Atlanta Aquarium

My department from work all went down to see the Atlanta Aquarium, which claims to be the worlds largest Aquarium. It was quite impressive. Here are some pictures:







These Manatees reminded me of Tim. OK, that sounded wrong. they reminded me of him because of this picture, which makes me laugh every time I see them. These Manatees were hilarious though. They were totally hot-dogging it for the crowd. They would swim around in circles in the tank and every time they rode by the glass, they would look at everyone like they were saying "check me out". Of course, I don't think they realized that it doesn't look cool when they decide to take a dump in front of the crowd too. That was pretty gross.



These were dudes inside one of the tanks cleaning the insides. It was pretty interesting.

Hiking Atlanta

Here are some pictures of us hiking areas of Atlanta

Stone Mountain:
I remember sticking a piece of gum on this pole last time I hiked it, so I found it and was looking to re-chew the sucker.



Tyler on top of Stone Mountain


Alene on top of Stone Mountain





This was a cute little bridge that was built around the 1880's and was moved to the park around 1920. The history said that it cost $1400 to build, but $19000 to move. Pretty funny. It was built with all wood, no metal. It has wood pegs holding all the boards together. Pretty impressive.



This is the famous carving of General Lee, General Stonewall Jackson, and Confederate President Jefferson Davis. The 2nd part of the KKK was formed at the top of this mountain. Pretty freaky. It took 20 years to do this carving.





Kennesaw Mountain:

There are a lot of civil war battle grounds in this area. This mountain was used as a look-out as well as a defense. The confederates were crushed here as well as out-manuvered as the Union simply fought for a bit, then went right around them.







Finally, on my birthday, we went fishing (pictures will be on another link). We didn't go fishing for my BD, because nobody I was with new. I was fine with it being that way (I don't like attention on my BD). However, when I returned to my hotel room, there was some room service consisting of some berries and whipped cream, some DELICIOUS chocolate cake, and milk. It kind of worried me because I had no idea how it had gotten there. I figured someone put it in there on accident, so I didn't touch it thinking I would be charged for it. It had no occured to me that it was for my BD (in fact, I had already forgotten that I was 29).

I called Alene a bit later and talked to her aboutt the fishing day, etc.. I then mentioned the room service tray that was in my room and how I was wondering how it got there and why it was in there. She then said, "maybe because it's your BD". It hit me then that SHE did it for me. I was so stoked because everything on the tray looked delicious, AND for the fact that my wife is so thoughtful. Thanks baby. Here is a picture of how it was set up in the room.

Coke Factory, Atlanta Georgia

Upon checking into our hotel room in Atlanta the first thing Alene and I did was head downtown Atlanta to tour the Coke Factory (Atlanta is where Coke was "invented"). Here are some pictures from our tour.

The cool sign at the entrance of the building



The building was being held up on one corner by a coke bottle



Alene inside at one of their displays



That's a lot of friggin' coke!



A couple of big coke bottles, artfully designed



Hanging out with the Coke polar bear



The best part: the tasting room. They had all kinds of flavors of soda here, most of which aren't made in America; flavors like "melon soda" and other oddities that are in demand in other countries.



It was fun to see a bit of American history. Kind of sad that something so bad for you is so worshiped, but it is part of our history.

Back from Atlanta

Just flew back into town and boy are my arms tired! Badda-boom, badda-bing! :-). Seriously though, that flight is 4 hrs. Thank goodness for a window seat, alene's laptop, and a good book to read. The only thing that sucks sitting in the window seat is when you have a bladder the size of a pregnate woman's. I drank about 10oz of OJ this morning and I swear I peed about 2 gallons on the plane. I had to keep asking the lady next to me to wake up so I could move out of my seat.

Anyway, the trip went great. We went fishing yesterday with the guys from my department. That was actually a blast and I caught a few fish. They were the biggest fish I had ever seen caught in person. The first fish I caught was a spotted bass. We were actually looking for stripers, and I caught two more of those later on. Our boat had 3 guys and we caught 13 total fish. Not too shabby.

I'm going to post all the pictures of this trip in another post.

Had a good weekend in Atlanta

I'm still here, but Alene is gone now, so I have to head over to work and mingle with everyone from my department for the next 2 days (tour the new aquarium and go bass fishing on Tuesday).

We went to the coke museum (it wasn't THAT bad). Like some said, yeah, it was like a big coke commercial, but being I like anything interesting and historical, I consider Coke a historical thing. It was funny how I kept thinking about how they kept saying "our secret formula" throughout their advertising everywhere. My immediate thoughts kept turning to "cocain". Once they got rid of the cocain (for legal reasons) what flavor did they use after that to keep the formula "secret and original tasting"?

We went to Stone Mountain, hiked it, drove around, and saw the lazer show later that night (actually, just saw the first show, then left; you've seen a lazer show, you've seen them all. Plus we were tired).

On Sunday we went and hiked Kennesaw Mountain, which was fun. Alene and I did a lot of talking and situational conversation. Stuff like "if you had a kid you were teaching in your class who just needed to pass a final to walk and graduate and get on with his life and you knew he was a good kid, but he just didn't care about the subject, would you give him the answer sheet for his final so he could pass it???" This situation happened to my younger brother his Sr. year. He was a good, quiet kid that just went with the flow. The teacher knew me from previous years and was a pretty older teacher, but for whatever reason he felt "inspired" or something to let my brother pass the final by giving him the answer sheet (my brother had failed it the first time and he allowed him to re-take it in private, with the answer sheet).

Anyway, I'm rambling there

Anyway, l dropped my wife off and went to the store to buy the Gorillaz CD. HOLY CRAP THAT IS A GREAT ALBUM!! The song "Dirty Harry" has a guest rapper on it named "Booty Brown" who was a part of the group the Pharcyde, which is a group from back in "my day" that I used to worship. It was cool to hear him rap on this album. This album is not rap, it's not rock, it's not dance. It's just a GREAT album that people of all genres would like. It's done very tastefully with a lot of cello's and violin's too. It's great.

I ended my evening watching a GREAT movie I had rented before we came out here, to watch when I had time. It's PT Anderson's first movie (PT Anderson did Boogie Nights, Magnolia, and Punch Drunk Love). It was called Hard Eight and it was suprizingly touching (had me trying to "scratch something out of my eye" at one point. I recommend it to all that enjoy PT Anderson-type movies. Great script, excellent cinematography, GREAT acting, and an interesting topic of course.

One thing that is weird about being away on "vacation" or to work is that I become very un-plugged from what is going on in the world. For all I know we could be invading a country, or Mexico could be washed away from some huge hurricane. Seriously though, I feel very "un plugged" from the world right now, even though I'm in one of the larger cities in America.

Well, it's time to get ready for work now.

More arches pictures

Just wanted to post some more arches pictures. We let my brother Russ borrow our digital camera, so we had to go back to that old primitive 35mm camera (with FILM in it!!). We finally got those pictures developed.

This is Caiden all pooped out from the Saturday at arches.



Here is me and Caiden hiking up to Delicate arch



Here is a picture of the family up at Delicate arch


This is me and Caiden standing under Delicate arch. That sucker is WAY bigger than you would imagine.



Here is a look at the arch from another little arch (or more like a hole poked through the rock that you can see Delicate from).



Here is a view of the natural "Bowl" that is created next to the arch. It is pretty scarry being up there with kids.



Here is Alene in the mini arch by Delicate



Here is the family up above delicate a bit. It was so windy up there, I felt like any moment we would be blown over the top!



Here is a crazy photographer (you can't see him so well, but I circled him in red). Homeboy inched his way down this wall there to take pictures. He had no climbing gear on or anything. You can't see the drop, but it's basically grand canyon below him.



Here is Alene, April, and Caiden inside of double arch



Here is a picture of double arch.



Here is a picture of me finishing off a (root) beer after hiking down. Caiden took the picture.

Kitchen stuff....

Got the countertop between the kitchen/dining room tiled yesterday. Alene, April, and I also painted a lot of our trim and set it outside (it was nice and sunny) to dry.

As I think about it though, I really don't think the kitchen will be finished for a while. This week is pretty crazy with me having school tonight and lot's of homework/studying for an exam on Wednesday. I need to use Tuesday for more studying, so I'll basically have Thursday to get the kitchen finished up. However, it's going to be my last day with Caiden and I won't see him for a week after that, so I doubt I'll do the grouting then. Maybe I'll just take Friday off and get it done then????

Anyway, the kitchen project is getting drawn out so long that I just want to GET IT DONE! Even after I grout, I still have the little things like adding the trim and making the wood countertop for the island. It will be nice though, when it's done.

I'm leaving this Friday for Atlanta with Alene. She is only going to be there with me until Sunday night, but it will still be nice to get away with her, even if it's for a short while. I'm going to be meeting up with some people from my department on Monday (we're going to tour the new aquarium there), then they're taking us bass fishing on Tuesday morning (EARLY). I'm not much of a big fisherman, so it should be interesting. I fly home early wednesday morning (just in time for my orthodonitc appointment). I'm going to miss Alene and Caiden though. I used to look forward to getting away and going to Atlana on business. However now that it's not with my family, being gone from them that long sucks.

Anyway, not a ton of pictures, just the few from the bar area (can someone give me a different name to use for this area???? I have no idea what to call it).

Kitchen update (countertop/backsplash is tiled)

I've forgotten what the date is, so I'm just going to update what I've done.

This past week was really hectic. It seems there was always something going on each evening.

Anyway, yesterday (saturday), I got quite a bit done, but not as much as I wanted. It's all good though. I got the countertop and backsplash tiled, which is a big step because we now basically need to grout/seal it, then put up the baseboard/door casing trim and we're good to go (for the most part). The last part of the kitchen will be to make the wood countertop for the island, but that is about it (and isn't a huge job, just takes a little patience). Alene and I still need to pick out what kind of wood we want to use. Not sure what a good "hard" wood is. I don't really like Oak because it's EVERYWHERE (but it's good for burning). I like Maple and poplar and some other woods I can't think of at the time (almond maybe?) but I'm not sure what is the strongest and most durable.

Anyway, enough of my thoughts. Here are some pictures:

I started off doing the countertop edge







I then proceeded to put up the middle trim piece. At first we had thought about putting pieces of mirror on the backsplash, but the stuff was so tough to cut and work with, we ran to home depot and found this trim stuff to use, which turned out really nice. Not a bad last-minute adjustment.



Break time (I BBQ'd hot dogs in the pouring rain)














Oh yeah, I also took a break and built the countertop for the easeway from the dining room to the kitchen. I'm going to tile that today.



Next up will be the grout job....