How Much Is Your Car Worth?
On yahoo.com, there is a featured article called “How much is Your Car Worth?”
I tried it out imputing the Festiva’s information…
WOW
RubyConf
I’m going to RubyConf …whoooohooooo!!!!
Yes….I think my level of excitement over this definitely confirms the fact that I am a geek.
Saturday
This weekend our friends, Vash and Ivana, invited us to go downtown with them to the Field Mueum. The museum is featuring the King Tut exhibit. It has been so well received that it has been sold out everyday including the day we went, but we heard that if you go there, you may be able to buy a ticket and get in…unfortunately that wasn’t the case. However, we did get a picture outside the museum in front of the poster, so it sorda looks like we went.
We ended up spending the afternoon at Navy Pier. There were a ton of old boats on display that were pretty cool. We ate dinner at Smith and Wollensky which was incredible. Thomas’s prime rib was as big as his plate and a few inches thick. He couldn’t even finish it. We all shared the banana split which is actually made to feed 4! It was so delicious. We highly recommend this restaurant!
Portland
Last week, my boss and I went to Portland, Oregon, for the 2006 CMSS Board of Directors Retreat. The Board meets face-to-face once a year, typically in the summer months. The location of the meeting changes from year to year. This year it was at the RiverPlace Hotel in Portland. The hotel was located along the Wilmette River. We took a dinner cruise on the Portland Spirit down the river. The pictures below were taken that evening.
Me with our organization’s President-Elect, Dr. Berkowitz.
Above: The CMSS 2006 Board of Directors and their spouses.
My really good friend, Jennifer (Kramer) Boness, and her mom took a little road trip from Eastern Washington to meet me on the last night of our retreat. She is formally from Bottineau, ND, but her family moved after her fourth grade year. Every few years we usually end up seeing each other. It is always so much fun to get together with her and her family. We went to dinner at the VQ…quite the experience…let’s just say we had heard the restaurant was casual and had a little bit of everything, so we were expecting something along the lines of an Applebees…much to our surprise the restuarant was quite lovely…but, only had about 15 VERY unique items on the menu… I went with one of the more tame choices, the Duck Confit…those of you who know me, realize that was a big step outside the norm :-)
Spending time with Jennifer and Vicki was definitely the highlight of my trip!
The ol' Fest Does It Again...
I bought a treadmill 3 years ago. I used it a lot for the first 9 months when we were living in Tucson…then not so much. We brought it with us to Kansas City with high hopes of using it again but that turned out to be wishful thinking…it was lucky enough to make the move once again to Lake Forest where it’s main use has been collecting dust. So I decided it was time to let it go. I tried to give it away, asked the condo association if they would like it in the “exercise room” they never got back to me, so we decided to dispose of it at the city dump.
You would think this would be an easy task, but believe me, it was NOT! First of all, being we live in a condo we have to abide by certain rules that the condo association has in place. One of those rules is no moving (large) items in or out on Sundays. Guess what day it is when this idea of ours transpired…yep, Sunday. We knew we were going to have to be sneaky…which proved difficult being we had a massive treadmill to haul out. But we were determined…so we quietly pulled the treadmill down the building hallways. I tried to help as much as possible, but Thomas practically single-handedly half carried, half pushed and kicked this machine all by himself. During this time we managed to avoid any contact with the other residents…until we started to hear someone’s door opening, so we hurried as fast as possible to the elevator and Thomas nearly broke his toe trying to jimmy this treadmill in and we quick pushed the button and got to the main floor. Thomas is now sweating like crazy and we still have to get in out of the main lobby and into my car…yes…the Festiva.
Now the hard part begins. How many of you think it is possible to fit a full size treadmill into the back of a Festiva? Well, we weren’t too sure either, but by now this treadmill was going to fit in that car no matter what we had to do. It took a while, and some more of Thomas’s sweat, but we managed to manuver this thing in and that’s not all…we also stacked an old microwave that we have had sitting around the house on top of it too! The front seats had to be pushed so far forward in order for this to fit that it made it nearly impossible to drive. The only problem was the back hatch wouldn’t close. So we tried attaching the cord of the microwave to the latch on the hatch of the car. It looked like it would work. Now, I didn’t feel very safe driving, so Thomas jumped at the chance to take the wheel. He wanted to see just how uncomfortable he could be. So he wedged himself in the seat as you can see below:
I followed him in the other car. We get about 2 blocks and the cord comes loose and the hatch flies open! I am dying. We pull over and he goes back to try and figure out something else to attach to the latch. I had a windshield protector thing, that you put up in your car when you park it to keep the sunlight out, well it had an elastic band around it to hold it together when you aren’t using it…that was underneath the treadmill…he hooked the elastic around the latch and gave me the thumbs up. I was so nervous but couldn’t stop laughing. It was the funniest site ever! I was just waiting for the hatch to fly open and the treadmill along with the microwave to come barreling out on the street, and every little bump in the road the hatch seemed to open up a little bit more. I was a wreck!
But long story short we made it to the dump and the treadmill is history. The ol’Festiva comes through again!
Animal Conservation Ads...
Here are a few of the images for an endangered species campaign in Argentina…I think they are hilarious….definitely head turners…..
PGA Tournament
The 88th PGA Tournament was held in Medina, IL, which is about 45 minutes from where we live. My parents had tickets to the tournament for Thursday and Friday. They said it was awesome and the course was unbelievable. Unfortunately, no cameras were allowed in the tournament so we don’t have any pictures to post.
They left today to go back to ND. It was great to see them as always.
(No, my dad isn’t wearing socks)
A Special Tribute to Casper Koble
Today is my Grandpa Koble’s funeral. He passed away Friday morning after a long battle with various illnesses that kept him in and out of the hospital for many months. Thomas and I were not able to make it back to the funeral in Rugby, but my grandma is in our thoughts and prayers today. I loved my Grandpa very much and I am glad he is in heaven now watching over everyone. I will always remember his sense of humor and fun-loving personality. May he rest in peace.