. I think that approach would definitely keep things moving so that way I don’t so easily fall off the horse when I go on vacation. In general I’m going to try to include more videos in my blog. I’ve been getting a ton of high definition video in the last year since we got the video camera and I’d love to share them with everyone.

Day 1

Day 2

Day 3

Day 4

Day 5

Sorry, not able to blog today, this is pre-scheduled post. I’m off in nature away from the internetz.

This morning we leave for our vacation. Debt free, car packed, ready to go.

We’ll be leaving a little later than planned, but it should be a fun ride and even more fun setting up our tent for the first time in a while. Will not be blogging on Monday, but will be making a large blog post on Wednesday.

This weekend we’re going on a trip to Fort Steven’s state park. Camping, fishing, hiking, geocaching, sight-seeing, and of course relaxation. It’ll be a nice chance of pace since half the trip we will be in nature, and half the trip we will be in a luxurious hotel on the pier. To help plan for the trip, tonight I wrote a pretty cool LINQ to XML application which parses GPX files and produces an grid output of cache information which I then copy and paste into excel. I’m pretty excited about it because it’ll make prep work for going geocaching lightning fast. Who knows, maybe I might perfect the application, add more features, and then sell the thing.

Thanks to a large tax return from getting married, buying a house, making home improvements, and finishing school…

My Mastercard – empty
Kerrie’s Mastercard – empty
Kerrie’s Business Credit – empty
American Express – empty
My prius loan – paid

What’s left? House (5%), windows (home improvement loan to be refinanced and consolidated), Kerrie and my student loans(5-6%), and Kerrie’s Prius (4%) which is at a lower interest than the house. All this right on time for Kerrie and my 1 year anniversary. Oh and I’d like to thank Mark Nortman of Ameriprise and David Bixel of MB Tax Pros for their wonderful financial planning and tax preparation services.

On top of that, my work is finally going to be adjusting me to a REASONABLE rate June 1st (though they still have work to do and they know it) and we have a comfortable amount of money in savings left over from paying off debts. Furthermore, I will be getting several stock vestings this month which is going to allow us to buy a Porta-Bote (www.porta-bote.com). These things are amazing and will not only be fun for us, but will add to my recent re-addiction into mastering the art of fishing. We have a trip planned for next weekend, then the weekend after I plan on going fishing with Dan in central Oregon, then the week after we plan on ordering the boat, beginning of June I’ll be attending a fly fishing class at Blue Lake and from there it’s all gravy.

Good times are ahead of us. I think while this last year was pretty fast paced, stressful, and a roller coaster, I think in the coming years will be good to us and we can focus on doing well at our careers, advancing slowly in the companies that we’re now pretty happy with, and progressing through our list of things we want to enjoy / accomplish together.

Placeholder:

Friday drive in the storming rain
Friday ceremony
“Always Ready”
Saturday, Hurricane Ridge and the drive there
Sunday, Mt. Rainier, Mt. St. Helens, Packwood (jo jo’s), Hood River, Mt. Hood, Timberline Lodge, homeward bound

It has been a really busy this month, insanely busy even for my standards. Everything from fishing trips, trying to recover the guild, getting setup for my final term of college while still making A’s and staying focused on the classes I’m taking now, making an offer on the house we’ve been renting, getting turned down by the home owner (she’s crazy I tell you), and now we’ve made an offer on a different house after looking at several with a realtor. All this while trying to stay focused at work, delivering a product release on time, feature complete, with over 100 bug fixes. Everything is moving at the speed of light although to be honest, there’s nothing like shining in the face of a daunting task.

I don’t normally blog while at work, but taking the time to just quickly compose in written form the level of insanity my life is right now.

Jersey shore, lighthouse, tradition, huge Philly airport, nice flight to MSP, nice Minniapolis airport, long flight to Portland, XNA brainstorming, drunk / meth head on the plane, getting home thanks to Dad, resting.

Historic villages, frozen custard, family all together including Kerrie’s Mom (minus Brian), pictures, good byes.