My God, it’s full of stars!

March 20th, 2012

Those who know me know that I geek out a little bit about space. I love living in a place where on a clear night, I could walk outside, look up, and see the Milky Way. I have seen the ISS, the Space Shuttle, and other random satellites cruise by in the night sky from my front yard.

Though I own a crappy little telescope, I don’t spend much time looking through it as I would like.  You see, it has a really flimsy tripod.  It also has one leg that JUST WILL NOT STAY UP SO IT ALWAYS FALLS!!!  Sorry, I got a little nerd rage on you.

When you look at something through any telescope, you have to move it every minute or so.  If you don’t, the object you are looking at will quickly be out of your viewing area.  This is because the Earth is spinning.  It also gives you an idea of how fast we are moving.�
With my telescope, when you adjust it, the legs wobble or fall and it is such a pain to get it steady again that it just becomes a huge ordeal.

Another thing about my telescope is that I have two eye pieces.  One will give you a larger area to look through.  For example, with this eye piece I could see the full moon in its entirety with extreme detail.

The second eye piece is apparently good enough to see details on some the planets in our solar system.  I say apparently, because I have never been able to view them very well using this eye piece.

This is what is supposed to happen.  Line up a planet, say Mars, with the first eye piece.  This gives you a wide area of space and allows you to see Mars as a dot of light in the sky.  Once you get Mars centered, you swap out the eye piece, and if you don’t see Mars, you make slight adjustments till you are looking at our red neighbor and waving to its alien inhabitants.

What actually happens is that I find Mars, center it, and swap out the eye piece.  I then spend the next 10 minutes adjusting the blasted telescope and fighting with its collapsing leg too much to actually see a close up of Mars.  Because of my issues with the stand, I have not been able to confirm life on Mars.  Sorry folks.

I know I could go out and actually spend money and get a new telescope and all these issues will be erased.  I know this, and as much as I would love to do that, I just can’t justify several hundred dollars on a new telescope.  Not yet, but one is on my wish list.  I keep asking Santa, but he disappoints every year.  *sigh

All this to say, I was finally able to view some of our planets up close.

This past week the family and I drove up to Flagstaff, and visited the Lowell Observatory.

I have wanted to visit there forever, but never made it.  This observatory is where they discovered Pluto, mapped the surface of Mars, and are currently observing and studying Titan (one of Saturn’s moons).  They also are open to the public and offer viewing through the “big” telescope.

Needless to say, I was very excited to be able to go check it out.  I was a little worried that my daughter might get bored, but she was a trooper and was familiar enough with the planets to know what was being said and appreciate the information that was presented during the tours.

I don’t want to go into details on everything we saw, or learned, as I think this post is getting too long and some things deserve their own post.  So teaser for a later post.

But I will give you a quick rundown on what we experienced.

We looked at the sun through a specially fitted telescope.  It.Was.Awesome.  We were able to see (for realzies) solar flares coming off the surface of the sun, plus a sun spot.  Too cool.  Or hot, I guess.

We were able to view Venus, Jupiter and three of its moons, Mars, a binary star, and the Orion Nebula through different telescopes.  By far, the nebula was the coolest.  But seeing the bands around Jupiter and viewing Europa with my own personal eye ball was very exciting.

I did get a chance to talk to one of the guys about telescopes and what I should look for in a new one.  The one they had in the gift shop was real nice, at a fair price, and he told me what it could do, and how to make it even better.  I didn’t buy it, but I really wanted to.  I mean, I REALLY, REALLY wanted to.

If we wouldn’t have had so much cloud cover this past weekend I would have brought my crappy telescope out and tried again to see what I could see.  It is probably a good thing I didn’t, because I am still on a space-nerd high from last week.  Reality would have tainted my fun, and taint fun is something I am just not into.  I’m not judging, I’m just sayin.

If you would like to see some really cool pictures of what I mentioned, check out hubblesite.org.  I always come here and get new backgrounds for my PC.  Looking through a telescope, everything is black and white, not color.  But the pictures will give you an idea of what we witnessed.

If you ever have a chance to check out Lowell Observatory, I highly recommend it, or an observatory near you.  Unless you don’t like this kind of stuff, but if you don’t, why did you read this far?

Tropizm
Wanna-be Astronomer

What the? A post on this site?!?

February 29th, 2012

Hey.

A quick (not really) note on why I haven’t posted anything here in over three years, and what my plans are for this site.  I will write it somewhat chronologically, as that is how my brain likes it.  And I like to keep my brain happy.  This is somewhat long, so you can just skip to the bottom if you don’t care about the details.  Or just continue on to whatever site you were looking for when you stumbled across this.

I originally took a break from writing here because I am a very private person by nature.  So writing what I am doing, or have done, was uncomfortable for me.  I also didn’t know if anyone really cared about this besides my family and close friends.  But since most of what I wrote was directed towards them, it didn’t matter much.  But even then, I was never really easy with saying “hey, look at what I’m doing”.  There is enough Internet noise out there, and I didn’t want to add to the ruckus just for the sake of it.

After a couple months of not posting anything, I felt that my next post would have to be something “big”.  I figured cool things have happened that I didn’t write about, so I wanted my next post to be awesome.  I had previously written several posts that were the “what I did on my summer vacation” consolidation stories and I was getting tired of them.  I would (and still) come up with something that I felt would be an interesting read, but I was in this mindset that it had to be “super-duper cool” to justify an actual posting.  In other words, this was a really good excuse for not posting anything.  So I used it.

After a while, it just became habit to not post here anymore.  I wrote a few things on Google+, and more things on Twitter.  The ease of posting with Twitter made me feel like the site was no longer for me.  I liked being able to just shoot off a quick comment, or post a picture with my phone.  Actually logging into a website and typing was cumbersome and not very convenient.

Next thing I knew, a year had past, then two.  It became easier for me to ignore the site and just never do anything with it.  So I made no new posts, no new updates, and no new anything.  When I saw that most of the links were broken and needed fixing, I decided to just scrap the whole site.  But I didn’t.

Fast forward to about a year ago. 

I was helping a friend of mine design and build a new site.  I didn’t do any coding, but I was helping him out with ideas, formatting, and I owned one of the first sets of eyes to see his creation.  It is www.bonsaioftheweek.com.  Check it out, he did a really good job. 

After an email discussion with another friend (well, Internet friend), I really wanted to dig back into updating my site for realzies.  His site is www.gonzoplanet.com and it is just.plain.awesome. 

What I saw these two guys do really started to get me excited.  They both used WordPress like me, but a newer version that allowed for all the cool stuff they were doing.  I really started to get that creative itch again.  I haven’t had that in a really long time.  I actually WANTED to make something again, and I liked that feeling.

I said, “Hey me, lets redo this site”.  So I started the process of updating my website. 

What has been changed so far? Well, nothing significant yet.  Life got in the way and I never started the REAL process.  I had ideas, researched newer modules and plug-ins for WordPress, and downloaded them.  What I didn’t have, was a lot of time.  So the site just sat there like an old rusty Studebaker in the north forty. 

So now what? 

Well, I still plan on updating the site.  But I have made the decision that even though I don’t like the site in its current state, I can write.  So I will write. 

What will I write about?  I don’t know.  I have several ideas.  But I have decided that writing is writing and the site is the site.  I will write when inspired, and post them accordingly.   I feel like I need to write more than work on a site, so I am not using the site as an excuse anymore.

Over the past couple of years, I wrote a few things for other sites.  I will post some of them here at some time.  Nothing major, but stuff I wrote and liked so hopefully you will too.  And why not share them with my friends and family here?  Besides, most of the stuff I wrote has never been posted, and have basically disappeared.  So if I don’t post them here they will never see the light of day.  Some of the stuff will never see the light of day anyways, because it sucked.  I plan on showing you the non-sucky stuff.  At least, I hope its non-sucky.

I will post some random items.  This is what I usually write about anyways, nothing in particular.

I have really been into video games the past few years.  Or more accurately, BACK into video games.  For the first time in many years, I have a PC that can play some of the newer games, and most of the older games that I was never able to play due to having an outdated PC.  I still have an older PC, but with some RAM and a nice video card I can finally play games I missed out on.  I also have my Xbox 360 and Wii, and thanks to Amazon sales, I purchased several games that I have missed when they were new.  So I may give my two cents on those.

Movies too, I like movies.

I am not really planning any particular overall theme.  I plan on posting game stuff, other writings, random things my brain comes up with, recipes (hey, you gotta eat), and whatever else my brain tells my fingers to type.  I probably will stay away from family stuff.  I am still a private person, and what happens in my home is none of the Internet’s business.   If family updates are your main reason for stopping by, you may be disappointed.  But who knows?  I know I don’t.

That’s about it.  I hope you enjoyed your visit.  If you hate my site, I’m glad you stopped by, and goodbye.  If you like it, thank you.  Please come again.  I hope I can keep this fun and interesting for the both of us.

Over the next couple months I will devote actual time to updating the site.  I will add a few band-aids for now, but I hope to have everything updated and looking pretty again soon. 

I did remove the broken links, so that is a startI take victories where I can get them, even the small ones.

Thanks for stopping by, hopefully I won’t waste too much of your time.

Tropizm

The-guy-who-will-soon-have-a-redesigned-website

Quarterly update

April 3rd, 2009

It seems I always wait too long to update this site.  I think of several things to post, but always seem to get busy and forget.  Guess that’s the way it goes.

Since the last time I posted anything, a couple things have happened.  Faith and I went to a concert last week and saw one of our favorite bands, Mercy Me.  The good thing about the show was that though it was at a huge venue (US Airways Center) it was only $10 at the door.  There were 5 bands and it was basically non-stop show for almost 4 hours.  The only breaks were the 10 or 15 minutes in between bands for the setup/tear down of the equipment.  During which, members of Mercy Me would come out and speak, pray, or promote different ministries.  The place was packed, nearly 13,000 people showed up.  Another good thing about the show was Mercy Me had all of their Cd’s for $5 each.  So my collection is complete.  We should have checked out Jeremy Camps table to get some Cd’s from him, but we didn’t think about it till it was too late.

Faith and Erin took a spring break to California a couple weeks ago.  They were gone for a whole week and was able to visit all of Faith’s family.  One of her aunts had a surprise birthday party and most of her family (cousins, aunts, uncles) that she doesn’t get to see often were there.  So many pictures were taken and lots of laughter and fun was going around.

I couldn’t go because of work.  I didn’t mind, because it gave me a chance to finish working on Erin’s playground.  We were able to get a backyard play-set from our neighbor whose children were too big to use.  It’s one of those big wooden things with the slides, swings, and even a picnic table and a little fort on top.  It took me a few hours to sand it down and most of the week the girls were gone to stain it and put all the parts and pieces on it.  The good part about doing it that week was it had plenty of time to dry without Erin playing on it.  The other thing that occupied my time was my new toy I received a few days before they left.

Around the middle to late February, I won a radio contest and got a free XBOX 360.  The promotion was for the new add-on game for Grand Theft Auto 4.  It took almost 4 weeks for it to arrive, but when it did, I was surprised what I got.  It was an XBOX 360 Elite, GTA4 game, plus the download code for the add-on game.  I also got some stickers (yay?), a t-shirt, and 2 games that came with the XBOX.  They were Lego Indiana Jones (dun-dah-duh-daaa, dun-da-daaa) and Kung Fu Panda.  This arrived a few days before Faith and Erin left so when I wasn’t working on the play-set, I was playing games.  My friend came over and gave me a couple games that he knew I would like.  One was a racing game and the other was a shooter game that is some-what unique.  He already has an XBOX so he helped me set up an online account so we could play over the internet.  If you would like to chat/play sometime, let me know.  My username is “Tropizm” (duh) and if you send me an invite, please include who you are.  I have my account hidden to anyone who is not “a friend” so you will need to make first contact.  Or email me and I will send you the invite.  Since I don’t have many games, the chances of playing are slim, but the option is there.

I will be making my second trip to Omaha, NE in a couple weeks.  I went there for a few days back in February.  It was real cold while I was there.  The hotel is about 2 minutes walking from the data center, so when I was walking over there I about froze.  When I was inside I checked to see what the temperature was, and it said that the current temp was 10 degrees, and it felt like -2.  I would have agreed with that statement.  I am the local lead network guy for a big project and this customer has equipment going in my data center and our data center in Omaha.  So I am sure this will not be my last trip.  This next one will be for about a week, which isn’t too bad.  I just hope I don’t have to go for longer than that. 

I got an email from Dario a couple days ago.  His bakery was in an article in the newspaper.  Monika and Dario send me a copy of it, but it is in German.  I am working on getting it translated, and probably will post it once I do.  I have the beginning finished up, but I am so out of practice it will take some time.  Dario is mentioned in the article a couple times, so I am definitely going to finish it up.  I know I won’t get help from them, the email was titled “How good is your German?”, so they are forcing me to work on my German.  It’s all good.  I’m so lazy that if they would help me I wouldn’t do it.  So its better this way.

That’s most everything for now.  Maybe I will have something else posted soon.  Probably not, maybe the next one will be titled “What I did on my summer vacation”.  or maybe not.

Tropizm
Struggling German student

Almost got it done

February 2nd, 2009

Last night the Cardinals came 35 seconds away from winning the Super Bowl.  I cannot describe how it felt knowing that the last few minutes of the game I saw them win/lose/win, just to see them eventually lose.  It was the most intense few minutes of any game I watched.  All the “last minute - come from behind” games I have seen were nothing compared to the game last night.  Because last night it was my team. 

I have to look at it in a positive light.  They were not even supposed win a single game in the playoffs.  And they not only won one, they won three, and came seconds away from winning four.  I am glad the Cards did as well as they did.  They didn’t go out there and fall apart, but stuck together and came from a 13 point deficit to take the lead. 

My biggest fear now is what will happen next season.  With so many players up for a contract renewal, this may be a different team.  I hope the success of this season will grow into many years of good teams that regularly make it to the playoffs, and eventually the Super Bowl again.  Only time will tell.

It has been a fun time watching so many people support the team.  Their motto was “Shock The World”, and they definitely did that.

Tropizm
Cardinals Fan

Cool video

January 30th, 2009

Larry Fitzgerald is one of the wide receivers for the Arizona Cardinals.  Who, of course, will be going head to head with Kurt Warner for Super Bowl XLIII MVP.  But back in the day, he was a ball boy for the Vikings.  I found this cool little video about those days.  I was already a fan of Warner and Fitzgerald for their game.  I am a HUGE Warner fan because he is not ashamed to proclaim his faith.  I am now an even bigger fan of Fitz after watching this video. 

Classy guy.

Tropizm

The Cardinals are going to the Super Bowl

January 28th, 2009

I have been a football fan as long as I could remember.  I was a Redskin and Steelers fan growing up, but for no real reason other than I liked to watch them play.  I instantly became a Cardinals fan when they moved to Arizona in 1988.  At that time, the only professional sports team we had were the Phoenix Suns.  I liked and supported them, but I am a bigger fan of football than basketball.

I remember watching the very first game the Cardinals had as an Arizona team.  They were the Phoenix Cardinals and it was against the Seattle Seahawks.  Two things about that game stand out in my mind.  One, the Cardinals got beat horribly bad.  Second, I was alone in a hotel room, knowing that the next morning I would take an airplane to New Jersey and “officially” be in the Army.

Here I am, 20 years later.  I have endured so many bad, bad football seasons.  I have seen the Cardinals lose games they should have won, and in the most spectacular meltdown ways possible.  The Monday Night Football game in 06 against the Chicago Bears come to mind.  That game prompted the coach to give this memorable youtube moment.

All the losing, all the teasing because I am a fan of the team, now comes down to this, The Super Bowl.  When they win this weekend, all of the past will not be erased.  I think it will be amplified.  In my opinion, what makes this game SO special, is the fact that they have been so bad for so long.  Embrace the fact that we were the worst, and will soon be the best.  If the teams entire identity turns around to be a team that consistently goes to the playoffs, always have winning records, and make it to more Super Bowls, that would be fantastic.  Just remember all the years we had to endure to become that higher caliber team.  When going to the Super Bowl stops being a big deal, then why even watch the game.

One of the best parts of this particular season is that Dario and I started the season together, and saw their first preseason game of the season.  We both have footballs full of autographs from the teams training camp, and also autograph sheets.  This season, this team was already special to me because of that.  With them one win away from being the champions, its even more special.  (teasing jab at Dario) I have Larry Fitzgerald’s autograph on my football.

Tropizm
Cardinals fan

Uncharted territory

January 13th, 2009

The Cardinals are in the NFC Championship game this weekend.

For those of us fans that have endured years and years and years of losing seasons, being the punchline to jokes, and lots of teasing from friends whose favorite teams have won Super Bowls and other accolades, this is for us.  We can finally hold our head up and say that we are a Cardinal fan and can hang our hat on something besides “have to support the home team”. 

I have seen my baseball team, the Arizona Diamondbacks, win a World Series.  I have seen my basketball team, the Phoenix Suns, make it to the playoffs several times and once they made it to the finals to lose to Michael Jordan and the Bulls.

 But my favorite sport is football.  My favorite team is the Cardinals.  And they are one game away from the Super Bowl.  If they win this weekend, I cannot even imagine what I will do or feel like.  It is almost weird.

For the past few weeks, I have heard nothing but “the Cards are the worst team to ever make the playoffs, and win a division”.  There was even a site that had some computer program that took every game, ran through them 1000 times and came out with several interesting reasons as to why the Cards would lose in the Wild Card Game against the Falcons.  Hm, they also predict they will lose this weekend against the Eagles.  Guess computers don’t take into account the passion, determination, and desire they have been playing with for the past few games.  If the Cardinals lose this weekend, I would be very upset.  Not only because I believe they can win, but because of the way the Eagles have played lately they should beat them.

I am hoping they go on and win the Super Bowl.  If they don’t, I would be OK with it because just getting there, is a victory in itself.  My biggest let down would be if they are not able to take the momentum from this season into next season, and go out there and lay an egg.  That would be a greater loss than losing by 30 points in any of the remaining games.

Of course, there will always be peoble jumping on the bandwagon and that is OK too.  The real fans will stick with them, even when they are horrible.  But I just am enjoying the ride while it lasts.  If I could change one thing about this season, it would be to make it last season.  It would have been cool if the Super Bowl was a home game for the Cardinals.

Take care, enjoy the games, root for who you like.  Jeer at who you don’t like.  Its a great game, and I love it.

Tropizm
Cardinal Fan

Happy November

November 10th, 2008

Usually, I don’t update the site because there isn’t much to write about.  I will write about something that happens, or something I have seen and post it.  I basically make myself to it so I don’t feel like this site is a waste of bandwidth. 

This time, however, is different.  I haven’t written much because we have been busy at home and at work.  I typically do all my site updates at work during my lunch.  But I have been so busy I haven’t had time and at home, I put this on the back burner.

So once again, its an update with a bunch of small things.

First, I am sad to say that some new friends of ours will be moving this weekend.  Their daughter and Erin have been best friends since Erin started school this year.  Her parents asked if we could meet so the kids could play together.  They ended up being really good people and the four of us became good friends.  Most of the things we have done the last few months have included them.  But alas, they will be moving to the other side of Phoenix to be closer to work.  When they first moved from out of state, they didn’t realize that pretty much every IT job is on the other side of town.  Funny thing is, they will be moving by where I work at now. 

One of the outings we did with them, was to take the kids to the State Fair.  Faith and Angela (the Mom) had the day off and met Marc (the Dad) there with the kids.  Rayne (the daughter) and Erin got all day passes for rides, and arrived about an hour later.  The kids had a blast and it was nice enough out that it wasn’t too hot.  After they left, we stayed a couple hours longer till after it got dark.  Erin won a couple stuffed animals playing games, and overall it was a real good day.

We also went trick-or-treating with them around their neighborhood.  Since we can’t do it around our place, we usually drive into town.  There were several houses that went “all out” for decorations.  I guess the new thing is to decorate like Christmas.  There was one house that had probably 50 things set up that were motion detected, moved, talked, and was really cool.  Personally, I wouldn’t do any of it, but it was real cool to look at.  I didn’t take a camera, and my new company provided helicopter doesn’t have picture taking capabilities, so I can’t post any pics.  If I did tho, the rating on this site would be PG-13.  oooooooo (scary ghost sound).

Work has been super busy.  No complaints here, with everything going on, its good just to have a good job.  The only bad part is that I had to work many hours over than my normal hours.  It messed me up because I have actively been trying to take pass a certification exam.  Its without a doubt, the toughest test I have ever taken.  It has “trick” questions to make you have to examine each question to make sure you answer correctly.  It also has “simulation” questions where you have to troubleshoot and fix the network issue.  Because I was spending a couple hours a night studying, working late messed that up.  The humbling part of it is that I have been doing the work for several years after taking classes for a year.  Anyways, Friday I finally passed it.  Now I don’t have to worry about it for three years. 

I don’t want to get into politics, but I have to.  Last week we voted.  I want to say that everything that I voted for passed, and what I didn’t want didn’t pass.  McCain won AZ, and I will take that as a small victory.  He will not be my next President, I am sad to say.  I have many reasons I voted for him and not Obama.  To all those who are happy Obama won, congrats.  I just hope I don’t have to say “I told you so” later.  Please, don’t make me say it.

God Bless America
Tropizm

New Pictures

September 16th, 2008

So I finally figured out why I couldn’t upload new pictures.  So this morning I uploaded new pictures of Dario’s trip to AZ this summer.  There isn’t many, but a couple from each part of the trip.  A couple of Vegas, Cardinals Camp, and hanging out around the house.

Short but sweet, enjoy.

FYI, Anja’s house was in the path of Hurricane Ike.  Her and Kris are fine, but as of this writing, I don’t know the status of their home.  From all accounts, the area wasn’t hit as bad as feared, so that is a good thing.  But we pray that everything turns out fine.

Tropizm

Dario’s Visit

August 27th, 2008

Life around here is getting back to normal around here.  After three weeks of hanging out with Dario, I have to go back to work.  So give me a few minutes of your time and I will summarize his trip.

We took Dario and Monika to Vegas for a few days.  We stayed at Circus Circus which turned out to be pretty good.  They have an amusement park in the building so we spent pretty much the first day hanging out on rides.  Dario and I went on their roller coaster which had 2 loops, and 2 twisting loops.  There was also a water log ride which was cool.  Erin went on the kiddie rides for about 5 hours straight. 

The next day we took Dario to see The Blue Man Group.  We had a ticket for Monika, but she seen them before and didn’t care for them.  So Erin was able to go and she had a blast.  All the lights, music, and goofyness of The Blue Man Group.  We have a DVD of them so she knew who they were.

After leaving Vegas, we went to Flagstaff.  The reason for the stay was Dario wanted to see the Grand Canyon.  Checking the AZ Cardinals website, we saw they had practice that day so we went to see them.  Faith wanted to get us a treat, so she got Dario and I a football, and Monika a Cardinals shirt.  After the practice, we stood on the side of the field where the players left and we got several autographs on our footballs.  We got many starters including Warner, Fitzgerald, Hightower, and Dario got Leinart.  The next morning we got up and went back to the practice field where they had a team autograph session.  There, I stood in line to get Edgerrin James.  Faith took the couple autograph pages they handed out and got probably 30 autographs from some of the players that didn’t have a line.  Dario was able to get many players and both of our footballs and pages were full.

After the autographs, we went to the Grand Canyon and spent several hours there.  What can I say about this, its the Grand Canyon.  We drove home after leaving the Canyon.

The rest of their stay we pretty much hung out around the house.  Dario helped me put our window coverings up.  We ordered them back in July but it took like 3 weeks to come in.  Other than that, we played Wii and GameCube.  I picked up Madden ‘08 and a couple controllers, and another Wii game that came with a controller so we could play against each other.  Dario pretty much played Wii tennis so much that his shoulder hurt by the time he left.  We had a lot of fun playing, and by the time Dario left, he pretty much was able to kill me in tennis. 

We had a BBQ with pretty much everyone in my family showed up.  Faith’s parents were there, my mom and Kevin drove up from Yuma.  Elmer drove in from Maricopa, which was a real treat.  I haven’t seen him in years and to have him drive all that way to see Dario was very special.  Kallie was there and she brought her quads.  Dario drove through the neighborhood on one for a while.  It was a real good time with lots of food, laughs, and family.  What more could you want.

We all went to the movies with my dad and Pat.  We saw the new Indiana Jones movie.  We pretty much had to.  Every time we saw anything that had a picture of Indiana Jones (pretty much everything in Wal-Mart) Dario would start singing the theme song.  No brainer when it came to picking a movie.

Faith and I took them to see the Arizona Diamondbacks.  They didn’t know too much about baseball, so I taught Dario about it by playing my old Sega baseball video game.  There were a few things I had to explain while we were there, but they pretty much understood everything that was going on.  He got to see a home run, stolen base, and the Dbacks won.  So it was a success.

A couple days later we went to see the Arizona Cardinals pre-season game against the New Orleans Saints.  This was their main thing they wanted to do while they were here.  I had a hard time trying to get tickets.  Seriously, to a Cardinals pre-season game, I had to jump through hoops.  I finally found a guy who had 4 tickets for sale for a good price, and it included a parking pass.  Before the game, we stopped and grabbed some Subway sandwiches and we had a mini tailgate party.  We parked next to a couple people who had tents, grills, flags, games, and all that.  There was a couple guys who were playing Playstation hooked up to their truck battery. 

Dario and Monika really liked the stadium.  That was a real highlight to their trip.  The seats were pretty good, lower level, corner of the end zone.   So we had really good seats to see the Cardinals lose a game they were winning at half time.  When I asked Dario what he thought about it, he said the stadium was good, the game was not so good.  But it was a lot of fun.

A couple days before they left, I took Dario out to some of the back roads and let him drive.  He never drove for real, just in video games.  He did pretty good and after about an hour of driving and a quick trip to my dads, we got home.  Later that day we went to Donald’s house and went swimming.  We were there for a few hours and had a real good time.  Dario and I kept dunking each other and Erin (of course) was the last to get out of the pool.

Like all good things, this too had to come to an end.  We got up early and Erin and I took them to the airport.  Faith had to work so she couldn’t go.  It wasn’t fun, but it was as good as it could have been.  Lines were short (it was 4:30am) and traffic was light.  I gave Dario a hug and kiss, and they went through security and then walked down the hall to the gate.

If you are looking for pictures, I am having issues being able to upload them.  I will post as soon as they get uploaded.  I will hopefully get them up in the next day or two.  I was able to figure out why I can’t upload them this morning.  So I will need to spend some time at home to get them up.

Long post I know, but this was three weeks, and we did a lot.  I hit the big things we did, and maybe later I will post some other things from their visit.  Hope this satisfies for now.

Tropizm