Let me start off on a negative note by saying that Lollapalooza 2009 was the worst Lollapalooza I've been to. I mean, it wasn't awful or anything, I just think we got spoiled in 2006 and 2007. The artists this year weren't as good, we missed a lot of acts due to traveling, we didn't go to any afterparties, we didn't get to see many friends, and the weather was rough. ...Aside from all that though - It was still pretty awesome and I'm really glad we went. We got to hang out with Jon and Liz quite a bit, had Sushi Wabi, heard a ton of good music, and of course, got to visit our favorite city - Chicago.

So everything started Friday morning when we (slowly) busted out of Cedar Rapids (late). By the time we got to Lollapalooza we'd …

So Kari's aunt Joyce is a traveling nurse. As such, she gets her choice of where (and when) to work in various cities around the country - 6 weeks here, 6 weeks there, 12 weeks at home, etc, etc. I'd be lying if I said I wasn't jealous; I'm incredibly jealous.

Anyway, lately Joyce has been in Chicago to be near Kari's cousins; helping Stephanie with the baby, ya know. And Kari just happened to be flying back (through Chicago) from math camp on Joyce's birthday. So, we all decided to celebrate!

Friday afternoon, Kari's parents and I braved the longest drive to Chicago ever. I don't mean long as in "road trip with the in-laws" long, cause my in-laws are awesome. I mean long as in, "htf did it take 10 hours to drive 5 hours away" …

Wow, that was quite a vacation. Completely packed, totally fun, and also completely draining, ha.

So, if you didn't know, Kari and I visited Arizona for 9 days. The first 5 days were spent with my grandparents and the last 4 were spent with friends. I'm gonna try to summarize my trip as best as possible - otherwise this blog could be incredibly long... and I've already uploaded too many photos... so, here we go!

Sunday the 8th. Grandma and Grandpa picked us up in Phoenix and drove us up to Cameron where we had american indian food and shared a hotel room.

Monday, we visited the Grand Canyon then drove down to my grandparents' house in Green Valley. It was Kari's first time seeing the grand canyon and my second. That thing …

Well that was another successful Bock Fest - filled with drinking and laughing until your face hurts.

Despite how awesome it was, Rico had to drop out at the last minute, which was LAME... however Cedric stepped up and stood-in for him. Tobbie also tagged along since she's been fitting in with our crew so well.

So this year I felt more prepared than ever. First of all I wasn't sick... But we seemed to have all the right gear - including my giant beard and Kari's 4WD vehicle. The drive for real took us about 2 hours longer than normal with complete white-outs all over. It was a rough, rough drive... However, we prevailed, pulled into Morgan, grabbed a beer at Josh's, and met everyone at Front Street.

The first night was all …

This past weekend, Kari and I flew down to Texas to visit my sister and Chris. We've never really hung out with just the 2 before, so it was nice to finally get to visit - just us.

And as an extra bonus - travel was crazy smooth. NWA didn't charge us for checking bags (in fact we could've each checked an extra bag if we wanted), plus we got free sodas, and 1 of our flights even landed 30 minutes early, nice!

So anyway, we got into San Antonio late Thursday said some words, then we all basically crashed.

Friday, Halloween, we took Daniel to a pumpkin patch and then checked out the new house that Bre'anna and Chris are building. It is stupid nice. And yeah, I'm a bit jealous that my younger sister has a nicer house than I do. …

Last weekend my buddy Turbo had a "He-Man Woman Hater" party. When he first told me about it I was like, "huh... cool name, Aaron." I figured he'd made it up, but it turns out it's a real club from The Little Rascals. The He-Man Woman Haters Club was... wait for it... a club of boys that hated girls. You know the "No girls allowed" sign on the treehouse? Yeah.

So basically, it meant that Turbo was having a dude party. Cigars, beer, grilling large cuts of meat, ya know. But he put an amazing twist on it. His invite said, "Aaron got a new humidor. Help him stock it! Bring a cigar for you and one to share." An amazing, amazing idea. You guys can all do this for my upcoming birthday party. ;)

Anyway... Zach, Ninja, and I …

If you've been paying attention to my photo stream, you've probably noticed that we had a jam packed vacation. 8 days and 250 photos of Key West and Miami Beach.

Man, it was a great time. Jeff and Teresa took us down there as part of a giant celebration trip. Kari, Victor, and I got new jobs. Jeff and Kari graduated with bachelors and masters degrees. Vic got a house. Jeff and Teresa celebrated a 30th anniversary. It was a big year that deserved some celebration - and that, we did.

So, it's going to be nearly impossible, but I'll try to keep this as short as I possibly can.

Saturday

• Flew to Miami from Cedar Rapids with a stop in Chicago. GPSs totally work in airplanes, btw.

Sunday

• Drove to Key West. It was quite a cool …

So I got a new truck. An 8 year old truck that looks like it's 1 year old.

As most of you know, I (for some weird reason) was in the market for a truck. The truck that appealed to me most was the F150, but I didn't want the F150 that you pass 76 times a day on the road. I wanted a unique one. So I got online and started researching.

While reading about F150s on www.fordf150.net I came across a "Lightning Clone" in the classifieds. It was in Ohio, looked super clean, and was really close to my budget.

Fast forward a few e-mails, calls, and weeks later to this Saturday... Kari's dad and I drove out to buy it. Even though the guy (Dan Mann) seemed nice and trustworthy and the photos looked amazing - I was nervous. I mean, if …

Man, I really haven't had the energy to blog... but I suppose it's time to write about last weekend.

So, Nathan, Josh, and I met up in Minneapolis for another big going-out fest, similar to what we did last year for Josh's birthday. The plan is basically to go to Minneapolis on Friday and come home on Sunday - that's it. Everything else just sort of falls into place, which is generally chaos.

We first walked into our hotel, right next door to the greyhound station and a salvation army home, to find that a goth festival was going on. There were tons of goth/metal kids and all sorts of "Crypticon" gear - the name of the festival. It was pretty hilarious.

So after checking that out, we decided to venture downtown for dinner. …

Why are windshield wiper controls so different in every vehicle? Seriously. I somehow wound up driving a LOT this weekend, in 4 different vehicles. Between Kari's SUV, mom's new car, dad's SUV, and Jeff's truck. By the end of the weekend I was almost taking Jeff's truck out of gear just to clear some rain off the windshield.

Anyway, Kari and I visited the QC to visit some family and celebrate my birthday this weekend. It was nice to see everyone. However, this new "splitting up time" thing is really draining.

So Friday, we met my mom, Juliet, Jeff, and Nina for dinner, which was a good time.

Saturday we woke up and went to Galena with Nina and Juliet. I really don't remember Galena being so big. I imagined it more like …

My last 2 birthdays have been the most insanely awesome/draining weekends ever. My birthday, in Chicago, on Lollapalooza weekend. The best thing about this year was that I saw every band that I had written down to see, except for silverchair. I even saw some shows on conflicting schedules, yessss.

However, my feet always kill me during the entire weekend. I either need some better walking shoes or a better walking job. I sit way to much for walking 1.5 miles from the hotel to the park, which is 3/4 mile from end to end. I bet during lollapalooza weekend I walk 20-30 miles, which is about 1 mile for every pound of food I probably eat.

Anyway... here's how the weekend went.

Thursday

We got into town and went to visit Harper …

So this weekend we went to South Dakota to visit my second cousin in law, Jerry Cozad, haha (Jeff's cousin). I really had no information about the weekend except that we were going to some Lake near Sioux Falls. I had no idea what to expect, but I certainly didn't expect to be in cabins nicer than my house... which is exactly what we found. And these weren't full time houses for these people, they were just weekend cabins. Seriously ridiculous. And the owners weren't like 60 year old doctors - everyone I hung out with was in their late 30s or early 40s, acted my age, and basiaclly made some huge bank. I would really like to figure out a way to live that life. I guess I got 10-20 years to figure it out...

Anyway, it was a really …

So... Back to Kevi's wedding weekend. Friday after we got to Orlando, we checked into Hawthorne Suites, which rule btw. Kitchen, living room, 2 queen beds, an amazing free breakfast, open bar from 5:30-7:30 daily, free wifi, and a nice pool - all for only $90 a night.

So after checking in, Kevi gave us some pretty rad gifts. Kari and Amy got wine and Zach and I got branding irons for stamping steaks, etc. I might use it to stamp some of my woodworking things as well. He also gave us some nice grilling spices and such - I'm excited to try it all out.

Later, we went to rehearsal and dinner at Ohana's where we got more gifts. I got a bottle of Glenfiddich 12 year scotch and Zach got some Effen vodka. <3 Kevi. Dinner was …

I really hate to rain on someone's wedding, which I won't do. But I'm totally about to blow up about traveling to Kevi's wedding. Omg.

So first of all, Thursday, Zach, Amy, Kari, and I were scheduled to fly out of Des Moines around 5pm and show up in Orlando at 10:30pm. So we arrived at the DSM airport around 3:45 to check in, when we met an NWA employee named Betty. Imagine Betty as the bus driving Chris Farley in Billy Madison - only thinner, older, and more female. She was totally stressed out, mumbling things under her breath, and yelling at people. There was one point when her glasses were falling off her face and she had 2 phones - 1 on each ear. I completely missed a golden photo opportunity. So anyway, Betty informed us …

Whoops, I forgot to blog again.

So yeah, last week I was in Orlando for an RFID Conference. It was really nice. The resort I was staying at (Disney's Coronado Springs) was much better than I thought it'd be. I was sorta worried because...

1. I don't like Disney
2. I don't like kids

But, there really wasn't much disney parafanilia and there weren't many kids. Just a really nice resort that served good drinks and held a pretty incredible conference.

As far as the actual conference goes, I learned a ton. I saw some really nice applications, and I met some cool peeps who knew what they were doing. It's going to be exciting to implement a solution at Pioneer - which leads to a funny story. Every time I was talking to a …

All in 1 weekend. Ahhh, this is nice.

Friday, Kari and I checked out waterfront deli, went to a party at Fry's for a bit, and then headed downtown to take part in some Drake relay festivities. Plus, Lindsey was in town, which always makes for a hilarious evening - when she calls us anyway...

So, Last night was Jody/Matt's wedding in Minneapolis. It was really a nice wedding. And the reception was also quite ridiculous.... Kari's friends are a blast. Pics coming soon...

And now, I'm currently sitting in the MSP airport waiting to go to Orlando for an RFID conference. I'm pretty excited.

Via hiptop...

So, I haven't really blogged about life in over a month. It started out that I was overwhelmingly busy. It sucked. Then I became even busier.

So, now that I'm back down to semi-normal busy-ness again, let's bring everyone up to speed.

-Sometime back in March, Kari and I met some friends at a cabin in north eastern Iowa. It was a great time. No cell phone, no internet. I really want to do it again but with nicer weather... maybe summer, fall, even winter - just not muddy.
-I got kari's car all fixed up. New Tires, windshield, and fog light (she tailgates like none other).
-I "upgraded" to a Mosso account for my web sites, which I would slowly move off of my old server as time allowed. It was a dumb project to start in the …

Last year I didn't really blog about bockfest because I came down with a bad cold directly afterwards. This year I'm not making that mistake. Instead, I got my cold the day before. With a little Zicam, Sleep, and Water, I prevailed and I am now blogging.

Friday around noon Nathan, Jeff, and Rico met up with Kari and I and we busted out to Redwood falls. The drive was decent... aside from riding 5 people in a Malibu, with a little bad weather along 90.

We showed up, hung out at Josh's for a minute, grabbed some food at Chumly's, then went to the VFW for some drinks, games, and mass nakedness. It was a good time. We then told old college stories and laughed about memories past.

Saturday we drove out to New Ulm (late, again) …

So, Nehru planned on driving to Chicago with some of his STI and EVO buddies last weekend. However, at the last minute someone canceled, which opened up a seat for me. Of course, I accepted.

The drive was definitely interesting. 4 pretty different people with really the only thing in common being our love for cars - and maybe beer. It was a good time, they were cool guys.

Once we got into Chicago we hung out at Nandy's Place for a second. It's pretty tiny, but she is on Wacker and Michigan, wtf. Seriously. So I decided I'd go hang out with some of my other buddies and find a more comfortable place to sleep.

Tag, Clock, and Mikey picked me up at Nandy's around midnight. They played a really good trick on me saying that Mikey …

Minnesota is so freakin... I can't think of the word. It's not hick. However, it's similar to hick, with better people. It's so... wilderness or something. See, everytime I go to Chicago I think, "Des Moines is so small town." Then on the drive to Mankato, and up 169 to the cities, I think, "Where do these people shop? eat? go out?" and then I realize that Des Moines is actually a big city compared to a lot. Everywhere I've been in Minnesota is so small town, with smart and friendly people. Then when I get back to Des Moines I appreciate my "big city." Shortly after this roadside pondering I reached rush hour traffic just outside of Minneapolis on 494. Then I saw the skyline off in the distance and went back to thinking Des …