Carli and I bought a house this past summer - yeah, yeah, I’ve not written much about it yet, but I will, promise! Anyhow, seeing as this is our first Christmas in the new house we thought it would be nice to have a real live tree too.

Our tree

So with some help from friend, Timmy & Julie, we went out and chopped down our own tree at a real Christmas Tree Farm. Yes, we actually cut the tree down with our own hands... well, our hands and a saw.

Anyhow, that big green bush-looking-thing to the left is our tree. Well, technically that’s an ornament with a picture or our tree, on our tree. :) Nice, right?

Lighting the tree

Carli had planned to decorate the tree with some really nice LED lights we bough, and some garland and classy looking ornaments. But much to her surprise my buddies, Bryan and Timmy, and I took it upon ourselves to decorate it while she was out with her girlfriends.

As you might imagine, my buddies and I have a different sense of style than Carli. I think PBR, Budweiser, and Old Milwaukee cans are perfectly fine decorations, aren’t they?

Don’t worry, the next morning I realized we weren’t in college anymore so I took the beer cans off the tree.

Now we just need some gifts to fill the void under the tree and we’ll be all set.

Today was the 28th Annual Columbus Marathon and 1/2 Marathon, and it was a packed house course with a full 10,000 runners participating in the race. Despite living in Columbus for the past eight years, this year was the first time I’ve ever watched the event.

Watched a marathon?

This year’s race course brought the runners right to our doorstep, quite literally. Even though the race didn’t actually start until 7:00am, the pre-race activities started early with the race volunteers setting up a water station in our front yard around 6:00.

I was on the porch, relaxing with some coffee, in time to see the race leaders cruise by our place, which sits right around the 11.5 mile mark. Amidst the nine thousand plus runners that followed I also caught a glimpse of a few friends during their trek.

It was cool to see the runners swerve over and grab a quick drink of water and/or Gatorade. I also heard more than a few runners ask for a Budweiser. Perhaps next year Carli and I will set up a beer stand! :)

More pics

During the three-plus hours that runners were shuffling past our house I was able to snap a bunch of pictures and uploaded them to Flickr. Go check 'em and out and see if you recognize any of the runners.

This is not a fake. I actually saw this very sign on an ATM here in town... and naturally had snap a picture for my own enjoyment. Oh, and this is no small mom and pop regional bank. We’re talking one of the largest banks in the world (in terms of sheer assets)... and a former employer of mine.

I need to visit a few other locations to determine if this is an isolated case of overzealous design, or if it is standard practice. My gut feeling is the latter - most likely as required by some regulation.

So, as soon as the blind guy (or gal) reads the sign they’ll be all set because they know there is audio assistance available.

Note: this is a cross-post from my geek blog.

Are you a student at a US college? How about the parent of a college student? If you answered yes to either of those questions then you have got to check out this deal.

The deal

For a limited time Microsoft is offering college students a copy of Office 2007 Ultimate edition for the bargain bottom price of just $60. To make it clear just how good a deal this is - the same version of Office will cost you a cool $680 at your local BestBuy. According to my calculations that is a savings of over 90%!

Check out TheUltimateSteal for full details.

Oh, and for the record... I’m definitely going to make sure Carli picks one of these up. She is in Grad school after all!

So it's been a bad day, week, month... whatever - You're just looking for a way to escape for a few hours. To unwind as my mom likes to say.

Happy Hour to the rescue!

I've always loved the idea of happy hour. It's a time for co-workers, friends, and complete strangers to collectively relax and let off some steam. After all, nothing soothes the pains of the daily grind like a few tasty pints... or ice-cold cocktails if that's more your style.

I've never had a problem making it to the pub and enjoying myself. Rather, I seem to have trouble finding an affordable happy hour in an agreeable location. But no longer!

Urban Drinks [dot] com

UrbanDrinks.com makes finding the next great happy hour super simple. You can get a list of happy hours in your area - broken down by city and then neighborhood. Then drill further for a list of all happy hour destinations in a given neighborhood.

The neighborhood list comes complete with times, specials, directions, map, and more!

The site has some community driven content features built in. You can tag any of the destinations just like you would a photo on Flickr. Tagging gives real power to the community as they, err... we, get to determine what makes a particular happy hour destination important. Also, you can search by tags to find similar locations.

Another nice feature is reviews. If you find a great happy hour and want to share it with the world, write a review. Found a total rip complete with overpriced drinks and crappy service? Write a review!

Map your next pub crawl

I think my favorite feature might be the Pub Craw section.

You can see a list, with accompanying map, of crawls that other users have done. I added a crawl that my friends and I used to do back in college - the Pre-Fall Crawl. Of course, back when I was at OSU there were about 10 other bars between stops number 1 and 4 on the current list... but those bars are all now gone. :(

I can already see all kinds of possibilities for this feature - perhaps mapping out next St. Patty's day!

Note: At the time of this writing Urban Drink only had three cities included in their listings - Columbus, OH; Portland, OR; and Seattle, WA. But fear not as they promise to be adding more soon, and often.

Team Lightning is finally back in action for the summer sessions. Actually we never stopped playing, I was just too lazy to post updates. At any rate, I'm going to try to post more often to keep you all abreast of our success, or lack thereof.

The Schedule

The Summer Session will be played out at the Westerville Sports Complex and all games are on Friday nights.

• June 22nd @ 7:30pm, vs. Kickstand Pub [field #5]
• June 29th @ 7:30pm, vs. Reccos [field #6]
• July 6th @ 7:30pm, vs. RBFC [field #5]
• July 13th @ 7:00pm, vs. Black Watch [field #1]
• July 20th @ 7:30pm, vs. mmm... Beer [field #4]
• July 27th @ 7:00pm, vs. B2 [field #1]
• Aug 3rd @ 7:30pm, vs. BWFC [field #6]
• Aug 10th - Rain make-up games
• Aug 17th - Championship & Consolidation games

You can also see the schedule here.

Game 1 - Lightning vs. Kickstand Pub

We started off a bit slow with a 0-0 score at the half. And the second half didn't start off much better with Kickstand Pub striking first.

Lucky for us Trisha came right back with a goal for the good guys. Go, go bionic leg!

About 10 minutes later we were able to put together a run down the right side line. I picked up the ball behind midfield and passed up to Greg Carlo who took it down the line and right into the 18yd box. He then chipped a pass over to me around the penalty kick mark. I managed to string together some kind of acrobatic dive and flicked the ball into the goal. And now my hip hurts. :)

The final score was 2-1 in favor of Team Lightning. Great start to the session now lets keep it up!

You have got to be kidding me... Meatless Meatballs... WTF?

It's bad enough that they are trying to pass this stuff off as a meat-like product, but this is just ridiculous! There is nothing meaty about these balls, so stop pretending.

The word meatball means it is a ball of meat... not a ball of some ground-up-veggie-paste with a dollop of BBQ sauce on top. I don't get it, where's the meat?

At least call them Veggie Balls, or Garden Globbs, or how about Plant Pellets!

This actually reminds me of a T-shirt I saw not too long ago:

Indeed, Meat is Tasty!

I'm sure many of you wonder how the hell a geek like me (just check out my other blog for a taste) ended up with girl like her... I know I do!

I think I may have stumbled upon an answer. Apparently we (geeks) make better boyfriends, at least according to an article titled 15 Reasons Geeks make Great Boyfriends.

Lucky for me it seems Carli also subscribes to this most brilliant philosophy. I mean, how else can you explain it? :)

A few choice quotes

2.) They’re useful. In this tech-savvy world, it’s great to have a b/f who can make your laptop, desktop, and just about anything else that plugs into a wall behave itself.

...

7.) Sex. Yep. Sex. ... all that time thinking about sex, imagining sex, dreaming about sex, (they are male after all) coupled with a desire to make you happy? Use your imagination.

...

14.) You’ll almost never have to hear, “Yaw dawg whazzap!!” plop out of their mouths. Unless it’s in jest.

Finally, the geek is getting some long overdue recognition - and play!

Update: You can pick up the above I Love My Geek shirt over at Think Geek.

On this day, some 9,490 days ago, the world was forever changed... Carli was born and suddenly the Sun had some competition for being the center of the universe*.

Everyone please join me in wishing her a happy 26th birthday, and many more to follow!

Oh, and for anyone interested (and in town) we are going to Lindey's this evening to celebrate with some drinks on the patio. Feel free to drop by to wish the B-day girl a good one and stay for a drink... or the entire evening if you like.

* - Yes, I realize that the Sun is in fact not the center of the universe, but rather the center of our solar system... but that just didn't have the same ring to it. Artistic license, look into it.

Due to popular demand Jesse has put together a 3rd (and 4th) option for our new team uniforms. These are a bit more expensive, but they are made by Adidas - and are made with Adidas' ClimaCool® fabric.

Anyhow, take a look and let us know what you think.

Oh... and there are not sock options with these kits, yet - but Jesse says he's working on them.