Fast Food Nation

I finally got around to reading "Fast Food Nation" by Eric Schlosser which originally was published in 2001. Fast Food Nation seemed to me to focus on the history of fast food which I found interesting. And just the general history of franchises both food or retail.

Back in November, I watched the documentary "Super Size Me" and haven't eaten McDonald's since. I think my generation has been groomed that fast food is a way of life. Much like I have a hard time remembering what life was like before I had a cellphone or email. I used to not give it a second thought if I was hungry just to pull over and get something. After reading the book and seeing the documentary I do give it a second thought, and so far I've always decided I can do without it.

UNC Chapel Hill

I interviewed at UNC-Chapel Hill on Monday for their Master's in Health Administration program. It was everything I expected. Quality program, good professors, good networking opportunities and career direction. It's ranked 2nd for that type of program. The school I'm currently at is ranked 25th. I was upset this past fall with my classes to the point where I didn't think I could stand paying for or attending them. I'm happy to say this semester is much better but I expect only because the 2 classes I'm taking have guest speakers for every class. I was accepted into UNC. It's a full-time, 2 year program starting in the fall. The choice is now do I continue part-time and working full-time and finish in Spring 2009 or switch and have loans to pay back? If anything, it's nice to have options...of course with them come more decisions to make.

Snowshoeing

I went snowshoeing with my two aunts in Evergreen, CO. It was a great day for it. Miss Kitty enjoyed herself also and got quite a workout in.

Kerri's Surprise Shower

Kerri had a surprise bridal shower. Here she is wearing the ribbon hat made from all the gifts. Both her sisters and mother flew in for it. Based on the look on her face when she walked in the door, it was definitely a surprise.

Where are they now? (Vol 2)

I wrote my first "where are they now" entry on 8/15/06. I have a new addition, so this is volume 2. I met Kelly in middle school. In the 8th grade we were signed up to do the 3-legged race together for the "Olympics" (field day). Kelly and I actually practiced the race beforehand. I'm not quite sure why we took it so seriously. I guess we wanted to win; we did get 3rd place. This picture is of us our junior year at band camp. Yes, band camp. I love to embrace the dorkiness of this picture. Hehe. Yes, nothing beats spending an entire week out in 100 degree weather in August in the humid south.

So where is Kelly now? She's been teaching English in Japan. And she has fabulous news in that she just got engaged to Harold. After the school term ends this year, they will both be taking the year off and travelling throughout Europe, India and China.

Cute picture

Denver Pioneers Hockey

I went to a Denver Pioneers Hockey game. It's the University of Denver team; DU is actually a really good school, very small and private. Condoleezza Rice was an AXO there. People kept asking me why I didn't switch to DU's MBA program. It's known as a good school in Colorado, but outside of Colorado no one would know that. Due to expenses I decided to stick with CU-Denver (University of Colorado - Denver). DU played Wisconsin. It reminded me of how much fun I had going to all the GT Hockey games. The NHL isn't the same as college hockey fans. There were some Wisco students sitting behind us on their holiday break. Their cheers were hilarious, and they knew all the players. That's what I used to like about GT hockey; it's more interesting if you know the players. There is quite a difference between a club team versus a team that won the National Championship. I have to say Denver is pretty darn good. They won the game I was at, but the next night Wisco beat them 4-0.

New Year's Eve

On New Year's Eve Day we went to Copper Mountain. It was actually my first day out for the season, and as you can see from the picture, it was a beautiful day. Suzanne and Eileen rented skis. Aunt Ellen drove us up and then she went hiking while we made it down one run. We then all met for lunch. Eileen and Suzanne were scoping out the next runs. Suzanne had enough for the day and Eileen and I closed out the day after a couple more runs.

Here is Ellen and me at the bottom of Copper. The next day Suzanne and Ellen took Miss Kitty for a hike.

Christmas

Despite the weekly blizzards, the whole family made it to my Aunt Joan's safely for the holiday. Here is a picture of my mom and I preparing the potatoe salad.




And a picture of Eileen and my Dad waiting to eat or just hanging around for a picture.






Miss Kitty was very spoiled over the holidays. She got plenty of turkey and ham and got to go on a lot of walks. This is a picture from Joan's neighborhood while Suzanne and I were out.

Blizzard 2006

Yup, so I think I'm going to be stuck here for awhile. I barely made it home from work yesterday around 11am. I was slipping and sliding all over the road back to my apartment.

First, my porch. This picture was taken without opening the door, or the snow might have fallen in. My porch is covered, so you can tell there was a bit of wind.

Outside my porch, looking down on the street I'm supposed to drive on. You can see the car below. Yes, they got stuck. There's another one stuck in the place where you're supposed to turn into the complex. Eileen and Joan made cookies last night. They called and asked what kind I wanted. I just joked that they should bring me some with milk. I live about 2 miles from them. Around 9pm, there's a knock on my door. Dave used his truck to drive Joan, Eileen and himself to my place. The cookies were good.

In case I was planning on going anywhere anytime soon, this is what is in front of my garage. I'm the furthest one on the left.

Here's the road off the main street to the entrance to my apartment.

These geese are just chillin' outside my window in the field between the apartment complex and a nearby office building. Click on the picture for a larger version.

Work Holiday Party

We had our department's holiday party (Happy Hour) at Senior Ric's.

Here's a picture of myself, Marty (worked with me up in Boulder when I first started), Jane (one of our trainers) and Nguyen.

Sweet Charity

I convinced Eileen's friend, Jay, to go see the musical "Sweet Charity" with me. It's touring right now with Molly Ringwald as the starring role. It was written in the 1960's. It had an Austin Powers feel to it. Generally, there was no substance to the story. There is one hilarious scene of people trapped in an elevator, that however was the highlight.

Crazy Story

My professor for my "Managing Teams and Individuals" class had a family emergency and couldn't teach the remainder of our class. He was replaced by an 80 yr old guy. His name was Charles Rice. To help us remember his name he said, "what do you do at the end of a wedding?" Answer: Chuck Rice. Nope, I won't forget his name.

Anyway, he had us do a creative assignment. He handed out a black and white picture. The picture was a man half sticking out of a US Postal service mailbox. The picture looked like it had been taken in a city and the man's legs are flaying about as his entire upper half of his body is inside the blue container. Our assignment was to write a quick creative story to explain the picture. What this has to do with Managing teams and individuals is beyond me. I think it's something he has his undergrad students do. Anyhow, I went out on a limb with this one.

My Story:

This picture of half a person’s body sticking out of a mailbox was captured today on a busy street in downtown Denver, Colorado. It will be published in the National Enquirer this week. This photo has confirmed our suspicions that there are indeed aliens roaming among us. The aliens are now using the United States Postal Service to move around the country undetected. As the aliens go through the mail slot their bodies are transformed into regular looking letters with the appropriate information and postage. It is amazing that this alien was caught on camera, and that he was performing the transformation in broad daylight. This is very alarming information. There must be some sort of emergency going on in the alien community for them to risk their exposure to the world’s people. The real question is where are they having themselves mailed to? Are they meeting for an attack on a particular city? Did they all want to take a trip to Disney World? Or is it a huge family reunion? We can only speculate what will happen in the next few days. The country is reacting quickly to this news. Postal workers are being assigned to watch the receptacles for any more incidences of alien infiltration. UPS, Federal Express and DHL do not seem to be taking this dire situation seriously and have begun advertising discount rates for aliens choosing to be transported by air express. It makes one wonder, if we could somehow harness the alien’s technology, could we be on the brink of changing transportation today as we know it?

Thanksgiving in NYC

I spent a week up in NYC over the Thanksgiving holiday. You can read all about it on Suzanne's blog. Here's a picture of myself, Suzanne's friend Julie and Suzanne in front of the buddha at Tao. The number one reserved restaurant in NYC now.

I ate at some other good restaurants, saw the Rockettes, went to a Philharmonic concert and I always enjoy the planetarium.

Here's Suzanne at the American Museum of Natural History.

GT Fall Meeting

I went to the GT Colorado Club's fall meeting. The speaker at the meeting was Dr. John Stevens, of Lockheed Martin. He spoke about the Crew Exploration Vehicle (CEV) project that has recently been awarded by NASA. First it will be used to dock at the space station, then a trip to the moon, and they're aiming to get men to Mars by the 2030's.

This stuff has always fascinated me. It probably all started as it did for a lot of kids in the 1980's when the movie "Space Camp" came out. Compared to the filming done for Apollo 13, Space Camp is laugh out loud funny. They sort of simulate no-gravity at the beginning of the film, but it's forgotten as the film goes on. What is so surprising is the stars in the film: Joaquin Phoenix, Kelly Preston and Tate Donovan. My favorite quote from the movie...."it's just Space Camp". You really have to see it, it's all in the delivery of the line.

I think I began asking my parents to send me to Space Camp for the next couple of years after that. I finally did go the summer after 7th grade. By then I was too old for Space Camp, instead it was Space Academy. All 3 of us went. Usually you would share a room with 5 other people, but I think it was too crowded. Eileen and I shared a counselor's room. They were on the ends. There were only 12 of those rooms in the building. You can see in the picture, we had the bubble windows. During the camp, you simulated 2 trips to space. You had to take a test at the beginning of the camp, then rank your choices for roles in the simulation. Eileen and I were both payload specialists for the first trip. This meant we ran experiments in the shuttle. Technically Eileen was the doctor on board. She had to keep running "medicine" up to the pilot. Really, the medicine was Skittles. Then while Eileen was upstairs with the pilots I was instructed to come down with a stomach ache. Eileen was supposed to recognize this and diagnosis me. I must have been doing a bad acting job because Eileen just kept telling me to cut it out and stop kidding around. Geez Nins, after all...it's just Space Camp. We also rode in the multi-axis trainer, experienced 1/6 our weight, designed a space station and built and launched rockets. Ah yes, I am a dork at heart because I thought all of this was very cool.

End Scene

Kerri and I performed our second play tonight for our Health Systems class. If you don't know what I'm talking about, see the blog entry from September 10th. We got an A on the first one, not really sure why, so I'm hoping we did as well on this one. The prof did mouth "good" to me after it was over. I hope that's the word for 'A'. The class got a laugh when Kerry appeared as my "fairy godmother" to help me figure out a solution to our healthcare problem. I think it was a big shock to the class since we were so serious and conservative in our first play. She had a dark queen dress on and a wand with a bell. It was humorous. I have to say I actually did learn something by doing the plays, but I could have just as easily learned it by doing the research and writing a paper. The performances of the plays just took up 2 class periods. I'm glad they're over, and I will be happy to put my poor acting days behind me.

Happy Birthday

Suzanne,

Have a Happy Birthday!

Nike Women's Marathon

Suzanne got up at the crack of dawn to start the Nike Women's Marathon.

Jen and I tried to meet her at the 13 mile mark but barely missed her in the park. So we went to mile 17 and caught her there.

This picture with the thumb's up is just past mile 17. She was taking a "goo" break. Check out that fuel belt. Jennifer and I were joking the day prior that she kind of looked like a police office with that thing on.

Jen and I then drove to a part further down in the race. The parking around that area was terrible but after about a half hour we found a spot. We caught back up with Suzanne past the 25 mile marker. She was still doing just fine. I ran with her for about a tenth of a mile. She finished in under 5 hours and met her goal. I think it's awesome.
Drew joined us at the end of the race and just barely missed Suzanne passing by. Here's a picture after the race in front of the ocean. It was foggy by the water but sunny everywhere else in San Francisco.

Later that evening we celebrated Jennifer's birthday at a Mexican tapas restaurant. Our waiter was funny. When Suzanne asked him if they did anything special for birthdays his response was, "like a stripper?" Yeah, not what we meant. He did get it right when he brought out dessert with a candle and Happy Birthday written in chocolate on the edge of the plate.

Suzanne was fine that evening after the race. Although once again Jen and I were joking as she walked around the hotel room that she wasn't exactly bending her legs, and it was more of a waddle walk.

Race Prep

Suzanne picked up her race info, and we visited the race expo. We also met a friend of Suzanne's, Kevin, for lunch at the Daily Grill. It was excellent food. Kevin was an interesting guy who told us about the book "Let My People Go Surfing" about the founder of the Patagonia company. He's investigating a career in CSR - Corporate Social Responsibility. I wasn't familiar with the career prior to that.

Suzanne then went to her pasta party and Jen and I went shopping at one of my favorite stores, H&M! Usually I have to wait until I'm in NYC to go to H&M but San Fran had several.

We went to dinner in the North Beach area so Suzanne could do some more carb loading. We had a great table at Trattoria Pinocchio that was quiet and right by the window. Their food was also excellent italian.

Scenic 17-Mile Drive

I started my Friday morning with a massage at our hotel the Monterey Plaza. It was the first time I've gotten a massage, and I highly recommend it! Suzanne and I then sat out in the hot tub on the roof overlooking the ocean. Yup, it was pretty awesome. Since it was early in the morning we had the place to ourselves. We had brunch delivered to us outside also. It was a very relaxing morning. I was wearing my spa robe drinking my stawberry banana smoothie soaking up the rays. Not too cold, not too hot, just perfect. If only every day could start that way...well, then you would just take it for granted.

We then drove down scenic 17-mile drive in Pebble Beach. Here's a picture of us in front of the famous lone cypress.

We drove back to San Francisco to pick up Jennifer at the airport and check in to our hotel so Suzanne could prepare for her race.

We had dinner that night in the restaurant Cityscape; it was on the 46th floor of our hotel. It has a great view of the city.

Monterey Aquarium

Suzanne and I drove down from San Francisco to Monterey on Thursday. We visited the Monterey Aquarium. If you click on the link you can see a live cam of the sea otters. We got there just in time to see all the afternoon feedings including the sea otters. They are so fun to watch. We also watched the feeding in the kelp forest tank. The diver wears a mask that has a microphone attached so he can answer questions about the feeding. The leopard sharks and wolf eels got a little aggressive for food. The diver had to be quick to release the food to keep them from accidently biting his fingers.