We were able to make it most of the way to Vegas on Monday night. Instead of stopping in St. George, UT as expected, Chris made reservations at the Oasis Hotel and Casino an hour or so north of Vegas. That was an experience. Due to having no available rooms at the price we reserved, we were placed in a suite. This smoking room/suite had burn stains all over the floor, a small 19″ TV, and had a lousy “kitchen” for what a suite should have. Luckily we were only looking for a place to crash for the night before heading over to Vegas for a couple of days.

Somehow, while in Vegas, I managed to make money while gambling. The blackjack table wasn’t very friendly, as it hasn’t been in a while. But, the night before leaving, I decided to play the Mega Jackpot slots. Somehow, I was able to make back the original money I lost playing blackjack and finish $60 up. Chris, not willing to let me leave while ahead, gave me a $20 to gamble on his behalf, and I turned that into $200. Since he was paying for the hotel at the Monte Carlo, I wasn’t going to ask for half.

On Thursday we started the final leg of the trip to Marina Del Rey, where we stopped for the night before putting most of my stuff into storage. I’m now settled on the floor at my brothers apartment while I figure out what to do with my life. Anybody want to put money down on how long I stay in California? Chris seems to think I won’t leave now that I’m here.

While those of you in NY deal with high humidity and those in Denver deal with heat waves this time of year, just know that it’s constantly in the mid-70′s with low humidity here in the Marina.

I actually had two offers extended to me this week, one from a public accounting firm and another from ControlPath, both located here in Denver. And, although the upfront money from the public accounting firm was higher, there is more potential income with ControlPath. Without going into too much detail, I will say working at ControlPath is a high risk, high reward venture. But hey, what’s life without taking a few chances. Or, as a friend says, sometimes you just have to say wtf and go for it.

Some of you might have heard me talk about ControlPath in the past. That’s probably because I’ve been consulting with them for the past 3 or so months. Rather than write about the company and what they do, here’s a link to their web site — ControlPath.com. The company is quite small in personnel, so my responsibilities can best be described using a baseball term – utility player. My primary responsiblity will be to work with clients to understand their processes and implement the ControlPath tool to mirror that process. That’s about as simple as I can explain it.

As for the past 6+ months, I’ve enjoyed visiting various places including Marina Del Rey, CA; Washington, DC; New York, Port St. Lucie, FL. In between all these trips I spent some time at my condo in Keystone. Blog posts for these trips can easily be found by clicking on the Travel category to the right. In the end, I can’t complain. The only location I would have liked to add was a trip to Greece. But, I’d rather visit during the summer so I can go to the islands. We’ll see if that’s something I can add to the plan for next summer.

Well, I actually have a lot going on in my head and could probably write a book right now, but instead I’m going to start celebrating the end of mid-life retirement and the beginning of a new career.

During Cinco de Mayo weekend, I was at Cabo Cantina, a relatively new restaurant at Venice beach close to where my brother lives. While sitting at the bar talking to a few friends, this guy walks up to me asking where I’m from. The second he asked I knew who he was, but forgot his name. Turns out Erik (aka, Grizzy) and I went to the University of Scranton together graduating during the same year. Scranton is a somewhat small school in NE Pennsylvania with about 4500 students graduating each year. Grizzy and I played a lot of basketball together. Needless to say, sometimes it really is a small world when you’re at a bar thousands of miles from where you went to school and see someone you hadn’t seen since then.

On a similar note, while at the same bar, a friend of my brothers starts talking to us. She was attractive… and blond. She was telling us about her audition earlier in the day. At the time I thought she was a little ditzy. Turns out, after talking to another friend that knows her, she’s in the process of getting her PhD in Anthropology at UCLA and she’s just a happy girl. Foot in mouth mean anything to anyone. Sometimes it would be best for me to keep my opinions to myself. But then again, without opinions, I wouldn’t have anything to write about here. Oh well.

Enjoy the Memorial Day weekend!

So here I am finally getting some things done at home. Mostly, I’ve been cleaning up in certain areas that get ignored, like the garage. And, in the “things that interest only me” area, I finally upgraded WordPress today. I’m now running on v2.3.1. And I was able to upgrade the K2 theme and Gallery plugin so everything work together. I’ve been using the Gallery plugin for pictures for some time now, but I had to stop using the K2 theme earlier this year when I figured out the K2 theme and Gallery plugin didn’t get along. The K2 theme comes with some cool functions that I’ve missed. Specifically, I’m able to create header images using my own pictures to put on the site. I’ve already added one that I was using earlier this year. One I get more header images in there, the images will rotate so that front page doesn’t seem static. Like I said, things that interest only me.

On that same note, I can’t wait for Christmas to come. I’m getting the latest version of Mac OS/X – Leopard. That’ll give me something to play with for a few days. I’ll try to get another post in before Christmas. But, if I don’t, I hope everyone has a Merry Christmas and a Happy New Year.

For the most part, I’ve spent my time going to a few restaurants/bars. I’m pretty sure I went out for drinks almost every night here other than maybe 2 or 3 days. The usual suspects were Tony P’s for sports, Cactus Cantina for Mexican food and “sight seeing”, and The Terrace for relaxing. Well, usually The Terrace is relaxing. Surprisingly, there were a couple of days where they had a DJ. You would have go to The Terrace to understand why that’s surprising. There was one other restaurant that we went too once, the California Yacht Club, to view the Boat Parade. I can’t explain how enormous the buffet was. I filled myself up with a small plate for dinner and finished off with a few rounds of desert, yum.

Thanks to Eric, I also managed to play a couple rounds of golf in California. Both were public courses, but were in pretty good shape. I guess it’s not too hard to keep a course in good shape when the weather is nice all year round. By the time I was on the course for the second round of golf last Monday, I was as relaxed as it gets. No matter how good or bad I was shooting it was nice to be outside drinking a few beers and enjoying the weather. Eric and I also had a few laughs along the way. Somehow, my ability to hit a righty driver over 200 yards – straight – surprises everyone. Well, I guess it should, it surprises me too. We also had a good laugh at one of the players we were paired with. We’ll just call him Mr. Professional since I don’t remember his name. At the first hole, Mr. Professional asked that we move back behind him and out of his site line while he hits his driver. It turned out being silent and still was a common request from him. I’d hate to see how he’s react to having a crowd watch him play. Early on Eric said he would lose his game in the middle of the back nine. And he wasn’t kidding. Mr. Professional lost his game big time. As for my score during the two rounds, I shot a 92 from the white tees during the first round and a 91 from the blue tees during the second round. It would have been nice to finally hit a round under 90, but it just wasn’t meant to be. Maybe I’ll buy myself a game like Eric claims to have done. In other words, he bought himself expensive clubs.

Outside of that, I helped my brother move apartments. Most days I would go to the old apartment, fill up my truck with as much as I could, then move it over to the new apartment. It worked out pretty well having a week or so overlap between the two apartments.

That’s it for now. And, as Joker pointed out, I’ll do my best to remember that they’re just chips!

Total Miles: 1044.6 miles
Total Time: 16:55
Moving Time: 15:34
Stopped Time: 1:21
Moving Ave. Speed: 67.1 MPH
Overall Ave. Speed: 61.8 MPH
Max Speed: 91.6 MPH

How did I manage to stay up for that long? Starbucks was a really good friend. I had 4 Starbucks coffees on the way over. Their coffee is so strong that after driving for almost 17 hrs. I actually went out for a few drinks.

The trip itself. Well, it was scenic during the first half, not so scenic during the second half. There were some parts of the trip that stood out. First, there were the canyons, one just past Glenwood Springs and another entering Arizona from Utah. There is something relaxing and impressive about driving through canyons, weaving through big walls of rock on both sides of the car. Then there was the big mountain/rock wall. I don’t remember exactly where it was, but I think it was somewhere around Grand Junction or Fruita, Colorado. As I was driving West, all I saw was this big mountain wall ahead of me from left to right. All I could think is how does the road go though it. Well, somehow, it did. After getting through Arizona, the only scenic area was passing through Las Vegas. With the casino’s on my left, I wondered if I should stop and stay there for a few days. But, being that it was a holiday weekend, the hotels were on the expensive side. So I decided to pass through. Don’t worry, I’m making plans to spend a few days there on the way back to Denver in mid-December.

One thing I noticed during the drive is the how the consideration of drivers diminished the further away from Colorado I got. When driving in Colorado and Utah, people stayed in the right lane and ventured over to the left only when passing. In Nevada and California, it almost seemed to be the opposite. People just go into the left lane and stay there. I only wish the GPS unit could have counted for me the number of cars I was “forced” to pass in the right lane. I’ll have to make that recommendation to Garmin.

So, here I am in Marina Del Rey, CA where the temperature has been hovering in the high 60′s all week, sometimes reaching the low 70′s. I hear they got some snow in the Colorado mountains, it’s nice not to have to drive through that right now.

Before I finish, to answer a question from “ME” in my last post – No, the ban on blogging about work has not been lifted. Whether it’s about my last job or my next one, I just think it’s a bad move. I can’t remember, but you had sent me a link to a blogger that makes a living off of her blog, which she was forced to do after getting fired from her last job. And she was fired because she blogged about work. So I’ll leave that stuff out.

Ok, back to the nice weather here in California.