These Ones Go to 11

Well we're back into the swing of things here. I start school again tomorrow and Nicole has already been back at it for a week.

Firstly, I think I should mention that we had a fabulous holiday. We booked the computer room in the Shurtz family hotel in Enoch, UT for Christmas. Besides being cozy accomodations for Nicole and I and everyone else that needed computer access, we were also fortunate because, unlike all the other guests, we had internet in our room. Beyond the wonderful acuitriments, with 19 people from the Shurtz family there, we were happy just to have a room. We were scared that like Mary and Joseph, we were going to be sleeping out with the horse.

Christmas was a little different for me this year than it has been in the past because I was now responsible to shop for a wife. I am learning to force myself to walk through women's clothing sections and fabric stores. However, when Nicole is not with me and I'm walking by myself looking at women's pajama pants I still feel the need to tell everyone passing by, "these aren't for me," or "I thought my wife might like them." At the very least, I find myself scratching my face and shoulders a lot with my left hand so that people will hopefully at least notice my wedding band. Maybe I'm paranoid of what the other shoppers think of me...or maybe I'm scared that I might think, "this pink velour sweatsuit actually looks good."

Anyway, Christmas was a fun time. We played a lot of games, played in the snow and ate a lot of junk food. After Christmas, we got to head up to Provo for a couple more days and hang out and visit some people. It was a really good time. We had some wonderful food cooked for us by Jessica Morris. She is a phenomenal cook. We also got to see my grandparents a little more and some of our old friends.

On Wed. it was time to head home. So we packed up the Noonan's van and headed off toward Vegas. The trip down was uneventful except for the part where we got pulled over for not having lights on and James managed to convince the officer that even though he didn't have any sort of proof handy, he did have car insurance somewhere. To James', and more specifically Monica's credit, there was proof and it was even in the car in James' lap, he just overlooked it.

Well we safely arrived in Vegas. James had to fly out early the next morning, so he was staying the night in a hotel with Nicole's parents. We, however (after a brief nap), went right on to the airport to fly out at 12:40 on New Year's Day. Some may ask, why would you fly out on New Years; especially when you could be on the strip watching Robbie Kanevil jump the volcano at the Mirage? The answer to that is easy. We saved over $200 dollars flying on New Years and for those of you who are slow with numbers, that equals over 800 quarters and about 6,000 empty airport slot machine seats.

Actually, there was another benefit to flying on New Years at a ridiculous time. When we arrived at the airport, one of my worst fears was confirmed...we had packed too much Christmas booty. I had weighed the bags before we left for Las Vegas with the precisely instrumented "old scale that has a family of mice living in it that we keep somewhere down in the basement...are you sure it's not there...maybe it's outside under the deck" which is accurate to +/- 10 lbs. Anyway, I was sweating it out as we were trying to check into our flight. I wasn't sure what to do. I decided not to say anything about it and if challenged I would either 1. let her know that her scale must be flawed or 2. cry. Well, some of you might might have heard the phrase before that 'close' only counts in horse shoes and hand grenades. Well friends, 'close' (defined as less than 8 lbs over in one bag and 7 in the other) also counts with Sheila the disguntled Jet Blue employee who is happy to stick it to the man for making her work on New Year's eve instead of watching Robbie Kanevil.

Since we've been home, things have been good. I've taken up playing on a city soccer league with a couple of guys from church. It's going pretty well. I'm playing defense which is a little different for me as I'm much more accustomed to mid-field. I am happy to note that I still have the endurance to play the entire game even though walking was painful for almost a week afterward. So far our record isn't too stellar, but I think once the team play more together and starts scoring more points than our opponents we'll start doing a lot better.

Nicole has started taking dance classes at a new studio. It's a little bit of a drive, but we enjoy the time together in the car and the studio is head an shoulders above the others in the area. So we feel it's worth the trip.

I also got to go biking again this week. If I haven't said so (I think I did in a previous post), but I love my bike; it goes to 11. I went to York River State park. It was a great place to ride. It's incredible to me that the trails I was riding on were battle grounds for both the Revolutionary and Civil wars.

Anyway, life is good.