Zombies? And Other News

Posted on by Jordan

This past week was noteworthy in a few ways, but the headline event was the RRV “Zombaree ” that my Scout Troop attended.

I will continue with my policy of avoiding posting pictures of random other people on here, but you can find pictures of myself and the troop scattered in here, and a deep link to our troop and the bridge that they made here (hopefully that works)

The guys had a lot of fun at the camporee, ahem, zombaree although one could be forgiven if they forgot it was a zombie event… there was a notable lack of zombies. The weather couldn’t have been better and it’s hard to complain about camping on a perfect fall weekend.

I got to pretend to be scoutmaster for the camp out due to a parental shuffle that left the actual scoutmaster at home. I was luck in that the majority of the weekend was being run by the district guys, and we had enough of the veteran scouts in our troop to comfortably lead the troop without too much input.

It’s surprisingly hard to find that balance between letting a bad plan flounder and taking over when your job is very much not to take over. I can’t say that I did a great job of it, but I probably ended up on the side of letting things fall apart instead of jumping in, so maybe it was a change for the guys.

Other notables:

Heather is 28 weeks along! This is apparently a milestone in that if the baby were to come today, odds would be in her favor to make it. Obviously we would like her to wait another three months, but it’s nice to know shes making progress in there 🙂

Also, 28 weeks is when the mom-to-be gets to drink… “glucose-up”… or some near literally named sugar concoction in order to determine if she has pregnancy induced diabetes. We had lots of good news there, Heather isn’t diabetic, and she survived the sugar drink without a massively upset tummy (A frequent problem with her and sugar)

So to recap, no close encounters with the undead, nice weekend, healthy baby, healthy mom.

I think it’s been a good week!

-Jordan

Chicago 2012

Posted on by Jordan

A few weeks back, Heather and I took a (long)weekend trip out to Chicago.

The first noteworthy thing is that we tried out the Megabus from Des Moines to Chicago. I realize now that we didn’t take a single picture of the bus, or on the bus… I guess it didn’t seem that noteworthy at the time, but looking back it probably was. So imagine a double-decked charter bus at about 30% capacity. We left early afternoon Thursday   and got into Chicago just after dark.

The bus dropped us off at Union Station, more or less right where we wanted to be. After a little walking (a nice break after about six hours on the bus) we checked into our hotel.

Oh, before I go on I should note, a few great deals Heather hunted down. Thanks to early booking, the bus tickets were a grand total of $8 round trip for the two of us! The Hotel was booked using Hotwire, and while not quite shocking deal the bus tickets were, surprisingly cheap considering it was a great room, and the view wasn’t half bad:

The next morning we walked around down town for a few minutes, had breakfast in a deli/coffee shop kind of thing, and then found our way into a Chicago information center of some sort. The center was staffed by very patent people happy to explain the public transit system to those of us who don’t exactly have a handle on the turbulent mix of letters, colors, and numbers that guide the natives around the city.

A hand full of pamphlets, two conversations with the desk person and one page of notes later, we were ready to take on the rest of our trip! First stop the Museum of Science and Industry. Getting to the museum required walking about a mile, then catching a bus with the correct number on it. We got on the bus without issue, but started to worry if we were really going to know our stop as the maps we had lost considerable fidelity once you left the downtown area.

We got off ‘near’ the museum, but in hindsight we probably could have stuck with the bus for another mile. On the other hand it was a really nice day, and we were walking through a beautiful old neighborhood so I don’t think we lost much in the deal.

Once inside the museum, we wandered into the first exhibit that caught our eye, featuring the first steam engine to break 100mph, and a giant model train set of the city and approximate countryside :

The model came complete with day/night cycles… had we realized that sooner we probably would have taken our pictures during the ‘day’… oh well.

After the train area, we headed over to a weather exhibit, that had incredible potential, but was awash in grade school field trips. I still got to see some amazing things, including what I think is the first Tesla coil I have seen in person!

As it was after noon, and we were standing next to the cafeteria, a lunch break was the natural next choice. The exit from there dumped us into a large farming exhibit (sponsored by John Deer, as you could kind of guess simply by the amount of shiny green paint on display). You would think we could skip that one, given my background and Heather’s current job, but it turned out to be really interesting to see how things were being presented, and how other museum goers were responding.

We could have spent more time there, but we had an appointment to see a boat:

Let me just say that presenting the sub in a room that really felt like it could be a real sub pen was awesome! actually, everything about that exhibit was well done. It was sad that we rushed through the intro area, because our appointment was for the tour of the inside of the sub. After seeing the inside, we worked our way back through all the displays that were leading up to the sub. I suppose it helps that both Heather and I have a substantial interest in that era of history, but the U505 exhibit could have entertained us for another hour or two without any trouble.

Could have, but we wanted to catch a movie on the omnimax screen they had. It’s like imax, but a dome instead of a flat screen. The only problem was we realized about 2 minutes into the movie that we were watching an imax movie on the omnimax screen. It was still really neat to see, but perhaps not quite as unique as it could have been.

At this point we had been to roughly a quarter of the museum, and were just trying to figure out what to see next, when they paged that the museum was closing. So instead we started trying to decipher the bus map again. The good news is we were 2 of about 300 people planning to ride the bus back to downtown, so we didn’t really have to do much searching.

From downtown we caught another bus and headed over to the area marked “Little Italy.” As predicted, it didn’t really look any different from other parts of Chicago, with the possible exception that every restaurant was Italian. The good news is we just headed that way to try some Italian food. I don’t think I could properly explain the food, except to say it was good, and it wasn’t the sort of thing you would find at a chain type place, so I think we accomplished our mission.

For the second day, our main attraction was the ‘Chinatown’ area of Chicago. Getting there required that we use the subway system, another first for us. (we used the elevated train network extensively during our last visit, but the two networks are separate). Again the stop we got off on wasn’t real close, but we had a rough idea where our desired destination was, and eventually found this:

It was very authentic I guess, not real touristy in that it was mostly grocery stores and hair salons, neither of which had an abundance of english signage. Eventually we talked to a shopkeeper who gave us vague directions to “Old Chinatown” that was apparently just down the street, and was the place with the gift shops. After a few minutes of walking we did in fact find it:

That street was made up of nothing but more grocery stores alternating with gift shops all selling exactly the same stuff. It was fun to look through for a while, but we quickly felt like we had seen everything. We looked around for a place to get lunch, but the wait time at the only pace that didn’t have chickens hanging in the window (Heather’s only stipulation for making the selection) was over an hour, prompting us to just head back to the train station.

We then had a very American lunch of hot dogs, and spent a few hours gawking at large buildings before catching our bus back to Des Moines.

-Jordan

The Zoo

Posted on by Jordan

Heather and I took advantage of the unusually nice weather this spring to make a little trip to Omaha and visit the Henry Doorly Zoo.

Actually, it’s a little bit of a misrepresentation to say that we took advantage of the weather, we did get amazing weather, but we had booked the trip almost a month in advance and were just hoping the weather wouldn’t be too bad.

As it turns out the weather was beautiful! Great news for us, except everyone else thought it would be a great day to go to the zoo… even then it wasn’t too terribly crowded.

We saw Gazelle!

And a rhino under the ski lift Skifari

Then some other rhinos, this time in the mud!

We wrapped up the day in the jungle area, complete with a rope bridge:

The bridge was still pretty cool. I remember it being the highlight of a trip when I was much younger and wasn’t sure how well it would hold up.

As per the plan, we had time left to take a nap before heading out again to walk around the Old Market area. I cannot over state how nice the weather was! We ended up eating outside at one of the sidewalk seating areas restaurants have in the Old Market. Not bad for March!

The next day we were able to attend the Omaha Vineyard, and see lots of old friends there. After church it was on to Lincoln for a family gathering!

It was a sort-of baby shower for one of my cousins on the Nelson side. Well, I suppose I don’t know what does and does not qualify as a baby shower, except to say that I typically don’t attend them. Whatever the case may be, that group doesn’t get together too often, so it was worth making the effort to meet up.

Also, Heather got to hold a baby out of the deal, so maybe it counts as a shower after all?

I really don’t know 🙂

-Jordan

Bowling In Nebraska

Posted on by Jordan

This kind of got lost in my campaign to redo the front page… lost but not forgotten about.

Heather and I traveled to Kearney Nebraska to watch my brother compete in a Special Olympics bowling event.

The trip started in Des Moines with a little rain. By the time we were 30 minutes down the road, it was snow, but the snow wasn’t sticking and the weather before we left indicated we should drive through it and be in the clear within another 30 minutes. What didn’t show up in the weather report I read, was the second wave of snow that caught us about 40 miles out of Omaha.

It made for easily the worst winter driving Heather and I have seen as a couple. Even with bad conditions, careful deliberate driving was working ok. What wasn’t working ok was the minority of drivers who were not content to stay in a line and use the narrow set of tire tracks that were open. Apparently getting where they were going 2 minutes faster was worth risking lives for.

Once we made it into Omaha, it really was smooth sailing, and we got all the way to Kearney without indecent.

The next morning we had a quick breakfast and headed over to the bowling alley. The most noteworthy thing we found as we came in was that they were not letting the public down onto the lane-level area at all, meaning the kind of wide hallway landing thing behind the lanes was really crowded. Lucky for us, my parent’s and aunt and uncle were already there, and had a spot staked out.

It was great to get to see my family, and it goes without saying I suppose, that Andrew was ecstatic to have us there for the event. After the hellos we found ourselves with plenty of time to chat as the event was a little lethargic getting started. Andrew headed up to his lane and everything looked all set, and then the PA system fired up and we discovered there were lots of announcements before we could get started.

After quite a bit of milling around, the bowling began. Andrew, as it turns out, is actually a pretty good bowler. His only downfall is that he isn’t actually that interested in winning when there are other interesting things going on. In three games, he pretty consistently bowled well every-other frame, meaning the strikes and spares he was getting weren’t having the compounding effect one would hope for.

The on again off again trend held for nearly all of Andrews games, leaving the last frame of the last game as a notable exception. Andrew bowled three strikes in a row! It was a fantastic finish to a morning of bowling.

We headed on to McCook to spend a little time with my parents. Have I mentioned that Heather and I like board games? We got our second chance to teach new players how to play the game St Petersburg, and I would say did a little better at teaching it. We also got in a round of Ticket To Ride. When not engaging in board games, we did get to enjoy some great weather in McCook (a place that seems to always have much warmer weather than we left in Des Moines), and eat at a great local pizza place.

The pizza place is noteworthy I suppose just for the pizza, but the more memorable thing is that it has a view of the switch yard. The yard was busy putting together a train while we ate. Andrew was perhaps 100 times more expressive about the event than I was, but that doesn’t mean that I didn’t also thing it was a great thing to get to watch them push rail cars around while we ate. 🙂

On the drive home, we managed to make connections with some of Heather’s friends from college, missed connections with my sister, and then met up with a good friend of mine from high school before eventually making it back to Des Moines.

All in all, it was a very productive few days!

-Jordan

Dallas

Posted on by Jordan

In a trip in part to celebrate our third wedding anniversary and in part to visit Heather’s sister now that she has had a few months to settle into her new job, we went to Dallas.

Technically, we went to Fort Worth, but as we soon discovered there isn’t really a break between the two cities. We forgot to pack a camera, so this post will be light on pictures.

Our first day there we had a lazy morning and played Ticket to Ride while waiting for Kelsey’s boyfriend to arrive. Heather and I are getting rather proficient at teaching the game, or at least that is my opinion… maybe the new players don’t agree. After our little group went out to lunch and did a little driving around, we headed back to the apartment to play more Ticket to Ride.

That evening, we headed over to Fort Worth’s stock yard area. I don’t really know what I was expecting, but I found the endless line of gift shops packed with people dressed up as if they were cowboys a little jarring. I should point out that being able to walk around without a coat was novel in itself, so maybe my impression the afternoon was overly positive, but we had fun just wandering around.

At some point, we found this:

 

After a nice dinner and a movie, we called it a night.

The next morning, Kelsey had to work, so Heather drove her to the hospital leaving us with a car for the day. We headed into Dallas to meet up with Heather’s friend Taryn.

This is as good a time as any to throw in a sideline about the traffic in the Dallas area. GOOD GRIEF there are a lot of cars moving around down there. It didn’t seem to matter what time or where we were going, there was ample competition for the road. I really can’t imagine getting ourselves to the places we went without GPS. The abundance of options sometimes when trying to figure out where to go made every trip a little intense, but we never got irrecoverably lost 🙂

Taryn gave us a little tour of her end of town, complete with a long walk around the local lake (have I mentioned the weather being warmer yet?). Later that day we went through the Dallas Aquarium. It turns out to be almost as much a zoo as aquarium, containing monkeys, snakes, alligators, penguins, and then lots of fish.

That night we met up with Kelsey and her boyfriend, Taryn and her boyfriend and Heather and I at a place in downtown Fort Worth. My estimation biased on the people there and the music they were playing is that it was way cooler than anywhere Heather and I would normally go. We had great time getting to talk to everyone, and the food was amazing, so I guess there isn’t any reason to complain 🙂

The next morning we went out for breakfast with Taryn and then she dropped us off at the airport on her way to church. We got back into Kansas City with plenty of time to stop in and check on our nephew, and his parents. Holden is just starting to talk, and after an initial bout of shyness was more than happy to give aunt Heather a tour of his domain.

We got back to Des Moines to find that the weather was nearly as nice as what we had left in Texas. Everyone tried to take advantage of it while they could. I probably heard this sentiment every day it was nice “This weather is amazing! … but we are going to pay for it soon.”  Given that I was running in shorts on Tuesday, the fact that we only have four inches of snow on the ground today seems less dire than I was expecting. I suppose there is still time for the blizzard everyone seems to think we have earned to arrive.

-Jordan

Deer Season 2011

Posted on by Jordan

It is that time of year again.

As with every year, I started preparing by confirming that my rifle was still shooting accurately:

That was at 100 yards, and the squares are an inch across… so I don’t have any excuse to miss this year I suppose.

Although my last post contained pictures of snow, Nebraska wasn’t having that kind of weather over the weekend.

We arrived at the farm with opening morning forecast to be in the mid 60s!

I should go back just a little I suppose, ‘we’ constitutes myself, one f my cousins, and his two boys. The plan was to include another cousin or two, but that didn’t work out this year. As has become the tradition we hunt with a few friends from the area, meaning the total number of hunters is at least six if not ten.

Ok, so not only was the weather too warm, we got to the farm after dark on Friday night. Not ideal when we wanted to have a few portable stands up, and do a tiny amount of scouting before opening morning.  As is often the case, work got in the way of our initial plan. At least it wasn’t my work this time… still unfortunate that it cut into the hunt.

I will skip large portions of not seeing any deer to keep this narrative somewhat interesting. After finding that our initial plan was not great, and knowing that the weather meant the deer were not going to be particularly active until evening, we setup a tree stand and scouted a few good lookout places to position people for the twilight hours in the hopes we would cross paths with something heading out into the fields for a snack.

I should mention that the great spot I used last year wasn’t an option because our only foot bridge across the creek washed out. We talked about improvising a replacement, but were concerned that we would disrupt the deer too much if we were running equipment to erect a new bridge.

When the sun started to set Saturday night, I was positioned in a tree stand overlooking what appeared to be a crossroads of deer trails. About an hour later, that theory was proven correct when about five doe wandered past me and started grazing around the edges of the field to the north of me.

It was awesome to see deer after the disappointing morning, but having them not only walk around but stay around turned out to be kind of a pain because I felt like I couldn’t move at all. I wound up waiting until well after dark to leave, because the deer didn’t wander away until then. From what I could tell, there weren’t any bucks around, but at least I got to see something!

I setup in the same stand that morning and saw…. nothing, … again.

A few of us spent a couple of hours walking through pockets of cover we thought might be a good place to catch a deer sleeping but didn’t discover anything.

At this point nobody in the family group had gotten anything, and with one exception hadn’t even seen anything to be excited about. It was a little distressing, but we were all still hopeful that something would turn up.

I went back to my stand, hoping that it was a better dusk location than dawn. Shortly after I got setup, there was noise clearly indicating that something was slowly working it’s way towards me. The noise was coming from my only blind spot, but it was unmistakeable that something was moving around, and slowly getting closer. Twenty minutes of sitting motionless later and I finally got a look at a squirrel who apparently really liked jumping back and fourth on the ground.

At that point I got kind of frustrated, and got out my phone to send a few texts and see if anyone else was fairing better than I was. The news wasn’t any better from them so I wasn’t feeling like I needed to stay particularly stealthy and stood up to get a better look at the deerless area around me.

Except that just after I did that I heard rustling in the leaves again, and looked over to see a small buck standing directly across from me! I really don’t know how he was able to sneak in so close without my hearing something, but he did. On the other hand he didn’t see me, so I was able to get my rifle up and on him without spooking him. Then I was able to fire once without spooking him. The second shot came quickly after the first, but… there was a delay.

Remember that bridge that washed out? had it been in place I wouldn’t have need to remove my boots and roll up my pant-legs to get this picture:

As you can see, I am basically out of light, and I only had my phone with me. It turns out to be rather difficult to take a you+deer self portrait using my phone, so you will have to live with the picture I got 🙂

The next thing I discovered is that deer float! That was a nice thing to discover because everyone else was still hunting.

The other hunters didn’t find any bucks, and passed on does again. It was nice to have something, even if it wasn’t a real impressive buck.

-Jordan

Western Nebraska Week Recap

Posted on by Jordan

I always find that when I try to cover something as big as a week away from work it’s an overwhelming thing to try and post about.

So I will just hit a few highlights:

First it was great to just spend time with my family. The fact that we had plenty of work to do was nice too, it made the start of the week feel really productive.

The other highlight was getting to share so many things from my life with Heather that she hadn’t ever seen or done before.

Heather was a really good sport with everything, despite the fact that she was able to attract every bug within five miles of wherever we happened to be.

Things Heather did with me:

  • Rode in the tractor while I was moving dirt
  • Paddled around in a canoe on a lake that I camped at lots as a scout
  • Went geocaching (not a childhood activity for me, but got us out on a hike and we found plenty of bugs)
  • Hiked around the farm taking pictures of things
  • Floated down the Medicine Creek with me in a canoe

I should expand on that last point. As you can see from the picture it was cool enough to be comfortable wearing a sweatshirt. Still ok weather to be on the water as long as you stay dry.

The trip marked only the second time Heather had been in a canoe, and the first time on moving water. I really should have been giving more instruction during the lazy areas as we started out. I had somewhat naively hoped that there wouldn’t be any downed trees blocking our path.

On the other hand, I did make sure Heather packed an extra change of dry clothes before we headed out that morning.

As you can probably guess, we didn’t make through our little trip dry. After a few close calls with tree branches we finally met one that was going to be really unpleasant to get past. There are a number of things I should have done at this point. One, I could have aggressively back-paddled to get some space between us and the tree, then landed at shore letting Heather out. Two I could have  jumped into the water and guided the boat to shore by walking in the water. Three I could have told Heather to lay down the the bow of the boat so the trees wouldn’t hit her.

Instead I only sort of explained that she should get down, and tried to get us lined up on the spot I figured we could plow through.

What happened next wasn’t so surprising: Heather didn’t realize I was planning to ram into the tree and got caught off balance, falling into the middle of the boat(on the upstream side). I wasn’t going fast enough to actually plow through the tree, and we were instantly swept crosswise of the current, and the canoe rolled.

Did I mention Heather was a really good sport about everything I wanted her to try this week? Because she got dumped into some very cold, very brown muddy water and managed to laugh about it!

We completed the res of the trip without much excitement, but I think I ruined my chance of instilling a love of canoes and or the Medicine into my wife. 🙂

-Jordan

Back In Town

Posted on by Jordan

You probably never even knew we left… but Heather and I just got back from a week in western Nebraska!

We have a camera full of pictures, I just haven’t gotten to them yet.

The downside of being gone for a week: Heather had over 1000 e-mails waiting in her work inbox Monday.

On the other hand, we had a really nice break!

More details to come
-Jordan

Las Vegas

Posted on by Jordan

Heather and I had the opportunity to join a group of friends going to Las Vegas last week.

The trip started with this:

As large as the limo may look… it was cozy with 14 people in it! The driver also warned us that his AC had a tough time keeping up when the ambient temperature was at 110 degrees. Ignoring those details, it was a fun ride into town. We checked in, and had time to do a little walking around.

Did I mention the heat? I had sort of thought that perhaps you could walk the entire strip, but quickly realized that it would take days to cover that much ground. This is looking back after we thought we had walked for quite a while:

We were staying at Caesar’s Palace (more or less centered in that shot)

I guess I should clarify, from what I know the entire “strip” you hear about is only about five miles long. The problem is, at the point the picture above was taken, we had walked an extra few miles inside the two casinos on our way down the strip… and only half of that was spent lost 🙂

I have heard people say that casinos were like mazes before, but I figured it was an exaggeration…  it isn’t. We probably walked twice the necessary distance inside the casinos because we were lost.

After a long walk we met up with a few of Heather’s friends from college who were able to come down, and headed to dinner. Now, everything in Vegas seems to be something you have heard about before, the buffet being no exception. We discovered that the buffet wasn’t even kind of cheap. The quantity and quality of the food still lived up to the reputation I suppose but there was a little sticker-shock.

Day two: The group had a cabana at the pool reserved, so we spent a few hours lounged in the shade by the pool that morning. At this point we discovered what ended up being a universal truth for our Vegas trip: “if you want peace and quiet, go to your room” The pool came complete with a DJ, and her mission was apparently to keep the atmosphere lively. This clashed a little with the “sit in the shade and read” plan Heather and I had. Lucky for us we had an assignment! Go pick up the tickets the group would need for the shows Friday and Saturday night from the two box offices.

We thought it would be a great idea to move inside casinos as much as possible in order to avoid the heat. It only took us three hours to pickup the tickets (want to guess how many times we got lost?) At that point the pool was in the shade, so we spent another few hours there.  Later we got cleaned up and headed to our first show. It was an improv comedy show that we really enjoyed. My only observation is that you should avoid sitting in the front row at that kind of event. We were lucky enough to be a few rows back, and were happy to simply observe the show and not participate in it.

That night we discovered that our peace and quiet rule only applies to your room in as much as your neighbors have the same plan… but after a brief 3AM conversation things calmed down 🙂

The next day we got up early and headed down to the pickup point for the bus trip out to the Hover Dam. We arrived at the stop almost an hour early (our track record to this point led us to believe we might need that much time just to find the pickup point). We were pleasantly surprised to find that the strip is nearly cool and peaceful that early in the morning. Not deserted by any means, but far more open. We spent a few minutes walking up to the outdoor displays in front of a nearby casino, and just enjoying the relative calm.

The bus ride out to the dam took roughly an hour, during which our tour guide provided a non-stop stream of facts and anecdotes about Vegas, the dam, and regional history. A few highlights: The valley gets only four inches of rain per year, and 19 of the 25 largest hotels in the world are in Vegas.

Hoover Dam is really impressive. It is difficult to grasp the scale of the dam, let alone try to convey it here. I was kind of in awe while we were there.

All I can really say is that you should go see it if you are in the neighborhood.

There is also a bridge that just opened up this year:

The scale involved in both projects is overwhelming.

That night we attended our second show, a Circ De Soleil production “The O Show” at Bellagio. Again, I really don’t have the vocabulary to do what we saw justice. I don’t think I have ever spent so much time tensed up and gasping in amazement. The show was just incredible.

The next morning we had most of the day before our flight, and the plan was to go to church, eat a leisurely lunch and then head to the airport. The actual service wasn’t really worth noting here, except I have to point out that apparently nothing can be built in Vegas without having a certain style applied to it.

I know this is getting long, but before I close out the post I wanted to throw out a few more notes that didn’t fit in the quick narrative of our trip:

No mater how much you spend on tile, marble, sculpture and state-of-the-art architecture… a room full of slot machines is still a room full of slot machines

Speaking of slot machines, I ended up with a few dollars worth of quarters in my pocket for most of the trip, and might have dropped one into a slot machine… but they don’t take coins! They have a dollar feeder and a receipt printer as their only input and output. I witnessed a receipt being printed, and there is a speaker down in the coin tray playing a sound like the tray is filling with coins… but the user just ended up with a slip of paper when it was all said and done.

My final thought is this:

Heather and I are really glad we went, and enjoyed the trip. That being said, it felt like a place you go to see once.

-Jordan