This has been linked a number of places over the past few days, but in case you missed it:
Reminds me how much fun storms can be! Sadly we don’t have a great storm watching view at our current apartment. The place in Omaha was great, albeit rather exposed 🙂
-Jordan
Heather and I went to North Carolina with her parents the second week of June. The place we stayed is apparently kind of a tradition for Heather’s family, called “Sunset Beach.” The area is actually an island of sorts, being cut off from the mainland by the “Intracoastal Waterway“, meaning that you have to wait for a little draw bridge to be closed to make it out to the island. They are in the process of building a much more substantial bridge, but for now the access remains pretty rustic.
Once we got to the beach house, we had an ambitious week of not doing all that much planned! Besides walking on the beach, and playing in the waves, I managed to squeeze in a little reading.
I read (in chronological order):
I will probably do some sort of a micro review of most of these, but the short version is that I enjoyed them all. Heather spent quite a bit of time reading too, we stuck together in the shaded deck of the beach house while most people were down on the beach. She didn’t manage quite as many books as me, I think in part because she was constantly distracted by our little nephew Holden.
By the end of the week, Heather and Holden were getting along well enough that she could hold him for extended periods of time without him crying. Everyone at the house enjoyed having him there, babies just provide so much entertainment it seems.
Mid way through the week, it was declared “Family Golf Day” (another tradition I guess) and the majority of us went to one of the many golf courses in the area. Now, Heather and I have been married for 13 months, so you might think we would have found the time to go golfing, or at least go to a driving range so she could show me how to swing a club. Somehow though, we hadn’t. I was more than a little concerned going into the even that I would be woefully outclassed, but I quickly discovered two things: I am at least competent at golf, and the “Family Golf Day” includes plenty of people who aren’t all that good. I think it helped that Heather and a few of the people on our team were providing great coaching, but I really enjoyed playing, and felt that I did ok!
The only really eventful part of our trip was the return. We started out early Saturday morning driving back to Charlotte NC, where our flight would then layover in Detroit, and eventually take us to Kansas City. We were hoping to then push through and drive back to Des Moines that night giving us an entire day home before going back to work.
Thing started off on a sort of bad foot when we were following the lead car through back-roads so small they didn’t even have lines painted on them. We assumed they had done some research on the map and had found some sort of optimal route to beat all the traffic going home from the beach. It was a scenic drive, if somewhat unnerving. We later found out they had mis-configured their GPS to pick routes with “no traffic” and really hadn’t meant to take us off the beaten path.
Once we got to the airport, we found out that our flight was at least two hours delayed, and possibly more thanks to major problems in Atlanta. This was going to be a problem as our connecting flight to KC was going to leave before we even boarded our plane to Detroit! The ticket agent managed to book us on the first flight to KC the next morning from Detroit, while still preserving our tickets on the flight we were destined to miss that day. Apparently that was bending the rules fairly aggressively. The rest of the day went almost exactly like it looked like it was going to, we boarded our flight about 2.5 hours later than we were suppose to, missing our flight to KC. An hour or so in line at the Delta counter in Detroit and we had two meal vouchers each and a hotel voucher for each couple in our group. Six dollars will not buy a real extravagant dinner, but we were more than ready to just grab something to eat quick and go to bed.
The next morning we got to the airport bright and early, got checked in and made our way to the gate. Things were looking good, no delays! Then the gate agent started paging that the flight was over-booked, and would anyone be willing to wait for a later flight. We were really concerned that maybe we weren’t going to get home after all. 40 minutes of this paging with nobody willing to give up their seat, and a woman who hadn’t been quite so early to the gate discovered that she didn’t have a seat on the plane. She went into total melt-down… It wasn’t pretty, I haven’t ever seen anything like it. After a few minutes Heather’s sister felt merciful, and offered to give up her seat. It turned out that she would not be able to get on the plane unless three people gave up their seats. After a few minutes of talking Kelsey, Jim and Pam all decided to give up their seats.
We boarded right on time and made it to Kansas City with no problems, but if you ask me there was a real air of “escaping in the nick of time” getting on the flight. The three people who stayed behind, managed to get on the noon flight (two hours behind ours) and made it with no other complications.
Despite the… adventure getting back, the vacation was very relaxing. Both Heather and I enjoyed the time to just slow down for a while.
-Jordan
As I write this, I am happy to announce that I don’t have anywhere to be this weekend!
It’s only a partial victory;Â Heather is, as we speak, returning from a wedding shower in Nebraska.
Still, I think it is a noteworthy occasion.
The last two weekends were spend in North Carolina, and I have plans to get a blog post up about that… Although honestly, not that much happened.
Should make for a nice short post then, right? 🙂 The only downside is I really didn’t take any pictures ether so I can’t even pad the post.
In the meantime, I am just going to enjoy being in town.
-Jordan
Not so long ago the front left brakes on my Escape started making a sort of rumble when slowing down. The sound started getting progressively worse, adding an air of anxiety to counteract my normal procrastination when it comes to dealing with the hassle of trying to figure out where to take my car.
Heather and I had gotten by using the local “quick oil change” specialty shops thus far in Des Moines. I don’t really like having them change my oil, but the convenience of being able to get in when it woks for me, without having to call way in advance is nice. It doesn’t hurt that they all happen to be fairly cheap too.
I really didn’t want those guys looking at my breaks though.
So I figured I would just go to a dealership. Not the cheapest option, but you figure they will at least do a top-quality job. I started looking online for Ford dealerships, and wasn’t finding too much that was close. They are in Des Moines, but were all going to be a huge trip out of our way, and not practical on the way to or from work. Did I mention how quickly that rumble was getting worse? So I clicked on the sort of close one in Google Maps, and as often happens, the map pop-up bubble had a customer review on it. It was overwhelmingly negative, not really what I wanted to read right then.
Seeing the review got me thinking though, I had been talking to someone who moved recently, and he mentioned how helpful the “Car Talk” website had been in tracking down a good local mechanic. Going to the Car Talk website then wondering around until I realized the “Actual Car Info” tab had “Mechanic Files” that then lead to “Find A Mechanic.” It turns out they have lots of reviews for the Des Moines area!
After a little reading, it looked like West Side Auto Pros was a good option, and they were not too far from Heather’s office. I called first thing the next morning, and when the guy heard I had break problems he shuffled things so they could for sure get me in that day! I was able to leave my car, drop Heather at her office and make it to work without really even being late. I have to say seeing the big signs for “AAA Certified,” “NAPA <something or other>, and “Voted Best In Iowa” was reassuring, as well as the really sharp looking facility.
They were not cheap… not to say I think I got over-charged, but I didn’t walk away from the transaction saying “wow they came in way lower than I expected.” I have to say though, it’s like driving a new car… you wouldn’t think breaks make that big of a deal, but it feels so smooth now.
I haven’t actually gotten around to adding my review to the Car Talk site, but I wanted to share the fact that it really helped in picking a shop to use. Definitely something to keep in mind if you are trying to find a good local shop.
-Jordan
It is still spring right?
Because we just got around to the first major cleaning this apartment has ever had.
We weren’t exactly living squalor, but somehow being on the run most of the time had gradually let us get farther and farther behind in general upkeep. Much of the past weekend was spent cleaning, with the additional touch here and there after work, things are starting to look darn good around here!
We have a second bedroom. As much as we tried to avoid it, that room became the “everything room” catching odds and ends from the first day we moved in. It has a bed in it, and I think in prior post I may have implied that it was just minutes from being ready to host a guest. Well, it may have taken a little more than just minutes, and it might not be 100% ready yet….
One of the things we discovered while attacking the remaining tasks in said room: Not only were things un-dealt with since the move in there, the prickly disagreement that contributed to them being dropped in there instead of being dealt with properly somehow was still attached! That isn’t to say we had a horrible weekend full of not getting along, it just means we discovered that many of the tasks were far more complicated than we could have ever imagined. Heather and I can both be rather… insistent when we know how something should be done. Sad to think we can discover that much when just cleaning a room, I am sure we will get to put everything we learn now to use a few times throughout the coming years.
In a less personal note, I cleaned out the freezer and found some frozen shrimp. The first half of the bag I had used to make this salad: Asparagus and Shrimp Salad. I forgot to take any pictures, but mine ended up looking about the same. Sadly neither Heather nor I were particularly taken with it, so I wanted to try something else with the remaining shrimp. We also had a number or cups of Greek Yogurt pushing their expiration date, so I pulled together a remarkably convincing Shrimp Alfredo that was at least close to healthy enough to be eating on our last week of this workout challenge! 🙂
Check back soon for my chance to work through the backlog of recipes that weren’t healthy enough for the challenge 😉
Also, I have no idea how this is turning into a 40/60 split between things we do and things I cook… but I guess it gives me something to talk about.
-Jordan
Meet aunt Heather! She is giving detailed descriptions of our new nephew to his dad in the picture, so the phone isn’t her somehow being less than attentive 🙂
Over the course of the weekend, Heather and I attended a couples shower for Casey and Carson (as seen in the website I worked up a few months back), and got to spend quite a bit of time with our new, and currently only nephew. (is there a gender neutral term for that? siblings offspring…)
I almost made a post back when Holden was first born, it was kind of exciting news… but I didn’t want to steal anyone’s thunder, and believe me, there are people who are really excited about this! One of them is Heather. She about lost it on the ride to Kansas City, it was just taking too long, and she wanted to meet Holden!
When the actual meeting took place, he wasn’t quite as enthusiastic about the meeting as Heather had been… I really wish I would have had our video camera out and read for it. His face seemed to perfectly express the mental transition from “hmm this seems ok” to “something isn’t quite right” and on to “noooooooo something is very wrong” and then the crying… The funny thing is when your six months old, even crying ends up being kind of cute. I suppose his mom is over that, but we only got part of a weekend, so everything seemed cute! 🙂
The couples shower was probably as painless as I could have hoped for. I don’t want to sound negative… I just don’t know about my participating in wedding showers. Also I didn’t bring our camera, so I can’t just throw up some pictures and avoid having to type much. On a somewhat related note, I thought I should share a color name chart that in a way I think expresses the disconnect: Color Wheel. Actually if you want to get really picky I really only consider there to be five colors… so less than what is expressed on the right hand side of the diagram.
-Jordan
So there is a missing weekend, but I realize the longer I put off posing the more I feel obligated to do some sort of super-post that I don’t have time for right now. That train of though leads to no updates for two weeks!
Starting off the weekend, Friday night Heather and I had the rare opportunity to see one of my cousins compete in a gymnastics event! She qualified for the Western Nationals, an even that was held this year in Des Moines. My grandparents, sister, and an aunt all came into town as well, so we had a pretty good crew in the stands.
Saturday night we hit the road for Lincoln, planning just enough time to arrive at my sisters house and go straight to sleep. The sleep was important though, as we had to start rather early Sunday morning for the marathon.
Heather’s sister, and a cousin were both planning to run the half marathon! I had toyed with the idea of trying to at least run part of the time. My knee has actually held up pretty well during the cardio-kickboxing program we are wrapping up, but I can’t say as it’s 100% these days. I decided my goal would be to just keep up with Heather!
A few points:
Although at the time, I may have felt that we were just out for a rather long and guided stroll… by the time we wrapped up the last few miles I was really feeling it. To put it mildly Heather and I have HUGE respect for anybody able to finish one of these!
-Jordan
Our move to Des Moines had lead Heather and I to look for new things to do together. One of the ideas I put forward was target shooting. Heather was borderline skeptical of the idea, but thought maybe it could work. I was pushing for pistol shooting because we are basically constrained to shooting ranges, and in the distance you are limited to at most ranges rifles just aren’t that challenging. Somewhere along the line, I also realized that Heather did not have the safe firearm handling foundation that my childhood had provided. As a result of all those factors, I signed us up for an NRA basic pistol class.
The class was held this past weekend at the Charles Olofson Shooting Range, near Polk City Iowa. First Off I should point out that the drive out to the range was beautiful! It took us maybe 40 minutes from the apartment, but most of the time we were in open country and really got to soak up the spring weather we are finally seeing. The range has a nice indoor classroom, much larger than was needed considering we only ended up with four people in the class.
The small class size was nice, as there was a wide range in levels of experience, and I think everyone felt comfortable asking questions. The instructor, Larry Krug, did a really good job of covering the basics and keeping everyone interested. We spent a little over four hours in the classroom covering everything you would need to know if you had never seen a pistol before up to the point where you could hold and fire one properly. After a lunch-break we came back in to take a written test over the information we had been presented. I have to brag on Heather a little, and part of this goes to the instructor too I suppose, but with virtually no prior knowledge of firearms in any form, she managed to pass with flying colors!
After the test we headed out to the range for some hands-on instruction. I should mention that, as this was one of the first truly nice weekends so far this year, I think a large number of people were excited to get out and thought throwing a few rounds down range would be a good way to do that. During the test we really started to notice the increased noise outside, as gunfire has a way of getting your attention. Once outside it really got loud!
I think this is the point where we really started to loose Heather. I often forget that people don’t necessarily feel comfortable around guns, and less so around dozens of them being fired in close proximity. Heather is building a tolerance, but three separate range-areas, all running at full capacity was a little much. She stuck it out, and as you can see from the intro picture, she even tried out a few different pistols!
This was also the point where the whole “shooting pistols would be better because they are harder to be really accurate with” hit home. When it was my turn to shoot I quickly realized how much room I have for improvement. The instructor was able to help me with a few small things, but the final verdict was basically that I need to practice a lot more (oh darn).
We learned so much throughout the course of the day:
As much as it may be disappointing to find that shooting isn’t something we are going to do together, I am still glad we tried it. We still created some memories, and spent a day together doing something different!
-Jordan
Today marks the end of three weeks in the Goals In Motion ‘Challenge’.
That leaves six to go, and I am counting 🙂
The interesting thing is that I rather enjoy the workouts, I just don’t like getting up that early, or what getting up that early does to my evenings. In case I haven’t mentioned it, we get up at 4:20 in order to make the 5:15 workout.
Beyond the changes to our sleep schedule, our eating changes have been more significant than expected. Heather and I did another challenge a while back that included an eating program, although it was self moderated. With the current program we have an assigned coach / mentor. She has been incredibly helpful! We already had the basic principals from before, but she has really helped us fine-tune it. One of the tools we have been using is a website called “The Daily Plate,” that provides a nice nutritional tracking tool. To be honest, the site is clunky and less than user friendly, but it’s free and gives us and our coaches access to the information we want.
Because of our nutritional goals, I have been really looking for new things to cook. I tried a few noteworthy things over the past few weeks.
First up was “Stickless Shish-Kabab“only I cut back the oil in the marinade, and made it with chicken.
I discovered a number of things that were somewhat exciting in the process. First up is the fact that our oven, although lacking the traditional gas oven broiler pan, has broiler settings to ether turn the top or bottom heating element on constantly. This gave me a lot more control when broiling than I have ever had with an oven before. The option to just turn on the bottom element will come in to play once pizza is back on the menu. The second thing I discovered is that the stores have yellow squash in stock, and that Heather and I both rather like them grilled. We have grilled them a few times already, after ‘discovering’ them in this recipe.
The second thing I tried was “Whole Wheat Pasta with Asparagus.” I don’t really think I set out to modify this recipe, I just didn’t quite have the right stuff on hand. I don’t know if the kind of sausage called for was what I used, but it was really hard to skin, so I just chopped it up and did slices instead. Beyond that change I think it was basically what the recipe called for. The results were really good, and I think I may have converted Heather to liking Asparagus.
The final new item we tried was a notable strikeout. After our success with grilled squash, we were eager to try to expand our arsenal of grilling options, so we thought eggplant might be a good thing to try. Normally I would have avoided eggplant, but i figured we were on such a role with new things that it might be really good. (pictured here, hot off the grill)
It wasn’t terrible… but it wasn’t great ether. I know there are recipes that dress eggplant up a lot more, and I think we may need to look into those. Heather mentioned having really liked eggplant in Spain, but that it was breaded, fried, and drizzled with honey. Hopefully we won’t have to go to those lengths, but as it stands now eggplant isn’t on our veggie good-list.
-Jordan
Heather and I finished watching the last episode of “From The Earth To The Moon” this week.
It concludes a small tangent we took, exploring the glory days of the space program, that has been really interesting.
It all started when I found out that “The Right Stuff” was on Netflix streaming. It was a movie I have heard reference from time to time, and always wanted to see. The movie is *over three hours* long, so Heather didn’t stand a chance, and I had to break it into more than one session, but I found it really, really interesting. Heather enjoyed what she saw, and I think she caught a big chunk of it. The movie stars with test pilots in the early jet aircraft prototypes after WWII, and progresses to the end of the Gemini program. As long as it was, I feel like they had to skim over so much.
I happen to have mentioned something about the movie at work, and a co-worker brought my attention to “From The Earth To The Moon.” It, like “Band Of Brothers” (a favorite of Heather and mine) was made after Tom Hanks did a movie about the subject, got interested in the larger story, and partnered with HBO to make a multi-part TV series. The Moon-race set being inspired by “Apollo – 13” and the WWII set being inspired by “Saving Private Ryan.” Band of Brothers was done second, and I would consider it to be a somewhat better product, although the subject matter is far more intense… not for everyone I suppose.
Going back to “From The Earth To The Moon,” They briefly cover most of “The Right Stuff” in the first few minutes, and then lay the context for the Apollo program, then follow it through to the last mission. All I can really say is that I am still in awe of what they managed to pull off in such a short time. If you have Netflix, or a local rental place that had a good collection of older classic movies and TV (I can’t imagine many having a TV mini-series from 1998… but Netflix does!) I highly recommend you check both the movie and the TV show out!
I think it is fair to say I had more interest in the subject than Heather did, but it was still really fun to get to share learning new things about the space program with her. Although we hadn’t actually finished all the episodes when we were in Chicago, the trip provided a sort of climax when we got to see the Gemini capsule from Jim Lovell!
Jim Lovell was also the commander on Apollo – 13, and had donated a few items from that mission… gloves, helmet, flight manuals, etc. Getting to actually see the hardware, in the middle of reviewing the history was a fun treat!
Now that we have finished “From The Earth To The Moon” I am pushing to wrap things up with “Apollo – 13,” but after 15 hours of space oriented viewing, I think Heather may be ready for a break!
-Jordan
Nelsons 