Salesforce.com knows how to party

Jodi and I attended our 4th salesforce.com holiday part last night at the newly opened Academy of Science in Golden Gate park. I didn't take to many good pictures but we had a blast. They spared no expense from the 5+ music groups scattered throughout the venue, to the food, the bars, DJ A.M., decorations, and the crazy cirque de soleil characters. Check out the video at the bottom.

Fall in Full Effect

I know it's fall when my yard is covered in leaves.  This suburbanite is going to take a modified approach to yard clean up this year.  The nation seems to be into X point plans right now so here is my 4 point plan to yard clean up this fall.

1. I'm only cleaning up leaves 2X this year.  I'm waiting till the pile is big, and half the tree is empty.
2. Mulch, Compost and avoid the recycle bin.  Leaves that fall on the lawn are getting mulched by the lawn mover to improve the soil.  All other leaves are being placed in the flower beds and dry soil areas.  This will improve soil quality all around.
3. It's all about the blower.  I like to blast the trees with the blower before starting clean up.  This does very little for clean up but does wonders for the psyche.  You know when you finish raking that last leaf and then the wind pics up to drop another 100 leaves.....ya this helps reduce that.
4. Be a good Neighbor.  You will not want to stop clean up right on your property line.  What you don't clean up on your neighbors side, you should put in a pile so they have an easy clean up.

A result of my 4 point plan will be less frustration and overall leaf cleaning, improved soil conditions and earth worm satisfaction, and  improved neighbor relations (they are already good so I'm not sure this does anything).

Busy Bee

It's been a busy past week with our yearly user conference. We had
about 10k customers show up and we got some good press. It looks like
Microsoft is attempting to get into cloud computing, something we have
done for the past 9 years. One highlight of our conference was seeing
the Foo Fighters. They rocked hard!

Mop Chop

Ya it was time to get the mop chopped. Funny thing is when I was buying wine at the grocery store tonight, I got carded for the first time in months.

View from one of our new offices

I took this yesterday from the 29th floor of the 1 California building
in SF. I don't know how people get any work done.

What happens when you leave 8 employees...

Alone for 3 days, with not enough work. My team threw me a surprise baby shower at my desk, fake sonogram, and card signed by the whole team. Best quote from the card "if you have a girl can you give her my # in 18 years?"

FYI, Jodi and I are not pregnant, there has been no mention of this, this was completely random.

Catching up from the Summer

I'm finally sitting down on a Saturday morning with a cup of coffee and taking the chance to catch up.  I feel like summer is here and gone, and although we were extremely busy I not sure where the time went.  The good news is that Fall is always late here in the bay area.

I just wrapped up a week at Carnegie Melon in Pittsburgh where I was recruiting my 2009 team.  It seems ridiculous that I had 6 new employees start 2 months ago and I'm already out looking for next years team.  

That school is a trip. 

We were across from Google this year and between the two companies I would say we probably spoke to a couple

 thousand students.   The students at this school are really intense.  

  

I finally got around to posting some pictures from the summer. 

Summer Garden Pillage at the Colli's

Rachael's Wedding in Shell Beach

Mexico Cruise with the Colli's

FJ40 Love

The FJ got some paint and shackles this weekend.

A Long Weekend up at Lake Tulloch

Here are some pictures and video from our long weekend at Lake Tulloch with Mike, Kari, Warren, and Christina. We had a kick @ss house on the lake with a dock, and the weather was perfect. I want to go back.....now!

Off to Lake Tulloch for the weekend

Jodi and I are off to Lake Tulloch for an extended weekend with Mike and Kari. There are a few other couples going including Mike's Brother Nick and his new girlfriend. It should be packed full of sun, boats, bbq, and Coors Light.

Kacie and Adam in Europe for a Month

My sister Kacie and her husband Adam are in Europe for a full month. Their trip started last week and they are currently in Amsterdam. I have started a map to track their adventures. You can click on the icons in the map to see their latest email.


View Larger Map

Escape to Arnold

Jodi and I decided to shoot up to Arnold at the last minute on Friday morning. We packed 2 small duffel bags, the Ipod, a small ice chest and hit the road. I have to say this is going to be my new method of travel. I'm tired of spending hours packing, unpacking, putting things away, and making 10 trips back and forth to the car.

We took our time driving up and stopped in Murphys to get some fresh bread and wine. The two wineries we like are Newsom Harlow, and Hatcher. We got up to Arnold around 1:30 and picked up some food and ribs at the market. I slow baked the ribs while Jodi and I went down to Meadowmont to play some golf. Jodi played cart driver and caddy while I hacked up the place. I started off rough but hit a few pars after the first 3 holes and a few Coors Lights. It was a nice way to spend the evening, cruising through the trees and ponds.

Saturday we headed towards the south grove of the Big Trees, past the Stanislas river. The south grove is more remote and a better hike than the north grove. We had lunch at Beaver Creek and headed back to Arnold. Later that night we drove to IronStone Winery in Murphys to listen to music and watch a fireworks show. Their wine really sucks so we brought our own. Still, I was amazed at how many people were buying carafe after carafe...or nail after nail in the forehead. The music, food, people watching, and the fireworks show were very impressive.

The trip was too short, the cabin looked great, and Monday was real rough today.

Christmas Comes to Chilli's

 

Thanks Grandpa Harley and Helen for the Chilli's gift cards this Christmas. It gave Jodi and I a chance to meet up with my cousin Kristi who live in SF. Fajitas, Baby Back Ribs, and margaritas.....yummy.

A Warm Summer Night in SF

 

Thanks Kacie and Adam for sending this. This was taken at the Giants Game last weekend not long after the sun went down. Ahhhhh, those warm city nights!

Dividend

Today was a good day. 2 of my employees for the past year interviewed for the next position up and did a fantastic job in front of our World Wide Director. I don't want to get into specifics, but when you have the president of North America Sales giving you the nod on one of your employees it feels damn good, especially being out of the spot light for the past year. Management is a whole different ball game. Day after day, week after week, you put in the hours. Months go by without any recognition, and if your lucky enough to work for my company, you get confirmation of your investment at the 9 month mark. At this point I can say I really enjoy building technical talent for a world leading sales organization.

What would be on Bob's Ipod?

Monday marked the 1 year anniversary of Bob's passing. Personally it feels like it has been a lot longer than 1 year. I asked myself what would be on Bob's Ipod today if he was still with us (he would have an Ipod by now). I don't have a huge list but I know for fact, the artist below, and these songs would be on it. Put some headphones on and enjoy.

Simply Red - Sunrise


Steve Winwood - Dirty City


John Mayer - Vultures

Pictures from last weekend

Here are some pictures from the weekend. We were up at Jodi's parents house for a wedding.

Man Day and Mikes House

Jodi was down in Orange County this week visiting a friend. She was due back late Saturday so I had some spare time. Friday night i headed over to Mike's house to help him and his dad do some wiring. Mike is remodeling his house and has all of 2 rooms that were untouched by his plan. After a a few hours of pig-tailing sockets, Coors Light, and some pizza I called it a Friday.

Saturday my buddy Raven and I had ourselves a lovely little metro-man day in Marin. We started at something called the Bay Model. Back in the 50's the Army constructed a working model of the San Francisco and adjoining bays. Here they could study the effects of diverting water ways in the delta and the impact it would have on the bay. They simulate a full 24 hour day in tides every 14 minutes. The result is a big @ss pool that shows how crazy and dangerous the currents in the bay can be, especially around the golden gate bridge. Today the Bay Model is retired, and they use much more accurate computer simulation to achieve the same effect.

After the Bay model we headed over to Tiburon to check out a winery. The weather was crappy so the town was pretty dead. After some heavy pours at the tasting room we headed over to San Rafael to eat some Puerto Rican food at a place called Sol Food. Raven had been there before and recommended it. I got a shrimp dish over rice with garlic fried plantains that was unreal. We capped off our day at Marin coffee roasters in Fairfax, hippie town USA. There seems to be an economy of selling hippie crap up there. There were about 10 shops that basically had the same theme, some looked like a glorified yard sale behind glass. It kind of reminded me of the Pacific Garden mall in Santa Cruz 25 years ago.

Say Hello to Lola

No we did not get a dog. Ha ha! Now that that's out of the way back to Lola. Lola is a 10 week Boxer puppy that belongs to Jodi's mom and dad. Since their previous Rottweiler decided to help itself to 2 horse steaks.... off the hind quarters of a living horse(no joke), it became a liability to have Duke on the property. One of Jodi's brothers friends was happy to adopt Duke and boy is he living the good life up in Northern California. So with Duke out of the house it was starting to get lonely on the property.

Enter Lola. Lola showed up with Peggy one afternoon to Vics classroom. It took Vic all of 2 seconds to fall in love. Saturday we met Lola at the picnic grounds at the Gundlach & Bundschu winery in Sonoma. Lola has a sweet temperament and loves to play. She's already starting to fetch and Vic says she likes crawl up on his chest then flop on her back to sleep. He also says she snores like a race car.

We had some good wine and a fantastic picnic courtesy of Jodi and her picnic making/packing skills. All and all it was a good mothers day.

Jarrod is the Man!

I'll Post some better pictures later but Jarrod installed 12 canned lights for us this weekend and they changed the whole feel of our dinning room and kitchen. Jarrod is the man.

Hobbies and Construction

This weekend my buddy Jarrod is coming up to install 12 canned lights in out kitchen and dinning room. I'm praying for smooth installation with our plaster ceilings. Jarrod says he has a special tool for cutting holes into plaster.

Today Jodi has a hair appointment in SF. I'm taking Cal Train up right now (while writing this on my BlackBerry) so i don't have a car at Bart. We're going to meet up later for Peruvian food in the Filmore at one of my favorite places.

On the Hobby front i finally picked up a set of golf clubs and have been going to the range. Yesterday i hit 200 range balls and was actually tired when i was done. Who knew?

As for new cool things i found there is a web site called Mint. Mint is for the generation that does not balance a checkbook. In about 2 minutes i hooked mint up to my bank account (it's very secure, and banks have verified it) and mint sucked in every transaction over the past 90 days. Then it categorizes everything into categories like "Groceries," "Gas," "mortgage" etc. It plots everything into slick pie charts so you know what % of your money goes to what. You can then drill into a category and get a further breakdown. Take Food as any example, you can see what is groceries vs. fast food vs. restaurants. Long story short this can help you know what you need to cut back on, and set budgets, another part of the tool. That Hobby category is about to go up a % or two with golf in the picture.

A Productive Weekend

Every once and a while you need one of those weekends where you feel like you got a lot done.  I definitely had one of those weekends.  Not that any of this stuff is all that interesting:

• Mowed and Edged the lawns
• Stripped and pained Parts on the Land Cruiser
  
• Vacuumed Half the house
• Mopped the Floors
• Bought a pair of golf Clubs
• Measured, marked, and crawled into the attic to prepare for the recessed lighting we are installing next weekend
• Hit 110 range balls with new clubs
• Went out to dinner
• Watched Juno and 2 episodes of Lost
• Rode 20 Miles in Santa Cruz with Jodi
• Grocery shopping

Family in the News

I was googling (the act of typing someone's name into Google) my cousin, Dayton Buller, who's playing for the San Francisco Giants Double A baseball team in Connecticut. I found a fans blog who is a huge fan of Dayton. It looks like he is off to a great start this year:

"After a Omar Rosario stikeout Buller, in his first game of the season, drove the ball high over the left field wall to make it 4-0. It was the third homer for the catcher's position in as many games with Adam Witter hitting homers in the first two games."

"Happy to see Dayton do well; talked to him yesterday about a bunch of stuff. He's a fine young man. It was a very cold afternoon."In a random coincidence Kenny, Dayton's father, my uncle wrote the family last night to tell everyone that Dayton got the call to move up to the AAA Grizleys in Fresno. This is huge! Not only can he live at home in Fresno, he's never been closer to the big leagues. Cross your fingers everone.

The Fillmore, a rock and roll time Machine

We got to the Fillmore early last night and went upstairs to have a drink. What is amazing about the Fillmore is all the concert posters on the walls. I was looking at many of the posters from the late 60's and it is unreal the bands that have been through that small venue. Many of the concerts they had there would be over the course of several days. At the bottom of every poster it would note where you could buy tickets. Of course City Lights Bookstore in SF, but there were other locations you could buy from in San Mateo, Redwood City, Berkley, Oakland, etc.

I'm going on memory here but some of the bands on the wall were as follows:

Big Brother and the holding company
Quicksilver Messenger service
Blue Cheer
The Who
The Doors
Jefferson Airplane
Steve Miller
Cream....these poster were some of the coolest
CCR

There are hundreds of these posters that date all the way to the present. I'm willing to bet there is a big chunk of history there that you won't see at the rock and roll hall of fame.

Off to the Fillmore Tonight

Tonight Jodi and I are off to see John Butler at the Filmore in San Francisco.  There should be plenty of dread locks and patchouli oil.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yI0_w9aV8G0&eurl=http://www.johnbutlertrio.com/

Life as a Trucker

Starting Thursday morning I am headed down to Cal Poly to present to one of the clubs and hopefully build the pipeline for new employees in the fall.  The bad news is I'll be driving there and back in the same day, and then heading up to Arnold that night to see my parents.

Mr. Moms Vs. 3 kids for an afternoon

Yesterday Mike and I had babysitting detail for a few hours. The goal was really simple, feed them, wear them down, put em to sleep...and have a few Coors lights in the process. The pictures and videos below tell the story best.

I met Juan Tonight

So it's late Thursday night and I'm taking out the recycling. A guy darts behind me on the sidewalk. I can hear his cans clanking in a potato sack as he rushes by. I tell him to wait up as I know I have a few cans. It turns out he's taking wine bottle, cans everything.... no biggie:-)

He's so thankful, so apologetic, so humble. He helps me take out my paper recycling. I tell him to hold up again. I just remembered, Jodi just placed a few pairs of old khakis on the goodwill box. I ask, "Tiene usted una familia.? He lights up and says YES, a wife and daughters. He was probably in his late 30's, had athletic clothes, shoes, and seemed well groomed. His English was not bad and he looked fit.

I run to get the khakis and give them to him. Again, he is so thankful, so apologetic, so humble. After I return he tells me he's having a hard time finding work because he's injured. He points to his knee, and shows trouble lifting it. I tell him my name is Todd, he says his name is Juan.

Juan tries to help me with my paper recycling and feels awkward for leaving without helping me more. I go to shake his hand and he scrambles to take his gloves off. At this point he's just grateful.

I'm not sure why this inspired me to write about it. I don't even have a point to my story, other than maybe hoping the khakis work out for his wife. Maybe in the spirit of tax season I'll say I hope part of what I put into the system goes to Juan, I really do.

What a cool way to end the week. Becca and Chris are coming over tomorrow and I'm really excited. I picked up some Prather Ranch dry aged fillets today from the ferry building and some shrimp. Tomorrow is surf and turf day, I said so.

Back from Hawaii Part II

2 Weeks ago Jodi and I were back in Hawaii for my Peak Performers trip for work (sales incentive trip). This time the 3 night tab was on the company...all expenses paid. They put us up in the Grand Wailea Resort in Maui, which was awesome. What's better than 400 young sales people from around the world, pool bars, and adult water slides? Lot's of things but go with me on this one. Anyway, before we got to experience this awesomeness we had to fly into Kona and then take a 737 over to Maui. We landed in Kona no problem, but our flight to Maui was a disaster. After two failed landing attempts and instability at low speeds our pilot came on the loud speaker. She said, "well folks, as you can tell we have the plane very stable right now, and we are very much in control. We are having a problem with one of our flaps and as a result the plane is unstable at low speeds. We'll let you know what our options are as soon as we know."

Now I'll be the first to admit, I was having some anxiety after hearing this, and I'll tell you why. I noticed the the wing would dip to one side when we slowed to land. I also know that you need to slow down when you land. So by that logic, I was pretty sure we would dip a wing into the ground when we went to eventually land. The pilots attempt to convince us that the plane was stable at speed was not doing much for me. Jodi was solid as a rock but as I looked around the plane people were not looking so good. First I look at some of the locals and they are looking concerned. Then I look over at my buddies 5 mo. pregnant wife and she is visibly praying. By this time I'm having some pretty bad thoughts. Let I remind you I fly a lot, and 3 weeks prior had no problem landing in Chicago with 1 ft of snow on the ground and heavy cross winds. That was another day at the office.

No, no, no, this was different. 15 minutes pass with high speed, low altitude (3-5K ft.) island fly overs. I'm thinking "Todd calm the F#$% down....read a magazine or something." But then the other voice in my head barked right back "You idiot, do you really want to be reading Sky Mall in your final minutes." Finally the pilot comes on, "I have decided to head back to Kona to take advantage of the LONG runway. We will attempt a high speed landing. Just so you know we will be greeted by firetrucks but this is standard procedure." Somehow I liked being greeted by snowplows in the Midwest a lot more. Long story short the pilot nailed the landing, fire trucks and all, and yes we were hauling @ss, and yes we used the whole runway. After a flight to Honolulu, and then eventually to Maui (yes 4 flights in total) I was ready for 10 Mai-Tais. That was until Aloha air lost our luggage. It took another hour to basically tell Aloha to send the bags to our hotel when they showed up.

Jodi and I finally checked in to the hotel and headed strait to the dinner event. 13 hours later we had arrived and the Mai-Tais could not come fast enough. The rest of the trip was awesome and we partied like rock stars.

All I have to say is church was awesome this weekend :-)

Oliver Martin and the Volvo 240DL Wagon

I'll write about our second trip to Hawaii this weekend, but until then here is a great story written by my childhood buddy Ollie and the Family car that just retired. Enjoy

It’s been a long road for the yellow Volvo 240DL Wagon – 338,457 (original engine) miles and 25 years to be exact. She safely transported us through oppressive desert heat in the Utah salt flats and frigid snow and sleet in the Idaho Rocky Mountains. From the Santa Cruz beaches to the Albuquerque war zone; she covered every state west of the Rockies as well as Canada and Mexico. Not to mention teaching my sister, myself, and countless others how to drive. And all without any complaints! If anything was wrong, give it a week to let her figure herself out. If the engine was smoking, reattach the aluminum exhaust vent. If the engine wouldn’t start, re-plug the wire to the distributor cap. And if you wanted to get to “5th gear”, short the SOB over-drive wires together.Here is a quick snapshot of days in the life of the Volvo Ultimo: Andre and myself with Joe Mei lost deep in Mexico. You might wonder why the right fog light is torn off or the license plate is bent back. Simple explanation: we were climbing some mountains behind Borland and there wasn’t enough clearance between the front bumper and the ground. Buried in Tahoe at Schmidty’s Aunt’s place near Homewood. Victors, Schmidty, and I managed to snap the chains but we ended up doing better without them anyway. The road to Punta San Jose in baja mex with NATE, ROB, granny, and sean. This is the intersection that Andre and I wish we would have found instead of taking some locals’ advice and driving the Volvo down a canyon, forging through a creek, driving straight through a crop field, and finding the “main” road after breaking down a fence. Checking the surf at 4mile with Eli (also the sight of cannon launcher testing – we hit that barn in the top left). Annual physical challenge: hike from the north rim of the Grand Canyon down to the river and back (30miles) in 24hrs. The results weren’t pretty. This was the day after hitting 300,000 miles and doing a couple victory donuts near the Four Corners. AMDAL upside down and chopped off after the D thanks to Eli and the De Laveaga crew.
And a couple Action Shots:








You may be asking yourself: ¿What was the fate of the Volvo Ultimo? Was it when the oil filter tore open after 2 engine mounts broke – possibly related to jumping her off the rail road tracks? Was it after nearly rolling her when sliding sideways at 40mph and hitting some concealed potholes? Was it after getting her stuck teetering in an 8’ ditched and having to pull her out with the Truck above Vine Hill elementary school? Was it from under-steer and crashing her into a fence on the way to Physics class? Or was it from filming Super Brodie or Abductions? No. No, No, No, and NO. The death of the Volvo due to god damn government regulations. The MAN killed the Volvo!!

R. I. P.

Dave's 30th Birthday Party

My Buddy Dave had his 30th birthday party this past weekend. All I have to say is that these pictures could have been taken 12 years ago for all you know. You might want to look at the group shots up close. I just about woke up the neighbors laughing.

Back from Maui, Back to Reality & Rain

Jodi and I got back Friday night ahead of this lovely rain storm we are having. I've posted more pictures in the slide show from my previous post.

More pictures from Maui

We drove out to Hana 2 days ago and saw most of the Island of Maui. It took us about 10 hours round trip but it was worth it.

A few pictures, notice Jodi's new hair style?

On Vacation

It's been quite a few weeks. Jodi and I have racked up some serious air miles in the last 21 days. Jodi has been to Serbia, and orange county, ca, and I have been to Pittsburgh, Las Vegas, and now we are both in Hawaii to enjoy a nice week vacation on Maui.

My travels to Pittsburgh were for college recruiting a Carnegie Mellon. For those new to that name, think of it at one of the top 10 computer science schools in the world. I was there to recruit and compete against Microsoft, Yahoo, and Oracle for the right mix of student. In my case, both social and technical, a 1 in 100 skill set from what I can tell. One thing. I cannot get over is the cost of living in Pitt. 99 cent pints and lunch for under $4. Pitt reminds me of a model
train town with rolling hills, American suburbs, and rivers. Somehow I made all my flight with white out conditions throughout the Midwest.

I got back late Friday night, and missed Jodi leaving to the OC by a few hours. Jodi got back Sunday night but then I was off to Vegas first thing Tuesday Morning. The Vegas trip was for our 2008 sales kickoff. We flew over 700 people there to get on track for the new year. It was a work hard/plat hard time with meetings from 8am to 7pm, and late nights/early mornings of partying. Between 4 hours of sleep a night and casino smoke I flew out Thursday night in poor
shape. We were flying out Friday morning at 9 and by Friday morning a cold had set in.

Long story short our cab didn't show up Friday morning and we left in a car for SFO at 8:15. We hit traffic and finally left long term parking by 8:30. We hit the airport and the FOB (look it up if you don't know what this is) told us that we can't check our bags. Jodi puts it into plan B and gets us through the premier status line of unites (because of her status). We throw a couple of large liquids away like our sun screen and her hair gel and we sprint for the gate. We make it by 5 minutes and check our bags at the door.

I'd say we both were on edge the rest of the day but we enjoyed our drive out to our resort. I finally enjoyed about 12 hours of sleep (with the time change) and felt like I was on the road to make this cold an 48 hour deal.

Our New Ride

2006 Acura TL with more horse power than a BMW 328i or Audi A4

Holiday Recap

Jodi and I had a great winter break. The time off we took almost reminds me when I was in school where you get 2 weeks off every winter. The time off consisted of 5 Christmas', chopping down trees, skiing, wine tasting, extreme snowman making, and Drinking a $130 bottle of Champagne.

Tour de Christmas started at Jodi's cousins house in Navato on Saturday. The Next day we packed up the family truckster and headed to the Central Valley. Christmas number 2 was at my Grandpa Harleys house. It was similar to last year, great home made tamallies, salsa, and other tidbits. As expected we sang Christmas carols, which was actually pretty painless this year. Later that day started Christmas 3 at Star and Hanks. Football came on, beer and wine was cracked and everyone settled into the holiday spirit. All the grandparent really spoiled the cousins this year with their gifts. One of the highlights of the night for me was seeing my cousins Dayton and Danny. They are working on becoming professional baseball players and I love hearing about what they do. They are built like Roman gladiators and make me wish I had more time to hit the weights. All I can say is these guys are studs. Danny brought his long time girlfriend for the first time, who was gorgeous and really personable. I wish those guys the best this year, it's a long narrow road to the big leagues.

The next day Dad and I got up early to go up to Bobs house in Squaw Valley. We stopped and got some coffee at the local store, which I agree they should have paid us to drink. I had not been up there since we moved Bob out, which was the last time I saw him. The place looked great and it was a crystal clear morning. The meadow below his property was sparkling with the morning dew, and the sierras with their snow caped peaks were visible just over the oak trees. Dad tidied up inside and built a fire in the wood stove. It turns out 2 buyers were on their way up to see it. I got busy on the side of the house cutting down two dead trees.

• Good News: Dale's chain saw had just been rebuilt and ran like a cougar
• Bad news: The blade was equivalent to a butter knife

I got the trees down and ran out if gas just in time. We met the buyers and took off. We got back to Hank and Stars and then headed over to Dale and Louise's house for Christmas 4. The food was unreal. Dale puts a turkey and a pig in a deep pit BBQ at his friends house every year. The results are a real treat. We went on our annual walk around the neighborhood and threw the Frisbee around a bit. We scored all kinds of gifts and Dale spoiled us with home made jams and salsas which I cherish like a fine wine.

The Next day (Christmas) we packed up the truckster again and caravaned up to Arnold for Christmas #5.

The Next day we sent skiing at Bear Valley. There was a little fresh snow and overall it was a good day. After lunch Adam and I set off on our own to get some runs in. As we pulled off the mountain and headed home it started to snow, and with the snow came inexperienced mini van drivers minus snow chains. The result? Lots of pile ups and a 3 hour ride home.

The rest of the week we went wine tasting in Murphys, building a mega snowman, and watching great football games.

Kacie, Adam, Mom, and Dad headed home on Friday and Jodi and I stayed to enjoy New years. On Saturday our friends Chris and Becca came up. New years was nice and mellow and we enjoyed a nice bottle of Dom Perignon 1998. I think there is plenty of good champaign out there for $40-50, but the Dom P was a nice treat.

Christmas and New Years

Here are some pictures + a video from Christmas and New years with the family. I'll write more about this later.