In case you can’t tell, I’m having one hell of a night with my cohorts in this region. Please hold for teleportation!

I will be travelling home tomorrow, so expect a late update if there is one at all!

Today was a busy one… a full day of meetings, followed by a long night of driving around seeing the Denver sights. We ended up eating Italian food before settling into a long session of work.

I just now got back to my hotel, with only a few minutes to spare before the end of the day! I’ll put a proper post together with meaningful content for tomorrow, but for now its time for bed!

Last night, we explored some of the perks of travelling for the company by spending our non-work time driving around the area sightseeing. My coworker *really* wanted to get an idea of what the shopping scene looked like, so after we hit a local brewery for dinner we headed over to the FlatIrons Crossing shopping mall.

I have to say, I’m usually not impressed by things like this but this place was IMMENSE. It really made Grand Praire look like a joke, and we were surprised to find that things didn’t cost a boatload more for being in the Big City.

We made a few wrong turns heading out of the shopping mall area, and ended up in quite the residential area. These houses were pretty big, but appeared to be mostly new construction. Some of them had 3 and 4 stall garages and giant chandeliers in their foyers (visible from the street). At one point, trying to find our way out of there we came across a house for sale, and my coworker implored me to pull over so she could see if the spec sheet listed the price.

It did. $750,000.

Good Lord. I wandered aloud what caliber of people lived in this subdivision were, since there were like 40 or 50 houses of that same size all in this little area. I have to say, if they can actually afford living in an awesome place like that they must be doing something right!

After that, we headed back to the hotel and I caught up on a bit of work. Tonight we’ve got a team dinner, so I might not be back to the hotel for awhile but hopefully I will have some more stories to tell!

Well, I successfully survived yet another flight to Denver and the subsequent drive to my hotel. I’m staying at a different place this time, I must say that I like the previous hotel that I stayed at better.

This hotel has an inconveniently placed wall right in the middle of the room, and they positioned the TV between the bed (on one side of the wall) and the couch (other side of the wall. I am sure this was just to provide a more optimal viewing location for either seat, but in actuality it just makes it hard to see the TV.

The wireless doesn’t seem to work very well, so I’m stuck on the Ethernet line too. That’s not a huge deal, but this desk chair isn’t exactly a portrait of comfort.

I’ve got dinner plans with a coworker that made this trek with me, but I’ve got a few blog posts planned for this evening after I put some work to rest.

While picking up supplies for my yardwork this weekend, my brother-in-law and I ended up in Radio Shack so I took the opportunity to pick up a small spool of solder for my multitouch table. I need to get the acrylic and the aluminum channel that I want to construct my table surface with, but I need to do some tests with my projector first.

This was a pretty safe buy at this point. I need to order some breadboard as well, but I want to shop around a little because it seems like I should be able to order a larger quantity of that online than I can readily get from Radio Shack, perhaps even cut to the dimensions I would need.

More on that later! I’m headed to Denver on business this week, so I might not have much to report until next week on the multitouch front!

I thought we would be down for the count due to the rain this weekend, but luckily we ended up with a gorgeous day. Yesterday, thanks to the help of and Tasha we removed the shutters and got them cleaned. It appears that whoever had this house before either attempted to paint the siding around the shutters, or the area of siding underneath the shutters just accumulated very even amounts of grime. I will find out in around 20 minutes when I head outside to spray down the front of the house with this new spray-on siding cleaner.

My brother-in-law came over today to help us paint the shutters, which are now drying in the garage. He and Tasha are going to undertake the arduous task of re-hanging the shutters this week while I am gone, which will leave painting the deck and landscaping as the last few required things on the outdoor task list.

After I’m done with this blog post and the siding, I still have to clean the rabbit cages today but that should be the last thing on the task list for this weekend. I intend to have a nice relaxing dinner at my parents house tonight before I fly out to Denver early tomorrow morning!

At the request of , I will be posting some “after” shots of the house when I’m done with the outside tasks. That might be a few weeks down the road still, since we have to get the front yard landscaping ordered and installed prior to considering the front yard done.

More next week on this front!

With the Mapleton dojo being closed this week, the Saturday morning breakfast club took a road trip to Mackinaw to train with Sensei Evans. It was a very basics-focused workout, most of our time was spent going up and down the floor focusing on different aspects of body dynamics, hip action, and movement.

As the class progressed Sensei Evans, , and Sensei Quinn took turns exploring different aspects of basic technique and we all took turns applying those ideas to our basics. Sensei Evans asked , and I to each take a small area of our training and teach a little of it to everyone. I taught a bit about extending the shoulder and keeping the pullback elbow tight toward the body during lunge punch, and I think it went very well. Everyone else provided constructive feedback on our teaching and I thought it was a nice addition to our standard workout.

It was a really good time!

I had ambitions to get my shutters off the house and my gutters cleaned after work today, but the unexpected downpour of rain will prevent me from getting the gutters cleaned. I don’t really want to get the shutters down with the threat of more rain either, since I have to disconnect my front porch light to do so.

Hopefully conditions will be more favorable tomorrow! We shall see what fate brings me after karate.

Tonight was a good solid basic workout for the first class. For reasons unknown (but probably related to my shoddy attendance record lately) I was having trouble keeping my center tight and my balance.

That being said, I was paying special attention to my stance during the first class. I’ve been working on getting my rear foot turned more forward and pushing off without my heel pulling up. All this effort earned me a C- from , but I’ll take it. It’s better than a D!

The second class was more basics, followed by partner drills. We used some less ordinary blocking combination in order to work on our body action, a lot of good discussion was had. I have some wicked awesome broken blood vessels coming up in my shoulders for some reason that may or may not have involved repeated backfist strikes.

I love karate!

OK, so I might’ve just got done watching the Top 20 Villians countdown on TV…

Today was a very productive day at work, and I briefly toyed with the notion of taking down my shutters and preparing them for repainting tonight. Instead, came over to hang out and we ended up watching TV for most of the night.

Since I’m heading out to Denver again for work next week, I have a very hefty to-do list this weekend. I want to paint the shutters and the deck. I want to get a carpet remnant ordered for the rabbit room. I need to clean the rabbit cages to prepare for the installation of said carpet remnant. I also get to deep clean the bathrooms, as it is my husbandly duty. Tasha gets the dishes. I also need to cut the grass, and edge the yard.

When I get back, we need to purchase new plants for our front yard and get them planted. That should be another sunburned day of fun.

So yeah. My weekend is going to be super-fun. Hooray.