Squirrelly Thief

So every autumn, Kate and I try to make a point of filling the bird feeder in the front of our condo with food for any straggling feathered folk who haven't migrated yet. This year, though, we seem to have a problem with a local squirrel who wants to feed out of the same feeder. Unfortunately, he's too heavy and ends up tipping out the bird feed all over the rocks below.

Here's our poor empty bird feeder...



And the seeds scattered on the ground...



These will turn into odd little sprouts by the spring, I reckon...

And here's a shot of the culprit himself...



Doesn't look terribly guilty, does he?

He's also been fond of digging in Kate's planter out front as well. The cats are eager to be released to hunt him down! :-)

Thanks always for reading! Hope you're having a great day!

Zoo Trip

Today (Friday) Kate and I met my sister and her family down in Denver for a few hours at the Denver Zoo.



Kate and I arrived a little early so we took the opportunity to check out the wolf exhibit...




...and some of the reptiles...





Aw, don't those skinks look so cute cuddled up like that? :-)

When Dianna, Heath, and the kids arrived, we got ourselves organized and headed out, stopping first by the lion exhibit.



Julie volunteered to be in charge of the map. Here she shows us where we are (the lion exhibit obviously)...



And here she compares one of the big "You Are Here" maps to her own carried one...



Everest seemed to have fun too. Here's a few pix of him with his Aunt Kate...

Having some lunch...



Posing by the water buffalo statues...



And looking at the duck pond...



Later, the kids and even the adults (sans me who shot pictures instead) took a ride on the carousel!




After the carousel, Everest was pointing out the safari train that rolled by - didn't get a picture of it though...



Though he did keep calling the train a "bus." :-)

At one point, Julie spotted a tiny little mouse snooping around...



...and Everest tried to feed it some of his snacks. :-)



Another fun time was when Dianna and I took Everest in to visit the lorikeets...



Dianna bought some nectar to feed the lorikeets, who lapped the stuff up!



Other cool animals that we saw included a coatl...



A grizzly bear...



A kangaroo (napping)...



And an elephant...



Now for some rapid fire pictures of us at the zoo...









After the zoo, we stopped in at a pizzeria that Emily recommended to Kate, called Pasquini's.



I'd say the show-stealer there was the massive calzones that Kate and Dianna ordered. They were huge - way bigger than either of them realized! :-)



Everest had his first taste of bruschetta with tomatoes and cheese.



And I guess we'll finish up with a picture of me and Julie at the restaurant...



Keep an eyeball out on my YouTube channel too! I made a number of videos of various animals while we were there and I'm hoping to get 'em posted on YouTube sometime soon.

As always, thanks for reading and hope you're having a great day!

Third Anniversary

Today (October 16th) is my and Kate's third anniversary! We've taken the whole week off just so we can relax all week and enjoy our anniversary without any stress from previous work days. I have to say that it has worked out swimmingly.

Kate's mother visited over the weekend. It was a low-key visit - though I'd spent much of the weekend hiding upstairs since I'd hyperextended or minorly sprained my foot. We made her dinner a couple of nights, invited the family friend Betsy over, and watched a couple movies. Mary Ann, if you're reading this, we enjoyed having you. Stop by anytime! :-)

I've had a handful of job interviews this last week...one of them very promising. More on that as it develops.

Now we finish our actual anniversary day. Kate and I spent the morning doing some leisurely errands around town. We napped and watched a little TV during the afternoon. And finished up with dinner at our favorite restaurant, Beaujo's, and dessert at Gelazzi's. (Thanks to Mom and Dad for the gift cards!) Then it was back home to chill out with some more TV. Just the kind of lazy, spend-time-with-each-other, sort of day we needed. :-)

Tomorrow we're joining my sister and her family down at the Denver Zoo for the day and probably hitting a pizzeria called Pasquini's for a quick dinner. I'm hoping to post this weekend with the inevitable pictures.

So Happy Anniversary to me and Kate, says I! And here's to many more!

Thanks for reading - hope you're having a great day!

Facebook and Others

Okay - you want to know the real reason I haven't been updating my blog lately? Here it is...

I think I'm becoming addicted to Facebook. :-)

Facebook is one of those online social networking sites and it has a huge following. I signed up for it just for fun some months ago. Now I have several "Friends" listed and I have a number of Applications running all the time. I'm also involved in a bundle of games that Facebook hosts - many of which I can play online against my friends. I'm also able to throw down a quick "Status Update" to let Friends know what I'm up to right then. It's so engrossing that I tend to forget that I have a "real" Blog that I need to update! :-)

It's so much fun that I've even got Kate largely addicted. She got hooked when she discovered a Scrabble-like game on Facebook and ended up playing and chatting with her friend Dana one night. She's also had chat and game sessions with my sister Dianna and our friend Annie, who recently moved to Virginia. When she found a Boggle and Tetris style series of games, it was all over.

I'm also on some other sites, including MySpace, YouTube, and LinkedIn. However, of the lot, I think I like Facebook the best.

MySpace is a little "clunky" in my opinion - and seems to be geared more for musical artists and bands. It's not as streamlined for customizing what goes on the site and it seems plagued with display issues. Still, it's quick and easy and there you go.

YouTube is, of course, just for videos. I think I'll keep working with it - mostly posting vids of the girls (Rune and Chiral). LinkedIn is a more professional site so I'm using it to have an online copy of my work experience and information while I'm looking for a new job.

There's a couple other sites that I'm thinking about experimenting with, including GoodReads and Twitter. We'll see how many I really need to get into.

So if any of you are reading this and aren't on Facebook yet - I highly recommend joining me and Kate on it. Fair warning though - you run the risk of becoming as addicted as we are. ;-)

That's all for now. As always, thanks for reading and I hope your day is going great!

Trivia Night

Meant to post this last Wednesday when Kate and I along with our friends Ron and Erin tried out a trivia night at the Trailhead Tavern. Erin had done this sort of thing before and was eager to recruit more people into it. The trivia night is hosted by an organization called Geeks Who Drink - a group of people who enjoy both obscure trivia and alcoholic beverages.

Well, naturally Kate and I don't drink. Neither does Erin. Ron had to have a couple of beers just to keep us honest. ;-)

At any rate it was a lot of fun! The Quizmaster (Quizmistress?) was a little foul-mouthed and rude...but despite that, we had a good time. Between the four of us, we had enough obscure knowledge from different areas that we did pretty well. Out of something like a dozen teams, ours came in 3rd! W00t!

(BTW, our team name was "We Can Haz Cheezburger" - since we're all fans of the LOLCats website.) :-)

Here's a shot of my teammates that evening...



Here's the one that's posted on the Geeks Who Drink blog...



(Yes, Ron has some sort of psychological aversion to showing up on camera...) ;-)

And here's Erin with our 3rd place trophy....



We don't actually keep the trophy. (Which was good - the thing was kind of ugly.) We just add something permanent to the thing and return it to the bar.

So I think we're pretty well sold at this point. There's another timeslot starting up on Sundays at the Stonehouse Grille. The Quizmasters are a pair of guys that Erin has seen before and really liked. Might have to give that one a go as well...

That's it for now. Thanks for reading - hope you're having a great day!