Ahhh, another weekend well spent in my home away from home. I love how comfortable I'm getting with Chicago. It's quite nice.

This time we visited the city for 2 milestone events - Vic's college graduation and Kari's 25th birthday. Thursday was Vic's ceremony, which ruled. They had 30 graduates so it was only like 40 minutes, haha. Plus Vic gave me a rose. We celebrated with much Giordano's.

Friday, Kari's B-day - ridiculous. We started the day out right with some mad omelettes at ihop. Then we met up with Kari's dad to shop around Michigan Avenue, etc. Kari got lots of clothes, we all got new Levi's, I got this insane mashup by Girl Talk, etc. We then hung out at a Viand for a second before meeting everyone at Sushi Wabi. …

So, this weekend I went to Chicago for a few minutes, which will put an end to a month straight of weekends I was out of town - without Kari, haha. Rochester, Minneapolis, Orlando, and Chicago. Traveling without Kari was a little weird, a little lame, but also nice. We both enjoy time with each other as much as we enjoy time without each other. However, 4 weeks in a row may be a little excessive... So this weekend, I am in Des Moines! Where Kari, her fam, and I will eat sushi, watch movies, drink homebrew, and love life.

And now for a recap of Chicago.

I drove straight there - no need to drop off Ninja, no tolls, etc. It ruled so much, and seemed like a super short drive - especially after that Orlando trip. And now I'm to …

Ok so, kevi totally changed everything in his life up again with a new place to live, new job, and new gf... Imagine that. In fact he still owes me a case of dewski for winning this bet...

how long were you at yellow book?
2 months
how long were you at the hospital?
3 months
how long were you at stamats?
1 year 4 months
ok, i'll bet you another case of mt dew, you quit your current job within 2 years
ok
haha
should i quit my job here at geolearning before april 7, 2007, i will give you one case of mt. dew
Derek R Brooks
Kevin E Switzer

So that said. We had a mini going away party at my house last wednesday. Fun time.

Then I somehow managed to let kevi talk me into helping him move to orlando. He sold it by saying …

Welp, as most of you know, Nathan, Chuck, and I went up to Minneapolis this weekend, which started out as a birthday bash for Josh, but ended up being a celebration of all our birthdays. Mine's in August... Nathan's is in June, and Chuck's is in November, haha.

On the way, we ended up making a last minute pitstop into Clear Lake to pick up Monica and drop her off at her BF's place just outside of the cities.

We got to our hotel around 9ish, which was in a pretty rough part of downtown - greyhound station, dudes getting handcuffed, etc. Actually we saw people getting cuffed on 3 separate occasions right in front of our building, haha.

So, we quickly threw our stuff in the room and walked straight to Gluek's bar. As soon as we …

Welp, Rochester was pretty rad. We tried to hit all the hot spots in 1 night, which made things quite insane. It ruled though because everything was pretty much within walking distance.

So we started the night off by eating at Newt's. I had heard that Newt's has the best burgers in town. So we went in expecting to order their burger - a normal, but really good burger. We didn't realize that they had a several awesome burgers with special recipes. I had this burger with Jalapenos and garlic ground into the meat prior to cooking. Zach had a Cheyenne bleu cheese burger, and Nathan had a burger with eggs and bacon on it. Seriously, best burgers in town... or maybe even the country!!! (chalk another one up for Minnesota, Josh).

So Kari's family and I spent Easter in Vegas this year. I hadn't been there yet, so I had to see it. And now that I'm back I must say that the city was pretty amazing. I've already got a list of things to do for the next time I go back.

Friday night we flew out of Cedar Rapids to Vegas. The landing was nice since it was nighttime and the airport is right next to the lit up strip. As soon as we stepped off the plane there were slot machines, which was pretty hilarious. Jeff won $4, ha. We then headed to our hotel - MGM Grand, which is huge huge. Like, there are multiple theaters, a gigantic casino, tons of restaurants, bars, clubs, shopping centers... seriously nuts. Our rooms were nice as well. Big ol king sized beds and all …

Oy, I'm home sick - it's lame. I'm all bundled up on the couch with 2 laptops, juice, and cold medicine, looking for some mindless things to do. Maybe it's a good time for a blog.

First of all - this weekend. So much fun. Nathan and I rode up to MN with Rico. He was visiting his family who happened to live 20 minutes from Josh... so it was obvious that we should ride along and visit our buddy.

The plan for the weekend was to attend Bockfest at the August Schell brewery in New Ulm - which was a blast. A lot of things happened and I've already told the story about 10 times... plus I don't feel like writing a whole lot - so I'll let the photos tell the story. It was a great time, I met a lot of people, got to hang out with …

What a fun weekend. The days were sorta weird due to messed up sleep patterns. It kinda seemed like one long day. But anyway...

Friday, Kevi, Kari, and I drove up to Morgan to meet Josh Lueck for a Birthday Bash. We got to his house at 11:30pm, picked up Jolene and then met Josh at work (@ Jackpot Junction). Kevi and I played some Pai Gow poker, which is a really fun game and Kari found out that she hated casinos, which was funny. Once Josh got off work (@ 2am) we drove up to the cabin we'd be staying in at Leech Lake. On the way there we saw the temperature get down to 29 degrees, wtf. We got there at 7:30am and napped til about 1.

After that there was lots of hanging out with the family that owned the cabin. We played …

This weekend Nathan and I went to Minneapolis for a couple Heely demos. For the most part it was pretty fun, but it was also sort of annoying. The roads around the Twin Cities suck... bad. Seriously, 35w does not mean 35 west, wtf. And it sucks even more that the people living there can't give you good directions to anything.

Friday night we decided to go to Mystic Lake (one of the biggest casinos in the midwest). The guy at the front desk of our hotel gave us directions that got us completely lost. It took us over an hour to get somewhere that was 15 minutes away... It made us both annoyed, frustrated, and pissed off. Once we got there we stayed for about 30 minutes... I've never really gone to a casino other than to eat... …

Tuesday after work, Kari and I drove to Denver to visit her brother and go snowboarding. The original plans were for her and I to go snowboarding thursday at Winterpark Mountain, but she hurt her knee walking, so her brother and I went instead. We took a lesson in the morning because it was my first time on a mountain (aside from iowa), and it was Victor's first time ever. Toward the end of the lesson, Vic hit his head and wanted to take a break... I ended up snowboarding the rest of the day by myself... but whatever, it was still fun. I covered a good portion of the mountain and got up to the Mary Jane peak (11,200 feet), w00t!

The bad part of the day was when my digital camera broke... I was really mad. On the way back from the …