Journal

Hunh...

For new years, we took our third trip in two weeks to Cedar Rapids.

The drive there was a bit silly. Roads were clear and clean, but covered in state troopers. I slowed down a bit, because I didn't want to push my luck.

At the Matta's we showed up, settled in, had a nice simple dinner, before the girls were packed up to spend the New years with Grandma and Grandpa Matta. We waited till around 8:00 PM before we started to dig into the prepared snacks. From Nathan's roasted nuts (many jokes ensued) to goat cheese pizza drizzled in a herb infused olive oil, they put on quite a selection of delicious things to eat.

The theme drink of the night was cocktails made with sparkling white wine. The base being a wonderfully fruity Asti (very similar to what was served at Josh and Lindsay's Wedding). So we had everything form your standard mimosas, Poinsettias to the odder Black Velvet (surprisingly good), Nelson's Blood (not really good or bad), and others. I brought quite a good bottle of port (Trevor Jones Tawny Port Jonesy), which I really enjoyed...and I'll be replacing.

Along with Shannon and I, Jenny and Nathan, Clif, Scott, Jane and her husband (and even though I've met him a couple of times now, I can't bring up his name), and then another couple Scott and someone...that I had not met before. Enough to like you aren't forced to do things together, but not so much that it's hard to do anything.

So as the night wore on and several of us got into the spirit. We played games on the Wii (Boom Blox is awesome). And then ended up watching CNN's coverage of the New Years.

CNN's coverage was awful...and I mean bad. Crappy bands and I love the 3 second before midnight cut over for those of us in the central time zone.

Anyways...people started to clear off, and some chatting continued well into the night. Eventually around 2:30 or 3:AM we called it a night and slept.

In the morning, I was up first (I never sleep long). Read a bit, played with my iPod Touch, drank all Shannon's water...and then got up to search for more water.

Colby (the dog) followed me downstairs, wanted to go out, so I let him...remembered that Diego (the dog) was in the crate, so I let him out and into the backyard too. I drank water, read some more and eventually others joined me. Waffles for breakfast, got cleaned up and headed over to Shannon's sister's.

Sean seems like he's becoming a bit more anti-social...but it could just be the day. Shannon's parents joined us and Mike's friend.

We had some cake and ice cream chatted with the family, watched Sean get a bunch more from Dr Who.

We eventually left and headed over to Culver's to eat before we drove home. However, it was closed. So we ended up at Ruby Tuesday's. I don't know why we keep going there. The food is never that good, and apparently nobody there wanted to be there and the service was lousy too.

Being that I was still a bit tired, we headed over to Starbucks (I'm not sure where the non-starbucks places are in CR), went through the drive through, ordered (Peppermint Mocha Twist for me, water for Shannon) and drove up to the window. We were behind two cars, waited for the first. and the a Caddy CTS and finally got to the window.

The barista said that the people ahead of us had paid for our drinks and wished us a Happy New Year. By this time they were already gone so no way for us to give our thanks, so we thanked them, and headed back to Des Moines.

Certainly was an unexpected surprise.

I've been told that I need to pay it forward...so I guess I'll see what I can do.

Triple Christmas

I was thinking about staying home, and just delaying things until New Years...

Christmas eve day we headed down to Cedar Rapids, the drive was relatively easy, and the roads weren't too packed with travelers. We arrived at the Matta's around 2. We settled ourselves into the guest room, and hung out with the Matta's for a while.

Shortly after Jenny's mom and uncle (I think) arrived, we headed over to Shannon's Parents for Christmas Eve. We arrived first, even beating Shannon's dad from work. Shortly after we got there, Kim's family (Shannon's Sister) arrived, and just right on their tails, Shannon's Dad.

We went for the stockings first, getting a small amount of things from that. Sean and Sheileigh (is it bad that I have no clue if that is spelled right?) seemed very excited to start off the season. We then sat down fro some homemade chicken noodle soup. It was good. Then the kids passed out each round of gifts. This helped slow the pace of the torrent of presents down.

It's fun watching kids open presents. Chatting, some game playing (princess checkers with Mike vs Sheileigh & Grandpa). After the time grew late, the Kim & Mike packed up the loot and the kids and headed home. I started to do the same, and had the car warming up.

I came back in and we chatted. After quite a while, I went back out, turned off my car, and then came back in to chat some more. We spent a lot of time chatting with Shannon's parents. History, the story behind the story, thoughts, opinions. One of the things we were worried about, when Shannon moved in (unmarried, mind you) was Bob's reaction to the whole situation. But he told us his experiences and his personal opinions on things. I actually thought he was far more conservative in his beliefs. Around 11:20, I made some nudges and we headed back to the Matta's. We helped as much as we could with setting up Christmas morning with Taylor and Cali and then headed to bed.

This is where the pain started for me. I think I woke up 4 or 5 times in the space of 6 hours. It was either struggling to breath, because my CPAP machine was having trouble getting through the nasal air passage (which was blocked). So I got up to blow my nose, several times. Laying back down, getting comfortable, and hoping sleep would come...I would often read a bit again, before I could fall back asleep. Around 7:am, I figured the girls would be up, they weren't, but decided to just stay up and read anyways. Around 7:30 Jenny's mom came in, which caused some barking from Diego (black dog), which I think, in turn woke up the girls.

Christmas morning at the Mattas was fun as usual. Jenny and Nathan got the girls a kitten for Christmas (so that's 3 cats, 2 dogs, and a few fish in the house) and that seemed to be popular. However, I think the girls are used to the older, lazier kitties. With the new kitten, which was ended up being named Santa Claws by the little girls.

We had a good breakfast of roasted pears, egg casserole, and hot chocolate to fill up our belly. Before Shannon headed upstairs to get ready for the day. I stayed down and watched the girls open up the presents under the tree, before I joined Shannon and got cleaned up too.

We headed back downstairs and opened up the last of the presents (what we gave to them and what they gave to us). Shortly afterward, we packed up the car and headed over to my Parents. We got there a bit before noon.

By this time I was starting to feel more and more like a little bit of leftover death. Lack of sleep on top of a super-cold, left me feeling grumptacular. We did the short present exchange (I gave my parents a new version of one of the first games they had gotten when they were married, and Joseph a good chef's knife).

We chatted with family a bit before lunch was served and we feasted on roast beast (beef) with quite a set of trimmings. After dinner I checked on the weather, saw that possible freezing rain was coming, so we quickly packed up and headed back home.

Last night we snuggled in, and camped out and vegged out. We had some chocolate, I drank a lot of water and then we headed for bed.

We slept in separate rooms, since I'm still snoring like a wildebeast, even with my machine. I only woke up once last night, so I think I'm on the way to recovery. I had a nice day of today, heading into the weekend here. Shannon had to work today, for the first time in a week...so she had a nice time to just not think about work.

iPod Touch

So I've had this thing for over 3 weeks now.

I've gotta say that I'm sold.

I will be getting an iPhone when I pay off my car. Hopefully by then they'll have the next edition of it by that time.

Between the apps, the music, photos, and the convenience of it. It's cool enough for me to use frequently and does enough interesting things.

I had a PDA a long time ago, but to get it to do anything useful was such a pain in the bum.

This one, I've already used it to remind me to do things, join conference calls and what not.

At the Matta's it helped me feel connected (email and what not) without having to bring a laptop along.

Quite the weekend

On Friday, we had our team holiday dinner. We headed down to Centro to have a lunch, and quite the lunch it was. Keith, instead of joining us, headed home to lay down, since it was feeling a bit sickly.

We started off with a small Margherita pizza. I had pesto steak sandwich and many others had their own. It was quite good. After lunch we walked down the street a bit, after the drivers plugged the parking meters, and headed to Django for dessert. Between the six that we present, we had an Baked Apple Galette, Lemon curd, and this other dessert that Proctor had been there three times that week to eat. All three were quite delicious.

Saturday, we headed over to Cedar Rapids to the Matta's. We waited for the storm to pass, and then got on the road. The interstate wasn't too bad, though it seemed that whenever there was a car, truck or trailer in the ditch, traffic seemed to slow dramatically. Or around the snow plows and what not. So it took us quite a bit longer to get from Des Moines to Cedar Rapids then it normally does. We did catch up to the storm and got hit by it again as we headed north to Cedar Rapids.

We came in from the wind and the cold.

We settled for a bit (and played some hide and go seek) and packed up in the minivan and dropped off the girls with Jenny's mom and headed over to Winifred's.

We were there early, and seated down and started chatting. Eventually we were joined by Scott (living in CR), Cameron (in from Japan), and Dave (in from Michigan). It was nice to see and chat with everyone. We finally got around to ordering and we split a full order of their onion rings, which were pretty good. Shannon had Chicken Angelo, and I had the beef tips with cognac sauce. I started with a lobster bisque, which was...well...just ok. And they brought out the beef tips. Presentation wise, they were very lacking. It honestly looked like dog food...I was kind of turned off. However, once I tasted they were quite good. The beef was tender, the sauce was round and robust. I tasted Shannon's chicken, with what they called prosciutto....it was way to thick...It tasted good, though...but the texture seemed wrong.

The detractions, from Winifred's were small, but annoying. I admit that we started off slow, however, the service was, generally attentive, but slow. Water was refilled a lot, but the speed that the food came was just a bit too slow. The bathroom was more or less hidden, and the vinyl walls, made to look like the tile, just looked cheezy in comparison with the rest of the restaurant. The wine list was large, but not that I'm a huge wine aficionado, but between Scott and I and the Mattas, other then one brand which could range quite a bit in quality, most everything else we didn't recognize. And with no wine steward to help...it's kind of hard to get through.

The conversation for the night ranged all over the place, from the economic crisis, to just silly inane things.

We skipped dessert, since most of us were full and the Matta's were a bit late in picking up their children.

After we got them, we head back to their home and met up with the whole crew and drank mulled wine, some beers that I had brought. We were later joined up by Richard, who had drove in earlier that day with his wife and child from New Jersey.

Conversation went into the night...very late, where eventually quite a few of us were having trouble staying awake. So the party broke up and people went on their way home.

Sunday morning, we were slow in getting up...though once the light started hitting my face, I had trouble keeping my eyes closed. The Matta's eventually headed over to their first Christmas with Nathan's parents. We got cleaned up, and headed over to the American Skillet. Found online that day, and not too out of our way out of town.

I don't really have much nice to say about the place. I didn't like the orange juice (not even remotely tasting fresh), I didn't like the bacon (to dry?...it was just wrong). The Dallas skillet was ok. Shannon said that she and been spoiled by omelets at La Mie.

However, not all is wrong with the American Skillet. The Fruit & Fiber Cakes, which I had read were good, were actually quite good. It's basically a pancake, set up on one side, adding granola, cinnamon to the other, and then finishing the cooking with the granola. A bit of crunch, some pancake, some blueberries and some butter and syrup. It's like a dream imagined in pot smoker's haze.

The drive back to Des Moines was much much easier, though with the head wind drove down the miles per gallon. It took about 1/3rd of a tank to get to Cedar Rapids, and a little less then half on the way back.

It's nice to catch up with long time friends.

JCAH Christmas Party

This is a bit overdue...since it happened this past Saturday.

We headed over to Bravo!, near Jordan Creek, and we were ushered into a side room with all of the other staff and significant others for the party.

Even though I've been to a few of these, I still feel uncomfortable, but that's really just me. I don't know the names of a lot of people (this is probably more just me, then anyone, since the remember names part of my brain doesn't work). I don't know anything about what they generally want to talk about. So the extra shy part of me comes out in force. I do think it's a great thing for JCAH to do as a whole and I think it does really show how much they appreciate their employees.

So there were appetizers out, drink orders being taken and eventually the entertainment for the evening came out. It was a murder mystery...I've never been to one of these before, though I've heard of them, and it just struck me as a bit odd. It does seem like something that would help a group of people who don't know each other well as opens to join in conversations. The other part is that I thought the instructions on the card we were given, were a bit lengthy...I didn't think I could remember all of the things. Also, some information wasn't there (it was based on Dicken's works).

Over all it was silly...interactive theater I guess it would be called. Fun and not too embarrassing for the people.

After we found out that there was NO murder, we saw a short video presentation by Dr. Whitney. Apparently in January of this year, there was a dog that left a little present on the sidewalk... Being that it was cold, it was frozen to the sidewalk on the side of the building. And so because of the security camera, we got to watch a quick view (maybe 4 frames a minute) of two staff members trying to remove it... They tried multiple snow shovels, shovels, an ice scraper (which you could see it get thrown away) and after a while it finally was freed up and thrown away.

It was very funny to watch.

Afterwords, we headed home.

Jury Duty

On day one (Monday), I headed down to the Polk County Courthouse, went through the metal detector, and headed up to floor three. This being my first visit to the courthouse, I was pretty impressed by the grandeur of it all. Though beneath the grandeur, one could tell that the building was quite old and starting to show its age. I guess that is why they want to build a new one (plus the fact that they're basically jamming offices in there with a crowbar).

I thought I was running late, however apparently, as with most things with the government, it's a hurry up and wait situation. So I went and stood over by a door, and then they crammed us into one of the courtrooms. The clerk of that courtroom stuffed everyone in there and showed us a super cheesy 70s style video of the details of court service. We were then greeted by the Judge, who, instead of appearing in his robes, like most have done in the past (according to him), appeared in normal wear and proceed to tell a joke and describe the situation.

After a bit more, the clerks of the various courts came up and called people for their jury panel for their courtroom. We got a bit of a break, and then were lined up and headed down to the courtroom on the first floor. It was a civil trial. A lady was suing a Plumbing company for poorly installing a water heater. She claimed it caused carbon dioxide poisoning, and a bunch of other stuff because of that.

The jury interviews and selection took forever...Interviews lasted to about 12:30 before we took a break for lunch, came back, and interviewed some more. I thought the questions that both of the lawyers asked were fairly transparent as to what they were trying to get at. Given the small size of the courtroom, when they were doing the juror strikes. The lawyers passed a pice of paper from themselves, to the clerk to the other lawyer back to the clerk and etc. At around 2:30 in the afternoon, they Judge read off the names of the people that would be serving...and apparently I had gotten the axe...

I headed home.

On Wednesday, I headed back down to the courthouse. They said to report at 8:30 instead of 8:AM, which for me is better, since I have trouble making it to places before 9:AM. So I left early, but due to the snow storm, traffic was a mess, and it took me 30 minutes to get from home to the courthouse, which would usually take less then 15 minutes. I headed up to the jury selection room. Waited until around 10:AM, when they finally came up and called for the jury panel...which I made again (woo). The rest got to go home (boo!).

The clerk told us that the judge wanted to start at around 10:15, so she'd be back shortly.

The definition of short took on a whole new meaning that day. Though I guess in the grand timeline of the entire universe, it was very short, but beyond that...we didn't hear back from them until around noon, where they announced that a plea bargain had been reached and we were no longer needed.

We all got our parking validated and left.

Unlike the first day, where it was actually interesting and even though I didn't get picked, it was an experience none the less. The other time just led to a whole lot of time that was wasted. Now I don't know about others time, but my time is far more valuable then that. I understand the whole reason for it...but I still feel like my time was wasted.

So I headed back to work. I'm glad to be finished....but it would've been interesting to serve on a jury.

Welcome to the World, Benjamin!

Early Thanksgiving morning, 11/27/2008 at 1:47 AM, Benjamin Kraczek was born to my sister Emily and her husband Brent. Apparently labor and delivery went very quickly once it started.

So Congrats to Emily and Brent!

Thanksgiving...

Thursday morning I headed out, tried to see if I put a Netflix at the central post office, if it would go any faster (it didn't), topped of the tank, headed back home, filled up the car with nuclear brownie cookies and leftover nuclear brownies, and then we headed over to La Mie to pick up some bread.

I had Joe (owner and proprietor of La Mie) try out one of the nuclear brownies (he liked them, said they were very fudgy) and we bought some coffee, hot chocolate, and a cranberry and walnut challah, some rolls (kind of in the form of muffins), and this wonderful bread with gouda in the middle that I can't remember the name of. It really was fantastic. Afterwards we headed to my parents.

Now I will admit that traffic on I-80 was lighter then other Thanksgivings, but like I told Nathan later, it seemed like all the pleasant people stayed home and just left the rest of the jerks on the road. Seriously, why do you call it a passing lane, when..well...the majority of cars are in that lane? It was tried by a BMW x3 and some gigantic of an locally grown SUV to basically kill me...the running up in the regular lane, thinking they can cut in front of me as I'm right behind someone else...I hate that.

Anyways, we were the first guests to arrive. Joseph got home from a hour something run (he had a bit of a unibomber type look to him (Beard + crazy hair)). I saw the senior pictures that we went back to CR to take with my brother. And saw the preparations of the massive feast that was about to take place.

People started to arrive. As with most of the recent events, it usually ends up being the parents, the boys in the family and their families, and a few other random people. In attendance were: Hyrum and Diane and their kids (5), myself and Shannon (2), Jed and Stephanie (2), Joseph (1), Isaac (1), Parents (2) and then Rod & Shanna (2) and a couple of their brood (2), a couple of missionaries (2), and to top it off, the family that Stephanie nannies for (lets just say 4); for a grand total of 23 people at my parents.

Before dinner there was a bit of foosball palying, some Stratego (played my nephew), lots of goofing off, catching up and etc.

Lots of food...and I mean lots. A couple of homemade pies, cookies (mine included), tons of side dishes, including several sweet potato dishes, cranberry sauces, breads (banana, Jed made, La Mie, etc), 4 or 5 jello dishes, and turkey. This is probably the juiciest turkey I've had of my mothers. So kudos to her for that.

There were 4 tables. One tiny table (for the little kids), a card table (for bigger kids, but ones that may still be messy) and the two bigger tables.

The hits of most of the night wast the gouda filled bread that I got at La Mie, my cookies, and Shanna's homemade Lefse. The La Mie bread didn't make it much past the prayer (people started eating it before hand). I also really liked Shanna's low fat, low cal stuffing, which was nicely spiced...I was actually surprised it was low cal and low fat...

After the dinner settled and desserts started making the rounds, we hung out for a bit longer before we headed over to the Mattas.

At the Mattas were Jenny & Nathan, Taylor and Cali, Nathan's parents Pat and Terry, CJ and Emily (I think that's what her name was). Eventually we were joined by Nathan's older sister Cherokee and her family (Cherokee used to babysit both Nathan and I).

Jenny and Nathan were mostly busy in the kitchen putting the final touches on their meal. We chatted, played with Taylor and Cali (which for the most part involved playing catch with Taylor and her Horton stuffed animal).

So when they were about to eat, we exited stage right, but before we did so, we tried little piece of the turkey they made (holy bajesus it was good. butter and bacon fat under the skin, so you had turkey + spices with a nice bacon finish), and got a thermos full of mulled cider (alcohol free) and headed home.

Traffic on the way home was much lighter.

My older sister Emily had a child on Thanksgiving morning...I am waiting for more details.

Shannon worked a bit today, and I left shortly after her to brave the mall crowds.

Now normally I avoid black friday like the plague. I mean I plan on staying in the house, my car not leaving the driveway, not participating in any sort of commerce on that day.

I don't like malls, I don't like crowds, and the combination of both makes it extra annoying. However Apple was having a sale, and my iPod recently lost it's life, and being that the iPod Touch was on sale, I figure if I can get the 10% iPod recycling discount, then I'd get it...it's not like i'll be able to get it much cheaper. I was able to, and did so. I got an iPod touch, so that way when the drive strikes me, I can listen to almost anything out of my music collection rather then a mere 10% of the total music collection...

So since I was already there, I figured I'd check out Williams Sonoma and Barnes and Noble. I ended up getting a good (comparatively) deal on some non-stick cookware, so that I can have a pan to do omelets and etc in. 2 pans for ~$60, when one of them costs $125 normally...which makes me think that they just have a great big profit margin...but...anyways...

By the time I got out of the mall, I was about ready to die... People wearing too much perfume, strong smells that hurt my nose. and just the mass of people.

I got out and after avoiding people who don't know how to drive, I got home...and proceeded to disconnect from people and play with my new toy.

Shannon got home, and we spent the rest of the day safe from crowds.