What’s new in Twizzler-land?

It’s that time of year again! I typically end up carrying over a few resolutions from the previous year, so I’ll start by reviewing how I did last year.

• Read more
  I did not do well at all on this one. With Tobey reading more now, I had a few successes – like finishing a book while we vacationed in Florida this past October, and Tobey had the reading fever – tearing thru the entire “Diary of a Wimpy Kid” series. Still, I need to do a better job of creating family reading time on the weekends, and also take time out of my night work schedule to read – both technical books to hone my web development craft and pleasure books.
• Continue to exercise
  Not bad at all. Ran 67 miles according to my Nike+ stats, which is great compared to some previous years in my 30’s when my only training run for the Bolder Boulder was the previous year. Speaking of Bolder Boulder runs, had my best time in 10 years by running a 48:37 in the annual ritual 10K. Towards the end of the year I had a lot of DNE (Did Not Exercise) or one and done’s so there’s still room for improvement here in 2010. I’m aiming to average going to the gym or running twice a week.
• Make time to be creative
  I feel like I did an excellent job of this in 2009, making time to create some fun little projects like: Biggest Loser Family Challenge, Tiger Den Cub Scouts Website (password protected – just ask if you are interested in seeing it), new personal Sitemap, Grandma Switzer’s 90th Birthday Card, Aunt JoAnn’s Birthday, 2009 Holiday Card, a page that displays what I’m listening to on my iPod, and a few more still in the works.
• Spend more fun time with family
  This one was pretty easy – Tobey is at a really fun age right now and we can play video games, build legos or shoot baskets in the driveway at any time. Ashley and I enjoy having a passion for movies and Sci-Fi in common. Carrie and I put a high priority on family time and spending time together also. Grammy and Gramps usually have Tobey time once a month and we also have a few great babysitters.
• Minimalize
  Eeek – not good. I did do some of this, but I still think I brought in more than I got rid of. That’s not progress. The main focus is to work on de-cluttering the basement so I can have a more creative work environment, and not live in fear of collapsing the bottom portion of the house. I did make some late 2009 progress by getting rid of about 60% of my DVD cases since I am moving towards digitizing my entire library and keeping the disks themselves as backups in a few large CD/DVD holders. I need to come up with a more efficient way of dealing with the paper though. Might be worth investing in a better scanner and using Evernote more. This overall effort will definitely continue in 2010!

Finally, a few new Resolutions:

• Blog more often
  I’m sure a lot of long-time bloggers have found themself blogging less in the last year or two. Why? Services like Facebook and Twitter make it much quicker and easier to post your thoughts and status. Still, blogging serves a different purpose and enjoy looking back on the history of it to stop writing it now. A compromise of shorter posts (but longer than a 140 character Tweet!) might be a compromise that will help me succeed in this resolution.
  
• Communicate more often with my extended family
  I had some success with this in 2009 – starting up a private family Twitter group with my sister, Mom, and Dad has been great, but I would still like to do better at this – reaching out to my two awesome Grandmothers in Redstone and Salina, and my various cousins and Aunts and Uncles.  Facebook and Flickr and email make it easy, so I have no excuse to not at least check in more often.

Popularity: 1% [?]

Looking good, birthday girl!

Originally uploaded by aswitzer

Our family’s faithful and loving Chocolate Labrador turned 12 this past Sunday, or roughly 84 in human years. When that monumental occasion occurs you try and create a special day for her!

Twizzler’s special day was spent in Boulder with Grammy and Gramps since Carrie, Tobey and I were in town for the CSU/CU game the night before. (YEAH RAMS!) After breakfast we headed to Rock Park with Twizzler and the whole crew. If you know Labs, you know that they are most happy when *everyone* goes together and is in one place, so they don’t have to worry or run back and forth between a split up group. After a bit of fresh air and exercise, we headed back home. Twizzler rested while we were at the pool. The topper was when Tobey and I ran some afternoon errands and he reminded me that we were supposed to pick-up a McDonald’s hamburger for Twizzler. She woofed it down in two large bites – yum! I think she had a great day.

On a very sad note, Carrie’s sister and brother-in-law (Amy & Karl) had their Black Labrador “Happy” pass away in the afternoon. Happy – may you rest in peace, and Twizzler will come find you to run with someday in doggie heaven!

Popularity: 3% [?]

For the final Father-Daughter Bowl in Ashley’s time at CU Boulder, it was time to see a game in person. Of course, I had to choose the one year it was hosted at Folsom Field in Boulder, rather than the more neutral confines of Invesco Field in Denver. Carrie and I thought we might be able to meet Ashley at the game, but that didn’t work out… so there we were on a beautiful, warm, early Fall evening… deep in enemy territory.

I had major trepidations heading into this game. CU had won the past two games against us, and were quite convincing about it in 2008. I heard story after story from friends and coworkers about how rowdy the fans were at these games, so I decided at the last minute to shun my CSU colors and wear a less conspicuous brown shirt. Let’s just say I regretted that as soon as I saw all the current CSU students strutting around the stadium before the game, and even more so as the game progressed.

The game started off quickly with CSU jumping out to an early 17-0 lead. The CU fans, who were out in full force and mostly dressed in yellow, were quiet most of the first half. CU threatened a bit early in the 2nd half and the CU fans were finally heard a bit. Halftime was eventful with a teenaged streaker running thru the entire CSU marching band before getting tackled in the endzone by security. The CSU defense held on in the 2nd half, and the final score was Rams 23 – Buffaloes 17. The CSU fans stormed the field as Carrie and I headed for the exit. I couldn’t get rid of the grin on my face until well into the evening.

View the Game Summary on ESPN

Here’s my payment for last year’s loss, taken before the game:

Is this the final year for the Father-Daughter Bowl? I hope not… seems like we could continue on as we both will be proud Alums in the very near future.

Popularity: 1% [?]

In late July, Carrie went back to Michigan to visit her family over a long weekend, while Tobey and I stayed behind in Englewood. Carrie flew out Thursday night and returned Monday night, so this was a little longer time away than Boys Weekend I. She had a great time and you can see her Flickr photoalbum here.

I’ll admit that I’ve been jealous of Carrie’s extra “fun” time with Tobey this summer between her working part time, or more recently, being in-between jobs as she starts a new consulting job with Comcast in early August. So, a weekend to just spend time with Tobey was both something to look forward to and a way to make up for some of that jealousy.

Thursday night started out with a quick trip to Anthony’s Pizza for dinner and then a trip to the pool around 7PM to close it out at the 7:45PM adult swim. The pool closes at 8PM. Tobey loves the diving board now that he got over that fear so we spent most of our time jumping into the deep end.

Friday meant work for me and G2G for Tobey but I worked thru lunch so I could pick up Tobey as early as possible. We headed to McDonald’s for dinner (I grilled brats for me) and picked up two RedBox DVD’s that I had reserved online – a new SpongeBob release and Inkheart. We were quickly disappointed with the SpongeBob video as Tobey had already seen every episode on it, even though it had been advertised as having a new episode on it. Must have meant a “recently aired” new episode. We switched to Inkheart, which looks promising but I fell asleep on the couch thanks to being up til 4AM the night before working on Online birthday cards and other side projects. Tobey noticed I fell asleep and got me going again. We decided to head outside and do some scootering, and take Twizzler for a walk. It was still quite warm outside as it had been in the 90’s that afternoon. I longingly wished I could have taken the day off and taken Tobey to Water World on a perfect day. I prayed that Saturday would bring more sunshine than the Denver weatherpeople were predicting.

Saturday morning was a bit of sleeping in as Tobey and I had both been up late the night before. We started off the day slowly and poked our heads outside on the back porch to confirm that it was indeed much cooler than the day before. We looked at some short video clips on Tobey’s computer about the many rides at Water World – including the “Journey to the Center of the Earth” – more on this ride later. We took a few pictures of our ongoing Lego Mindstorms Robotics project to send to Gramps. Finally, we decided to head out and have breakfast somewhere and run a few quick errands. I have loved the weekend breakfast tradition for the past year+ with Tobey, but lately his interest in it has waned quite a bit. He’s realized we can do a lot of the same things that we used to do at breakfast (play DS Lite together, chat) just as easily at home. Since he’s not really that into breakfast and currently has little sense of adventure in trying new foods, the allure of going out to a restaurant just isn’t that strong – even going to McDonald’s since there are very few things on their breakfast menu he currently enjoys. We tried to go to a nearby cafe that we had tried once before, but it had already gone out of business. So, we ended up at a Del Taco where I got coffee and a breakfast burrito. Papa was happy. For fun, we staged a Pokemon cards battle (our highly modified version of it) at the table in the restaurant. After quick trips to nearby Bellco, the Post Office, and Target (efficient errand running – my favorite) we ended up back at home. At this point, it was just after 11AM. We continued to check out weather reports, and with the temperate creeping up towards 80, we decided to “go for it” in regards to Water World.

Once we decided to go, it was scramble time. Packed a cooler with snacks and drinks, find our cameras, get our swim suits on and get on the road! As we were singing to a CD on our way up north, I realized I forgot one important thing for a swimming outing – towels! Doh! So, we stopped off on the way at a Sporting Goods store near Water World, which, being stocked with hunting and camping supplies had zero towels, and then the Soundtrack next door, for no reason other than we got distracted. At this point though, I realized if we waited about 50 minutes, we’d save $30-$40 on our admission tickets. With the weather still being quite iffy, I pushed for this, and Tobey agreed. We watched a bit of Blue Man Group, Bolt, and a few other movies on huge Blu-Ray setups for a bit and then finally headed out. A Walgreens stop finally granted us our quest for a beach towel, and we headed inside for the afternoon session at Water World. The weather held on just long enough for us to enjoy a trip or two around the lazy river, a few raft/tube rides, and some time in the wave pool. We stared at two of the cool, but slightly scary rides – Voyage to the Center of the Earth and Storm, but decided to pass on both… “til next year”. When we got home we were reminded that the neighbors were having a get-together so we headed out to that, where Tobey enjoyed a little time with neighborhood kids and I re-familiarized myself with adult conversation.

Sunday morning was a little warmer (of course!) and a very nice day. We decided to go play a little tennis. Tobey has been taking tennis lessons this summer and has really found a love for it. (Yeah!) He’s also getting quite good… so we had a blast playing for a bit, with freshly opened tennis balls. Mmm, love that smell right out of the can. There’s no other smell in the world quite like it… and its not really a good smell, but I think its the fun tennis memories that come flooding back each time I smell it. All too soon, it was time to head home, clean up and go to a Colorado Rockies baseball game. We were joining one of my co-worker’s and his son for a Boy Scouts sponsored outing against the San Francisco Giants. Our seats were in the lower foul ball area off of first-base, so we brought our gloves, sunscreen, and ballcaps. One foul ball landed a section over from us, and a souvenir Rockies jersey landed in the row right in front of us, but no other close calls. The game was great, and the Rockies won so we all left the stadium happy.

Since it was a 1:00 game, we got out of Coors Field before 4:00, and still had time to pick off one more item from a “things to do” list. So we stopped by Dave and Buster’s for dinner and some gaming. Tobey likes collecting the tickets for prizes so we played mostly games of chance. We did have a fun car-race or two, and I noticed Tobey’s get big enough and coordinated enough to drive his own arcade car, and steer it on his own. We stopped gaming long enough to grab a bite to eat, and Tobey declared D&B’s has the best linguine noodles in Denver. After dinner, Tobey made the tough but excellent choice to save his tickets for a bigger prize down the road, and we headed home. A perfect ending to a fun-packed few days.

If you made it this far, thanks for joining me on a rather descriptive trip thru our Boys weekend. I hope you enjoyed the ride, and it inspires you to savor those special moments with your children, friends, or loved ones, next time you get the opportunity!

Check out the Flickr Slideshow from the weekend:

Created with Admarket’s flickrSLiDR.

Popularity: 3% [?]

Congratulations to Chris and Sara Smaling, who welcomed their son Jason James Smaling to the world on July 7th, 2009. One of the best parts of being friends with them is that they are also our next door neighbors, and that means we will get to see Jason often and watch him grow. From the guy perspective, I have to say I have never seen a more glowing new father than Chris… his smiles shines thru and tiredness he might have each time I’ve seen him the past few weeks. It only gets more fun!

Here are a few pictures from our visit to their house the other night:

Popularity: 3% [?]

The 7th annual Father/Son Movie outing also included Friend and neighbor Chris Smaling. Chris enjoyed being included in our long-running tradition and has already been invited to the next event, whenever it occurs in 2010. In a few years, these mostly annual outings, will most likely include another generation as well – Tobey!

Terminator Salvation was the fourth installation in the futuristic nuclear holocaust story where robots decide to take over the world. There have been a few movie franchises that have borrowed from this storyline, but this is the one that helped make Arnold Schwarzenegger a household name way back in 1984.

My favorite part of these outings, other than the movie itself, is heading to a nearby restaurant to discuss the movie over a beverage. We saw Terminator on the Giant screen at the Regal Continental (the best place to see the big action movies in Colorado) and then went to Chili’s next door for our roundtable discussion.

The majority of the reviews that I scanned before our movie night were unfavorable, but all 3 of us ended up enjoying the movie at some level. The tone of the movie was similar to several other recent franchise reboots (i.e. Batman) in that they choose a gritty, more real and realistic feel that seems to resonate better with current moviegoers, rather than maintaining the same kind of storytelling from the 3 previous movies. Casting Christian Bale in the role of a finally grown up John Connor was a good choice. The movie is set in 2018, in the early stages of the war between man and machines. The opening third of the movie is intense with great action sequences. We come to learn that the future has taken a slightly different path than Connor had been told about and Connor is not the full-on leader of the resistence, but just a voice more behind the scenes. The mysterious Marcus character creates some interesting moral dilemmas, and the climax to the story has some surprises as Connor and Marcus end up in the heart of Skynet operations.

I’m looking forward to seeing it again when the DVD/Blu-Ray comes out in early December.

Popularity: 1% [?]

The 31st annual running of the BolderBoulder 10K over Memorial Day weekend was one of my favorites in the last decade.

First, it was a great day for running – nice and cool, but not raining at 7:15 in the morning when my wave went off.

Two, I got to run alongside my sister Amy for a majority of the race, which was a total blast. We were both in shape enough that we literally used the first few miles to catch up on life while maintaining a fairly healthy clip.

Third, it was my best timed 10K race in exactly 10 years, and having it coincide with my recent 40th birthday made it all the sweeter.

Without further ado, my time was 48:37. I’ve blogged my last 8 races here, so you can see for yourself that I somehow have managed to get faster with age! Hmmm, maybe actually getting back in the gym again over the last year was the real reason.

The plan next year is to walk the 10K with Tobey for his first time – looking forward to that!

Here’s the 2009 BolderBoulder Participants, from left-right: Mom, Dad, me, Amy, Brian

Popularity: 3% [?]

For my Dad’s birthday, I took him to go see the SciFi remake of “The Day the Earth Stood Still”. This was also our 6th annual Father/Son movie, where we choose a movie the rest of the family isn’t into seeing (typically SciFi!) and make it an event. The event itself is bigger than the movie, because we also use it as an opportunity to catch up and talk about a wide variety of topics. We even bring lists of dicsussion items! It makes good sense for it to be a one on one event, because anyone else would be quite bored.  :)

On to the movie and review! (minimal plot spoilers) We both went into it with very low expectations. The reviews had not been good, and we could see that the number of theatres showing the movie were quickly dwindling. It had already been relegated to a fairly small theatre at the downtown Denver multiplex, and the number of the people in our showing was also quite small.

Surprise! We both came away enjoying the movie. First of all, Keanu Reeves was perfectly cast in his role as Klaatu the alien. Keanu does very well in roles that require little emotion (i.e. the Matrix series) and this role was just that.  Jennifer Connelly was also great in her role as Dr. Helen Benson, as the main point of contact for humanity with Klaatu. The plot of the movie is simple – humanity is destroying the planet Earth, and a representative from a group of alien races has been taking notes on us as a society. The final report is being delivered to Klaatu, who will then handle the verdict of what to do. Apparently the Earth is one of only a few viable life-sustaining planets in the universe and its too valuable to let us humans just destroy it. Dr. Benson becomes instrumental in pleading our side of the story before this verdict is delivered. The original movie was made in 1951 so this version obviously takes the time to do a major upgrade on the special effects, which are quite stunning. The plot is very simple and has few twists, but it can still be a fun ride. If you miss it in the theatres, its at least worth putting on your NetFlix rotation or picking up at RedBox.

Popularity: 40% [?]