The Naughty Elf

Merry Christmas and here is my gift to you...Mike in an elf outfit.
Jodi and I went to Mike and Kari's last night for their Christmas celebration. What a great idea! They had all kinds of holiday drinks, hot buttered rum, apple pie, Irish coffee, and Coors light. Friends stopped by throughout the night and it was great to see everyone. We even got to see Dave and Hana which was great considering that we haven't seen them since the wedding. At one point Matt, Mike's brother in law came out in a full fledge Santa outfit. He had a bag of toys and was handing them out to all the kids stopping by. Kids were in shock. Not to be outdone by Santa Mike comes flying out in his elf costume, green tights and all. What are my thoughts at this point in time? "So wrong, but sooooooo right!" You see, if you hang out with Mike long enough you begin to realize that this is a regular occurrence. We were just glad to see that he decided to go with tights instead of green leg paint.

On a different note Jodi and I are hanging out today until we go up to VIc and Peggy's house for Christmas. It should be a mellow weekend.

Busy Weekend Ahead

The o'll social calendar has been pretty booked the past few weeks. Birthdays, holiday parties, catching up with friends has kept Jodi and I on the run. This weekend will be no exception. Tonight we have my companies holiday party at the San Francisco City Hall. It should be interesting.

Tomorrow night it's off to Marissa's parents house for their annual Christmas party. Net-Net: there will be a plenty of good food and holiday beverages.

Holy S@#% it's Cold Here!

8:30 EST - Touchdown Detroit airport. As I exit the plane there is a small gap between the plane and the terminal. In that 1" gap I take a breath and a huge white cloud forms right in my face. I just checked the temp and it's 8 degrees! Thank god I bought a wool coat last week.

I took about a 30 minute cab ride to Birmingham Michigan, a suburb of Detroit. It's really nice here, almost like a Normal Rockwell painting. Tree lined streets, brick buildings, Christmas lights, parks, etc. OH ya it's did I mention it's 8 degrees!. There are beautiful, huge mansions here. I asked the cabie how much one of them might cost and he said, "oh those are real expensive." I asked what is expensive, he says "150 -200K." The whole time I'm thinking to myself "I can't buy something falling down in the Bay Area for under 700K." Is it worth it? After 3 days of experiencing 8 degrees I'll let you know. I like what the girl at the coffee shop near my hotel said when she saw my California license, "what the hell are you doing here?"

Tomorrow it's off for a full day of site visits and then to our companies event. I fly out Friday morning and get in to SF around noon.

Time to Celebrate

I finally did it. I took the leaderboard this month for the fist time at work. Where I work it's not like one would expect to get any form of recognition for this. It's more of a personal goal. I also closed my 201 deal, which is also a personal milestone. Given that I turned 28 today and it's a new sales month I decided to exercise my floating holiday and took the day off.

It's not like I did anything all that exciting, but it was a nice reward. I feel like I am rarely one to reward myself or acknowledge that I did a good thing but yesterday I felt it was time to pat myself on the back.

Today I woke up to pooring rain. Jodi left the house and I decided to make a breakfast sandwich and organize 8.4 GB of music that I hijacked from my buddies Ipod at work. After that I emptied the packaging peanuts from this 3 Ft box in the office and cut a hole in the side to let the cats duke it out. They did exactly that. One cat would climb in the box and the other cat would stand in front of the hole. At one point I saw a whole cat arm, shoulder and all come out that small hole. That was good entertainment for 30 minutes...It's great when you find yourself laughing by yourself.

After that I decided to hop on bus 30 to go to Union Square to do some Christmas shopping. As always the bus (that goes through China town) smelt like moth balls and old polyester....SWEET! I killed some deals (oh my gosh I sound like a chick) and I was out. Oh ya, when I was being rung up in the home department the woman at the register asked how old I was. I said "well matter of fact I turned 28 today." I look behind me and there are 8 women in line and they all say, "you don't look a day over 27." Then they sing me happy Birthday. Turns out they were from Fresno....small world.

So here I am, waiting for Jodi to get into the city to meet her old roommate Jenny for a drink. I have a nice glass of Zin, and I am listening to St. Germain. If you don't have any of this guys music I highly recommend it. Jazzy, Blues, with a steady beat.

Back to Normal

Jodi and I survived thanksgiving unscathed. Our flights were on time and painless, Tucson had great weather, and we really enjoyed the time off. We got into Tucson Wednesday night about 10. We waited a short time for Kacie and Adam to arrive and then headed for the east side. For as many times as I have been to my parents house, it sure does feel like home. I love the high ceiling and the master room, the view is unbelievable.

Thanksgiving day itself was mellow. We went for a hike and had the first annual "Sombrero Cup." You might be asking yourself, what is the sombrero cup? It's quite simple, place a 12"X24" AstroTurf mat at one end of the pool. Count 16 golf wiffle balls (which happen to perfectly line the sombrero of a ceramic statue in the yard) and 1 sand wedge. The goal? Hit as many balls into the hot tub as possible - that's it. The players consisted of Dad, Adam, and myself. Adam took the cup after 3 rounds and won the grand prize of dry desert air. We bbq'd the turkey with hickory chips and I have to say it turned out well. The dinner as a whole was really good.
The next day was jammed packed. We started off horse back riding. I got the trouble maker of the horse, "Buck Shot." As Valerie our trail guide (who sounded like Indian Sue from the series Deadwood) said, "Your horse also responds to Bucket Head and Boot in the Ass." Buckshot had a nice flattop for a mane, when asked why Valerie said he looks stupid with a long one. Turns out Buckshot like to mess with the other horses and they tend to bite his mane off. Long story short, Buck Shot and I got along great. Every time we went down for a bite to eat, I gave him a kick and pull of the reins. Surprisingly he didn't rub me up against a cactus (which lined every square foot of the trail). Buck Shot failed in one department, he like to follow my dad's horse (Morgan) a little to closely. Morgan - you put my best friend Mike to shame. Mike used to wake me up sometimes with a fart that could last 20 seconds. Morgan had a Fart that lasted 50 ft, or about 30 seconds. The worst part is I was damn near point blank - tail up, big o'll butt, wind like a hurricane. I was embarrassed for the horse, I'd never heard a mammal fart like that. After 2 hours of dodging cactus's, Morgans wind, and kicking Buck Shot in the ribs the boys went off to golf. We all had our moments throughout the day but there were holes in which I wanted to break the club over my knee. Golf is just one of those sports, when you have a good day you love it, when you don't you hate it.

The last day we went to Chiricahua National Monument. It was a pretty long drive that put us pretty close to New Mexico. Turns out that this park is where Geronimo and Cochise used to hide when the US Army was on their heals. The elevation is about 9,000 feet and littered with these columns of rocks and caves. You would have to be an idiot to follow a bunch of pissed off Apache into this place. We took a 4 mile hike which wiped everyone out. the ride back was pretty silent. When we got home we cooked up some steaks and watched a dud of a Tom Cruise movie. Jodi and I were up at 5am the next morning to catch our 6:30 flight. We arrived in SF to 40 degree weather and were home by 8:45 am....you can't ask for better than that!

Junipers 0, Todd & Mike 14

I went down to Mike's house on Saturday to play supervisor with him. Turns out he had a friend of the family and 3 day laborers building a fence in his back yard. We felt kind of bad watching 4 guys sweat it out all day so we decided to start a project of our own. Mike's been sizing up these juniper bushes in his front yard from they day he bought the house. I wouldn't say these were pre-historic junipers, but the roots were about as think as my fist in some areas. Now just because we witnessed the hard manual labor in the back yard did not mean that we wanted to repeat that in the front yard.

We cruise on down to the hardware store and Safeway. The Shopping list looked like this:

• 6 ft. of 5/8 thick steel chain (1800 lb working load) + Industrial Hooks
  
• 8 hamburger patties + Buns
• Lettuce, Tomato, Onion, Mayo
• 2 bags of Lays BBQ chips
• 12 pack Corona w/ 2 limes

We get back to Mikes and I back the Tacoma close to the lawn. Mike wraps the chain around the first bush and throws the tow strap around my hitch....bu-ya, out pops the juniper like jello shot at a frat party. The truck only grunted once the whole time but the 4 wheel drive took care of that. I have to say, that was some of the easiest yard work I have ever done. Thanks Toyota.

After turning Mikes front yard into Alabama we cooked the fence builders burgers and drank beers. At least we didn't feel as guilty about watching them build the fence.

Dallas for a Day

My day yesterday started at 4:30 am, after getting home at midnight from the Rolling Stones concert. Off to SFO to fly to Dallas for work. I was at the Four Seasons all day in Irving Texas, a very nice hotel. On my way there my cabbie asked me a loaded question, "do people in California hate George Bush?" I started to explain how the state should be broken into 3 states and how every county is different. After that I said some comment about the war, basically we are there now and it makes no sense to bail until the job is done. This guy could not agree more. he turns around and continues to tell me how his uncle, his 2nd cousin, and brother are all high ranking officials in the new Iraqi government. "No lie I tell you," he says. He is Kurdish and tells me that he is so happy that is homeland is liberated. He says "the press is so negative, and not reflective of the truth." He told me that his relatives were at the whitehouse last week and that there is a big report due out on how most of Iraq and the Kurds feel about their freedom. We'll see if the press picks it up.

After a long day of talking to prospects and customers Brian (another SE that I work with) headed for the Dallas Airport. We took off at 10 pm CST, and landed at 11:45 PST. I slept for most of the flight. I got home about 1:30 and hit the pillow. Jodi woke up and told me how Tosca caught a mouse and brought it into the house all proud. Turns out house cat didn't want to kill the mouse, it just wanted to play with it in a more comfortable environment, otherwise know as our house. The mouse eventually hopped down all 20 stairs and climbed into a small hole in the wall by the front door..."SweeeeeeeeeeT!"
The cats slept off the catch over night and fished that sucker out of the wall first thing. 7 am, Jodi, "Todd, the cats have the mouse again and he's not dead yet." Todd, (head still in the pillow) "Baby, take care of it." Jodi without hesitation grabbed the mouse with a towel and released it. I have to say, I'm real impressed. Jodi = Plus 2 points.

Stones or Hackey Sacks?

Jodi rallied the Colli clan and myself to the Rolling Stones/Metallica concert at SBC Park on Tuesday night. Here is my take on the night:

• The Crowd: I think it was very hard for the individual to represent both Metallica and the RS. The Metallica fan is typically a dude in with long strait hair, shaved on the sides, wearing acid wash jeans and a black faded Metallica shirt from 1993. The typical Rolling Stones fan is a man or woman in their 40's/50's dressing like they are in their 20's. My point being, the Metallica fans looked so cool head banging in their uniform, but suddenly looked like a Nascar fan at the Kentucky Derby once the RS came on. On the other hand the RS fans looked like yuppies who walked into a biker bar during Metallica, but fit right in once Mick got on stage.
• The Stones: Mick Jagger is amazing. They played a video they made in the 80's while they were performing that song on stage. Mick moves and dances just as much as he did 25 years ago. This man is a living rock icon, and I feel blessed to have seen him. Keith Richards, Keith, Keith, Keith....how are you still with us? Keith is like the performing skeleton from that Grateful Dead video. As Jodi says, "He looks like a Hacky Sac." I have respect for the Stones in that way, they haven't gone the plastic surgery route. They are the opposite of what Smokey Robinson did to himself. There is no doubt Keith is one of the greatest guitar players of all time, he makes it look effortless. It was however very obvious why he never had a solo career. Keith sang two songs which where rough. He kept holding up his guitar with one hand while singing almost as to say "give me a break, this is my real talent." He also had this sinister grin on his face the whole time which i interpreted as "look people, drop as much acid as I did and see if your lips still function." In summary it's amazing these guys still rock like they do.

My first blog entry

So this is a little weird because I feel like a total rookie, all this blog lingo is throwing me for a loop but I'm sure I'll pick it up. I guess the main reason I started this is because I just don't have time for 10 personal calls a day yet I want to stay in touch. My friends Raven and Mona (his wife) are all hip to this blog stuff and I find myself reading their blogs to get updated on whats going on in their lives. Take this weekend for example, we went out to dinner and I had insight as to what they were up to. We didn't waste time talking about the typical filler stuff, ex: "what have you been up to", "what's new", "how are you", etc.

So given this is my first entry maybe I'll talk about my weekend a little. I totally realized this weekend how stressed I've been. I think I've been in denial lately, but this weekend I was able to truly relax and enjoy it. I guess the turning point came on the boat Saturday morning. I was hung over as heck but I told my neighbor I would go out fishing with him. About noon we started nailing snook and striped bass off the back side of Tiburon. We were having a total "fish off", Bass masters style. We must have landed 15-20 fish. The sun was out, we were listening to the Cal vs. USC football game with music in replacement of commercials. This was the moment I slipped into relax mode. I had a blast.

Later I took a little nap and my Grey cat, the elusive Tosca (or Bosc as we call her) found a place to sleep on my chest as I took a nap.

Later Raven gave me a call about diner. Jodi and I were both pretty wrecked from the night before but we hadn't see Raven and Mona in a while so we rallied. Raven found this awesome place called Cafe Andree in the theatre district. The food and wine was great but the setting made the meal. For two hours I felt lie I was in the study or library of some mansion in the UK. I did some thinking about this experience and felt that this is the new standard for dining.

Sunday we went to church for the first time in the city with my friend Brian from work. He has a 3 month old with his wife so she stayed home with Jack (the baby). The church was awesome, good band, good pastor, good message. It's a non-denomination church and I know we will go back for sure. Afterwards we took a tour of Brains pad, met Jack and Janet, and Jodi got to hold the baby. It was scary and exciting to see Jodi with a baby in hand. She looked like a natural. Later on I went over to see Fernando and his new pad. Jodi and I finished up the night with burritos and 60 Minutes. Are we married or what.