Last night my cousins fiance Christine and I went to see Missy Higgins in Boulder. She played at the Fox theater, a small little intimate venue and and awesome place to see a concert. When I studied abroad in Australia back in 2003 I started listening to her and while she's become top of the charts in Australia since then, she's still making her way here in the US. Which means playing in the US at small venues and a couple hundred people. We were right at the front of the stage and one of the best concerts I've been to. Joshua Raidin played before her and he's really good too! It makes it so much better when you can see performers live up close and at places where they actually play for much longer than an hour.

If you ever get a chance, definitely go and see either of them, they put on a great show!

I have spent some time updating rcent photos to our FLICKR account.

Those can be viewed at www.flickr.com/jenandnick/collections


Well, actually there isn't a ton to update you about...if you really care :) Nick spent the past weekend in South Korea and last weekend in Sapporo, Japan presenting at conferences for TESOL. I would've been jealous of him visiting a new country without me, but thankfully I got a chance to visit S. Korea without him back in 2006, so this was his chance.

I am on my way down to the Bahamas on Thursday, just could not miss the annual halloween party at Compass Point.....or perhaps due to the lack of finding a job here in Colorado I thought I'll head back down there and hopefully be more productive there than I have been here. Gotta find a Halloween Costume! Although it won't be the same wihthout Nick :(

While Nick has been working, I 've really been trying to find a job with no luck. I did do a personal training course so will be able to start working at a gym upon my return and get some people back in shape after the holidays. I am looking forward to trying that out. All the while I will continue looking for those marketing jobs somewhere out there.

I have also been coaching water polo at CSU for the club women's team. I've been enjoying that, but it's just not the same coaching as playing. I hurt my knee so I haven't been able to get in with them, but am hoping once I return from the Bahamas, to start getting in the water and playing a bit.

I'm looking forward for Nick arriving at the end of December and hitting the Rockies for some snowboarding!!

About 2 weeks ago, I got a chance to go with my friend Muffy to Mt. Evans, outside of Denver to hike to the summit! An absolutely awesome day, we started a bit too late, but still in time to make it down by sunset. We took the ridge trail up which was about 4 hours, pretty rocky terrain with snow as we got higher and higher. Mt. Evans is one of the 14ers in CO, that would be 14,000 feet high. Near the summit we saw all of these mountain goats which Muffy became obsessed with as we probably got a little too close to them. They are really quite large, but very cute. It was an awesome view from the top looking out over the other peaks and valleys. You could see down below the Aspen trees changing colors. The pictures just don't do it justice! On the way down we took the road, which was already closed for the season. Thankfully we were able to walk down the side and cut off some time instead of walking the whole way on the road.




Unfortunatley there will be no more hiking for a couple weeks as I partially tore my MCL playing kickball! Yes...kickball. I went to the park and joined in on a game, thought it would be a good way to meet people, halfway through the game I was in the outfield going to catch a ball when my leg slipped and bent inwards and pop, there went my knee! What bad timing as I was supposed to do a rock climbing course, was just getting in shape and was looking forward to some outdoor activities this fall. It's feeling better, but I am now in a brace for a total of at least 4 weeks...bummer!

Natasha, Jen and myself were walking around the Edinburgh Fringe Festival one luke warm summer's day when we were approached from a man with a microphone and video camera. He was a producer of an online visual dictionary website called Wordia. The idea is that people are filmed giving a definition of a word. Everyone is encouraged to say what the word means to them and so many words can have several meanings.
I was asked to say a meaning to a word when Natasha screamed out "You should do Lingerie". Not one from backing down from such a challenge, I present to you me on Wordia.

http://www.wordia.com/words/lingerie/videos

A quick little post from Japan. One of my office mates came in and said that there are two ladies pulling weeds out in the courtyard with hard hats on. I had to see this. So I went out and took these two photos. I took the first close-up to see the hard hats and the second to show there is no scaffolding or construction around them (i.e. there's no point to wearing one!). That's just how things are done here.

We've spent the last 2 weeks enjoying the outdoors in Colorado and enjoying the rest of our summer together. There's so much to do here and definitely can see why people love it here!

We went golfing with my Uncle Dan and cousin Chris and while the rest of the boys had been golfing before, Nick only twice, but it was my first time! For a first timer I didn't do half bad once I started making contact with the ball. It's definitely something I could get used to playing as long as we Always rent a golf cart, that makes it just that much more fun and so much easier to ride around and find my 'stray' ball :)





There's a huge reservoir and mountain (a small one) called Hoorsetooth in Fort Collins. We got a chance to hike up, only about 2 hours up and 1.5 down to the top to see an awesome view of Fort Collins below. I gotta get some new hiking boots as blisters quickly formed and nothing worse than starting a hike and getting them shortly after.



We're not very good golfer an we're not really good frisbee disc golfers either, but both are fun and lots of room for improvement. There was a guy what he had thrown on the course when disc golfing and he was like 1 under par...we all laughed as we didn't care to tell him that we were all in the 30 over par group...too funny...we suck


We loved our dinner at the Melting Pot...fondue..so good




Lastly, on Monday we went to Brekenridge for some Mountain Biking. So awesome....but hurt like heck the next day! We started off in the morning doing some trails just outside of town and there was noone on the trails which was great as we were getting used to rding up and down with pretty good size rocks sticking out on the trail, ridges to make sure not to fall off and some tight turns. After lunch we headed to Copper Mountain where we spent the rest of the day riding the chair lift up the mountain and riding down on the trails, that was tough and much more technical. Nick's okay, but he did take a wipe out after missing a switchback and going right over hte edge, unforutnatley I didn't get it on video as it was a pretty graceful wipeout!





Nick's scrapes and bruises..he went off the right behind him over the edge! It looks smaller than it actually was here in the photo :)

Some videos of the Mountains...perfect day!

This is our blog about Scotland. We were lucky enough to visit my sister Natasha and stay with her for 1 week and do a road trip around Scotland for another. Throughout this blog I will use "..." and you should think and read "...shame about the weather and the expensive prices".



We really liked Scotland... It was great to see Natasha and also my folks as we all traveled there for a Yates family reunion. All of us hadn't been together for 2.5 years. We arrived with no bags (see previous posting for that little one) and walked out to buy some spare clothes ...

The first night was the Edinburgh Military Tattoo. Dad is almost obsessed with this and each year he watches on Aussie TV so he was stoked to finally be able to attend a live performance. That night was a good night ... It rained all throughout the performance, not hard, but just enough to give your boots a good soaking.

We went during the month of August which is coincidentally the time of the Edinburgh Fringe Festival. All five of us took in some shows, some were good, some were not... Our favorite was probably Jimeoin, an Irish-Australian comedian who makes statements about life. One of those guys but real funny. My personal favourite was the last performance we say. Two Irish guys were just standing at the front doing some improv. Their niche was to get information from the audience and then play a clip of a movie. For instance, Natasha yelled out that I was a lingerie salesman so they dimmed the lights and proceeded to do a voiceover for Braveheart, the rousing scene where William Wallace is riding his horse in front of his men, getting their hearts and minds stirred up for lingerie! This was typical of the night.
'
Edinburgh is a fantastic city ... My one grip, apart from the obvious weather and expensive nature, is the food. It is crap. The menu has a few local delicacies on it like Haggis, Nips, and Tatties (Haggis, Turnips and Potatoes) but is very similar to things you would find elsewhere. The price list is almost identical to a US price list. But the pound is twice as much so all food cost us twice the price. I know, I'm whinging now. Our favorite meal was definitely an Indian curry we had up in Nairn. Awesome...


We hired a car and did a road trip around Scotland. We stayed overnight in Stirling and Aberdeen as well as two nights in Nairn, a small town near Inverness. The weather in Stirling was beautiful and the castle was pretty darn cool as well. There are still many holes in the walls and statues from where mortars or bullets have hit during battles and sieges in the past.


Aberdeen was nice... We didn't see the sky whilst we were there and in the morning there was so much low fog that we couldn't see the tops of churches. We ended up at a vodka bar for dinner (because it was offering 2 for 1 drinks and meals!) and we sampled our first vodka salsa on a burger. Two thumbs up from me.


Inverness was also nice ... It didn't rain as much on one of the days so that was a good thing. Nairn, where we stayed was quiant and a nice country town. I watched Scotland and Northern Ireland duke it out in the soccer which was good. Nice to feel the local atmosphere in a pub with locals.



On the way down from Inverness to Stirling, we passed Loch Ness and crossed over the rolling highlands. Some mountains were covered in mist from the low lying clouds but as we drove further south, the weather started to clear up so we then got pockets of clouds only covering half a mountain range or we got the sun streaking through gaps of clouds into a valley. It was quite beautiful.


One of the highlights of the trip was seeing a genuine Scottish Highland COW! Jen was sooo excited when we finally found one. We got pretty darn close to it. It's name was Hamish.

So that's about it for our Scotland experience...

We first had to make our way from San Francisco to Edinburgh via Chicago and Manchester. Believe me, this was a major feat in itself! Our flight was delayed for a half hour because all passengers were on board but we had no pilots. Seeing that we only had an hour and a half connection time, this was going to be tight as it was but life continues to throw up obstacles. We were originally scheduled to land only 20 minutes late but at one of the furthest gates from our connecting gate. But we landed only 15 minutes late at a "closer" gate but still in a distant terminal.

Once on the ground, most people on the flight who didn't have a connecting flight stayed seated so that the poor souls who had to make the mad dash could get a head start. We heard this old guy mumbling the same gate that we were headed to so I asked him if he was going to Manchester and he was. I felt better because we were in much better shape than he and his Mrs. were so we felt that if he could make it, we would make it to.

The doors open and we start running down the terminal asking people along the way, then discovering their way was totally wrong and finally retraced our steps and asked a TSA agent. He told us, right at the dinosaur, take the lift down one floor, exit, take the lift up two floors and cross the bridge to the inter-airport train system. After this we saw the old couple running so we grabbed them with us and the four of us found the train. We were stopped at the international terminal by a staff member and she was barking orders to open the doors back up because now there were about 10 passengers who had just arrived (the four of us + others on the train). We were on!!!!!!

... our bags were not...


On the way back, silly us, we'd only allowed 1hr 30mins to do the same thing as before but this time it included immigration. We were on the plane thinking, that's it, we're done for. We docked at one of the furthest gates from our connecting gate (of course!) and then when we got off the plane, we decided to run to immigration. If there were long lines, then we'd just try and hop on another flight. As we approached immigration, we saw... no-one. Absolutely no people were waiting in the immigration hall. We had run and become the first people in both our lines! Amazing. We ended up making it with 5 minutes to spare. Had we missed that flight, it would have been a long wait. The Democractic Convention was happening in Denver that day and Obama was speaking the next day. So it would have been a long wait on standby.

My advice is, leave plenty of time for transfers Chicago O'Hare airport. Or just avoid it at all costs like we will.

It was low key birthday as we were recovering from Hayley's wedding, we made our way up to San Fran, but thankfully we did get a chance to stop at In and Out burger with Megan, Katie and Matt :)


It has been a little over 4 years since Jen and I both visited San Francisco. Last time we did a lot of the tourist things, see Alcatraz, Fisherman's Wharf and of course the Golden Gate Bridge but this time, we saw San Francisco from a local's perspective. We were lucky enough to stay in the Cole Valley area which is right near Haight and Ashbury with Jen's friend Jen from Michigan. She lives in a three story typical Elizabethan style San Francisco terrace house. It was awesome. I have always loved the San Francisco architecture and to stand on the balcony overlooking the city and to look out the windows and see other terrace homes next door. Simply amazing for me.


We took a walk when we first arrived around the Haight District and ate a couple of slices of pizza at this local pizzeria. The area down Haight St is basically an alternative area with lots of organic supermarkets, non-mainstream (independent) clothing stores and a few shops with different and a little unusual odds and ends. The next day we took a walk through the Castro Valley which is the gay community of San Francisco. Very colorful, very vibrant and a very happening place. Next was the Mission which is a small area next to Castro Valley and has been nicknamed Little Mexico. The two Jens and I ate at a very busy Mexican restaurant.

Our final day we headed down to Union Square for some shopping, walked all the way up to Fisherman's wharf and over to Ghiradelli square for a much anticipated hot fudge peanut butter sundae! Absolutely delicious! For dinner we took in some Japanese, I don't think we would've spent even half of that if we were to have eaten the same meal in Japan..yikes! None the less, it was tasty.

It was a quick stopover in San Fran before heading to Scotland and great to see Jen and hang out in the city for a couple days.

Hayley and Eric got married in Santa Cruz in a perfect perfect sea side wedding! The bride and groom were beautiful, the Mexican food was delicious and catching up with lots of water polo gals is always a fun time. Thankfully the margaritas and dancing helped keep us warm as the night set in.

We arrived in Colorado and settled in at my Aunt Sue and Uncle Dan's house for the week. Getting used to the lay of the land and the mountains we quickly got a chance to see the real Colorado beauty that is Red Rocks! For my birthday, Nick got me tickets to see my JT..that's not Justing Timberlake...that would be James Taylor. We drove down to Red Rocks Amphitheater from Fort Collins. This place is an absolutely amazing place to see a concert! Despite the rain and cooler weather, the night was great. Definitely say this is the best place to see concert and seeing James Taylor there made it one perfect evening!

Jen and I reunited in the Bahamas for a week and of course, stayed at Compass Point Beach Resort. It was obviously awesome to be together again with Jen but it was also excellent to hang out with Jen's parents too. We had some excellent Japanese one night, had a Brazilian BBQ another and of course ate lots of conch fritters at the hotel's restaurant. Jen and I also helped her parents Skip and Linda celebrate their 29th wedding anniversary. In celebration of this, we had a fantastic dinner down on the dock, had some beautiful lobster mornay and prime fillet steak. The definite common theme of this week is food. I suppose I was catching up on decent "western" food that I have missed since being in Japan.

Jen's trying to discover the perfect work/life balance.....4 hours is enough for me and what a great place to embrace this idea! :)