Tree Huntin'

In Cedar we don't go out and buy Christmas trees like the city folk. No sir, we go Tree Huntin'. Tree Huntin' is when you buy a $5 tag from the city, drive out into the cold and treacherous mountains with nothing more than your bold spirit and a rusty saw and cut your own tree down, ala Clark W. Griswold. You then "tag" the tree, take it home and put it on display as though it were a stuffed bear.

Sorry about the bad pic. This is us with our friends the Sidwells after we bagged our wild tree. We got it from a camp ground, which I am pretty sure was illegal. Oh well, teach them to put better directions on that map of theirs.

It's official...

Two lines means baby.

Just got clearance from the committee to release this: We're prego. Well, really we're not, just my wife is, but it's a teamwork sort of thing you see.

I'm really excited. It's been a little tough as she's not always her usual cheerful self and spends considerable amounts of time praying to the porcelain god. As a guy I want to just make everything better. It's hard to be in a situation where you can't.

It's amazing to look at her and think, 'Wow, right now my wife is making a person. Have I done anything productive today?' I made a little snowman a couple days ago, but it's just not the same...

Our due date will probably be late July or early August, although if we follow recent familial trends we can expect it sometime in April.

St. George Triathlon

So I've decided to enter a triathlon. The St. George Triathlon takes place May 13th, 2006 at Sand Hollow State Park. Yessir, 700 meters of vigorous swimming immediately followed by 10 miles of mountain biking, 3.2 miles of running, and, from what I hear, 10 minutes of freestyle puking. Needless to say, I'm very excited and have been training for about a week and a half. This should be interesting for 3 reasons:

1. I despise running as a form of exercise;
2. I pretty much taught myself how to swim and therefore have no technique (my stroke of preference happens to be the "underwater torpedo", which I made up); and
3. Every time I've started training for a relatively large athletic event I inevitably get injured. Sprained ankles, bad knees, debilitating diarrhea, you name it. Well, maybe not diarrhea, but you get the picture.

The training schedule isn't half bad though. I was worried I would have to run 2-3 hours a day and start rinsing my cottage cheese (Sorro should get that reference), but really it's just about half hour a day. I can do that.

So of course I'm excited about it now, but the real test will be to see if I keep it up once the initial excitement wears off. Just like blogging...

Back Home...

Ahhh... It's good to be home again. This week was the end of Regional Meetings. Tuesday I was in Vegas and Wednesday was Phoenix. Here are some pics:

In Phoenix we stayed at the Arizona Golf Resort, a beast of a nice place full of sun, golf, and old people.

Here's the front of my room. A boring pic, I know.

Here's the backyard though, a nice green golf course.

More golf. Don't have any pics of Vegas, the place is no longer a novelty to me and I don't find it picture-worthy. If you're immensely disappointed about this and aching for some candid, high quality pics of Vegas (such as the ones of Phoenix I have displayed here), then you can visit the great state of Nevada's webpage. I'm not even going to bother getting you a link for that.

It's good to be back. I find I appreciate Cedar City a lot more when I leave it every once in a while. I also came home to some pretty big news, though it hasn't been cleared for publication on the blog yet. Here's a hint though: akachan.

I'm in Denver

Apparently La Quinta has had a problem with eggs exploding in the microwave and decapitating hapless customers. "We're warning you, do NOT microwave the egg for more than 10 seconds! You wanna see what happened to the last guy?!"

It's Friday morning. Last day of Regional Meetings (for this week anyway). I'm excited to get back home. I've had loads of fun, but this trip reminds me of the movie Groundhog Day-- go to meeting, give little spill on Employee Management, get on a plane, check into a random hotel, go eat dinner around 9:00PM, watch an NBA game, call my wife, sleep, alarm goes off around 7:00 AM playing festive mexican music that somehow gets incorporated into my dreams, eat semi-good continental breakfast, then start the cycle all over again. Don't get me wrong--this trip has been loads of fun, but I wouldn't want to do this anymore than once every 4 months or so. Consequently, I can't wait to get back home.

Here's a couple quick pics of Denver. As you can see Denver is actually about 200 miles away, which is curious considering our hotel is next to the Denver Airport. As far as I can tell the airport is actually located in Wyoming.

See that distant, white dot? That's the start of Denver. You can't see it very well in this pic, but the entire city is behind it, and the Rocky Mountains are behind that. I was wrong about Wyoming, I think we're actually in Nebraska.

Me in front of the fabulous La Quinta Inn, Denver Airport. Oddly enough our Salt Lake hotel was a La Quinta, and my room is almost identical to the one I had there, which only adds to the eerie Groundhog Day feeling.

It's a pity we're not closer to the city, I'm a big fan of Denver. Went to a U2 concert here with some buddies back in aught-1, one of the best road trips I've ever been on. I also have another brother that lives here, Gid, but I don't think we'll have time to meet up.

That's all. Next update will be from good old Cedar City! Peace Out.

Salt Lake City

Yesterday we were in Salt Lake. Got nothing to say about Salt Lake. Here's some cool pics from the plane though.

Here's the company plane. Not flying commercial is the best: No delays, no demonstration of how to buckle your seatbelt, no waiting 45 minutes in a security line and having to take half your clothes off.

I'm kind of bummed that this one didn't turn out better. This is the Dallas Mavericks private plane, owned by the benefactor Mark Cuban himself. Our plane pulled up and parked right next to it. They were in town to play the Jazz. Jazz won.

Here's the inside of the plane. It seats about 10 people. The woman giving the unsuspecting "oh crap, someone's about to take a picture" face is Joanne, our new HR Director.

I'm in Portland

Yep, that's pretty much what I thought this place would look like.

Last night we flew into Portland. I'm excited to be here, I've always wanted to see the Pacific Northwest (Oregon or Washington) and this has been my first chance. I guess I came to Oregon once when I was a little kid, but that doesn't count because all I probably cared about was whether or not my dad was going to buy me candy. Anyways, we got here around 7:30 PM and it was too dark to see anything, but the air was cool and it smelled like camping.

I also have a brother that lives here, Adam. I called him up and he met us at a steakhouse downtown. We don't see each other or talk very often, so it was really good to see him. He moved up here with some friends just to get a change of scenery.

That was last night. Now it is morning and I'm getting my first look at Portland. I went jogging, here's some pics:

Cool houses. For some reason this place reminds me of "The Goonies"

While in Portland, participants of Regional Meetings will stay at the fabulous Windgate Inn. Amenities include a workout room, heated indoor pool, full breakfast bar, and B.O. free rooms and sheets.

That's pretty much the most ducks I've ever seen at one time.

The Cord

See. Here's the cord I was talking about. You thought I was lying didn't you?

I'm excited it's here, that means I can update much more frequently.