December 30, 2005:  Wow, the year is over, seems like it went by in a flash.  It is hard to believe that we have been away from rochester for almost 3 years now, seems like it wasn't so long ago that we were there hanging out with our friends and talking about moving here for Lisa's school.  Hopefully the next 6 months go by even quicker because in spirit we have already left!  Lisa was checking out some of the yearly snowfall totals for ski areas a reasonable distance from Seattle the other night, some of them were in the range of 10-12 feet of snow in a single season!  This first week back has been pretty nuts at work and even at home too.  Isis somehow came into an eye infection of epic proportions on Wednesday.  In the morning she had a small amount of "morning" leaking out the corner of her eye, by the afternoon it was an inch long yellow snot that needed to be wiped off every few minutes.  She is a very tolerant dog but this was bothering her, she wasn't herself.  I took her to the clinic yesterday afternoon and they poked at it a bunch and gave me this ointment to squirt on it three times a day.  I'm ok with eyes, I poke myself in the eye all the time putting my contacts on but squirting this stuff in her eye freaks me out.  She doesn't seem to mind though, it must make it feel a lot better.  I have Lisa's parents computer at the house and have been working on rebuilding it, it's been lots of fun so far and I'm sure it will be lots more fun before I'm finished.  I also have an old laptop that I need to rebuild so we can use it for streaming Siruis and WBER to the stereo in the living room.  Those two projects along with the normal Saturday stuff should keep me busy all day tomorrow.  Lisa is working until around 6pm so I think we are just going to have a quiet New Year's Eve around the house, we'll drink some champagne and celebrate the beginning of our last year here.  Have a great holiday weekend and be safe. 

December 25, 2005:  Merry Christmas!!!  Hope everyone had a great holiday, we sure did.  Sorry we haven't done any updates, it's been a while since I've even been home long enough to even check my email.  The trip to Atlanta went well considering the first two days were a complete mess.  Delta Airlines has a rule that you need to check in at least 30 minutes before your flight takes off.  We got stuck on I-91 for an hour in traffic and arrived 28 minutes before my flight left.  That meant I officially missed it and got to pay a fee to take a different one 3 hours later.  When I arrived someone else was driving away in my rental car, the attendant stopped him and I got my car.  The hotel had overbooked for that night so I had to take a smoking room with a single bed.  On my way back from visiting Dave and Jeanie that night the check engine light came on in the car and it barely made it back to the hotel parking lot, it wouldn't even start the next morning.  The rental company took 3 hours to get there with a replacement car.  After that the week went very well, I got the correct hotel room the next night.  Class was cool, I learned some stuff, but had more fun hanging out with Dave and Jeanie and visiting my friend Shawn.  Friday afternoon we went to the new Georgia Aquarium, it was unbelieveable.  You can check out some pictures and a video under 'Adventures' to the left.  I got back Saturday night and we left for NH Sunday morning for our vacation.  Lisa had caught a horrible cold and seemed to be getting worse by the day.  We took Isis snowshoeing Monday morning and then drove to the hotel that afternoon.  Lisa was drugging up pretty hard but still hanging in there.  We finished up shopping for ski equipment that day and had a great dinner at Horsefeather's that night.  We hit Attitash Mountain on Tuesday, Lisa was very happy with her new skis and went through at least 5 packages of tissues and another handfull of cold medicine.  I realized that although ski boards are a lot of fun on mountains with below 1000' of vertical they were nothing but work on mountains taller than that.  We ended up spending the evening looking for skis for me.  We got lucky and found an incredible deal on a leftover pair of Salomon Screams with the Integrated Binding System and even got the them mounted that night.  Lisa was able to hold it together for another day and we hit Wildcat on Wednesday for 2 for 1 lift ticket day.  The skiing was amazing even though it was only 4 degrees when we got there, we mostly had the mountain to ourselves all day.  Lisa's cold was starting to get the best of her, after 3 trips to the drug store she was out of tissues and drugs again.  We had a great dinner and tried to get some Christmas shopping done.  Thursday we ended up driving back to my folks house to hang out with them and so Lisa could have a day to recover before the holiday.  Friday we took Isis and Maddie for a long walk with the snowshoes, wore them out real good.  We had dinner with my parents, uncle and grandfather that night and had a soak in the hot tub.  Saturday Lisa was feeling better so we went to Cannon Mountain for a few runs.  The weather was good but we were both pretty beat from the week, we stayed most of the day but weren't on top of our game at all.  We had dinner with my family again Christmas Eve and crashed pretty early.  Today we took off pretty early so we could spend some time together at home relaxing before everything goes back to normal again this week.  It was a great vacation and neither of us are looking forward to the week starting.  Anyway, have a great week back, we'll talk again soon! 

December 7, 2005:  Good afternoon, hope things are going well for y'all.  Things are good here, Lisa's schedule is starting to slow down, her current rotation ends the day after tomorrow so she hasn't had many assignments this week.  Work is crazy for me because I'm trying to finish up a few things before I disappear for the next 2 weeks.  I printed out my flight info yesterday and realized that they had scheduled my flight a day late, luckily I checked it before arriving at the airport, that would have sucked.  Sunday we did a little more shopping for our ski trip and were lucky enough to find a helmet that actually fit me, XXL.  Lisa found a set of poles that she liked too and one of those head sock things to wear under her helmet.  We still need to find goggles and a pair of gloves for her but other than that we are ready to go.  I won two sets of Stubai Aluminum Crampons on Ebay this weekend, they are actually rebranded with a different name but from the research I was able to do I found they were actually made by Stubai and much more expensive than they were listed for.  I guess it pays to do some investigation before bidding on something.  Well, I started this update about 5 hours ago and just got back to my desk to finish it.  This place gets crazy sometimes and even more crazy other times, the weeks before a holiday are usually pretty quiet, so much for that this year.  Now that quitting time is upon us I need to get out of here, have a great weekend, we'll talk next week sometime. 

December 1, 2005:  Hey everyone, sorry for the lapse in updates, it's been a crazy week for both of us around here.  Thanksgiving was great, we ate lots of turkey and stuffing and still have quite a bit in the fridge too, even after a week.  About 4 inches of snow fell during the night and all day Thursday, it made it feel more like winter.  We're hoping that another storm or two passes though before we leave so we can get some decent skiing in.  It all ended up melting this week but it was fun while it lasted.  We didn't really do anything other than hang out at the house and eat the whole weekend.  On Sunday after everyone left we checked out the big sale going on at EMS for the holiday.  We updated our skiing equipment this year, for Lisa that meant getting everything new because her old stuff was just too old to be using anymore.  I have a pair of skis that are only a couple years old so I just needed boots to replace my 15+ year old pair.  We are going to both get helmets too so we need those, goggles and she needs gloves.  After that we should be done for a few years.  She found a helmet that fit her perfectly and was really comfortable but I couldn't find anything that fit me all that well, go figure, my head is shaped like a bean, a huge bean, so nothing seems to fit all that well.  We should be able to get the last couple things just before we go skiing in NH next month for our annivarsary and the holidays.  The ski and boot bags we ordered from Ebags finally came in this week too.  It seems like we have a bunch of time before the trip but it will be here before we know it.  I will be going to training in Atlanta a week from this Monday and returning the same day we leave for our trip.  Work will be insane between now and then and Lisa has one last week left on her second rotation.  It seems that only a few weeks ago she was in classes and talking about rotations, now she's got two down and three to go.  I guess we should start looking into finding her a job out west!  I can't believe how fast time is flying, June will be here in like two weeks, or it will feel like two weeks anyway.  Other than that the week has been somewhat mellow, work has been keeping me busy and Lisa has had some homework to do but nothing too crazy.  The weekend should be cool, we're going out with some friends from work on Saturday for a few drinks and because things are starting to wind down for Lisa at this rotation she shouldn't have too much work to do.  I made an appointment to get my tattoo finished in January, that's the month that we have been told is the beginning of not being able to get any time off until we are finished moving into the new building in June.  If I waited until after that I might not get to finish it before we're out of this aweful place.  There is only a small amount left to do so I'm hoping that Jet will have enough time to go over a part of my sleeve that has faded out almost entirely.  They tell me that the brand of orange ink Evan used is notorious for doing that.  Other than going out Saturday night it should be a quiet weekend at the house, which I think we both really need, Lisa more than me though.  Oh, it seems that there really are people out there looking at this stuff, we broke our record again for requests, you can see here in the graph, thanks for your support!  Have fun and we'll talk again soon.