Just in case you didn't get your card yet!!!

Boooger and Handsome are making the xmas tree right at home at our house this year as well....!

O Mod Tannenbaum Christmas

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Coffee maker troubles

About 1.5 years ago we bought this coffee maker - burr grinder included!


It stopped heating the water at approx 11 months of age. I tore it apart and put it back together.... it magically started working again - keep in mind that I didn't actually DO anything to it, it just started working. Just took it apart.... sigh.



And it continued to work well until 2 weeks ago. I started searching on the internet for ways to fix it since we had bought a different brand of grind-and-brew coffee makers and hated it so much we sold it less than 3 days later on Craigslist. I found a couple of blog postings about fixing the coffee maker. It seems that there are some thermal fuses in the base of the thing - that are cheap-o and fail often. I purchased 3 of each temp rating (for $1.25/each). So, I can now fix our coffee maker two more times for less than $10 for all 3 repairs!) in case I damaged one or lost it or whatever.

I cut out the old ones, realized I had no butt splices to reassemble the dang thing, and ran off to Radio Shack. I returned quickly with the butt splices and went to town! 5 minutes later, everything was put back together with the new parts installed.



Now.... does it work or was this adventure futile...? I plugged it in, poured water in and listened (with glee) as the water started heating and pouring into the carafe! Our favorite coffee maker is repaired and we are, once again, pleased with it. AND, as one of the repair guides said "Can you smell that? That's the smell of delicious do-it-yourself satisfaction."

*I am still smiling*

Thanksgiving weekend

Well, we stayed home and went to Boulder to Levi and Sarah's celebration at their house! It was great fun and was sad when the night came to an end but what a wonderful night of fun and friends... too bad we forgot our camera. oops!

Friday morning we got up early and headed to A-Basin to get in some skiing (shocked, aren't you?). Thursday had been SEVEN degrees up there so we were thankful for 20 degrees! We skied the morning and then headed in for some lunch. A few more runs and I was tired and cold so I went inside to wait for Tucker.... Where I ran into Kathy - who used to work out with me at Bonza Bodies a.k.a Fitness by Atlas - AND Jody, an ex-coworker from Lockheed AND our friends Pat and Heather who we hadn't seen in more than a year! They ended up kicking us out of the bar at the end of the day as we had gotten carried away chatting with everyone and catching up!
We left and didn't even stop at the condo - we headed straight to Russ and Becky's ski house! Where we had a wonderful dinner and met Alex's girlfriend, Andy! It was soooo much fun!

Saturday held much of the same activities. Ski, lunch, friends, dinner at Russ and Becky's house.... I even played hearts for the first time (that I remember)... I still like Euchre more! :)

Sunday was skiing and then home early to start cleaning the house in anticipation of Book Club next Sunday afternoon! We are reading A Year of Living Bibilically. I'll let ya know how it turns out.

It was a good thing we were set to clean. The cats have a new habit of taking things from closed cupboards (off the bottom shelves) so we have moved most things up from that area. Apparently we didn't get the shredded coconut.... Not only this.... (recycled because all of them used to live in Boulder and want to help the planet)


but it has now stopped up our glorious, automatic litterbox twice in the 24hours that we have been home.

The cats then had to be punished and I think we did a great job there! What do you think?

San Francisco!!!

Last weekend we went to San Francisco - left early Friday morning and returned early Monday morning. Friday, we checked into our awesome hotel in DOWNTOWN - 4th and Market - which was a cute little place. And, by LITTLE, I MEAN LITTLE. But we had a beautiful view of the wall behind the building - hahaha. It was great though!
As you will see we had fantastic weather the WHOLE weekend! After we checked into our hotel my friend, and fellow future-Ironman/woman teammate, Kathleen picked us up for a little sightseeing! Whoo hooo! We all went down to the Golden Gate Bridge. This is where knowing a local came into play - she knew where to find FREE parking! She had warned me that we would walk between 8 and 12 miles and she DELIVERED!
We took LOTS of pics - but I'll limit it!

--The obligatory, self portrait --

Next it was back to the hotel - where Kathleen's friend, Al, had luggage awaiting him that had been lost on his travels to San Francisco the day before! We handed off the luggage and exchanged hugs - the next time I see Kathleen I suspect it won't be 'walking' for 8 miles but rather running or biking or swimming!

We met Drew and Liz for dinner! Drew was a neighbor of Tucker's in Michigan and I have fallen in love with them both. They recently got married and Liz was anticipating a big job interview on the Wed after we left so there was lots to talk about and the energy was HIGH!

Dinner was fantastic and so were the views off the roof of their building! Great to see all of our friends on Friday! But Saturday held more friends and a wedding! Saturday morning we got up early and headed for breakfast with no clue where we were going until we saw 'Chinatown' signs - so breakfast in Chinatown it was. It was not 'Chinese' but Chinatown, none-the-less. We then headed to the airport to pick up our rental car and went to the wedding!

Uy and Joanne got married! Don't worry about it but NONE of these women is the bride!


They released doves at the end of the ceremony.....

Which would have been awesome except Uy's dove wasn't very happy about it - note the mid-air flop on the right side of this photo.
We, again, did the self portrait -

And a timer shot of the two of us -

The view from the wedding site was great as well -

We left a little early from the wedding to return to some tight parking at the hotel

The next morning we went sight seeing - redwoods and San Francisco - it was great (and, again, the weather was PERFECT!)

Next we headed into town to see what we could see before returning the car -
LOTS of bridges

And some street with more turns... blah, blah, blah, I don't know but Tucker was driving and REALLY wanted to drive this one.
Trolleys and Alcatraz?!?!?! Awesome!
We got done early and returned the car, ate dinner at the hotel and flew home the next morning - where I brush SNOW off my car! I forgot, while enjoying the wonderful California weather, that it might even have the possibility of snowing in Colorado! Go figure!

Until the next one.....

Sperry, Laura, Agean and Cambria came to visit

Some pix from the Ventura-Browns visit:

Another weekend of skiing - I know that you are not surprised

We headed up to Keystone Friday night and finally arrived about 8pm - an hour later than anticipated. We ate dinner with Bill, Marilyn, Sperry and Laura! Sperry and Laura (Tucker's brother and sister-in-law) are visiting from California for the week with their twins! I had never met Cambria and Agean before so this was exciting for me. Somehow in all the fun we never took a single photo....??? We'll get some and post soon.

We skied Arapahoe Basin on Saturday morning, then shopped at the outlet mall and then back to the condo to see and play with the kids and rest of the family! Then we were off to dinner at our friends' house. We arrived early. In fact, a little too early as they weren't even there. I quickly decided that a trip to the nearby Walmart would kill some time. I bought some essentials - like dental floss - and then we spotted some items that we wanted to take on our Christmas hut trip this year as well as a fashionable doggie sweater that was ONLY FIVE BUCKS!!!!

Oh, that's right, we don't have a dog. But we got home almost 6 hours ago and immediately put Handsome in the sweater.... he loves it, loves it, loves it. I can't even get over how ridiculous this is but also AWESOME!


This morning we skied A-basin and got some more time with the family before weather moved in and we moved out. Down to Denver so that I could run an hour before book club. This is the first time, EVER, that I have run 45 minutes continuously. No walk breaks, no water breaks, no bathroom breaks. no breaks! Maybe this off-season running program is just what I need to help me get across that finishline at Ironman Wisconsin in 2011?!?!

And for those of you paying attention - Sunday, 11/7/2010 - Day 4 of skiing for the 2010-11 season :) All at A-Basin so far.

Branson Photos

I found a few pix of Branson. I'll work on some video

Music City? Like Radio City?
Ducks Ducks Ducks!

Macaroni Grille

Bike Friday folding bike in Branson

Happy Halloween!

Day 1!

Monday was opening, but Saturday was our Day 1.

It was a little depressing to get a text from a ski bum friend of mine on Tuesday stating: "another powder day" while I was hard at work...

Check out the new lift!


We made it up again today. 2-3 over night made it a great 2 runs before it was skied off. People must have slept in, the lines didn't get long until 9:30.

Pheasant!!!!

I joined Dad in South Dakota for some pheasant hunting...

If you don't know what that is... You end up doing a lot of walking. Hunters walk fields in parallel, with dogs usually running around chasing after birds. When you get to the end of the field the birds flush.

We had lunch out of the back of the truck every day.
Baily, one happy Dog.
On the way home we came across a storage facility for a new wind farm. In the picture below there are hundreds of wind mill blades.

Ski Season is HERE!!!!!

Yup, A-Basin opens on Monday and I'm feeling a little 'cough' coming on... might be powder fever for which the only cure is a trip to the mountains with skis - weird. :)

We had dinner with the Summit crew last night and we were all pondering the start of ski season - guess we got our answer! We all even considered going up today for Loveland's opening day but changed our minds.

Karyn has bursitis...

Well.... here it is..... I drove to Boulder this afternoon to see MY orthopedic doc after I didn't get an especially warm fuzzy from the doctor on Friday. I scheduled surgery with him after him telling me that the MRI showed a torn labrum (soft tissue that holds the 'ball' in the joint so that you don't dislocate your shoulder all the time) and frayed bicep tendon (likely torn).

So, one of the things that I like about Dr. Halbrecht is that she has performed surgery on my knee.... 3 times. Tucker's shoulder once and Tim's shoulder once. When I arrived at her office today she looked over the radiologist's report and then took off to her office to look at the digital MRI pics.

THEN, she invited me into her office to look at what she saw. An inflamed 'bursa'. BURSITIS! I have BURSITIS!!! So, what was that other doc talking about? She saw what he saw but said it appeared to have been a very old injury and that if my shoulder wasn't prone to dislocation that I shouldn't bother with the repairs. :)

Then she had me do some wall push-ups. Apparently, my right shoulder blade isn't tracking correctly and this is what is causing the bursa irritation.

The solution??? physical therapy. End of story. I still will be an Ironman in 2011. I will still be skiing and hut tripping in 2011. Life goes on, as normal, and hopefully my shoulder feels much better soon.

yikes! 2 weeks?!?!?

TWO weeks since the last post? I'm sure that nothing too exciting has happened, right? well, today was a phenomenal day for me. My friend Mari, in the black jersey in the photo below, has been declared 'cancer free' (for the 2nd time) from breast cancer and she wanted to do a celebratory bicycle ride. What an awesome idea!!!! I rode my bicycle for the FIRST time since the race and had a GREAT time. 35 miles later, sweaty and cold - yes, that happens - I curled up in my bathtub and prepared for the evening activity.


ROLLER DERBY!!!!

where was Tucker for all of this adventure??? First things first. Do you know what a pheasant is?


Do you know what to do with one? Well, we do and Tucker is off hunting them in South Dakota with Dad and Tim. Hope that they are having fun and doing well!

More posts later? A visit to the orthopedic surgeon this week has a 2nd opinion scheduled for Monday and surgery scheduled for 10/29.... After I visit my usual doc on Monday I'll post more. AND, it's NOT a knee!