There's Hope After All

I have another chance to see NKOTB with my friends! Julie's company has loge seats and they offer them to employees in a raffle. She put her name in to win them and she'll find out next month.

I already took a look at flights and it's insane, but it would be worth it for all the fun with my friends. I hope she gets them!

The Birds

Would you believe there's a rainforest and a waterfall just south of Ventura Blvd. near our apartment? You go to George Clooney's house (how LA) and to the right of his tennis courts is a path. Shortly after you make the turn around the rear of his property, there's actually a city park looking sign that says Rainforest and points to the left. A rainforest in LA? Just past George's Dish satellite and last security camera, the path narrows.

We followed the path for a while - it wasn't well maintained. They attempted to put some wood steps on the steep hills, but they were wobbly and falling apart. It was better to take our chances walking on the scree beside them. Periodically, small lizards startled us as they jetted off the trail ahead. At least we didn't see any snakes. Oh, did I mention no one else was on this so-called rainforest hike...curious.

We were around 3/4 of a mile in when Ryan (who was in front) passed under a large group of trees. Turns out there was a giant flock of birds nesting in those trees and Ryan disrupted them. All the sudden, it was birdie mayhem. We ran past and stopped in a clearing to cope with the bird trauma. Then we looked ahead and saw all these low hanging bushes and trees over the curving path. I think it lead to Freddie Kruger's home. It was nice and shady, a perfect snake home. At that moment, I wished one of those emergency helicopters could come and lower a rope and lift us out of there. Ryan kept asking, "Should we turn around?" I kept saying, "Yes." Repeat this dialogue five more times until I just turned around and started going - I knew Ryan would follow. I wasn't about to hang out in Freddie's bird lair debating for 10 minutes.

We practically jogged the whole way back. I was never so happy to see George's house again. So is there really some Brazilian rainforest or Niagara Falls waterfall? You can go through that freaky hike yourself and let me know.

I could work for the DNC!

I guess you have to be in the right frame of mind to come to some realizations. Even with my sister's move to DC and all the talk leading up to it, I never considered it an option for us. Not until my friend Julie brought it up. How had I never thought about it? I immediately began doing some research.

One of the best pros to DC is that there are actually job possibilities for us. Can't say that for most of our other options, except for local news (yuck). DC not only has the local markets, but every network has DC bureaus, cable news, National Geographic and Discovery in Maryland. Not to mention the government related tv jobs and who knows what else. Wow, we could actually work in tv still!

Next, I looked up the location. Close to most of our college friends, my cousin outside of NJ and of course my sister (for the time being). It's also almost equal distance between my hometown and Ryan's; about a 6 hr drive.

And as the city goes, it's got everything we want. A large city that has sports and concerts and fun things to do. I'm told it's a big outdoorsy place with the Potomac river and lots of parks. Also told that it's not too far from nice beaches on the coast. And it's the east coast so it's close enough for lots of traveling and to see lots of friends. Did I mention that we could live in the burbs and finally buy a house? Oh, and no earthquakes!

As for cons, it's not Boulder and it's no where near CO. We're also told the weather is bad: extreme humidity (bad hair days) in the summer and very cold and icy (scary driving) in the winter.

Of course, DC has just been added to the list of places to research - we're a long way off from making any sort of decision. If anyone has advice for what life is like in the DC area, I'd love to hear it. But thanks, Julie, for opening my eyes!

Name That Tune

What was the number one song the day you were born? Check here.

Mine was: "Da Ya Think I'm Sexy?" by Rod Stewart!

Enjoying the Olympics

The Micheal Phelps relay win was a pretty big deal, but my favorite part so far is the little boy who marched with Yao Ming in the opening ceremony. How cute is this kid? And what an amazing story.

I Feel Like I'm 10 Again

We bought Mario Galaxy for the Wii. It's been pretty fun so far. I feel like a kid though - my parents would never let me have a nintendo so I could only play Mario Bros sporadically at some friend's houses. Which explains why I make Ryan do the parts that scare me. So far I've enjoyed the bee suit the most.

In other random news, we watched Knocked Up on Sunday. Decent movie - some very funny lines. It was a good no-brainer movie to watch on a Sunday night. We're going to see Wanted on Friday at the lot - I heard it's not the best, but it's with James McAvoy so who cares.

In tennis news, the city of Santa Monica requires community space be built in office parks. So my giant complex has tennis and basketball courts. Turns out the management company held a free tennis clinic for kids with Andre Agassi and Steffi Graf. Five and I went on our lunch break to check it out and it happened to be right when they were starting to autograph tennis balls. So we hopped in line and I got an autographed ball for my sister (she's a huge fan). At least it was something different to do at lunch.

CO Trip Report

By now, you've probably seen our CO pics. The trip was pretty amazing. It all started with the hot air balloon festival in Steamboat Springs. The pictures kinda say it all. We didn’t go up in a balloon, but I'm glad we didn’t because we wouldn't have been able to take most of the pictures. I kept saying when we live in CO we'll be able to come back every year and go up in a balloon. Then we had a great breakfast in SS before hitting the road to Boulder.

SS was a really cool mountain town. Everyone was very laid back and outdoorsy - which is true for everywhere we visited. It was over an hour from the main interstate and I can't imagine trying to go there for a weekend in the middle of winter. Which reminds me of an interesting thing we saw: On interstate 70, they periodically have big railroad crossing gates that can come down over the entire highway. So that means the snow can get so heavy that they have to close the interstate. And this happens on such a regular basis that they've installed gates. That's a serious amount of snow.

Boulder was great, stayed in a nice Marriott. The city is very college townish in parts. The main downtown area was the Ithaca Commons just bigger and more cosmopolitan. We ate at a great tapas place. I imagine if we lived there I'd want to go all the time. The flatirons and the park around them were pretty. Lots of people walking their cute labs. I could totally see us living there, just don't know what we'd do for work. It's about 45-60 minutes to Denver. In the summer it would be doable, but I imagine the winter would be a tough commute.

Rocky Mountain National Park was a lot of fun too. I got altitude sickness - we were doing a lot of hiking and it was a pretty high elevation. The 14 mile drive up the one lane dirt road was a little scary. Hello to our friend Tex and his family - hope you're enjoying your throw blanket from the gift shop! Again, the pictures sum up the park - it was beyond beautiful.

Then we went to Colorado Springs - an even nicer Marriott with a great view of Pike's Peak. Garden of the Gods was cool and Ryan got lunch at Sonic. Then we drove up Pike's Peak - kinda scary. I have a fear of cliffs if there's no railing. I had a minor breakdown at one point - the picture of that (not uploaded onto Kodak) is kinda humorous. There was a ranger station a few miles down from the top where they check your breaks. Our crappy dodge was in a low gear the whole time and still almost 200 degrees hotter than it should've been. The ranger made us stop for a bit till the breaks cooled (hot breaks fail) - lots of other people had to stop too. Then we packed up our stuff and headed to Denver. BTW - when in CO Springs, be very careful what neighborhood you enter when you're trying to turn around.

Denver was quick - a very nice JW Marriott with great views of downtown and the mountains. We had a nice massage the morning of Ryan's bday. In the afternoon, we met our friends at the airport and headed to a brewery for dinner and saw a Rockies game. Then we headed toward Keystone for the weekend, making a quick stop near Buffalo Bill's grave where I had a little incident in the parking lot. Sorry, Bill.

Keystone was nice - a total ski resort town. It was very quiet in the summer. The condo we stayed at was really nice - lots of space for all of us. Had a fun little trip past a guy with a shot gun to pick up the DQ ice cream cake and load up on condiments for our upcoming BBQs. Word to the wise, sometimes I'm right and the GPS is wrong. The fireworks over the lake were cool. It was just nice to all be together and hang out.

The rafting was Sunday. It was a ton of fun for all of us - I'd love to do it again. I'll never forget the picture we never got of Greg flopping around in the front of the boat after one rapid! I also don't think I'll forget the fowl BO/wet dog smell of the wetsuits we were in for 5+ hours. Sparky - remember waddling around with our wetsuits half off trying to get to the bathroom?!

There was one very disappointing part of the weekend: the lovely barn puzzle some people were so diligently putting together every moment of every day was never finished. What a darn shame. It really broke me up to have to rip it to pieces Monday morning. Stupid puzzle.

So there you have it - some highlights of our trip. Thanks to everyone for a great weekend in Keystone - can't wait to see you for our 09 trip.