The Gee Spot

Wells State Park…

August 22, 2008 · 1 Comment

I finally got my butt out of bed and did something healthy on the road. A quick web search and it was discovered that Wells State Park was less than five miles from the hotel. So the alarm went off at 6:00 am and I was up and at ‘em.

First and foremost living South has softened me to the brisk New England mornings, but once the shivering subsided the walk was pretty enjoyable. I was able to scoot around Mill Pond Trail and then up to Carpenter’s Rock. Definitely enough to get the heart pumping, it was early enough that no one could hear me wheezing.

The view was pretty spectacular. Not the highest of peaks, but I could see across the valley and it was a clear crisp morning with plenty of sunshine. Short lived I had to hussle back down the hill and drag myself to work.

A link to the trail map: Download printable version (pdf).

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Walking Triad Park…

November 17, 2007 · Leave a Comment

11-17-2007 2-36-29 PMWe headed out to Triad Park to give Fancee some exercise and look for a geocache in the area. We loaded the coordinates for “Puzzled? – Art Of Sketcher Series” into the GPS and headed off. We hiked around the main loop a bit and the coordinates lead us off into a stand of pines. Mommy stayed behind with the d-o-gg while the jmonsters and Daddy took a look. We searched for about 15 minutes, with no luck. We headed back to finish our walk and stopped off at the County Line Cache, and made a quick find. The find is a little suspect, because we have found this geocache before with the Arachnuts last year around Thanksgiving time. The jmonsters denied ever finding this and even after showing them pictures they are skeptical that we were ever in the area. So it was like finding it all over again.

11-17-2007 2-54-25 PMAfter trading some trinkets, and a final rolling of the eyes by Mommy we were off. We finished the loop and found the ravine. We had to take a little time to climb in and out and this made for a great photo op. The leaves were a bit past prime, but the colors were still pretty brilliant. We spent some time goofing on the hill and Fancee even behaved long enough to get her picture taking.

We had a slight mishap and lost the lens cover to the camera in a sea of leaves. After some searching and helping from the jmonsters, kicking leaves all over we were able to locate it, and make for the van. Not sure what Mommy thinks about frolicking in the woods with the jmonsters, but the “boys” had a good time.

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A day in Copenhagen…

March 10, 2007 · Leave a Comment

3-15-2007 6-55-29Today was a beautiful day in Copenhagen, much better weather than we have had so far. The temps were in the 40’s and the sun was shinning, so no complaints here. We started with breakfast, European breakfasts rule because you can have a ham sandwich, and the coffee is fantastic. We asked the concierge where the tourists go, and it turns out he was from Niagara Falls, it truly is a small world. He gave us a map and told us some points of interest that we had to see.

We started walking, and we walked a lot today, my dogs were barking by the time we made it back to the hotel. We headed down past the Tivoli, towards the canals. The canals had fishing boats docked along and the water was crystal clear. Row houses flanked either side and it looked just like the puzzle we had put together over the Holiday break. We then headed to Christian VII’s Palace and watched the changing of the guard. The guards looked like the ones in London, but they didn’t act like them. They looked around and smiled at the tourists taking photos. Other than the bearskin hats, they had nothing else in common.

Next we headed to the Citadel, which still looked somewhat active. We saw the statue of the Little Mermaid, and on the way saw where Hans Christian Anderson lived. There was a beautiful park there full of canals, and we were able to hike around for a while. We headed up towards the old windmill, but didn’t see any tulips coming up yet.

We took a break and had some lunch, a club sandwich and a couple of Carlsbergs. After lunch we did a little shopping. The kids were taking care of in Sweden when we ran into that big toy store, but wives need some Danish wares as well. We made out pretty well, considering that there are about ten million stores in the city.

Next it was off to the Rundetaarn, a large tower that you can climb to the top. It was a large spiral incline with stairs at the very top. The last set of stairs was a spiral with hardly enough room for one person to go up or down. It was funny because you had to take turns with a group of people headed up and a group of people headed down. It seems like it would be a big bottleneck, but it worked pretty well. At the top you could see just how big Copenhagen is. We snapped a couple of photos with our single shoot cameras we bought in Sweden.

3-15-2007 6-55-22 AMAfter, we headed up to the Rosenborg Castle, where they keep the crown jewels. This one was guarded by real solders that looked a lot more intimidating than the ones at the palace.  We were able to see tons of antiques, with the flint lock guns, swords of every description, and finally the crowns. Lots of gold and diamonds, but a little gaudy for my tastes, I prefer a crown that is a little less overstated. We were able to tour only three rooms of the castle because the rest was being renovated. They also had an exhibit of the royal wedding outfits from the 16th century. It was hard to believe that they were that tiny back then, the outfits almost looked like doll clothes. We toured the gardens and headed back to the hotel.

On the way we caught the tail end of a demonstration. There were more police than I would have thought they had in all of Europe. We had heard that they were having riots, and this must have been the more peaceful portion of them. We still aren’t sure what the fuss was exactly about. We were tempted to start chanting and marching, but we weren’t sure if the company would bail us out if we were protesting, especially if we didn’t know what we were protesting.

Finally a break at the hotel, rub down the feet and rest the back. We have to get geared up for dinner.

flickr: SetDetailSlide ShowMap
: Web Album

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The hunt is on…

February 10, 2007 · Leave a Comment

 

We looked at some houses yesterday, and meet a realtor we think we like. We looked at: First House

It was a model home, and too expensive, but we wanted to see what a ¼ of a million bought. The house backed up against a busy road, even though the realtor claimed “it’s not very busy and at least you wouldn’t have any neighbors in your backyard” so no go and we would have to hit you up for a loan.

We went to this house next: Second House

We wanted to see what financial ruin would get us? The house was really nice, but huge. It had a wing off from the kitchen behind the garage where a bath and the laundry room was. I lost Beth a couple of times. Way too much house and too expensive, maybe if we win the lottery and can pay someone else to vacuum it.

I was really excited about seeing this next house because it had a pool and a side load garage which I go for: Third House

Total disappointment. Needs a lot of upgrades and the pool doesn’t look so nice covered with four feet of snow. There was really bad wallpaper everywhere, so the house was really overpriced, not enough hardwoods and the carpets were trashed.

We are going to try and see these two houses: Next House and Second House a little bit more in our price range (still too high), hopefully no bad wallpaper!

I still like this house in Elbridge: Elbridge House it has a slope for a backyard :( , but a walk out basement :) . We aren’t sure if this is a plus, we keep wondering if it will be a pain to let the dog out and such. Then there is the price which we can’t afford, but the realtor keeps saying to make an offer. It would be the best drive to work about twenty minutes compared to the forty minutes from B’ville.

Things are still up in the air, but hopefully we will find something.

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The shack is no more…

February 4, 2007 · Leave a Comment

It’s official, we accepted an offer on the house. The same people who made the list of all the things wrong with the house decided to buy it, see the post here.

A bit of haggling back and forth, but Beth is the queen of negotiations and we ended up just slightly below what we wanted.

No we have to find a place to live by the beginning of April, no pressure.

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School…

January 26, 2007 · 1 Comment

Done!

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Dry as a bone…

January 25, 2007 · 1 Comment

It’s the first night, but we have to celebrate the short-term wins. At 5:00am the boy was dry. We got him up at 10:00pm and evidently he got up at 1:00am when the alarm went off. We didn’t hear a thing, so he must of taken care of everything.

Now we have a proud parenting moment…

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Still wet…

January 23, 2007 · 1 Comment

This kid is amazing. No drinks after dinner, potty at 8:00pm, 10:30pm, and 1:00am and wet at 5:00am. He must have a bladder the size of a walnut.

We’ll see after two weeks where we are at, besides sleep deprived.

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No sale…

January 22, 2007 · 2 Comments

The people came back for a second look at the house and evidently didn’t like what they saw. They had a bit of a laundry list which included loose molding, cracked grout, and the beauty ring on the fan.

Not sure what they are looking for, but we didn’t need them to point out the faults, we have our own list. Maybe they can build a brand new house and get away from the troubles of a 120 year old house. Hopefully they can do it at $129,000. We wish them well.

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School…

January 17, 2007 · 2 Comments

It’s almost over!

What a mistake, everything in life is based on expectations and my expectations were way out of line for this program. I knew that I had to boaster my business knowledge, but there is a bit of a gap between not knowing what EBIT is and writing papers every weekend about leadership and management skills.

Don’t get me wrong the program was well run and the instructors were top notch for the most part, I just had different expectations of what I wanted out of the program. I would have been better served with an Accounting 101 course.  

Enough bitching, like I said it’s almost over. Just have to do some minor editing on the ARP, and put together the presentation. January 25th is the day. Then just pay my $150 graduation fee and hopefully they will fess-up with the diploma.

On to bigger and better, how about Greenbelt training? That starts next week, I didn’t learn my lesson…

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