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for January, 2005.
Weekend? What weekend?Posted In: Everyday life — January 23, 2005 @ 2:39 pm — PeterSo, this weekend was pretty busy due to some home banking system migration efforts I had to particpate in on Saturday. Everything has gone well so far. We will conclude our migration on Monday and then have a good feel for how this stage of the project went. This is the first major project I have partipated in and I am thrilled to have things go so well. Thankfully we have a great IT department at SunCorp that works well together to get these tasks done. I have been there for a little over a year now and am certain I made the right choice by accepting their job offer. Last night we wimped out on making dinner. Instead, we went to Damascus, a wonderful middle eastern resturant in south Denver. It was packed when we got there and we ended up taking a table right next to the entry door. Despite being cold every time somebody left or came in, we had a nice dinner and talked for quite a while afterwards. There is really only one thing we can have on the menu, but it sure is one tasty dish! We get the Veggie Combo, it comes with hummus, baba ganoush, fatoush, falafel, rice and pita. Oh, and it comes with one dolma. The presentation of the food is fabulous too. It is very colorful and arranged neatly on a large plate. After that we rented a movie, we got Mean Girls. That taps our $20 dollar gift card we got for xmas, so back to getting movies from the library. I though Mean Girls looked dumb from the cover, but I guess you can’t judge a movie by its cover, can you… The movie was funny and I drifted away from my computer to watch the rest of it with Stephanie. Well, it is 60+ degrees out today and we need to get out there an enjoy it. Iris needs some exercise, so a trip to the dog park is in order. I might head up to the rinks in Westminster to get some hockey practice in. Ah, what a beautiful day! http://www.weather.com/weather/local/80220 
Best Vegan PancakesPosted In: Food — January 22, 2005 @ 1:14 am — PeterStephanie has been asking for pancakes for weeks now. I finally got around to making a batch last weekend. They came out much better than the reciple I was using before. 1 cup whole wheat flour 1. In a food processor or in a large bowl, combine the whole wheat flour, white flour, wheat germ or oats, baking powder, baking soda, cane sugar, and salt. Run the processor to mix well. Cut the margarine into small pieces with a knife, and add the margarine to the processor bowl. Either run the processor in short spurts or cut with a pastry cutter or fork until the mixture has a sand-like consistency. If you’ve used a food processor, transfer the mixture to a large bowl.
Sad night…Posted In: Everyday life — January 19, 2005 @ 11:21 pm — PeterTonight Stephanie and I visited three sports stores looking for some hockey equipment. I really wish I didn’t insist on going to the last store, because when we got home, we saw our neighbor’s house getting robbed. As we pulled up, we noticed a strange car parked outside. I figured it was our neighbor’s brother, who she said would be checking in on the house while she was away. Stephanie noticed a few black men running around the house. As we pulled into our driveway, they started coming out of the house and as we pulled into the garage they were fleeing for their car. We hurried and closed the garage door behind us to avoid a confrontation with these guys. I was pretty freaked out and called 911. It took about 20 minutes for the cops to show up. We circled the property with the cops for a while, telling them all the details we could remember. The problem was glaringly obvious, our neighbor does not leave any lights on and it was quite apparent nobody was home. After a while longer, our neighbor’s brother arrived and he and the police went inside. He called me later to let me know that not much was done to the inside of the house. We must have came home before they had much time to ransack the house. Also, the police will be returning in the morning to lift some prints off the window the thugs entered through. I hope there is enough to match it to someone. I imagine that people breaking into homes have passed through the police system before and their prints should be on file… So, how do we return to normal? Seeing this was pretty traumatic. One of our biggest fears is having our home broken into. We will probably be dormant for a while, afraid to leave our home for any long period of time. Although we are very careful with regards to home security, we just don’t feel safe right now. I realize this kind of things comes with living in a city, but I am not use to it yet. It has only been a little over a year for us and we are somewhat put off by the crime that has been happening in our “good neighborhood”. I guess all we can do is further secure our home and not do stupid things like leaving the house completely dark and empty looking. Soon enough we will get our tax return and have the last remaining security door installed. Ugh, this is so frustrating… feeling so helpless in your own home..
Scrapbooking fun!Posted In: Everyday life — January 18, 2005 @ 10:54 pm — PeterTonight Stephanie and I went to an introductory scrapbooking session and it was tons of fun! For the first hour or so we were given a presentation on all the various types of materials and methods used in scrapbooking. I had no idea it was so complicated. The possiblities for customizing and jazzing up photos seem endless. The next hour was spent building a page for a scrapbook. We each brough six pictures of of a similar topic. Stephanie chose pictures of Iris and I chose pictures from our Europe trip. At first I was stumped, staring at the pictures, sheets of paper, and supplies. I narrowed the six pictures down to three… There simply was not enough room on the page for the large photo of Notre Dame, fountains, etc. Instead, I choose a picture of me laying infront of the Eiffel Tower, me in a random Parisian street holding a baguette, and Stephanie playing with a lonely kitten. The finished product is here, albeit a bit fuzzy… The background is plain white cardstock with a travel theme paper glued on top. The luggage tag reads:” We stumbled upon this lonely kitten while wandering the streets of Paris… Stephanie takes a moment to provide some entertainment.” Stephanie used some super cute pictures of Iris and did some fancy detail work. She used paper tearing techniques, photo matting, die-cutting and stickers. The finished product is here. I love how it turned out, it is going to be a great title page to our Iris scrapbook. In case you can’t read the text she wrote, it says: ” Iris came to us late one night, entering our lives with a phone call. We were asked to foster her FOR JUST ONE WEEKEND. That weekend became two, four, ten, forty, forever… We love our little girl + look forward to a life of mischief, snuggles, and love.”
Busy bee!Posted In: Everyday life — @ 6:52 am — PeterI have a busy day ahead of me after this nice long three day weekend… Last night I had class and scurried around until the last minute trying to complete the review questions from the back of the textbook chapter. This is such an arduous task. None of the questions require any critical thinking or analysis, just regurgitation of terms and concepts. Thankfully the professor recognized this too and canceled the review question assignments for the rest of the course. We still have to respond to the case study at the end of each chapter, but that is a much more interesting assignment. When I get to work today, I have to quickly branch some code in the CVS repository. There is no way I can get the Struts integration working well enough to push it out into production today. So, I will have to carefully wrap up the rest of the code modifications and work on the Struts portion as time permits. I also have that pesky .NET app that needs attention. I am falling a bit behind, but I work best in this type of situation. I am sure after the 22nd I will get caught up. Did I mention that I have to work this coming weekend? A large batch of our customers will be migrating from a remote hosting facility to our in house systems. I have been coordinating this effort from the technical perspective and am required to work over the weekend to ensure things go smoothly. Coworkers are quite apologetic about it, thinking it is a huge inconvenience, but not at all. I have seen other IT professionals expected to work weekends regularly, along with 80 hour weeks. I have never been expected to work like that, so the occasional weekend session is no problem at all. I have been preparing for this for weeks and everything appears to be ready. Tonight Stephanie and I will be attending a scrapbooking class. I am quite excited about it! We need to bring six pictures of something along with us. I picked our trip to Europe, specifically Paris. I really wanted to have pictures that have both Stephanie and I in them. Scrapbooking seems fun, we’ll see what comes of it after our introductory session tonight. I really like the idea of having several scrapbooks on our bookshelf. When talking to people about our experiences, it would be nice to have a book of photos to look at. Dragging out a shoebox of pictures is never convenient, so I welcome this alternative way to preserve our memories. More details on this later… I ought to get going to work now… « Previous Entries Next Entries » |
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