The Juice is Loose

Moving on, moving up.

2011-08-25T19:49:00.002-07:00

Hi all. I have no idea how long its been since i've posted. Nevermind, I just looked it up. December 2009 to be exact. Since then I've gotten married, life has moved on. However my beautiful wife of almost a year has her own blog and has graciously allowed me to co-author it. I hope to start posting more, without so much political commentary. But the sports commentary will have to stay. Enjoy!

check out: littletleigh.blogspot.com

Climate Change

2009-12-11T08:38:00.006-07:00

Rockies are ready to resign Torrealba. Hooray! (hopefully. back off, giants!!)

Recently when I turn on the news I see reports about climate change, false emails, and angry conservatives.

Ok people heres the thing: It doesn't matter. It doesn't matter if the world is getting hotter, polar bears are dying, ice bergs melting (though you should definitely get to places like Glacier National Park before they are all gone.) Why doesn't it matter? Because all the things that combat global warming are good. Walking, driving your car less? good. Using renewable resources? also good. Theres no if ands or buts about it.

I guess the other issue is whether we should be forced to do these things. Well let me suggest that we'll never do it until we're forced. NEVER. By the rules of capitalism, large businesses are inherently self serving. Sure they donate to charities, but thats all just for good PR, and always within reason. Something this big has to come by necessity; either by government force, or a world suffocated by stifling heat. And let me make this clear: greenhouse gases in the air are bad. bad. Been to L.A. recently? Might as well be a smoker.

Controversial

2009-12-03T08:39:00.003-07:00

So that long hiatus was completely on purpose. That Rockies game was so awesome I thought it deserved to stay up...for multiple months.

And what better way to get back on track than to say something controversial!

Tami and I have been spending our down time watching curb your enthusiasm. I love it because its like improv Seinfeld. In this certain episode we were watching its Christmas time, and the main character, Larry (David, creator of Seinfeld) is shunning all the christmassy stuff because, well, he's Jewish. His wife is Christian, and as they go along with their celebrations he stays out of the way, but is occasionally perturbed, notably for the caroling.

But this got me to thinking. How is it that Jewish folks, those who outright deny the existence of Jesus, are treated more fairly by the religious right than, say, gays, many of whom believe in all things Christian but just struggle within the system. Why? Gays seem to be treated more with the label of "outcast" or "unclean".

And no I'm not here to be a big gay rights activist, I just like to point out the inconsistencies. Maybe I'm just more comfortable with these issues than many because with work I have so many gay friends.

I dunno, just a thought.

Wow! Rockies Baseball!

2009-08-25T15:37:00.005-07:00

I have, for the past week or so, meant to post on a couple of recent trips. I joined my friend Micaela on an AMAZING trip to Glacier National park, then more recently climbed Bison peak with my girlfriend (yup, still Tami) and Micaela. But then I experienced a once in a lifetime event.

One of my favorite things to do here in Denver is go to Rockies games. From previous posts you know all the things I love about it. It's a big reason that I choose to stay here in Denver and not move up to the mountains, or other beautiful places such as Oregon.

So I bought tickets to last nights game, and sat in our usual seats (upper outfield reserved, first base side where you get a great view of the mountains)

We played the San Francisco Giants, a team 3 games back in the wild card, and quickly turning into a rival. Winning here would be HUGE.

It was a game full of complete futility. I was constantly frustrated. We scored 1 run, 1 RUN!!!, that coming off a bases loaded walk, through all of regulation. Luckily the Giants could only muster 1 first inning run of their own. We constantly got men on base, men on third and 1 out, 1st and 3rd one out, over and over, and time after time we left them there. We couldn't score. Neither could they. The 9th inning came and went. 11th. then 12th. 13, then 14. I told Tami I was on an emotional roller coaster. I'd get excited only to be let down again.

Then came the 14th inning. The Giants strung some big hits together, scored 3 runs to go up 4-1. Only a miracle could win this game for us. After all, we had all those chances, we deserved to lose.

In the bottom of the inning, they gave us some base runners by way of walks. Cool, but no way I'm getting excited. I've seen this before. Fowler gets up, hits a ball off his knee, somehow gets back up to hit, and walks. From this point on, he's hobbling around the base paths. With one out, the bases get loaded, and guess whose up? Yeah, the pitcher. Perfect. And no, we had NO MORE bench players. I read in an article today that if we tied the game, the pitcher was going to play right field.

Then the unthinkable happens. They walk the pitcher, forcing in a run.

We now trail 4-2, Ryan Spilborghs up to bat. Spilly, by the way, has already grounded into a double play when just a fly ball would have won the game, and misplayed a double, turning it into a triple. Heres the clip of what happens next: (including a little on what already took place in the inning)

I could not contain myself. All that pent up frustration released in a single swing. It was awesome.

-JJ

MIssing the Point

2009-07-10T09:27:00.003-07:00

While undermining all that Obama is trying to do in the Middle East, you wonder why they don't care much for us.

Failed...

2009-07-01T13:16:00.002-07:00

Today I wandered to downtown Golden to grab some lunch and drop by the bike shop. On my return trip I passed by the blood mobile. I have, since a small child, and like LOTS of other people, have a completely rational fear of needles. I've never given blood.

This time I decided to man up. So I stopped, joined the small group of people relaxing under a tent, and signed up.

Why the change of heart? Well I blood drawn back in the fall for a cholesterol check, and it wasn't nearly as bad as I thought it would be. So here I am, all signed up. My name was called, and I headed in the bus, where I was immediately informed of the finger prick they had to do, to make sure my blood was ok.

In my head, this is actually worse! But with no way of backing out without getting called names, I manned up and got my finger pricked.

Again, not nearly as bad as I remembered it.

So next thing I know I'm laying on the table. Whenever I get nervous, I get very chatty. So here I am chatting up everyone. Then a girl from a previous session comes in, for she is still feeling nauseous and weak. So I start talking to her. She was in a while back, and still not feeling well, and looked as if she might puke.

I shrugged it off, and in the needle went. Ok, not so bad. The nurse asked how I felt, and I knew I wasn't quite right, but then I wasn't sure how I was supposed to feel. I told her I was feeling kind of sleepy and maybe just a little hint of nausea. I'm just trying to be honest, after all.

Next thing I know shes fiddling with the needle, and then takes it out.

I immediately felt like a complete waste of these people's time. I just wanted to help, and I was just being honest, and she bailed on the whole thing. I then asked if not getting enough sleep might have something to do with it, and she said "definitely." I had only 4 hrs that previous night. No breakfast either, but a good lunch.

So here I am, armed bandaged up, having made absolutely no contribution to humanity.

-JJ

2009-06-28T06:35:00.004-07:00

Hello All. Guess I just have to be honest that everytime I have some free time on my computer I end up on World of Warcraft. Yeah, my buddy Chester from work got me into it. It's fun, and nice for overnights.

So many things have been going on that I could have posted about, but if I did it now, it'd be too late.

Notably I got to fulfill a small dream of mine and go see the College World Series in Omaha. Thanks to my uncle and cousins for letting me tag along on their trip. It was a blast.

Anyway, excited for this coming weekend at Kelsie's cabin on Grand Mesa. I'll be posting soon.

-JJ

Home of the Free?

2009-05-21T07:09:00.002-07:00

13 year old Daniel Hauser has Hodgkins lymphoma. I'm sure you've seen him in the news, for he and his family are refusing Chemo treatment. Doctors say with the treatment he has a 90 percent chance of survival. Without it, he will likely die. The family wants to go the route of more natural treatments, per their religion.

I saw that yesterday authorities were imprisoning the parents for this.

I'm wondering when we got to the point of not being able to make our own decisions about our own lives.

I once worked with a young gir, probably late 20s, that had cancer, went through Chemo, and was well. Then the cancer came back. They wanted to go through the whole operation again, and she refused. She started taking care of herself, eating right, excersizing. The cancer went away, and never came back.

I've gotten similar testimonials from at least 3 passengers on my plane.

I say he should be able to do what he wants.

-JJ

Impressed!

2009-05-20T12:55:00.004-07:00

A few weeks ago I posted about our trip to Santa Fe. We brought our bikes on that trip, and on a few of the moderate climbs, I noticed that Tami dealt with them quite well.

After that trip, I thought that maybe she could handle the 5 miles uphill to lookout mountain. It's one of my favorite things to do here in town, and one of the most rewarding also. You get up there, impressed with what you just accomplished, and its literally all downhill from there. Like 50 mph downhill. Awesome.

So we did. After work Tami came over, we drove to the base of the mountain (the ride from my house to the base will ruin you) and up we went.

Let me tell you the girl DID NOT STOP. It was slow and steady, all the way up. I honestly, for her first time, did not expect her to make it all the way to the top. But she did. I was floored. Even better, everyone on that mountain had thousand dollar road bikes, pedal clips, the works, and Tami did it with her commuter hybrid bike and regular pedals. ha! I'm surprised she didn't wear a skirt.

Congrats Tamara!

Unfortunately I had promised her ice cream, and by the time we made it to the Golden Sweets shop it was closed. (Early, I might add, because of the Nuggets Lakers game. ha!)

I Agree

2009-05-06T18:20:00.000-07:00

I love this short little article.

http://www.denverpost.com/rockies/ci_12303097

Santa Fe Road Trip

2009-04-27T06:44:00.006-07:00

Friday Night Tami and I took a road trip out to Santa Fe, NM. We've been talking about going there for almost a year, and we both had the weekend off, so off we went. 6 hour drive with plans to camp the first night, but all the sites were taken, and at 1am we decided just to sleep in the car. It did not fare all that well. :) and NO, I cannot get this underline thing to turn off. See not it just does it on its own. I dunno.

Here are just a few photos from our trip. 'Tis a beautiful city.

And I awoke this morning to find this. WHAT THE HECK?
-JJ

My Lovely Girlfriend

2009-04-23T14:50:00.003-07:00

Tami's bed recently was stolen. You see, shes moving this weekend, the bed she was in wasn't hers, the owner came to reclaim it, which left her without a bed for the next few nights. So she stayed in mine.

I was out of town. Geez.

ANYWAYS, I get back home from work just this morning, walk into my room and what do I find?

A note saying that she prepared and left me lunch in the fridge.

I go to the fridge, open the door, and find another note.

"Apple and Nut Salad.

-Romaine
-Apples in Lime
-Chopped Walnuts
-Chicken
-Balsamic" (my fav!)

So Nice.

Also, I bought a carpet while I was in Morocco, and I finally got around to taking a pic of it in our living room. I fits perfect!

Lata

The Problem with America

2009-04-20T08:08:00.002-07:00

Not like you don't know.

So big government versus little government. Right to bear arms, or no? Stimulus package, or no? Abortion? taxes? Gay Marriage?

Unfortunately, its rare that there are any cut and dry issues.

-No matter how many times you say "Guns don't kill people, people kill people", in the end its crazy people WITH guns.

-Opposed to the stimulus package? Then I expect when you get this money that you give it straight to charity.

-Opposed to abortion? Are you then opposing private property?

But none of this is the point. Its that nobody is trust worthy anymore. It's already been proven that you can't put control with the people. You angry at AIG execs? This is the byproduct of small government with untrustworthy people.

And I guess we're going to find out that you can't trust the government either.

I'm not saying I have the answers, just some things I've been pondering recently.

The Movie Business and GOLF!

2009-04-08T15:12:00.002-07:00

It seems every time a highly hyped movie comes out, it seems to be the "biggest opening in history." I always wondered how this was all possible, but this question was just fleeting. I never really stopped to think about it. Well recently I did think about it, and it was then I realized that they judge this by the amount of MONEY it takes in.

HOW does this make ANY sense when movie ticket prices go up, it seems, EVERY WEEK!!?? Shouldn't we just judge this by tickets told??

And you should read this. Warning: Not everyone will be happy or agree. But I like it. :)

-JJ

Ava Grace Jackson

2009-03-30T20:57:00.004-07:00

These are pics of my new niece! Enjoy!

Pics are up!

2009-03-24T18:38:00.002-07:00

ok so I put the Morocco Pics online for those of you who care.

Morocco Part 1 (Marrakesh, Desert)

Morocco Part 2 (Fes, Meknes, Kinitra, Rabat)

Home!

2009-03-22T06:00:00.002-07:00

So we just returned from our 2 weeks in Morocco, first time overseas for both of us, and it was completely and utterly amazing. We have come back with so many stories that there is no way to put them into words. We visited 4 imperial cities, bargained for items for our lives, met awesome people, climbed sand dunes, rode camels, and got scrubbed down by a complete stranger in a public bath house.

I'm still sifting through photos, so here are some just for now. Enjoy.

First Couchsurfer!!

2009-03-02T10:07:00.004-07:00

Ok so many of you may not know of a website called couchsurfing.com. Its basically a place where you can network with people around the world and sleep on each others couches, for free, during your travels.

In fact Tami and I plan to do some of this while we visit Morocco (T-minus 5 days).

ANYWAYS, I also have my couch here in Golden available to "sane" folks who need a place to crash.

So just the other night Tami Justin and I were in Boulder when i got a couchsurfing email on my phone. It was a desperate plea from a guy named Lucas, visiting from Brazil, and he didn't have any place to sleep. So I took a chance and called him up (he left his phone number in his message) and he met up with us.

Long story short, he was great. He's from an city on the coast of Brazil called Florianopolis. We brought him home, we chatted for about 2 hours (he speaks very good English, though it was hilarious when he wanted to know how to differentiate the words "Beaches" and "B*tches"), he showed us pictures of his homeland, then he crashed on our futon. We took him back to Boulder in the morning. Here is our picture:

In other news, tonight Tami and I are going to the concert of my favorite band: Jimmy Eat World!! Its their 10 year anniversary of their first hit album, Clarity. (Though not my favorite.) Just for kicks here is my favorite song off that cd,(Lucky Denver Mint) and the song that got me hooked on them, Sweetness. (sorry, won't let me embed that one.)

Lucky Denver Mint

Sweetness

Republicans are making me SICK

2009-03-01T16:25:00.002-07:00

So heres my problem right now. I've seen some clips of that giant Republican conference going on, and its ALL bashing. Obama is wrong for this, is wrong for that...and the PROBLEM is that they are focusing on WINNING NEXT YEAR more than they are solving problems RIGH NOW. More about causing dissention than fixing the economy. Look, YOU LOST, and you'll just have to suck it up for 4 years. We have bigger issues right now and I don't have the time or patience to listen to your whining.

Vertigo

2009-02-24T09:52:00.003-07:00

I've been a skiing slacker this year. Too often I've awoken in my bed, with plans to hit the slopes, but with an overwhelming urge to poke around the house all morning. Sunday night we had a Mardi Gras party, and after speaking to a lot of my ski bum friends, I'm not the only one. Even the most hardcore of us having only been up 3 or 4 times. This has been an unusual winter, as its currently February 24th, and the high today is 65.

That being said, at that same party, I met up with a friend of mine who is currently unemployed. The first thing out of my mouth was "wanna go skiing tomorrow?"

So we did.

It was the best "snow" conditions I've had in a long time. Nice and powdery. We went to A-Basin, where there were almost no crowds, and TONS of completely untouched powder. It also snowed, and being that the peak is at 13,000 ft, sometimes you are in the clouds. And you can't see...ANYTHING.

On the back edge theres the Monezuma Bowl, and we hiked up to an experts only run. Once we got up, it looked like an abyss. If you've never skiid in fog before, basically you look into the fog, then down at the snow, and its almost the same. You have no idea what your about to ski across. Visibility is about 10 feet. It turns your world upside down. You'll be skiing across the mountain, to your left, going very slowly, and next thing you know you fall down and your sliding down the mountain in the OPPOSITE direction you thought you were going. Its crazy. Its skiing in bizzaro world. At one point I looked up to see Luanne practically on top of a dry patch, and she yelled "how on earth did I get over here???." It'd almost be better off just to close your eyes and use your other senses, because your eyes keep decieving you.

Heres a pic I found online of basically what it looks like:

Anyway, we had a good time, and Luanne let me drive her decked out Subaru B9 Tribeca there and back..in the snow. Sweet ride.

-JJ

Heartbroken

2009-02-21T17:24:00.002-07:00

I just played the final level of zelda: The adventures of Link, for Tami. See, she'd never seen it. "Oldschool" to her is Nintendo 64. She loved Zelda on the 64. So I wanted her to experience the original.

After I defeated Gannon, she said "eh, I like the realism on the 64 better."

Stupid kids.

Trouble in Paradise.

Why do we need to know?

2009-02-13T16:14:00.002-07:00

Alex Rodriguez.

I salute him for admitting he made a mistake. In life, with my friends, with my parents, with my favorite athletes, with my President, all I ask for is honesty.

I don't understand why we need details..and by WE, I mean the general public. WHY do we need to know what he took? (Most of us wouldn't know what it was anyway) WHY do we need to know how often he took it? WHY do we need to know where he got it (some of us would like some, perhaps?? i dunno). These things are only significant to MLB and whatever invisigation is ensuing.

So many questions swirling around that personally I DON'T CARE about. People need to quit being nosy with stuff that is insignificant to them and their lives. YES, i'm a baseball fan but as a fan I feel like I know what I need to know...I mean sure there's still speculation whether he still takes it or not, which a very valid question that DEFINITELY CONCERNS THE PUBLIC, but as for these others?? PLEASE.

Just Fun

2009-02-11T18:06:00.002-07:00

It's HUGE!

2009-02-09T22:25:00.003-07:00

I got this last year for christmas. We sat down this evening and finally put it together.

World's Largest Crossword puzzle! It's really a task just to find the corresponding number on that thing.

-JJ

Super Bowl?

2009-01-29T16:09:00.003-07:00

Ever since the contestants in the super bowl have been decided, I have purposefully avoided all sports shows. Thats sportscenter, PTI, Around the Horn, etc. All shows that I pretty much watch regularly. (Although I still read CNNsi, just avoid all Super Bowl related articles.) One article I did not avoid was one about how the two weeks before the super bowl are the most obnoxious. How true it is.

These past two weeks (week and 4 days) have been great. Sometimes I forget the big game is even coming up. Just the other night I picked up a trip over that day, so I won't even get to see it. I don't think I really care. I mean, I want the Steelers to win, but not being subjecting to the media DIGGING for any sub-story they can find, well, its quite nice.

Bring on Baseball.

-JJ

The Premonition

2009-01-16T07:52:00.002-07:00

Kristy sees things...

...she sees whether her day will be good or bad.

As we sat there on the jumpseat, she told me of a day a few months ago. It started with a button popping off her work shirt. She knew she was in for it.

The day ended with the aircraft engine catching fire right after takeoff. And yes, there were things in between.

We ended our day in Sacramento. She hadn't said anything about this day being good or bad, but the stretch limo that awaited us to take us back to the hotel says that maybe she saw it all after all.

The next morning we stood in the hotel awaiting our shuttle back to the airport, when Kristy mentions that she feels great today. Today will be a good day. I like the sound of that! Just then a large coach-looking-ish bus pulls under the overhang. I look at everyone and say "hey guys! our ride is here!" Completely kidding of course. Though next thing I know were all piling into this bus. It's got beautiful leather seating, dimmed mood lighting, large flat screen tv, ice for drinks, and lets not forget the stripper pole in the middle. NICE. (Never in 4 years have I had anything but a van or car pick us up. NEVER. )

We get onto the plane and start our security checks, when the ops agent tells us to call Scheduling. Apparently theres been a change. They tell me our LAX to OAK flight has been cancelled, so when we get to LAX we need to head over and deadhead* to OAK, then pick up our original OAK to MDW flight.

*DEADHEADING: Or what we call snoozing for dollars. It's just flying as a passenger for positioning purposes.

So we land in LAX, clean the aircraft for the next crew, and head straight over to the gate we are supposed to. The agent takes our passes to get our boarding passes, her eyes get big, and she tells us that scheduling hasn't made our reservations and the plane to OAK is pushing 5 early. She picks up the phone to call the ops agent to hold the plane, and right as she picks up the phone, the plane pushes. Oops. Then she looks at the computer and says "oh, now your reservations is here!" You see, had our reservation shown up, they would have known we were coming and would have held it.

So I call scheduling and tell them what happened. They aren't amused. We're now going to miss our connection in OAK. After a few minutes, they tell us we are going to take the NEXT flight to OAK, sit in the front, and RUN to our gate. "We'll have to delay the plane a bit, so HURRY!" Got it.

10 minutes later, they call back. "So we noticed that in OAK you're going to have to switch terminals, so yeah, thats not going to work. Just deadhead on the next flight back to MDW."

So essentially we worked 1 leg and then just slept back home. And still got paid for all that we SHOULD have done.

Oh no, it's not done yet.

We arrive in MDW, and Kristy and I go directly to the tv monitors to check on our commuting flights back home. She commutes to nashville, me to denver. BOTH are showing "BOARDING". We walked straight to our gates and hopped on. No waiting, no nothing.

Too easy. Too creepy.

-JJ

Rocky Mountain National Park SNOWjourn!

2009-01-10T15:23:00.004-07:00

So my birthday was rather uneventful. I had of my friends from Louisiana, Jerry and April (now Baltimore and Dallas) in town visiting and they wanted to get one more day of skiing in. So they went skiing the afternoon and evening of my birthday.

HOWEVER,

We had planned, well, I had planned an epic snowshoeing trip up to my absolute favorite place to be in the winter time, Rocky Mountain National Park, the next day. THAT was to be my birthday extravaganza. AND it was! I'm currently attempting to upload a slideshow video to youtube for you all to see, but its taking forever. (Its finished, so I embedded it at the end!!!) So you'll have to settle for normal pics without fun music. Here are a couple of teasers to entice you. And note, most of the photos with large open spaces are actually frozen lakes.

BONUS!: And especially for you guys I made another video detailing the comparison of summer and winter in Rocky Mountain National Park; featuring my own photos!!! ENJOY! (Its at the very bottom. Don't miss it!)

And heres my video!

Happy 28th To Me!

So this is how it feels...

2008-12-27T23:15:00.002-07:00

Christmas was great. I flew out to Baltimore, met up with my folks, and drove up to Tuckerton NJ and my brothers house. It was great to see them, and my nephew is a giant chatterbox, repeating everything he hears. On Christmas Day, Tami used her last companion pass to give my parents a surprise visit. (pics will come as soon as my dad sends them)

And thats where my story begins.

It was a breeze for her to fly out xmas day, but I knew it would be tough for her to get back. But with all day saturday and sunday, surely she could get on one flight...

So this morning My dad, Tami and I all got up early and drove the 1.5 hours to Philly. We got there really early so Tami would have a shot at getting on the nonstop.

Unsuccessful at getting on the nonstop, our next shot was getting her to chicago, where she would at least have a place to stay and have more options out to Denver.
This is where we realized how hard it can be to get stuck somewhere. The problem is not that you can't get on a flight, its that THERES NOONE TO TALK TO. And really its nobody's fault. The CSA's are doing everything they can, theres just so many people. Every gate had a line 10 deep, and it wasn't moving quickly. And then you just don't know which flight to try to get on!!

Ughh...since I had to work that afternoon in chicago, I ditched Tami and left her to fend for herself. When I landed in Chicago I was glad to find out that she was right behind me, on the very next flight.

Now here we were, with the rest of the day and all the next day in Chicago to get her back to Denver. We immediately ran to the next Den flight and asked the CSA if she could get on the standby list. She looked at us, and bluntly told us that non-rev's (non revenue passengers) wouldn't even have a chance until Wednesday.

Oops. See what happened is that friday night both chicago airports shut down due to fog, cancelling tons of flights and leaving tons of people stranded. Not good when you have nowhere to put them. We had anticipated full flights, but we had not anticipated a HUGE backlog of revenue standby's.

There was no way she was getting out.

A few tears and $300 later, Tami had a flight booked out of O'hare on United back to Denver..ON MONDAY. Yikes.

It all turned out to be a blessing in disguise since Tami's mom lives there. (An hour away) I spoke to her on the phone very briefly and it was then that I knew we had made the right decision. She haden't seen her daughter since May, and she was ecstatic to see her. I talked to Tami just a few hours ago and she sounded completely happy! We just have to suck up to her boss so he won't be too upset that she'll miss a day of work on Monday. ;)

-JJ

Midnight Visitors

2008-12-19T14:13:00.004-07:00

I recently read a blog about the top reasons to love colorado. here is #12

12. A fresh layer of snow on my backyard never lasts for more than a few hours before a maze of fox tracks is imprinted on it.

How true it is.

It aint a fox, (Deer, POSSIBLY but DOUBTFULLY elk, maybe one of you wildlife trackers can figure it out) but Kelsie says that while I'm gone there are more every morning. They aren't small either. Weird thing is we never see them during the day. They just leave traces of their presence.

The Missing Reindeer, and I miss Baseball

2008-12-16T06:51:00.004-07:00

Last night I was sitting around with Kristy and James watching the tail end of the Polar Express, when I noticed a glaring omission. Santa was circling the skies and there was no red nosed reindeer guiding the way. It was at that moment I realized that in most of these Christmas movies Rudolph is pretty much missing in all of them! I looked at Kristy and James and said "WHAT GIVES??"

After my question was validated, I did some research online and found out that the very idea of Rudolph is still a private entity. It has not yet entered into "public domain", therefore his name can't be thrown around like...say...SANTA CLAUS. How unfortunate.

Not many of you know Kristy and James. I recently moved into a new crashpad! Which is great, because its not really a crashpad at all. Both flight attendants, Kristy and James have been dating for 15 months and living together for probably 13 of those. (Not saying I approve) We've become good friends in the past year or so, and they invited me to come stay with them when I'm in town for $50 cheaper than my last place. Add to that the fact that Kristy loves to cook for me, for which she REFUSES reimbursement, its not a bad deal at all!

So anyway, as of Thursday, the Saints are officially out of the playoffs, LSU is playing in a second tier bowl that they will probably lose (they really don't deserve to be there), Colorado narrowly missed being bowl eligible, and we're stuck watching crappy teams for 3 weeks until we get to see Florida manhandle Oklahoma. So basically we're stuck with the NBA until springtime. ech. I'm glad I enjoy the snow.

And SPEAKING of Florida, with Tebow missing out on the heisman, get this: When Florida beats OU, we're going to have a heisman trophy winner that has lost to BOTH the other guys who were up for the award. Hilarious, for I think the Heisman is a JOKE. YES, A JOKE.

I'm sorry, but I'm gonna rant on ONE MORE THING. JUST ONE. The CUBS. And for that matter, the YANKEES too. But mostly the Cubs.
Up until yesterday, the Cubs were in seriously contention to sign perennial All-Star Jake Peavy. Probably to a huge 100 million-ish deal. Ok, not surprising. Until you realize who owns the Cubs: The Chicago Tribune. What did the Tribune do back in April and again earlier this month??? LAID OFF A SIZABLE PORTION OF THEIR NEWSROOM STAFF. Nice. And in this swell economy the Yankees are spending like its 1999. Plus the fact they just built a new stadium and made the public pay for it. These people need to get their priorities straight.

Thats all. Sorry for the very wordy and no fun pictures blog. ACTUALLY, I can show you pictures of my parents house...IN NEW ORLEANS!

Enjoy the cold.
-JJ

My Little Buffalo!

2008-12-08T14:20:00.008-07:00

I'm proud to announce that Tami just got herself a job at the University of Colorado! She'll be working in family housing, which is precisely what shes wanted to do. Long story short, this is probably a month or 2 in the making, as it started out with over 350 candidates and in the end Tami was #1! (This is more or less accurate? As others who tested above her, there were only 7, either got weeded out or were placed in other jobs. Tami correct me if I'm wrong.)

So much else to say! We just got back the other day from plucking our own Christmas tree out of the woods. It's not perfect, in fact I refer to it as our special tree, but it looks great in our front window.

Yes we have 2 trees. One is fake. And unfortunately at publishing time the lights would light on the fake one.

And the evening before that, Tami and I joined the Southwest employees here in DEN for the Parade of Lights! Tami blogged about that one, so I'll leave that to her.

And yesterday we were seeing friends in Colorado Springs, and went for a jaunt around Garden of the Gods, where I haven't been in 6 years. And in the process got some nice photos of each other:

Anyways, thats all for now! Enjoy.

-JJ

Airline Industry Poem

2008-12-03T19:24:00.002-07:00

Sorry I've been...away. Had a good thanksgiving, and I've uploaded a nice picture from that.

I also have a great poem tailored to the airline industry. So enjoy!

Last night as I lay sleeping
I died .. or so it seemed,
Then I went to heaven
But only in my dream

Up there St Peter met me
Standing at the pearly gates,
He said, 'I must check your record...
Please stand here and wait.'

He turned and said 'Your record
Is covered with terrible flaws,
On earth I see you rallied
For every losing cause.'

I see that you drank alcohol
And smoked and partied too,
Fact is, you've done everything
A good person should never do.

We can't have people like you up here...
Your life was full of sin,
Then he read the last of my record
Took my hand and said, 'Come in.'

He led me up to the Chief of Heaven ....
'Take him in and treat him well',
He used to work in the Airline Industry ...
He's done his time in hell.'

-Anonymous

A Sham.

2008-11-14T08:38:00.004-07:00

Does anyone else find the new Bud Light Ads touting "Drinkability" as completely ludicrous? It's not even a word for cryin' out loud! I, for one, find that this is just them ADMITTING that its no different than any other cheap american beer.

THIS, my friends, is amazing.

Sorry, I have to post this too. It's just too much.

Back Online!

2008-11-09T21:04:00.002-07:00

Hooray! My computer is back, with a brand new 160 G Hard Drive, successfully installed by...ME. Anyways.

So here are some pictures. Enjoy. I have nothing else to say.

Just a thought

2008-11-04T10:56:00.003-07:00

Here on this blog, I'm not really afraid to share an opinion or just an idea. Sometimes they border on the extreme, but sometimes its just a thought process. So don't freak out.

Heres another one. I got this book at the library called "The Seige of Mecca." It also describes the birth of Al Queda. I'm not even halfway through the book, and just yesterday this is what occured to me:

Al Queda was basically formed by a group of extreme conservative Islamics. Morman Fundamentalists, led by the likes of Warren Jeffs, is the extreme conservative sect of Mormanism. (Thanks "Under the Banner of Heaven")

So heres my question: What makes extreme conservative Christians any different? Are they immune to the same ill feelings and hate toward their fellow man?

Once again, just a thought.

Yup

2008-10-28T07:36:00.002-07:00

Hi fellas. My computer is still broken. Well its not broken, but it is sans hard drive. I got my new one in the mail, but it was the wrong one.

Anyways, in news, I just got back from my 5 year reunion. I know. What other college has a 5 year reunion? haha. It was fun.

Also the leaves around Golden have been amazing. I went and took some pics. Here they are. I added them to a preexisting album, so the first have you may have seen before.

Can't Trust Either of Them

2008-10-07T18:46:00.002-07:00

Ok, why would I vote for someone who consistently lies to me? Just the fact that there is a website called factchecker.com, used to help us find out how much these candidates are lying to us in their campaign ads, pretty much says it all. And its BOTH of them. They lie to us now, they will lie to us later.

AND THEN Mccain STILL tries to fool us with this ruse (Obama has voted to raise taxes 94% of the time, which has been proven to be a lie) at the debate tonight. UNBELIEVABLE.

On anonther note, I accidentily set my Macbook in a small puddle of coffee, and now the hard drive is fried. Its ok, most of my stuff is backed up and my new one is in the mail. (2x larger and $100 cheaper than having apple do it.)

VP Debate Thoughts

2008-10-02T18:49:00.002-07:00

It's only halfway through (and frankly I'm having trouble not flipping to the dodgers cubs or oregon st utah, but here are some of my thoughts:

taxes: I don't care. tax me if you have to. The problem here is honestly. Are my taxes going towards what you say, or to golden toilet seats?

same sex social rights: A non issue. It's about human rights, not gay rights.

Foreign Policy: How do we insist on other countries not having nuclear warheads, when we refuse to get rid of our own? This will forever be a stalemate. God help us.

Playin some ball with a Hall of Famer

2008-09-29T14:31:00.011-07:00

Not too long ago I entered a contest here at work: Write an essay about a time you "hit one out of the park" (i.e. did something great for a customer) and win a trip to play baseball with Nolan Ryan.

Well I did not win, but my friend Kevin did. (For the 2nd time), and invited me to come along as his guest.

So needless to say, the weekend was PHENOMENAL. Much better than I ever could have expected. 10 employees and their guests flew into Albany, NY along with 10 customers and their guests. It was fun to meet folks from around the country with same interests as you. Here were some highlights from the weekend:

-Filet Minon dinner on the first night

-Playing softball on a recreational soccer field because Doubleday field was flooded. It was awesome to see Nolan helping move benches and setting down bases to help set up the field. He was really into the game and his wife was the backup catcher. It had such a pickup-game feel and was a very intimate setting that many of us think it was better than playing on Doubleday Field. Nolan was quoted saying that he'll keep doing this weekend every year as long as Southwest wants him to. BTW, as a guest I did not play, which I was really ok with.

Nolan helping move benches, as his wife looks on.

First Batter of the Game

-Dinner in the Hall of Fame, surrounded by plaques of inductees, with Nolan having a beer at the neighboring table, just hanging out, one of the guys. I can't explain how cool the experience was.

Dinner in the Hall. Yup, Nolan is in there somewhere.

Q&A Session after dinner

-Watching the carved out 1,000 lb pumkins, manned by rowers, raced on the lake.

Some Pumpkins Floated well.

Some did not

-3 hours at the Hall of Fame.

Make sure you read that story. Click on the picture to enlarge

Every Championship Ring

This was definitely a once in a lifetime experience. I have every intention of winning it next year.

Here are some other worthy pictures:

Me bringing one back into Doubleday Field

I think this quote from a former Mets manager is pretty accurate in the present.

Go here for the remainder of the pictures from the weekend.

Widow Sighting

2008-09-23T08:50:00.003-07:00

Tami and I just got back from an early morning hike to see the aspens turning colors. (see those pictures here) When we arrived back home, I stepped into my bathroom to make sure there was a towel for her to take a shower, when I noticed a spider in the sink.

It was large and looked like it was ready to pounce on me. I soon recognized some distinctive marks on it that identified it as one of the worlds most dangerous spiders: The Black Widow. After smashing it with a shoe, I ran for the internet and my recognition was correct.

Now bears the question, what should I do? Coors is coming over to inspect the house in a couple weeks, where we will definitely mention it. But should I say something sooner? Is this not that big of a deal, just a spider who happened to wander into our house?

Crazy Work Story!

2008-09-13T07:13:00.002-07:00

Yesterday I was supposed to be done in chicago by 3. Unfortunatey I'm on reserve so scheduling decided I needed to be rerouted down to Oklahoma City via Kansas City. No big deal, right? Well we get down to Kansas City and its raining cats and dogs. This really isn't a big deal either, but problem is we had no pilots. They were on their way, running late, from St Louis. When they finally get there, we load up and leave.

Well we end up sitting on the runway for 15 mins or so, when the pilots call us and tell us that the control tower had shut down so we can't go anywhere until that gets back up and running. About 30 mins later we get the call, and we take off headed down to OKC.

Well later that evening at the OKC hotel, I got hungry so I headed down to the restaurant. As I'm sitting there watching the Kansas-South Florida game, I overhear a guy next to me talking on the phone about being stuck on the runway with tornadoes on the field. When he got off the phone, I asked him "You were in Kansas City today?"

"Yeah"

"You a Pilot?"

"Yeah"

For who?

"Southwest"

"I think I was your flight attendant today."

We both laughed, and explained I just didn't get to say hi to him since we were in such a hurry. Then he proceeded to tell me that they had talked to the control tower, and they said "hey guys theres a tornado 1 mile south of the field, so we're evacuating. We'll see you in 30." And just left us stranded on the end of the runway, in an AIRPLANE. uh oh. haha. So they had a decision to make, either stay put or head back to the terminal. Ultimately they decided that the terminal was a quarter mile CLOSER to the tornado than we were, so they decided to stay put.

They just had been wise enough not to drop the "T" word to the passengers, or to us for that matter, for fear of scaring everybody.

-JJ

Giants Game

2008-09-09T18:22:00.003-07:00

These are from a few weeks ago. I finally got back home to my card reader to take the pictures off my camera. Nice stadium. I was extra tired the next day, as I didn't get back to the hotel until 11:30 and I had to be up at 5am. I paid for that for a few days, but it was worth it. I sat out by the bay.

Sorry these pics came out a little dark.

What I Believe...A Political Blog

2008-09-04T21:08:00.004-07:00

This is probably something you've never heard from me. And since I'm new to all this, forgive me if I sound naive or some of my facts are skewed. I try.

-Politicians act like children in a "yo mama" fight. Can't I decide on the issues instead of because one candidate bashed the other one and the other one didn't have a comeback?

-Our country was founded on democracy, and it works here, but that in no way means it works everywhere. In the history of the world there have been a plethora of types of governments that have succeeded and we think ours is best??? Are we THAT smug? Is the US the Ohio State of the world???

-Experience is often overrated:
George Washington was a seasoned War General, but had very little "political experience." At least none that I could dig up, seems most was self taught.

JFK, the second youngest president ever, spent only 6 years in Congress and 4 in the Senate.

Teddy Roosevelt, our youngest ever (and my personal favorite), spent 1 year as Secretary of the Navy, 1 as the Governor of NY, and only 7 MONTHS as VP before he became President.

And these are only some of our greatest presidents.
*Though I will admit that they all had military experience.

-Theo Epstein, at age 30, after only 12 years working in baseball (that INCLUDES time as an intern with the Orioles, then working in PR at the padres, moving up to director of baseball operations) and in only the SECOND year as GM with the Red Sox, brought the first World Series to Boston in 86 years.

-Lobbyists basically sell ads to the President. He should just walk around with a big "Exxon Mobile" sticker on his suit. And in order to best serve the needs of these companies, they are very good at spinning things to make you believe it.

-Political affiliation does not determine my place in heaven.

-I can't wait for the "you guys are both dumb" party convention. The answer is always somewhere in the middle.

-A President can't do anything unless Congress goes along.

-I would probably vote for Arnold Schwarzenegger, if he could run.

-Politicians are always all that bad, it's just a whole lot of pressure from a lot of different places. I couldn't do it.

-JJ

Waste of 10 minutes

2008-09-02T09:17:00.002-07:00

Sportscenter just aired Ohio States press conference after they destroyed a HORRIBLE team in Youngstown state. I just watched him name off all his players of the week.

Seriously, is there any other team that would be SO SMUG after getting annihilated two straight years in the BCS Championship game??? Seriously? Why do we care which players did well against a team whose players barely started in high school???

Um

2008-09-01T11:26:00.001-07:00

Why does everyone insist that Barack Obama is black when he's clearly Muli-Racial? He's no more black than he is white.

Gustav!

2008-08-31T07:06:00.002-07:00

Folks kept asking me about my parents and the hurricane. I didn't know what their plan was, as I spoke to my father a few days ago and he didn't mention a thing. So I gave him a ring.

Like I assumed, my mother is heading up to MS to stay with the relatives. My father, as expected, will be at work in the city. (For those of you who somehow don't know, my father is a photojournalist, so his job would be to record whatever insanity ensues.) As for my Coastie brother in NJ, he is being picked up by a C130, being flown to Jacksonville to wait out the storm and then perform search and rescue wherever needed. So, as my dad puts it, "I'm going to New Orleans and your brother is coming to rescue me."

As for me, I'll be hopping along in my little 737 like usual.

City Nicknames!

2008-08-25T13:02:00.002-07:00

Here are a few city nicknames that I have heard over the past 3 1/2 years. You should be able to pick out the real city name.

Trampa
Detiolet
Sacapatatoes, Smurfville (ok this is sacramento, the second one stemming from its city code: SMF)
Midland-Slowdeatha
Lost Wages

ok so this is all of them I know. (I thought I knew more) Anybody know any others?

How to Make a Flight Attendant Happy

2008-08-20T14:22:00.002-07:00

Yes, we can be grouchy. When you get stuck inside an aluminum tube with hundreds of people hours at a time and you are given the reigns to impart some sort of civilized environment, it can be enough to stress anyone out. Here's how to make our job SO much easier:

1) Be aware of those around you.

Thats it. Its not what you do to us, it's what you do to others. Well, yeah be nice to us too. I could go on all day about this, but I feel that I shouldn't have to.

And thought of the...week I guess...on the Olympics.

Isn't it funny that on the U.S. Olympic team we have Russian gymnasts (Nastia Luikin) African runners (Abdi Abdirahman) Laotian Badminton players (Khan Malaythong) and Japanese Judo (Sayaka Matsumoto)?? All of these athletes countries traditionally excel at those sports. How odd would it be to see a white boy born in Iowa running the 100 for Jamaica??

-JJ

Eat Your Heart Out Texas!

2008-08-13T20:55:00.006-07:00

I had a grand time at the Grand Mesa this past week. I was a little sad that I missed a lot of the Olympics, including the opening ceremonies. But I'm sure I can make up for it in the coming days.

Bluebell Shcmoobelle! Our time at the Mesa was highlighted by the amazing wildflowers that were blooming. We strolled on the Crag Crest loop trail, and it was definitely a top 5 favorite trail. Other than that, we spent our time NOT catching fish (except for Kelsie's 3) and eating amazing Wylie food.

More Pictures can be seen here.

-JJ

Interesting Ad

2008-08-09T12:15:00.002-07:00

Not really sure how I feel about this. I saw it while flying into DIA. Papa Johns decided to carve an ad into the local wheat fields....

In about an hour I'll be heading out with Kelsie and her mom and dad to their cabin in Grand Mesa. Be back soon, probably with pictures.

NCAA Football Predictions

2008-08-06T20:28:00.002-07:00

Ohio State will inevitably cruise through their Big 10 schedule, (despite one loss to some crappy team) and meet and get yet again annihilated by an SEC team...this time in Georgia.

Colorado will break the top 25.

Lookout Mountain

2008-08-05T08:28:00.004-07:00

This morning I woke up semi-early, racked my bike on my car, drove the 1.5 miles to the base of lookout mountain here in Golden, and proceeded to climb it all the way to the top. I've never done such a climb, and actually it was easier than I expected. I even passed a couple folks on the way up! (Never mind the 2 ladies who scorched me on the way up..AND on the way down. look you punks who are about to make fun of me, I have no doubt in my mind those ladies could take you down!) Speaking of down, that ride down was fantastic. Though I was a little frightened of having a blowout and flipping over the handlebars going 60.

Next I would love to do one of those awesome mountain passes!

In other news last night Tami and I went to the Rockies game. I splurged and got us seats way down low. I even taught her how to keep score during the game! I haven't seen a Rockies victory in person since April 2007. I figured with 14 game winner Aaron Cook on the mound, playing the league worst Nationals, this was as good a shot as ever. We lost 9-4.

View from our seats

And lastly I got new insoles for my work shoes. Here are my old ones when I pulled them out.

Yikes.

-JJ

Screw your head on straight!!!

2008-08-01T16:12:00.005-07:00

In September of 1939 Germany invaded Poland, sparking the beginning of the second world war. Germany was a world power that held a form of government called communism.* Flash forward a couple years and in America, the very word "communism" was not even to be uttered in public.

*Retraction: I've been corrected that Germany was not communist, but fascist. But the point is still in tact. Thanks for making me look DUMB, grubbsy. ;)

It's just a form of government that happens not to work. Nothing about Communism is inherently "evil". Unfortunately it all got wrapped up to become synonymous with the Nazis. Just because someone thinks Communism just might work, doesn't mean that he would like to travel Europe enslaving Jews.

Flash forward to today, and the country is all up in arms because one of our Presidential candidates is being accused of being Muslim. Do I care if he is Muslim? No. No I don't. I don't think he is, but even if he were, I don't think it matters. Just because a President is a Christian doesn't make him a good leader of a nation, and in the same way a President being Muslim doesn't make him a bad one.

For most Muslims, the only crime they ever committed was being loosely associated with the Muslims who act as terrorists...those terrorists are only extremists. I found this quote by Richard Bulliet, who is a professor of Middle Eastern history at Columbia, and he says it pretty well.

"Jim Jones, David Koresh and Meir Kahane do not typify Christianity and Judaism in the eyes of the civilized West, but those same eyes are prone to see Osama bin Laden and Mullah Muhammad Omar as typifying Islam," Richard Bulliet

I just worked with a girl who happened to be part Pakistani. She was born here to an Oklahoman mother and a Pakistani father, who was in the Air Force. She rattled off story after story of ignorant folks who constantly bring her and her family into question just because of her Middle Eastern name. Shameful.

What do you think of when you here the word "Allah?" I'll admit that for a time, in my younger and more ignorant days, I just thought of a terrorist running into a crowd of people with bombs strapped to him. Allah is only an Islamic term for God. Yeah, the same God that you and I pray to. Granted the religion from there on down is different (Jesus-Muhammed), but I think the God is one in the same.

What, do you think that if a Muslim becomes president that he's gonna just invite terrorists to come over and have a field day? Please, grow up. Vote for whoever you want, just don't let a skewed view of Islam cloud your judgment.

Field Report: Detroit Tigers

2008-07-29T19:40:00.002-07:00

Oh you poor AL bench players. You will forever be pinch runners.

Sunday I had the day off and the opportunity to day trip to Detroit to catch an afternoon Tigers game. After waiting for almost an hour, I caught the city bus headed for downtown. On the way, I was highly disappointed in the endless poor neighborhoods I passed through. though I guess "disappointed" means I expected much, which I didn't.

The stadium was beautiful. Right downtown, none of this suburia mess, Giant Tiger statue out front. I was impressed with the completely sold out stadium. I went to the box office, and picked up one of the few tickets remaining, not unreasonably priced. (Read: Chicago Cubs, Boston Red Sox; Right field, $22)

Entering the stadium I picked up my $1 scorecard (free pencil!) and was ushered to my seat. The scorecard was nice, thick paper stock, nice picture on front. As I opened it up, I was disappointed with the poor layout. Only 10 spaces to write names??? Are you kidding? Oh yeah, in the AL theres no reason. Barely any subs, aside from pinch runners.

Curtis Granderson hit a homerun that lands 5 feet from my seat. As always, its given to a small child.

The guy behind me is also filling out the box score. These fans are traditionalists.

Tigers ended up taking the game, avoiding the sweep.

Other than that, it was overrall a pretty pleasurable experience, aside from things not working out so well at the airport. I had to check in at 550am and didn't land until midnight.

I lived.

-JJ

Numero DOS!

2008-07-22T13:07:00.002-07:00

Ok, if you would, please allow me just one moment..JUST ONE! to be smug. ok, here it is.

YES! This is the second time I've won the coveted award. When people find out about it, they ask me what I did to win it. Well its simple really...well...yeah I dunno. Just one day you get a letter in the mail.

Also take note of the beard. I tend to go in cycles..I trim it real short before work..kind of a five o'clock shadow sort of thing, then I don't shave until I have to go back to work. Usually my crew asks about it by day 3. And as you can see, I haven't worked in a while.

Also we went on a recent 14er hike, Mt Elbert. Highest peak in Colorado, and one that I almost climbed when I was on Trek. But the weather did not permit. This time the weather was splendid. Really, check out the pics, some of them are really cool.

Mt Elbert

-JJ

Mistakes that make my job MUCH MUCH harder

2008-07-17T11:14:00.002-07:00

I'm hot about this one:

Biggist Mistakes made by the luggage industry. Well, good for them, terrible for us.

1. Putting wheels on luggage. Hooray! Allows folks to bring along...well pretty much EVERYTHING. (Sonny, would you mind lifting this over your head and putting it into the bin for me? Be careful, It's filled with books.) Or gold bars.

2. Putting wheels on briefcases. Nice, now we can't even carry around paper. It must also be wheeled. And why is this bad? Case in point: Kansas City to Chicago, lots of business men who think the whole wheeled briefcase thing is completely awesome. They bring their allotment of 2 carry on items, luggage plus briefcase, however they fill both up, expand them, so now BOTH can ONLY go into the overhead bin. (DID YOU KNOW that as an airline we can be fined by the FAA for allowing people to put 2 items up there??) It just won't fit underneath the seat. Awesome. Only 60 of 137 people have gotten on and all the overhead bins are completely full. I walk around the plane looking for more room, and I see wheeled briefcase after wheeled briefcase. I just don't have the time to pull down briefcases, find out whose it is, ridicule them, and check their bags. RIDICULOUS. And the poor people behind them have nowhere to put their luggage.

Although I would like to congratulate Matt Holliday and Aaron cook who represented the Rox quite well at the all-star game. I mean, bases loaded non out and you get 3 ground balls and 3 outs at home??? amazing.

-JJ

AL vs NL, Revisited

2008-07-14T19:50:00.004-07:00

I know, I've done this before. I admit, the American League beats us time after time. Intereleague, All Star Games, World Series. We keep getting beat. We'll probably even lose tomorrow night.

I ran across this article by Darren Everson in the Wall Street Journal? of all places, and it was very interesting. It tried to explain the disparity that has happened between the two leagues in the past years, and it came up with some very interesting theories.

1) Designated Hitter. Obviously. AL teams basically can sign big fat guys who can flat out hit, but are average or below fielders (Frank Thomas). NL teams have to worry about fielding, while in the AL it is a non-issue.

2) New Ballparks. The Tax Reform Act of 1986. This is sort of complicated, but in short, due to this officials started charging teams little or no rent, making it highly attractive for teams to demand new stadiums. More AL teams were playing in stadiums that needed replacing, so it all began with the Orioles building Camden Yards. Between 1992 and 2000, 8 AL teams have built new stadiums, while the NL built none between '78 and '94. All of a sudden AL teams were making more money than NL teams, and in a game with no salary cap, that makes a huge difference. The American League could now afford higher priced athletes.

3) The Oakland A's. They were poor, and couldn't build a new stadium, and couldn't afford high priced free agents, so they hired Billy Beane who took a new approach to building a team through what basically amounts to number crunching. It was a wild success. Since 2000 the A's have won more regular season games than anyone except the Yankees. So to compete, other teams started adopting the same techniques. The Red Sox have used techniques from the A's to win the Series in '04 and '07. Meanwhile, NL teams didn't have to compete with Oakland, so they didn't, and ended up blowing tons of money on Stars on the decline, a-la Griffey Jr.

4) Then came the ridiculous pitching deals. 105 million to Kevin Brown. 121 Million to Mike Hampton. 126 Million to Barry Zito.

So there you have it. No, I'm not bitter, I just think it's very interesting is all.
And at least it gives me something to blame.

:) JJ

Do they never learn???

2008-07-12T13:43:00.002-07:00

Ok so the new iphone came out. People lined up to get it. Store sells out in minutes. Remember when people did that when the first iphone came out, then apple decided to drop the price 200 bucks, and those very people were mad because they got ripped off? WELL YA DID IT AGAIN! Just don't get all pissy this time, ok?

Road Biking Denver

2008-07-10T15:09:00.002-07:00

I don't like it when I'm trying to work on the plane and someone tail-gates me in the middle of the aisle. Give me a sec and I'll move! Just give me and my bum a little room, will ya!??

This past week I thought that I might finally get my new road bike out and take it for a real ride. So far its just been a couple jaunts around town. So I told Tami that I'd ride to her house, which normally is a 20-25 minute drive. I get there when I get there.

See theres a trail that I notice driving towards downtown Denver. I see people biking on it all the time. So I decided to see where it leads. Little did I know that not only does it connect to the loop trail in Golden, but I rode 95% of the way to Tami's apartment without having to get on a street. The Clear Creek trail literally runs 50 feet from my back door, intersects the South Platte River trail 20 miles or so downriver, then arrives at Tami's, Via a beautiful downtown trail, about 10 miles south. It was a spectacular ride, and come to find out these trails run all over the denver area. Simply spectacular.

Unfortunately I was pretty whooped, then realized I had to make the ride back the next day. 2 days later my legs still haven't recovered. Road biking is fun.

-Jeremy

All Star Outrage

2008-07-06T21:19:00.002-07:00

I'll just jump right into it.

It all figures that the teams with the highest fan base, boston and chicago cubs, had the most all stars in a system that selects its all stars by fan votes and you can vote however many times you want?? It doesn't seem right to me. I was irritated to see that Matt Holliday, hitting .340, and gets to ride the pine behind a completely overrated Fukudome whose hitting .287?? I enjoy that the fans get to play a part in the selection process, but when this happens, the system is obviously broken. The starting lineup for the AL represents only 3 teams other than Boston and New York. Strange how they are the teams in the AL with the largest fan base...hmm....

In every category that Boston has a player starting, theres at least one person more deserving.

Dude, Jeter, there are arguably 7 AL shortstops who are having better years than you are. Michael Young is by far the All Star in that category.

That said, here is MY All star team:

American League

1B Justin Morneau (Min)
2B Ian Kinsler (Tex)
3B Alex Rodriguez (NYY)
SS Micahel Young (Tex)
C Joe Mauer (Min)
OF Josh Hamiltion (Tex)
OF Jose Guillen (KC)
OF Ichiro Suzuki (Sea)

National League (not a whole lot different, just getting rid of those overrated and over-voted-for CUBS

1B Lance Berkman (Hou)
2B Chase Utley (Phi)
3B Chipper Jones (Atl)
SS Hanley Ramirez (Fla)
C Giovanni Soto (Chc)
OF Matt Holliday (Col)
OF Nate McClouth (Pit)
OF Carlos Lee (Hou)

Mountain Rescue

2008-06-29T20:03:00.002-07:00

Friday night we had the fantastic idea to hike up South Boulder Peak...at night. And by at night, I mean starting at 9:30pm and getting back...well whenever we get back. The trail is rated at "strenuous" and we had tried it once before (Danna, twice) but we failed to bring adequate water and food, so we thought we would have another go at it.

So here we are, all 7 of us,(plus Duke the dog), donned with headlamps on a basically moonless night, trudging off into "Cat Country" (Mountain lions). Exciting.

Everything went well. It was a nice cool evening. The pace started very quickly, but slowed even quicker when we arrived at the base of the mountain. From there it was a 1.2 mile hike and a 3,000 foot climb.

A little further up, Justin was startled by a strange man who gave us absolutely no warning of his presence. He had started hiking at 3pm that afternoon, had become lost, and now dehydrated, was heading down with light from his cellphone. We gave him a bottle of water and a flashlight (to be left at the trailhead) to aid his journey. He also mentioned that we may run into his buddy, who ran out of energy further up, and was sleeping on the trail.

So on we went.

About halfway up the mountain, Barrett and Cami became sufficiently exhausted to turn back around. But the rest of us kept climbing.

Up and up it went. It never seemed to stop. Here and there I would glance into the bushes, half expecting to see a random dude lying on a rock trying to grab some sleep.

At this point we're trying to conserve a little water to help this random person we were going to run into.

then it happened. Out of nowhere I heard a "HELLO??" And I knew it was him. But he didn't appear for another 5 minutes. Then suddenly I saw this guy, hair ruffled and covered in dirt, sitting up in the middle of the trail. He looked completely horrible, and asked for nothing but water. He looked worse than I had expected, so I turned to find Tami and Danna to grab my spare nalgene and an empty water bottle. We filled it full, and he chugged. He then told us that he had already called 911 and they were on the way. He also asked for a blanket, as he was visibly shivering.

The rescue team then called his phone, and he let Rachel, one of our friends and a nurse, talk to them. From then on if they called, Rachel would give them information and updates.

In the meantime, Tami have him dried papaya and we through all the clothes we had on him, and leaned against him to keep him warm. In the meantime, we gave updates to search and rescue every so often. Then they called and wanted someone to go to a clearing and see if we could locate their car, whose lights will be flashing. So down Justin and I went, about 200 feet down, until we found a giant boulder. We climbed upon it, and were presented with a view of the entire city. And way down below, a car with its lights flashing. So we flashed them back. Using our headlamps of course, and eventually they spotted us, and the car pulled away.

5 Minutes later we heard someone yelling for below, saying "Where is Rachel??" It was 1 man from search and rescue, and Justin and I led him up to where they were. From there the pros took over. Our victim, Nate, got up, and immediately threw up the water we gave him. (I had learned a few weeks prior, from the movie "The Good, the Bad, and the Ugly," that after being dehydrated you are supposed to slowly sip water). Unfortunately he blamed it all on my girlfriends papaya, which is incorrectly identified as apricot. Search and rescue wanted to give him and iv, but he refused it, saying that he would be ok to walk down.

So after 5 more guys showed up ("That was quite the hike, eh fellas?"), and we were questioned about the possibility of our dehydrated friends drinking more than they had said (uhh, probably) we headed up the mountain and left the pros do their job.

So we summited, had a great view of the city, then headed back down. Search and rescue and Nate had already headed down, and we never caught up with them. Though on the way down, we stopped, and someone said "uhh, wheres Duke??" Sure enough, the dog had dissappeared. This is not what I wanted to deal with, for it was now 230am and I just imagined the poor dog wandering around in the wilderness for days before eventually giving out and dying on the mountain. I didn't want that to happen. But Danna, his owner, was convinced that he had gone ahead of us to the car, and from my experience of losing dogs, "when they are lost, they go home." In this instance, the car would be home.

I was hoping she was right.

So sure enough, down at the base of the mountain, we crossed a small stream, and we noticed paw prints leading out of the water. There was a collective sigh of relief, especially when 20 minutes later, still a full 30 to 45 minutes from the car, Barrett and Cami called to say Duke had showed up.

So after that all went well. Got back to the car, back to the house, and into bed by 430. Just as Kelsie was getting up for work!

-JJ

Fees Don't Fly

2008-06-27T08:44:00.001-07:00

Here's one of our new ads. Not sure if you've seen it. I find it highly amusing. I like that fact that we're going back to our "edgier" roots.

The Wild, Wild West

2008-06-25T16:44:00.002-07:00

So I've obviously been on quite the western kick, after "Blood and Thunder", visiting Dodge City, seeing the movie Wyatt Earp (Awesome! and next Silverado!) and I just finished "Custer and Crazy Horse." At the moment, I don't think much of the "White Man." I just picked up "Trail of Tears." Yeah, that shouldn't help.

Mt Shavano and FIBARK!

2008-06-18T12:26:00.009-07:00

This past weekend I climbed my second 14er in Mount Shavano.
It wasn't easy, as we (Danna, Erin and I. Tami figured 1 week is not long enough before climbing a 14er, so she stayed home) got lost once due to snow covering the trail, and we had no idea even which peak we were trying to climb, as we arrived past dark the previous night. After we reached the top, a guy up there said he had climbed 12 of them, and this was the most difficult.

That evening we were met by the rest of the crew (including Tami, on her first CO camping trip!) ready to enjoy Fibark (first in boating the Arkansas). We camped that night, then headed into town for the festivities, which included tons of food, skateboarding, and of course lots of whitewater kayaking.

So anyways, as usual, I let the pics tell the story.

Grove of Aspens

Crossing a small creek

Danna trying to find the trail..which she did...unfortunately it wound around, right back into the snow.

Erin scrambling. After getting lost, we were just climbing UP. Right before climbing yet another false summit, I noticed the trail..WAY OUT YONDER.

We traversed the side of this mountain on the left, at 13,000ft, for quite a ways.

AHA! The peak.

View right before starting the peak

Made it!

14,248ft

Danna

The three of us

Got me some gaiters for the snow that had covered the trail. There was tons of it, and we continuously lost the trail, but we figured it out.

And here are the pictures from Fibark. First is the Hooligan Race, which is just some local idiots who build odd boats, some which barely float, and just end up breaking apart. Here are two boats that didn't make it through the rapids.

And the freestyle kayak competition. It was amazing what these guys can do, including front and backflips, sometimes without their head even touching the water!

-JJ

Mt Shavano and FIBARK!

2008-06-17T17:33:00.002-07:00

So I just fixed my template..I was tired of the last one..enjoy. I'm going to post tomorrow on our trip to FIBARK and climbing Mt Shavano. for those of you who can't wait, go here: http://picasaweb.google.com/jetjackson/FIBARK

ROAD TRIP!

2008-06-09T14:22:00.008-07:00

Road trip with gas at $4.00/gallon? Well not just any road trip. A "halfway across the country-I'm moving my girlfriend to Denver" road trip. Tami already had her job, her condo, her new car, her new master's degree, and her new boyfriend, so now all she needed was to put it all together in this fantastic road trip.

It started on the last day of May, after I got off of work, I immediately hopped a flight down to Tampa, Fl. Meanwhile, Tami was leaving her brother's graduation from high school. More specifically his after party. With the minuscule Ody, her new Scion XD, packed to the roof with her belongings, she left Sarasota headed for the Tampa airport to pick me up. First stop would be Gainesville and the University of Florida, her undergraduate alma mater. After only a 2 hour drive, we checked into our hotel then headed to have dinner with her old friends, Hal and Cody.

The next day began the first long day. Well in fact we were making 2 long days, back to back, in a push to Dodge City, KS so we can have more time there before I had to be back at work. So the first full day was a long drive all the way to Memphis, TN and Barbecue. Our route took us along the panhandle and up the length of Alabama, cutting across the corner of Mississippi.

Just across the AL - MS border, we stopped at the awesome welcome center (good job MS!) and collapsed onto the lush grass under a tree, where pictures occurred.

After signing the ledger and grabbing our free cup of needed coffee, we finished off the last 2 hours to Memphis.

In Memphis we met up with an old friend Adam Forette who lives in downtown, and headed out for barbecue ribs. It's kind of nice to have someone to split expensive meals with. ;) Afterwards we found an outside bar and listened to a band play.

Adam and Sarah

Tami and I

Mississippi River from the top of the Peabody Hotel

That night we stayed at Adam's pad, and left at 5am the next morning for Dodge City. The route took us through Little Rock, where we stopped for breakfast with Dan Griswold. Unfortunately we were forced to temporarily abandon our "no chain restaurants" rule due to the closure of a diner and my unnatural yearning for stuffed french toast. Plus we didn't have all day to search for a restaurant in the area.

After getting through the ozarks, fighting the winds and tolls of Oklahoma and Kansas, we were just outside of Dodge City when I looked in the rearview mirror and saw a cop turning around to bust my girlfriend speeding. Oops.

We found it apt that we got the law slapped upon us in Dodge city.

If you don't know about Dodge City, its basically an old frontier town of the 1800s. Many famous lawmen lived there, including Wyatt Earp and Doc Holliday. It sits next to the Santa Fe Trail and was founded to protect wagons from American Indian attacks.

Anyways, we got a room in a bed and breakfast there, which was fantastic. The folks were SUPER friendly, the breakfast completely amazing, and the other guests, which included travel writers from different countries and a harley riding couple, were also cool.

The next day we spent the day exploring the town, going to the museum, seeing the gunfight outside the re-created front street, having a root beer (it was NOON!) at the recreated long branch saloon. It was so awesome that now Tami is on a Wild West kick like me and we're starting to rent all these western movies. (just finished the Good, bad, and the ugly)

We left town around 3, and stopped at a historical site where you can still see, over 150 years later, tracks in the ground from the Santa Fe Trail.

Tami's Bamboo Plant was not doing well

The Boot Hill Bed and Breakfast

Yup, thats me in a cowboy hat! What, Tami likes it!

Boot Hill Cemetary

Re-created front street

The Long Branch Saloon!

The Santa Fe Trail

Where the tracks used to (still are!) to be

That evening, after stopping in Colorado Springs for a minor league baseball game with Tim and Jo Inwood, we finally arrived in Denver over 2,000 miles later. We had a fantastic time, I tried licorice (and liked!) and Tami now eats sunflower seeds. Mission complete. ;)

Back to work

2008-05-28T18:16:00.002-07:00

So after a lengthy vacation I'm finally back to work. I just got done with a three day, which was wholly uneventful save for the guy who got mad because I was squishing his super expensive hat in the overhead bin.

Heres a hint: something you don't want squished? how 'bout not putting it up there! Like, put it on your head!

ok so anyways, now I'm back in Chicago trying to get an overnight in Denver for my next three day that starts tomorrow.

Why? well not just to go home, but for 3 reasons.

I would like to go home.

I just bought a new bike. this one is a road bike, a Specialized Allez 2006. got it off of craigslist for a highly discounted price (it was used!). I have yet to ride it. The girl who owned it had the pedals taken off, so i had to buy new ones, which should be at the house by now. I would like to ride my new bike. It really was kind of freaky, as the only issue I was concerned about was whether it would fit me properly, and when I showed up to look at it, sure enough the girl was exactly the same size as me. Crazy. She was a triathlete (you could tell) and had the bike sized to her 3 times.

second, I need my camera. While I was gone from home, I got a trip traded that will allow me to take a grand roadtrip with my girlfriend while she moves from Florida to...DENVER! Yeah i know, crazy, but really exciting. Maybe my life will turn out to be somewhat normal after all.....YEAH RIGHT! (i sounded very high schoolish right there).

So anyways I don't have my good camera on hand and the only way thats going to happen is if I get an overnight there....unfortunately theres only 36 minutes left until trading closes, so chances are looking slim. AFter this three day I'm flying immediately to Tampa, where Tami is picking me up and we are heading straight to her alma mater of the University of Florida and staying with a friend of hers. The big idea for the trip is an overnight stay in Dodge City, KS. Not sure why, just always wanted to go there. The more I talk about it, the more Tami gets excited about it too. I can't wait.

All for now!

-JJ

When Making Disciples Doesn't Seem Right

2008-05-21T09:19:00.003-07:00

Right now I'm reading a completely AWESOME book called Blood and Thunder. Basically it's about Kit Carson, a mountain man/scout for the US Government and the "conquest of the American West." Its very well written, intriguing, and I would suggest it to anyone. But thats not the point. A large part of the book is about the complete destruction of the American Indian and their way of life. There are many things that bother me about this, including American's "Manifest Destiny" and just the complete lack of respect for the Native American culture as a whole.

But the biggest issue I have is the fact that the Anglo's (thats me!) were out to Christianize the Indians. I know full and well that Jesus told us to go make disciples of all nations, but in many cases, doesn't that mean destroying an entire culture??? I mean a major part of the Native American way of life is their rituals and their gods, so wouldn't becoming a Christian nation completely wipe that out? And in fact it did, as they were forced into shabby patches of land and told to become farmers. (In the American sense). None of it seems right to me, and I kind of feel the same way about missionaries in Africa. Not that they don't have entirely good intentions, but maybe we just try to do too much. Instead of just going and teaching them about Jesus, we also try to make them live like us. We should instead celebrate these different cultures instead of ruining them. Any thoughts? Ideas? Hopefully I explained that well enough.

Art Loeb Trail

2008-05-15T15:43:00.005-07:00

Believe it or not, I've never been backpacking. Over the past 2 years, I've slowly gathered the required equipment to do so, but just never actually planned a trip. So after last years (or was it 2 years ago??) yosemite trip, we decided to get the crew back together for another outdoors adventure. Unfortunately Grubbsy, due to an upcoming baby, was unable to join us. (Next year, baby! literally!) So last friday Adam flew from Dallas and I from Denver over to Greensville, SC, then immediately drove down to Zach's home of Asheville, NC. After a short weekend and the gathering of equipment on Monday, we headed out on tuesday. We spent the majority of the day day hiking 8 miles without packs with melissa (actually Mel carried the pack.haha) to see some local waterfalls. She would drop us (and Bonnie, Zach's Border Collie/English Setter Mix) off that evening at the beginning of the Art Loeb Trail where we would squeeze in a few miles to get a head start. We had 3 days to do 30 miles. We got 3 miles in that first day.

I'll leave the rest to the pics and some captions. But i will say the most challenging part of the trail, aside from the mountiains we had to climb (the entire thing was basically peak to gap, over and over. The trail was rated "strenuous") was WATER. I believe there were only 4 spots along the trail where you could get water. And it wasn't a river, it was barely a trickle, only enough to pump into the filter.

Bridal Veil Falls, during the day hike

Setting off

Thats the sign...

We think she was having a good time

First sign of water, 7 miles into the trail

She wasn't the only one exhausted. This is at the base of Mt Pilot, a ridiculous climb up to 5500 ft. We had to make it over to find water for the evening, and since we'd already done 10 miles, we opted to follow the road around the mountain.

I believe this is self explanatory

Day 3...already. Day 2 was so long and hard not many photos were taken.

Ok, so at the end of day 2, adam and zach wanted to call Mel to pick us up at one of the roads. I tried to talk them out of it, but they were set on it. This is adam on one of the phone call attempts. We eventually got ahold of her, but she couldn't find anyone to pick us up until 6pm. Realizing the trail got slightly easier, we opted to continue. YES!

Resting

Climbing Black Balsam Knob

She never left his side

The views got amazing

Group photo

Entering Shining Rock Wilderness. We got lost twice here. And it rained on us that night. Hard.

I can smell them through the photo.

This is just hilarious.

Up to the Narrows

Day 3: Bonnie is noticibly tired

View from the Narrows

The "home stretch." Unfortunately it was 4 miles long.

Finished!!!! 38 total miles in 4 days!

The night before we left town we had a shishkabob dinner at the house, out on the back deck, sunset, and watermelon. It was perfect.

-JJ

Coors Rocks!

2008-05-01T07:11:00.005-07:00

So its not just me! SI.com recently did an online poll of the best baseball stadiums. Before I read it, I predicted that we would rank somewhere in top 10...well actually I thought we DESERVED to be somewhere in the top 10. And I was right! I enjoy the fact that everything i hate about fenway and wrigley is what ended up knocking them down so far. And they only things that we ranked poorly in are things we don't have a lot of control over (tradition) and things I don't care about (promotions). Now if we could only work on that fan IQ...I just think thats a product of our lack of history. We'll get there.

If you would like to see all the reasons why I love this stadium, I wrote a post on the subject about a year ago.

And while we're on the rockies, our second year stud shortstop Troy Tulowitzki (ok so he's in his sophomore slump, hitting somewhere around the mendoza line, and he just went on the DL. He'll be alright) has his own chant out at the stadium. It's nothing overly creative, but definitely overly fun to do. It's based on a chant we all know and love, but instead of ending it with "let's go!" we end it with "Tulo!" It's become quite the fan favorite.

So the local fox sports station did a commercial based on it. Here it is!

Doin' my part!

2008-04-30T19:40:00.002-07:00

Today I made 2 trips to the grocery store, 2 to the bike shop (i'm tuning my bike myself, aside from help here and there from the shop, and its currently not ridable...) and 1 trip to the hardware store, and my car has not left the driveway.

Also, I'm thinking of becoming a vegetarian. Tami is a "flexitarian," which means a vegetarian except with the occassional beef or chicken, but she says she'll join me in going all out. But she sent me this article. So thats what I'm reading.

-JJ

Rumble In the Littlest Big City

2008-04-27T11:41:00.002-07:00

Friday night we landed in Reno. We were to stay there for the night, and leave around 10am the next morning.

And in fact, thats exactly what happened.

Only that night, we got to our hotel exhausted, an hour late, and finally got into our rooms ready to pass out for the evening around 11:30. I went to the bathroom to take my contacts out, when I heard a commotion next door. it was a bunch of jr high to high school age girls (a sports team probably) out in the hall. And I then realized that the hotel was swaying, back and forth, quite significantly. Especially since we were on the 16th floor, the movement was quite pronounced. I felt like I was having a bout of vertigo. I kind of stood still for a minute, slightly bracing myself, waiting to see what happened.

Nothing did. The swaying eventually stopped. No alarms sounded. Nobody evacuated. the only thing that didn't stop was the annoying "keep me up all night" voices outside my door.

I then realized that the girls outside were talking about an earthquake. Not really taking them seriously, for they were adolescent females, I wrote off the whole thing as just a gusty wind, for I knew these buildings were meant to give a little in such situations. I laid down that night hoping that the girls next door would settle down and go back to their rooms...and be quiet, which they shortly did.

The odd activity soon left my mind, and I went to sleep.

The next day I woke up, did my thing, then got ready while I was chatting on the phone with Tami. As I was leaving my room to go to the lobby, I mentioned the odd swaying to her, and within a few seconds, she told me that her mom and seen on the news that there had been an earthquake...4.7 in magnitude, 3 miles west of where I now stood. A little surprised, I went downstairs.

I soon learned that it was all true. Not that I doubted my girlfriends mother, but it was all confirmed. There had been an earthquake. Jessica, the girl I was working with, who grew up on the west coast, was used to such things and ended up shushing the girls outside my door with a stern "It's just an earthquake! Get over it!" How I never heard this, I dunno...or maybe her voice fit in seamlessly with their voices. ;)

Now apparently it's a big deal, as they are talking about the possibility of a larger earthquake in the near future because of all the aftershocks..over a 100.

So anyways, just wanted to say that I'm proud to have survived my first earthquake.

If you have no idea what I'm talking about, here is a story on CNN.

-JJ

Keep it Clean, Will Ya?

2008-04-19T17:17:00.003-07:00

This has been bothering me for a long time now, and its time to share.

I'm continually amazed at the complete INABILITY of ADULTS to keep things clean. And I'm not even talking about their home. At home, do what you want, leave your Kleenexes, dirty diapers, paper towels, whatever...you can leave those around. It's your house.

But I'm getting tired of going into bathrooms at restaurants and seeing filth everywhere. I mean really there is no reason for ANY public bathrooms to be that dirty. Is it really that hard to pitch your paper towel into the trash can??? I love public restrooms at rest stops. Theres never paper towels in there, just blow dryers, so its always clean.

And I know I've mentioned this in a previous blog, but do you really have to shove ALL your trash into the seatback pocket? Even those poopy diapers?? (YES, I'VE WITNESSED THIS)

At the gates in chicago, we have new chairs, complete with mini tables between each chair, large enough for you to set drinks or food on. So just the other day, I waited for everyone to board the aircraft. Once everyone was into the jetway, I was completely APPALLED. Here, just a few minutes prior, were a group of ADULTS, with the possibility of a few children, waiting for their flight. Now, they were not there, but unfortunately, EVERY SINGLE TABLE had trash on it. Cups, wrappers, you name it. If they had it and it needed to go into the trash, they had left it. I don't get it. I really don't.

People, take the time, THROW IT AWAY!

Hold the phone, I'm not done yet!

2008-04-15T09:09:00.003-07:00

Ok so I'm skipping a REALLY AWESOME trip to DC to see the first game of the baseball season (the lame one in Tokyo DOES NOT COUNT). I feel like I'm behind and I need to catch up with whats happening NOW. Dan blogged about it, so go there.

So I got home on Sunday night. First time in..well quite a while I've been home, and my first order of business was snowboard shopping. I've already let the other one go. Theres absolutely nothing I can do about it, so lets just go ahead and move on.

Monday morning I sat around and did nothing. Went to the coffee shop where Kelsie works, read the paper, had a cup, went home, successfully integrated Tami's music library into mine (now up to 11,000 songs), and sat around some more, mostly just waiting for Kelsie to get off of work at 1215. She wanted to go snowboard shopping with me.

So finally we left around 1, headed for Colorado Ski and Golf shop, and perused the limited selection of boards. Now I'm NOT an expert on these things. My last one I selected online not knowing anything about it. So I'm at a loss looking at all these boards. The salesman was very nice, and..well adamant about certain brands. He pointed out a Salomon Strobe that looked pretty cool, it was in my price range, and at a pretty good discount. But thinking that I probably should look around some more, I put it on a 24 hour hold so nobody would come behind me and get it before I could get back.

I asked them to disconnect themselves from being an employee for a minute, and direct me to some other good snowboard shops. I got a list that I had never even heard of....BC, Zoomy's, Boardroom...

The Boardroom was the closest, so we headed there.

It was a small shop specializing in snowboards and skateboards. In particular, they were a large dealer of Never Summer Industries. I'd heard of them, but didn't know a whole lot. Plus they had a lot of really cool boards. Unfortunately the ones he picked out for me had horrible graphics on it or were out of my price range, and the ones I liked he didn't have in a size that would fit me.

I saw another one I liked, but it also was too big. So I asked if he had a smaller size. He said he might, and headed into to back.

A few minutes later, he emerged with a different board in a plastic sheath, with the bottom facing us. He pulled it out, and said he didn't have the board I had wanted, but that he would let this particular board, in my size, go for 299. He flipped it over, and Kelsie and I were both in awe. I loved it. Plus it was a $500 dollar board. It's called a Never Summer Premier. He spouted off things about it that I didn't understand, and I told him the board I used to have. "This one will blow that one away."

I was sold.

Whats better is that I'm supporting the local economy, as Never Summer hand makes all their boards here in Denver.

I even went over and picked out some new Burton Mission bindings that I got for $110, retail $170.

When I got home, just for kicks, I looked up some reviews online, and they were nothing but spectacular. I can' t wait to use it.

Most of the resorts are closing this weekend, so I think I'm going to go try it out tomorrow. Heres a picture of it. I might take one tomorrow with snow.

-JJ

I Give Up

2008-04-08T17:43:00.008-07:00

Sort of a weird title considering the last post, but then...i just wanted to prove to Tami that I can spell weird correctly.

Ugh. I can't believe I'm about to admit this to the entire world, as it is a highly painful story for me to recount. But I guess this is one of the many reasons I have this blog...to get things off my chest.

So shortly after seeing Tami in Sarasota, I flew off to Reno to see my old (he's not old, just known him a while) pal Bobby Hulett. He and his family, along with Albert Addison, were driving up from Oakland for a week of skiing and winter fun, and they invited me along. So I quickly packed up my snowboard, snowshoes, and ski jacket for the trip.

the next day, after arriving in Reno, I went down to claim my luggage when...uh oh..its not there. Ok so no big deal, maybe it got on the next flight from vegas and it will be here shorty. Oh no. 1 hour later the next vegas flight arrived and it wasn't on there either. Still not completely freaking out yet, I reported my loss to baggage. They were genuinely concerned, and told me that bags rarely get lost overnight, but I would just have to come back to Reno when they found it to pick it up.

Well I left. And long story short, I haven't seen it since.

At this point I'm convinced that it was stolen. I lollygagged getting down to baggage claim, and the fact that an easily identifiable bag such as a snowboard bag not showing up anywhere in the system after 2 weeks pretty much points to theft.

SOOO, I'm now out a snowboard, its bindings, my ski jacket, snowshoes, and some linens off my bed. But this is it. I'm washing my hands of the situation and getting over it.

You lose a snowboard, you get the girl. I'll take that trade.

I guess I know where I'm spending my tax return/stimulus check.

But not to take away from the trip. It was great. Spent quality time with old friends, snowboarding with magnificent views of Lake Tahoe, and a newfound talent at video-jump rope at circus circus in Reno. Here are some photos.

The Story

2008-03-28T15:37:00.005-07:00

I know a lot of you have been curious about this since my sudden relationship status change (I know, earth shaking news) and it really is a great story that no one should miss out on, so here you go. Tami feel free to comment on any omissions. Or if you think there are better (or bigger) words I should have used. ;)

I was in New Orleans visiting my parents for my mother's 50th birthday, and I had to be back at work the next day. So here I was, minding my own business, waiting for my flight. I had to fly to Dallas to pick up my ipod from baggage claim there (THATS a whole 'nother story), then catch a flight to St Louis then onto Chicago.

Well my stomach starts grumbling, and my legs get shaky, indicating that I should probably go grab some food. Now as everyone who's had layovers in N.O. knows, theres next to nothing to eat there, and what there is, is mega expensive. I pass by a place called the "Praline Connection" and I figure I could just grab some bacon and a biscuit for the price I could have a full breakfast for at Denny's. Sounds good and it should hold me over until Dallas.

So I jump in line and immediately notice this stunningly attractive girl standing in front of me. Being the MAC DADDY I am, I chose to say absolutely NOTHING to this girl. Typical. As we proceed towards the front of the line, a lady behind me asks if there was anyway she could get just ONE piece of toast. They said it only comes in pairs, and that its a $1.40. So I looked at her and said that if I could give her .70 we could split it. Perfect! Well she laughed, and I noticed that the hottie in front of me kind of giggled at the comment. So the girl in front of me orders her coffee, I get my biscuit and bacon, and after I pay I step over to the condiment tray to grab some jelly where this same girl is doctoring up her coffee.

Thats when it happened. Out of nowhere she looks at me and asks where I'm going.

I told her my itinerary, which leaves her gaping because I'm flying across the country for no apparent reason other than to grab my ipod.

So we stand there, completely in the middle of the exit from the line, chatting. She was traveling back to Tampa from interviews, as she was a soon to be graduate from grad school. (Is that redundant?)

So after about 5 minutes of discussing Catholic School and my lack of ability to teach (at the time I thought she was interviewing to be a teacher), I reached down into my gut and from somewhere dug out a little courage.

"Wanna go sit down for a bit?" I'm not sure if thats what came fumbling out of my mouth, but I think that was it...

She agreed, and we went and sat down and chatted for another 20 minutes or so. We talked about mostly music and sports, more specifically the Florida Gators and Jack Johnson. We got along extremely well and I guess.."sparks flew" as they say. We spoke about Baseball and her lack of interest/knowledge about it. Siezing the opportunity, or just mooching a place to stay, I'm not sure, I asked her if she'd be interested in going to a game with me sometime, since she lives in Sarasota, spring training capital.

"Are you serious??" (i remember this word for word).

"Absolutely."

So she gives me her email address, I realize that I'm running somewhat late for my flight, we go through our "way to late in the conversation to be doing this" introduction of names,(hers is Tami) and I skeedaddled off to my flight.

Fast forward a few emails, and I ask her out to dinner. Since I had a Tampa Overnight, and since she just happened to be driving through town that day (never mind she had to dump her sister off at some random guys house) it seemed to work out perfect. I called my friend KiKi who is a supervisor at the hotel there to get suggestions on restaurants and was told to go to a place called the Rusty Pelican in Tampa. So I show up that day, with KiKi waiting on me to make reservations, and Tami comes a picks me up. (Any girl thats ok with picking me up on the first date is ok with me!). Long story short we have a great dinner and conversation and end the evening with a glass of wine on the back patio watching the sunset. (With the beach bash going on next door...thumping music, girls screaming...I thought for sure that she wanted to be there instead of hanging out with me!!!)

After that we talked on the phone every other day or so, until Easter when I got the opportunity to head down to Sarasota to visit. We had dinner on sat night, church sun morning, then to her grandma's house that afternoon for lunch. Her family was great! And I got along really well with them. That trip went great and we made our "relationship" official just before I left town. And by official, I mean Facebook official. ;)

So theres the story. Now here are some pictures.

Couch Surfing!!!

2008-03-14T17:31:00.002-07:00

Alrighty folks, a few months ago I decided to take a double vacation in the month of May so I could travel Europe the entire time. Unfortunately, the gang I was going with bailed because of the destruction of the dollar over there.

AAAnyways, now I'm left with basically an entire month with..well..nothing to do. All I have planned right now Is to head out to Asheville, NC to see Zach, and we are going to grab his dog Bonnie and hit the trails for 3 or 4 days..and by trails I mean the Appalachian trail. But other than that, I have nothing planned.

The other issue with this is that I have no money. I mean I have money, but not anything to go travel the world with. I can get a flight to another country for a lot cheaper than normal, but still the whole shabang is rather...pricey.

I just flew with this girl, who is a rabid traveller, rock climber, and camper. I told her all about my double vacation, and she THREW...A....FIT.

"YOU'VE GOT TO DO SOMETHING!!"

well surely. I'm just not sure its going to be out of the country.

Then she told me about couchsurfing.com. Basically its a website where people offer up their couches...FOR FREE...for travelers who want to actually experience the local culture, instead of staying at some resort. She said she's couch surfed in Boulder, CO and has hosted 3 different international surfers at her couch at home.

Awesome, right?? I think I might do it. I think it would be a blast. I just don't know where to go!!! New zealand? Finland? Mongolia? What do you think? Any ideas?

-JJ

You've been there the whole time???

2008-03-13T08:42:00.001-07:00

First of all, I just gotta say that the way the media spins things are ridiculously...well...sick and irritating. Thats all about that.

So heres a fun and exciting story. The past couple months I've gotten emails from friends Katie Coldwell and Rebecca Wilkinson, ACU and Harding grads, respectively,and also fellow employees. They were telling me that they had a friend they went to church with that was now a fellow flight attendant in Chicago, and they we needed to meet up...and be friends apparently.

And now too soon after that I received a message from this said person, whose name was Drew, that he was bored sitting reserve in Chicago and that he had heard about me...so in essence he wanted to be my friend.

If theres one thing I need, it's guy friends.

So I messaged him back, and said that when I'm in town I'll look him up and maybe we'll get together.

So a month, 2 months, then 3 go by. I get lazy, I never look him up, and we never hang out.

Then I get a facebook message from him, once again saying that we need to hang out. and once again I check his schedule, and the day I'm going to be in Chicago early, he wasn't there...missed once again.

So just this past Monday night, I was sitting in my crash pad, watching tv and browsing my computer. Then I opened up my hard drive (not physically, on my desktop). When you open this the computer scans for other networked computers. And there, on the left, in my menu items, was a networked computer: "Drew Shreeve's Computer."

Well thats interesting. It took me a second for me to come to my senses, and I realized that if it was showing his computer, he must be nearby. I sat, and pondered for about 30 seconds...there's another crashpad in the basement below us...I wonder...

And obviously, instead of sending him a message saying "HEY MESSAGE ME BACK I THINK YOU LIVE BENEATH ME!" I went straight down there, knocked on the door, and a tall guy opens the door.

"are you drew??"

" yeah!"

"hi, I'm Jeremy. apparently we have mutual friends in Dallas."

And that was that.

-JJ

Poor Benny

2008-03-08T16:11:00.001-07:00

Wow. Please don't bail on this video just because its jerry springer.

Go-Go Gummi's !

2008-03-06T21:19:00.002-07:00

This post is really quite pointless, but...

what would I do without the gummi's?

Really when I got into the outdoors, I had no idea of the potency of gummi bears. If I go skiing, hiking, biking, whatever, I normally take maybe a sandwich, snickers maybe, and a Clif bar. Unfortunately sandwich's get old and clif bars are expensive.

But man, let me tell you, middle of the day when your're skiing, and you just need a boost of energy, just bring a long a sack of gummi bears and you'll be good to go.

Don't believe me? Just check out the back of the packaging. I was amazed to see a simple 14 gummi bears have 11% of your daily value of carbs. it's like theres nothing else in those things, save a few grams of sugar, except for carbs, It truly is amazing. I just may try living on those things.

Ok, and get this, today snowboarding I noticed my big bottom lip, numb from cold, probably drooping past my chin...well I think it began to flap in the wind.

-JJ

The Life Behind the Face...

2008-02-28T20:25:00.002-07:00

...and sometimes questionable actions.

We all say that when passengers check their luggage, they also check their brains. They do crazy things. Sometimes they're nice, fun, respectful. Sometimes they sit there and stare at the back of the seat (read: David Putty) and sometimes they are unnecessarily rude. You have to just sit back and laugh.

But at the end of the day, the majority of the 400 + faces that I see a day are just those...faces. You just don't know what they've been through, whats going on in their lives. We maybe get to know 1, maybe 2 people per day, and most of the time everything is just fine and dandy. Going on vacation, going to see family, business meeting, whatever.

But then there are the folks who are going for a funeral. Just the other day my co-worker got to talking to a guy who was just going through a divorce, had been sober for 20 years, and on the plane was drinking a bloody mary. He cried right there. Gave her a hug on his way out.

I once ran into a couple who were flying into Philly to pick up their daughter's ashes. She had been stabbed to death.

On take-off one day, I noticed a lady crying. I'm not the best consoler, so I looked at the girl I was working with and ask how she was at consoling. She did a great job. The lady was on her way home for her father's funeral. On her way out she told the other flight attendant that she must be an angel.

These are just a few. And it can be so easy, when someone who is having a crappy day snaps at you for no apparent reason, to be rude right back to them, or to just think they are great big jerks. Sometimes you have to give them the benefit of the doubt.

There are so many more that we don't get to talk to. I've even gotten to know a couple passengers outside of work. It's just wierd. Here you were, just happened to get on my flight, just a face that entered my world for such a short period of time, the right words were said, and now...so much more is known. Its just crazy to sit back and look around and wonder about all the stories.

I have a sort of...Condundrum?

2008-02-19T21:41:00.002-07:00

So heres my thing. I just placed membership at my church. With the whole "in the middle of service announcement of my 'decision' plus the fact that I am single" and everything.

Which brings me to my problem. I love my church. I do. Everyone is friendly, and open minded. The preacher is great. (Reg Cox for those of you who know him). And I love my friends. My married friends that is.

Just last Sunday I got into a conversation with Reg, and somewhere in there I mentioned that I thought I was the only single person there. "Call me when your 40 and single" he responded.

Ok, so fair enough, I'm 27, not a big deal, and the amount of single girls at my church was never factored in my decision making. But its also a valid point. Theres not many outlets for me to meet people. Ok, well I meet tons of people when I work, but they all live across the country and I'm not about to do that.

Kelsie told me the church she attends, not far down the road, is loaded with single people my age. So MENver denver isn't so MENver after all.

But I just placed membership. I can't just bail. And it would be for the wrong reasons anyway, right? I would just split time in between the two, but when your only there one sunday a month, thats like once every two months....

So right now I'm thinking of going to our small group at Lakewood on tuesdays, and maybe splitting time on sundays...or just going to Saturday night service at Kelsies church...I dunno.

Any thoughts?

-JJ

My Valentines

2008-02-16T20:24:00.004-07:00

I don't like Valentines Day. I really don't. I don't like being forced to do something nice to your significant other. I think it should be more of a spontaneous thing. Because after all, girls just end up comparing what the guys did for them, and if you weren't the best, then all for naught. Just doesn't seem right. But I guess in a way, I feel like I kind of celebrate it. I'm single, and I enjoy randomly being nice to other single people.

Anyways, I worked Valentine's day, and thats the way I prefer it. I guess I kind of enjoyed the festivities. When I checked in, my supervisor, or one of the many, gave me an envelope full of big red hearts that read anything from "LUV is in the air" to "We LUV our customers." We decorated the entire plane with these hearts.

During one of the flights, I was deeply involved my "down time" ritual of my nose in a book, when I looked over and saw a mom and her daughter, whom were in my section, standing there waiting for the bathroom.

I looked at the little girl, and just to start a conversation, I asked what her name was.

"Molly"

"How old are you, Molly?"

"11"

"Well would you like to be my Valentine?"

She smiled.

"Yeah."

Her mom smiled too. Which was good because I guess some moms could take that the wrong way and report me.

So when we handed out our chocolate hearts, I gave Molly extra. She was my Valentine.

When Molly and her mom got off the plane, she handed me this:

I love my job.

So the next flight, BWI to BMH, I noticed 2 girls kept signing to one another across the aisle. While I was serving drinks, I tried to be a little jokster with one of them. Soon I realized my mistake, noticing that they really were deaf, for I had thought that maybe they just knew sign language which helped them communicate from across the plane.

Oops.

But as I stood there, the girl, probably high school or college age (I have no idea, I'm guessing), waved me along. Kind of a "dude, get out of here!!" kind of wave.

Slightly embarrassed, I was determined to interact. By way of writing on a napkin, I asked another deaf person on the flight how to ask "do you want something to drink?" in sign language.

She told me, so the next time I passed through, I looked at one of the girls who were STILL signing to each other, and asked in sign language. she shook her head no, but the lady behind her who i had asked how to say it smiled and gave me a thumbs up. Job well done.

So while deplaning, I had a plan. I took one of the giant hearts that we had pasted on the plane that read "happy valentines day," and when the younger deaf girl was getting off, I handed it to her and smiled. She, probably slightly embarrassed, took it and gave me a grin.

That was my valentine's day.

-JJ

Man Vs Wild

2008-02-08T08:57:00.000-07:00

Sometimes I'm glad that hotels have the Discovery Channel.

Yesterday Kelsie and I went snowshoeing. Just up the canyon from my home is Golden Canyon State Park. Its a good park.

Just before noon we set off on an intermediate trail, not having a real plan of where to go, just to follow the trail until we got tired...then turn back. I guess thats what our plan was. But when we reached a fork in the road, we decided the follow the trail around, where it would loop back to where our car was parked. I guess the only flaw in this plan was that the trail we would be returning on was the "black bear" trail, meaning it was one of the most difficult trails in the park. I mean cmon, how hard would it be going DOWN?

Well up we went. the snow got deep, but that wasn't a problem. I mean we did have snowshoes. But this also meant that the trail got harder to spot. Basically you would find the trail marker, then stop and try to spot the next one. A BROWN metal stick with a bear paw on the top marked the trail. Yes, I said BROWN, not hard to spot at all.

Well eventually the trail headed UP a mountain, to the very top where the rocks forced us to take our snowshoes off, to a peak called Ralston's Roost. After scaling the rocks, snow started falling. Not a big deal, we were spotting the trail easily, and it was heading in the right direction. As we headed down, the snow got deeper again, so we put our snowshoes back on. Then we located the next marker and.....

Yup, you guessed it, there were no more markers to be found. We ventured a few yards in every direction trying to find the dang thing, but it just didn't exist!! After about 30 mins of searching, we gave up hope and resorted to blazing our own path down. As I looked out into the mountains to gain my bearings, I felt a little like Bear from Man vs Wild.

I knew that if we could find a river, we could follow it down to civilization. And as I looked to my left, there was a canyon, which was cut by...A RIVER! And the city was to the East, so we should be going that way too...luckily Kelsie had a compass, and we got our directions, and headed down towards the river.

We basically skied on snowshoes all the way down, hoping and praying to find a trail or something. We talked about that maybe if we had to spend the night in the wild for a few days, maybe we could end up on Ellen!

About an hour of sliding down what seemed like one continuous cliff, in the middle of nowhere, just wanting to be rescued and get wrapped up in a blanket and thrown in the back of an ambulance and ending up on the evening news, we ran into the very trail we had come in own. And just so happened we came down right where the trail crosses the river (otherwise we would have had to ford it). Cool.

So it ended up we were fine, except for my left foot which as now soaking wet and cold and frozen, and we made it home without a hitch. But I was nice to feel like a true mountain man just trying to survive in the wild, if just for a few moments.

AND my gatorade in my Nalgene bottle turned into a slushy like the ones that the old man on the corner used to give us on saturday mornings when I was a kid. Life is good.

And this is better, especially for those of you at work in an office:

glumbert - Bad Day at the Office

-JJ

Blood Pressure

2008-02-03T13:01:00.001-07:00

I just found out that I have the blood pressure of a 6 year old.

I guess thats good.

What, we don't spend enough?

2008-01-31T20:45:00.000-07:00

Ok, I'm all for the government sending me a big check in the mail so I can buy more toys, but I'm confused as to why. Apparently our economy sucks because we aren't spending enough? Isn't it a fact that Americans spend more than we make? Then is it really possible for us to be spending even more money? Should we be maxing out 5 or 6 credit cards instead of just 2 or 3?

-JJ

Video Chat

2008-01-31T07:15:00.001-07:00

Yesterday I chatted with my old college roommate Travis Tidmore on Instant Messenger. He was in class at Pepperdine, and I was at my crash pad in chicago.

Now Travis and his wife Jeri just had a child. His name is Owen, and I thought it would be fun to utilize the cameras on our Macbooks so I could see a live picture of Owen. We temporarily agreed, and made vague plans to contact each other later that night to see if we could make it happen.

So later on, I found him online and we started a video chat. I honestly had no idea what to expect. In my mind I thought there would be a choppy, low quality video on the screen where we stared at each other while typed in messages.

So all of a sudden, after I accepted a video chat invitation from Travis, when there was a crystal clear image of travis, Jeri, and Owen sitting on their couch in Malibu, and them audibly saying hi to me, I was slightly shocked. I didn't even know my computer had a microphone on it. All of a sudden we were having a mini teleconference from across the country. It was outstanding. Owen was beautiful, and after a few awkward moments of staring at each other and having nothing to say, we started utilizing the fun backgrounds (note the roller coaster background from above, probably the best one...not a perfected technology, but still fun) The video would sometimes go a little blurry, but not too bad. All in all it was a blast.

At one one point they even had to move the computer so Jeri could feed little owen. A little wierd, but I've been used to that since high school. ;)

So after about 45 minutes or so, some spilled water and a walk around the house to Bev and Bren, two girls in my crash pad, could say hi to Owen, we signed off. I felt that our conversation was a lot more fulfilling that just a phone call. Fun times.

-JJ

3 Years in the Making

2008-01-26T16:10:00.000-07:00

So after waiting 3 years, my parents actually took advantage of their flight benefits and flew up to Denver to see me. Now for a year and a this argument was actually a fair one. But since my nephew has been around, its not really fair for me to complain when he was obviously their main priority.

But on the 20th of January, the impossible happened, and I actually drove to the airport to pick them up. They would be staying until the 24th, and my plan for the trip was to make my dad want a massage, since he claims to not like them. In other words, I was going to make him work.

Sunday was actually relaxing. (Had to get him prepped!) We went to church, where I believe they now know more people than I do. Then came the standard visit to REI, where we picked up some gear and my dad an early birthday present for himself. (a Marmot jacket). As is normal for an REI trip, he spent a while justifying it to himself. I've done it a million times, and always I go home with something I know is a wise investment. ;) No really.

Monday we woke up at the crack of dawn and headed to Breckenridge. It has the easiest, most gentle slopes around, so I thought it a wise choice for people who have not been skiing in a while. And in the single digits (easily negative with the wind chill) they both did spectacular.

Pooped, we headed down the mountain, got some pizza at the famous Beau Jo's, and headed home. Mom was in bed by 830, Dad by 930. We had a big day ahead of us.

Now was the fun part. One of my mother's life long goals is to see a moose. Shes been to many places where moose exist, they just keep eluding her. So I thought it perfect to head up to State Forest State Park, Colorado. One of our Rampers (guys at the airport who throw their backs out trying to load your ridiculously overstuffed overweight luggage) had clued me on to it, telling me that it was "infested" with moose.

So I naturally rented a small yurt that we had to backpack a mile up to. I could have made it harder and rented one that we had to go up to 4 miles to, but I thought I would go easy. So monday morning we picked up my friend Kelsie (the official planner of the trip, and who should be the official planner of every trip) and made the three hour drive into the mountains. On the way up, with Drake tearing through icy roads like it was summer, we had lunch of beef jerky and tuna (we waited too long into the mountains, where there was no food!) and witnessed a few Rocky Mountain Bighorn sheep alongside the road.

This was the scene just off the highway. I believe this to be some mountains actually in Rocky Mountain National Park.

After stopping at the Moose Visitor's center and being encouraged by the big "moose sightings" board that was littered with sitings within the last week, we headed up and found our parking place for the yurt. I loaded up my parents with as much stuff as they could carry (as long as they could stand!) we headed off on the 1 mile snowshoe hike.

Kelsie and I lugging our stuff

My mother..shes down there on the bottom left

Once across the frozen lake and up a small hill, there it was in all its gloriousness.

The Yurt at sunset

That night we FEASTED on steaks, leftover gumbo, and mashed potatoes. As for the weather? While only 4 degrees outside, the wood burning stove kept the little place at a comfy 65-70 degrees. In fact, I slept for the majority of the night in just my shorts, on top of my sleeping bag. Unfortunately for my father, all he had lugged up the hill was extra blankets..which all now proved useless.

The Next morning after a HUGE breakfast, we cleaned up the cabin and headed down. We had decided to snowshoe a trail down by the visitor's center for 2 reasons. It was relatively easy, and moose had been spotted. And sure enough, on the trail, only 10 minutes into it, two moose climbed onto the trail, one plopping down right next to it.

The Moose...or Meese?

Mom was excited

After all the excitement died down, which took a few minutes, we had a small issue. Moose are known as agressive and very dangerous animals, especially a mom and a calf, and here we had a mom and calf sitting right in the middle of the trail. We ultimately decided to blaze a trail around the moose and give them their space. (harder than it seems, since your displacing a foot of snow with every step.)

Our trip couldn't have gone any better. We saw our moose (not to early as to climax our trip too soon), stayed warm during the night, and enjoyed each other's company.

3 1/2 hours later we were back in Denver enjoying a nice Thai dinner together. The next day I sent my parents packing back to New Orleans.

-JJ

The Birds

2008-01-25T09:34:00.000-07:00

While I await some photos, check out this video. hilarious.

http://view.break.com/439964 - Watch more free videos

Computer Drama

2008-01-18T09:04:00.000-07:00

So I'm not sure if I ever posted about this, but I've had some computer issues.

Not too long ago, as I was travelling around with my computer nestled in the laptop sleeve of my backpack, there was an accident. I forgot that I had left a bottle of french vanilla creamer down at the bottom of the bag. (It was in there because I had brought breakfast stuff to my friend's house and it was at the bottom and never made it out).

Anyway, I arrived at my hotel one evening to find my computer soaked in creamer. Luckily, the computer was fine, it worked as it had before, except for one thing....which I didn't find out until a week later. Apparently some of the creamer had seeped into the cd drive, completely hardening the felt that blocked the way to the entrance. Oops. And worse a DVD that I HAD TO HAVE was stuck in there. So I was forced to use an exacto knife to cut it out.

I didn't get to bring it into the shop until about a week ago, and...ughh.

I thought it would be a simple $50 job, but unfortunately the quote was $280. Dag. Apparently there is a flat rate for repairs such as these. I really had no choice, as there was a gaping hole on the side of my laptop, and if I didn't get it fixed I'd be buying a new superdrive.

Fast forward a week later, my computer has arrived at the shop and I run in to pick it up. I sign the paperwork, and I make the 30 min drive back home. I open up my laptop, start it up and...what?

It starts as if I've never used it before. Read: intro to Mac OSX. And its the older version of OSX than what I had on my computer. Wierd. Plus the track pad feel is different, and the clicker isn't working like its supposed to....THIS IS NOT MY COMPUTER.

So, I make that drive all the way back to the shop, where I tell them the problem. He checks the serial numbers, and it actually IS my computer, they had just gone ahead and replaced the top and bottom covers, the hard drive, the track pad, and the superdrive. ALL NEW. cool! And since the clicker wasn't working right, he replaced that at the store, and reinstalled the new version of OSX....great since I had left my copy in Chicago. ( I won't be back for a week).

So here I sit, reinstalling all my programs and re-configuring everything on my computer. Luckily, all my irreplacables (pictures, movies, and music) are all backed up on my external hard drive. And also, there is currently a CD stuck in my computer because for some reason its failing to spit it out. SOOO, i'm going to have to make that 30 min drive BACK to the shop to see if they can fix it.

Update: Minor technical difficulty, 2 minutes at the shop and it was fixed. I love those people, but I'd rather not see them for a while.

-JJ

I LUV Making People's Day!

2008-01-09T21:12:00.000-07:00

Last night I received an email from my friend Erin Sims, who is a Customer Service Agent here in Denver. (I should go ahead and say she is the GREATEST csa in the system).

Basically it read: For those of you who are attending the event tomorrow, we are meeting for breakfast...

See I didn't know there was an event, and since I've been wanting to get more involved with the station here, I was feeling a little left out.

Well I emailed her back and got the scoop. Apparently Gary Kelly, who is our CEO, was coming to town to make a big announcement, and we were volunteering. We were going to go to the press conference, then "hit the streets." I'll be honest, this last part scared me, because I didn't want to spend the afternoon handing out flyers. And Erin didn't know what this meant either, so we were all clueless.

The next morning at breakfast rumors abounded. We KNEW that we were announcing more flights, but we thought there was something else involved that would make Gary fly all the way out here for a new conference....purchasing Frontier, maybe?

So we arrive at the conference and we are greeted by a SEA of red. Apparently 300...yes, 300!! marketing folks from around the system had flown in. We go to the conference room, I run into 2 of my friends, Brooke and Katie, and we get briefed on what is going to happen.

The plan on the streets is to give away free stuff...and some good stuff I might add. SWA ice scrapers, beanies, (tooks??) coupons good for $52 dollars off a flight (we had tons of these) and 200 free roundtrips. FREE!!

After the briefing we head to the conference room and pack in behind the podium. We pass the time with chants and cheers. As nbc news put it, "The Southwest Airlines marketing team was out in full force on Wednesday, with all the rowdiness of a rock concert."

So the conference begins, Gary makes the expected announcement that we were adding flights...AAAANDD??? nothing. The "other" news was that we were hitting the streets to give away free stuff. bummer.

But the good news was that I ended up with a free ticket to give away. But to whom??

So the sea of red stormed the streets. We had no problem giving stuff away (at one point the driver of the free 16th street mall shuttle drove by, opened the window and yelled 'thanks for the hat!!'). People were pretty receptive. All the street performers had on our hats. But still I couldn't find someone to give my pass to. I didn't want some stuck up business man to get it, and I wanted someone to actually deserve it.

At this point we were out of EVERYTHING. Except me. I still had my pass. As we headed back to the hotel, I spotted a girl, about my age (not really attractive so that was not my intention;) ) and she was working hard unloading boxes. She just looked like she needed a vacation.

So I walked up, and asked if they were making her work too hard.

"yeah." (with a smile)

"well you wanna go somewhere? take a break?"

"what do you mean?"

"If you could go anywhere, anywhere in the country, where would you go?"

"Ummm..I dunno, California?"

"Well here ya go, have fun!"

And I handed her the free ticket. Her face was priceless.

"are you kidding??"

"no I'm not. It's all legit. All the instructions are in there. Have a good time."

At this point Erin had run over to confirm that it was all true. She couldn't have been happier!

Here are a slideshow done by nbc news9 here in denver. (You'll see Erin on slide 15)

-JJ

New Theme?

2008-01-08T17:24:00.000-07:00

Ok so I think this has gone on long enough. I'm in need of some change, and I think all of you are wanting some change. I need a new theme for my blog, and seeing that I am A) not a creative person (no matter how much you think I am like my father) and B) I'm not a creative person.

So what I'm asking is whether anyone would like to help???

Can or Cannot?

2008-01-07T08:21:00.000-07:00

I really do think people are afraid of cans. And I'm here to figure out why. It's baffling. See, our water on the plane, which is completely purified (through reverse osmosis, mind you) comes in a can. It makes complete sense for stocking purposes, plus we already recycle cans so why would we have bottles??

So just yesterday I'm coming through to take my drink order's and I get the same old question that I get all the time. (At least twice a day)

"Do you have bottled water?"

See this is a tough question because technically we do not have bottled water. We have canned water. But the real question they are asking is whether we have purified water. Well the answer to that question is obviously yes. I'm not gonna go into the lav and fill your cup up in the sink! (Though if we continue with this conversation I'll definitely be tempted)

So do I just answer her question? Or do I just say yes and bring her a cup of water? She'll never know the difference. But since she wants an entire "bottle" of it I guess I'm stuck.

So I tell her it comes in a can. And she wrinkles up her nose in a kind of confused disgust. And honestly this sort of annoys me, because I've had a really long day and I don't have the time or patience to put up with people who are scared of cans.

"It comes in a can??"

"Yes ma'am. Please don't look at me like I'm crazy. It's really not that strange."

"Oh. Ok. Well I'll just have a ginger ale then."

"That comes in a can, too." (And my sarcasm definitely comes out on this comment. You have to be careful who you are sarcastic too b/c one guy threatened to write me up because I was being sarcastic)

"Does everything come in a can?"

Ok so this baffles me because soda's have come in cans for...well...at least 27 years because ever since I was born. I really don't understand her confusion.

So she ends up getting a ginger ale, but I tell her I'm bringing her water also because I'm going to try to break her of her fear of cans, or her fear of canned water.

Can anyone explain this? Is anyone else scared of cans?

-JJ

New Years...and WHATS WRONG WITH ME?

2008-01-02T20:07:00.000-07:00

I've been staying home a lot. I think that is why I have nothing to say. I go home, I go hiking, I go snowboarding..I don't think any of you really want to see more pictures of snowcapped mountains. It all gets redundant. But New Years was fun.

I was off new years eve, but the scheduling department decided it would be a good idea to make me work 1 day on the 1st. Just one day, its not a big deal. Unfortunately it was on the 1st, which mean my plans to go to Indianapolis was in certain peril.

But FORTUNATELY, $100 bucks said it wasn't. And thats how much it cost me to get rid of that day. It allowed me to spend new years with friends, a Lite Brite, and a Log Cabin.

Thats right. Kent's parent's house in Indy is complete with our childhood toys. Lite Brite, Airguns, Air hockey, wierd old-school records, and..LINCOLN LOGS! So Dearing, kent, Laurann and I spent a while goofing off in the toy room, then headed upstairs, built a log cabin out of lincoln logs and roasting marshmallows on the fire. Basically we spent the last moments of 2007 acting like it was 1987.

The next thing we knew we were ringing in the new year watching Carson Daly oddly flirting with Alex Rodriguez on national television. Then I fell asleep watching the end of fiddler on the roof.

good times.

-JJ

Winter Wonderland

2007-12-09T20:14:00.000-07:00

Wow, where have I been???

Now, where were we.

I flew home on Thursday with plans to join kelsie for an adventure to her family's cabin out on Grand Mesa, not far from Grand Junction. We'd invited many others, however all decided that they were too cool for us...

The problem, however, was that a large snowstorm was moving across the rockies, and on my way home we texted back and forth..possibly 50 times, trying to decide what we should do. It could be either go tonight or not go at all. But if we did, we would surely have to drive in driving snow.

And thats what we decided. Kelsie immediately drove to my house, waited for me for an hour, I finally arrived, packed in about 30 minutes, and by 6:30 pm we set out on our journey.

Let me explain to you that its a 5 hour drive (in good weather), I had gotten up in providence, RI at 4am (2am Colorado time). I'm pushing the limits of sleep here.

For the first 45 minutes there was nothing...no snow, no rain..just a nice mountain drive. Then, right before the Isenhower tunnel, it started. Once past the tunnel, and for the next 2 hours, we dove on pure snow. And I'm glad to say that no good story comes out of this. My car did not slide, not once. I drove anywhere from 20 to 45 mph, and not one hiccup. Then came beaver creek, and the snow turned to rain. It was easy from there.

Once at Grand Mesa, more snow. It cabin is at 10,000 feet, so this was expected. But the last hour of the drive was quite entertaining. Since I was getting tired, Kelsie was now driving, and the snow started to get deeper. We were now crawling up a mountain with about 3-4 inches of fresh powdery snow on the road. And still Drake just cruised along. The windshield wipers started to ice up, so every 3 minutes we had to stop to scrape the ice off. It became somewhat hard to see. At one point we smashed into a snow drift...instant white out. and totally awesome.

So we make it up, changed into snow gear in the car, donned our giant backpacks and our snowshoes, and trekked it up the mountain to the cabin. After 23 hours of being awake, it was time for bed. Even if I fell asleep and woke up being able to see my breath.

The rest of the 3 days there were bliss, even if we were like an old married couple. Every morning I would wake up, shovel out the stoop (path to the outhouse), start the fire, and kelsie would make breakfast and coffee. Then we would sit and watch the snow.

Days were spent snowshoeing, TRYING to snowboard (in 10-15 inches of POWDER that is not an easy task.) Just going down to the now snow-covered car was an all day event. Seriously, it took us 4 hours to go dig my car out and come back (with short de-tours on the way back).

The only sounds we heard all weekend were of falling snow and the occasional snowmobile.

On saturday I tried my hand at some snowboard tricks. I laid the door covers across the stoop of the gap, covered them with snow, trudged up the mountain, and shredded across it. then at the bottom of the hill I built a little ramp to rocket me ove

r the road. I did a half decent job, but not what I was hoping for.

In the evenings we reverted to an old couple, playing cards, reading books, dinner, and hot chocolate...and in bed by 10.

Sunday morning, our day to go home, it was still snowing. We calculated that of the 60 hours we were at the cabin, it snowed for about 55 of them.

So that was our adventure. The only exciting thing on the way home was when a truck, going down the snowy mountain (very sloooww) started weaving, then lost control and drove through the snowbank into the powder. As we past, he looked at us, smiled, and waved.

Guess we're not the only ones loving it out here.

See More pictures below: (Plus Bonus Picture at the End! You deserve it since I've had such a long layoff.)

Well it felt like I got a lot more air than this indicates...

Snow for Melting

Where is My Car???

FOUND HIM!

Only way to get around...SNOWSHOES!

Inside of the Cabin

What can she say, Kelsie is a good photog! Note snowshoes on my backpack..I think they make me look cooler. (Plus useful, I had to hike back up!)

AND FINALLY!!

MERRY CHRISTMAS!

Rockt-0-FER

2007-11-21T11:51:00.000-07:00

So you take a team that made one of the most historic runs in history, posting the greatest defensive numbers in history, with some FIIINE offensive numbers to boot..and what do you get?

A giant O-FER.

Yesterday's announcement of the NL MVP concluded an awardless season.

REALLY?

First came the Gold Gloves, which are given to the best defensive players at each position. You figured that a team that had the best fielding percentage in HISTORY could win just one....but no, not a single player won one. (Even though Tulowitzki made one spectacular play after another all season.)

Thats ok, because Tulo was surely a shoe-in for the Rookie of the Year. His only other competition was Brewers third baseman Ryan Braun, who did have great offensive numbers, but they weren't leaps and bounds above Tulo. Not to mention that Braun's defensive statistics were the worst in the league at his position.

Oh, and his team didn't make the playoffs.

But we lost that one too.

Then came the NL MVP, where Matt Holliday's ridiculous offensive numbers still weren't enough. In all these award's we placed a close second.

But we didn't win a single one.

I don't know what else to say. I just don't get it.

-JJ

Fun New Game

2007-11-17T20:39:00.000-07:00

Ok I'll be honest...most of the crazy mess I pull on the plane is used material. I get it from others before me. And even if I do do that stuff, sometimes I'm not the leader, I just participate.

So anyway, I JUST got off a trip with my friend kristy and her boyfriend James. We are all similar ages and all very outgoing....ESPECIALLY James. If you think I talk to everyone....

So theres this activity that we play occasionally. If it's been a long flight, at the end we do inflight yoga. Just have everyone put their arms in the air, "stretch left, stretch right" blah blah blah. It's fun, but not a big deal.

But James showed us a new twist.

First he calls the pilots and gets them in on the gig. After letting them know what's going on, he goes into the routine.

Now let me tell you James has a very "announcer-ish" voice. And he knows how to talk. And entertain.

So he goes into the stretching routine, and as everyone has their hands in the air, then stretches to the left....

then the plane tilts to the left.

"now, stretch alllll the way to the right...."

and the plane tilts to the right.

the pilots today did a lot better than the previous. The first did a slow tilt, while the ones today turned HARD and almost sent Kristy and I (we were the stretch leaders) into the wall of the cabin.

Everyone loves it.

Anyway, just thought I would share this with you.

The Story that I Wish Ended Better

2007-11-13T07:53:00.000-07:00

First of all, for those of you who care, Tulo was robbed...FLAT OUT burglarized in the Rookie of the Year voting.

Remember this? (you only need to watch the first minute or so to realize what I'm talking about.)

Just yesterday I was out at A-Basin snowboarding. One of my goals this year is to learn to ride goofy. I ride Regular, which means that I ride with my left foot forward. Goofy is the opposite, with your right foot forward. Might sound easy since I already know how, but its not. It's like re-learning. It might not be quite as difficult as when I first picked up a snowboard, but still difficult. My brain knows how to do it, I just need to train my body. The advantage of doing this is to perform tricks. If I'm going to get some air and turn a 180, landing goofy, it would be advantageous to be able to ride that way.

So here I am, a beginner again. I'm slowly traversing the slopes, making those wiiide S-turns...back and forth, back and forth. I drop to my knees, facing up the mountain, to take a break, and here comes this guy, flying down the mountain, screaming. I assume he's screaming to make me think he's out of control and about to run into me, but I know better. At the last minute he cuts left, and ON PURPOSE, (this is WITHOUT question) sprays me with snow. I mean a lot of snow. In the face. I'm kind of shocked. I look up and see a guy coming down who is kind of smiling, though I can see in his face he feels sorry for me-this poor beginner snowboarder who just got terrorized by a 20-something year old ski-bum JERK.

Then I comprehend that this loser thinks I'm a little rookie that can't do anything about it when he falls victim to such a crime.

Well think again, buster.

I jump up, turn my board back regular, and begin an epic descent of the mountain. I felt like the villains in a James Bond scene, chasing him down the mountain.

I didn't know what I was going to say when I caught him, though admittedly a few choice words came to mind. I didn't want to fight him, I just wanted him to know...yes, just to KNOW.

But it had all happened so fast that I had no idea what he looked like. When I arrived at the bottom a very short time later, I saw a guy standing there who looked absolutely shocked to see me. Maybe he was one of this guy's cronies...and I'm sure he could see me scanning the crowd for....for what I didn't know.

So I lowered my head and got back in the lift line.

Just like Costanza in that episode, too little, too late.

-JJ

Devil's Causeway and SKI PORN

2007-11-11T14:10:00.000-07:00

I've gotten into another winter sport. It's called snowshoeing. Kind of like Lacrosse, you may not know what it is if you are from Louisiana. Or maybe that was just me.

Anyways, maybe a lot of you have heard of it, you just didn't know that people still did it. Maybe we just ride around on snowmobiles.

I just bought a pair of snowshoes and I was eager to use them, so on friday we drove 3 hours into the mountains, about 1 hour south of steamboat springs, to check out a place called the Devil's Causeway. After repeated hints from the local ranger not to cross it, we headed up onto the trail, and eventually into showshoe-dom. It was freaking awesome. After following a path up the mountain that was originally created by what looked like a freakishly large mountain lion, we found the Causeway. Not for the faint of heart, it was only 3 feet across, and about 20 feet long, and with a 1500 foot drop on each side. We made a decision to NOT try to cross it, being that it was covered in snow.

Back in Denver, it is now officially ski season, as we joined a bunch of folks from our church to watch some porn last night. And by that I mean we watched Warren Miller's latest installment of ski insanity, which is more affectionally is called ski porn. I really had no idea what I was getting into, but when we arrived at the theater in Boulder there was a line around the corner waiting to get in.

We sat down, and as the song "thunderstruck" blared and the film started to roll, I began to understand. "Are you ready for snow??" flashed across the screen, and I knew this was the official beginning of ski season. Everyone was screaming, and you could feel the excitement. I was part of a tradition that I'd never heard of. For 70 years Warren Miller films has put out this "ski porn" that officially kicks off the season. The film was filled with unbelievable triple back flips off of 200 foot cliffs, 7 year old snowboarding prodigies, helicopter pilots leaping from 5000 feet in a wing suit, and my favorite, a new sport where you cruise... i mean, SCREAM down a mountain while para-gliding, occasionally skipping across the snow on your skis. Amazing.

As we left we received a voucher for 3 free lift tickets at resorts I've never been to, so that might have been the best 18 dollars i've ever spent. Check out the film's trailer.

I'm going snowboarding tomorrow, and you're all invited.

-JJ

New Territory

2007-11-07T22:40:00.001-07:00

So either no one cares about what I wrote, or no one reads this blog anymore...which would mean I would be talking to myself, which is alright, because I got used to that the first year I worked at this job.

I'm currently on one of those self-created vacations. And I'm venturing into new territory because I've never actually chosen to go home during one of these. Normally I'd chose a part of the country to visit, look up an acquaintance that I hardly know and invite myself to stay over. Instead I'm actually finding myself a life here in Denver. I've done a lot of mountain biking, movie watching, and decorating my car and snowboard with Rockies stickers. I'm running short on things to do, and I still have an entire week to go.

There really truly is not a whole lot going on. Last month I worked my butt off to pay off all my billls. That way I'll be able to work the minimum this winter and come home and board my life away. Here in Denver, that means I'll have a life.

I've become a regular down at a small sandwich shop here in Golden...unfortunately I found out today that she is closing up shop due to a lack of business and running away to Montana. Couldn't say I wasn't jealous.

If there is one problem that I have here its that I have a lack of guy friends. Well, more specifically, a lack of SINGLE guy friends. It's hard to just call up a married man to see if he can come over and play video games with me. I was thinking of inviting some friends over for dinner until I realized that should I do that it would be me and 7 girls. It's gotten to the point where Kelsie is trying to set me up with her roommate's boyfriends. Apparently they are looking for guy friends too...so its not just me.

and I've signed up to walk in the Parade of lights, meaning I'll get to wear the "TJ Luv" costume. you should all be praying that pictures will be involved in this, b/c you won't want to miss it.

anyway, here's a fun picture you may enjoy:

JJ