Before it all began...

A long time ago in a town far far away.

There are two travelers who are about to start a new journey, much like the one before, but different in every way. But before the new journey could begin, an old journey had to end. The two travels knew they had to pack in as much as was possible within the next two months with as little budget as possible so that eating could happen during and after the trip.

So to begin with Andrea wanted to complete the second of two expensive activities that the National Aviary had on their regular schedule. But being a once in a lifetime event, how could we say no to it. The first we had done a year or so ago, "Breakfast at the Aviary" (or something like that) where we got a breakfast, a meeting with a few birds up and close, a tour of most of the facilities and a "free" pass to the rest of the aviary after it was all done. We had a blast doing it, but knew there was a bigger and better event for Andrea to experience. So after a bit of convincing that the cost of going to the Aviary was a bit less than trying to get down to Antarctica she was finally convinced. This time we went for something a little more special. This time we signed up for the Penguin Connection. More on that in a sec.

Our encounter was setup for something like 1:00 or around there. We knew we would be there for a few hours, so we figured we should start with some lunch. Although we didn't know they had a hot dog stand in front of the Aviary at the time, who would want a hot dog when they can have the BEST SANDWICH IN THE WORLD!!!!! 

We had seen Lucy's stand for 3 years and new it was time to partake in one of her Banh Mi sandwiches before we lost the opportunity to... so we did... and it was Fantastic. If you are ever in the Strip District around lunch (or any time that she happens to be there) I would highly suggest trying one at least once.



So back to the main event. We knew they were building a new penguin exhibit and I had kind of been convincing Andrea to wait on going to the Aviary again for both the right time to visit again and for the new penguin exhibit to be open so that we could get our fullest enjoyment of the visit. Well it just so happened that the new enclosure opened towards the beginning of the year and we were moving soon... it was like the planets had aligned, for Andrea. So, the event was setup to bring you first to the new penguin exhibit, show you around the facility again (meal prep, food storage, super-worms... you know... the usual) and finishing up with a 1 on 8ish visit with our very own penguin envoy.

We were able to see him, have him walk among us and even pet him for the duration that he would stand in front of each person. It was incredible and well worth the investment (both to have fun with penguins and not have to take a trip to South America to start with.) Out best pictures of both visits are on the web. So a good time were had by all!

That's it for this post... next post will be a here and now post as we will be mixing in stuff that's going on now with trip posts until we can catch up. Also click here to see the rest of the photos from our Aviary Trip.

I'll see you where the roads meet.

We're Here / We're Home / We're Employed

So I know I'm supposed to be typing up all the memories and stories of our trip and including pics and all... but I thought I would start off with something completely different (a post about there here and now with no pics)!

I just wanted everyone to know that we are finally safe and sound (of sorts) in Laramie, the big computer made the trip safely and Vger is back up and running in the living room/kitchen. That's the important stuff right? That my computer is ok and the robot vacuum is happy to be cleaning again. Right?

The apartment is great... wood floors through most of it, carpet in 2 of the bedrooms, washing machine and dryer included.... but best of all.... a DISHWASHER!!!!!  Big windows in all of the rooms, 2 decks (one off the kitchen and one off of our room), 2 bathrooms (a boys and a girls), a nice sized kitchen with a lot of cabinets and more outlets than you can shake a stick at.  Everything seems to be of pretty sound build and all the plumbing/electrical seems to be just fine. So all in all... not too shabby.

Andrea started school at the University of Wyoming last Monday. She's taking just over a full load (grad school full load is 9 credits and she is taking 12)... but they are all classes she really wanted to take and ended up having to fight for to keep them all on her schedule. She's a little bit worried of the work load (30+ books so far assigned this semester) but if she keeps the 12 credits for a semester or two then it really opens her up to take some fun classes the last 2 semesters after she has take a lot of her required courses. We'll see how this semester works out as to whether or not she will take 12 again next semester. Here's to hoping its not too bad.

So Monday before last I had an interview for a part time tech support job. I went it and went over my abilities and they loved how good I was with my hardware/software but wanted me to be stronger on the programing side of things. So they gave me homework to learn SQL enough to take a test for the next interview which would be held in one week. So over the next week I went online and went through like 5 SQL Server tutorials and downloaded SQL Server from Microsoft and did the best I could to learn as much as possible. The next Monday I went in and they tested me on what I knew. They set aside an hour to get through their worksheet, I was done in about 30 minutes.We did end up skipping about half of it because of how well I was doing in the beginning, and I did get hung up on the last portion, but all in all I think it went really well and they said they were impressed with how quickly I had picked it up.  Monday they said they would know if they wanted to hire me by the end of the week, but about 2 hours later they called and said that other interviews or not, they wanted me as part of the team. So I am working as a tech support guy for a company called Handel IT who makes Ritetrack which is a human services software. So I am now learning SQL server and eventually C ++ so I can troubleshoot the software side of things and I will use my hardware knowledge to troubleshoot the normal hardware stuff as I always do. After about 4 days of work I feel very out of my element and that the amount of software troubleshooting is going to be way over my head.... but I remember feeling a bit like this every time I start a new job... so we'll just have to see how it goes.

The cats are down in Phoenix, and from what we hear they are doing well.  Kitty is sleeping with Geri, who is doing her best to spoil him. She has been giving him chips and stuff so that now when he wants something when she is eating it (out of a bag) he'll bat the bag until he is given some. Titania has aparently been seen sleeping places and every now and then running somewhere... so she's alive.

That's about it for the update post.

I'll see you where the roads meet.