Oh, and by the way, I've barely been able to watch TV in the past week, much less investigate TiVo - Alex has recorded every motorcycle event from around the world for the past 6 days and does nothing but watch the races!

We closed on the house in LA yesterday - finally. My poor mother is exhausted, she packed and loaded up a truck all day yesterday, and then spent several hours cleaning the house before she left it. I think she really is sad to have sold that house, but I keep reminding her that she's embarking on a new adventure, and will have a new house to love. She and her friend, Jan, are driving out next Sunday and will stay with me for a while. Alex and I leave on Sunday for MAM (Mid-America Motorplex) for a track day next Monday, and we'll be driving back on Monday night. We should get to Boulder about the same time my mother and Jan arrive. The following week, on April 29, we fly to Minneapolis to do four days at Brainerd. We found a pretty good deal on airfare/rental car, certainly beats driving 18 hours to get there! I'm excited to be going, I've missed the race days and all the riders and hanging out with Kim. As long as we have someone to watch Ruby, we're good to go.

Work and school continue to keep me busy, plus I'm spending a lot of time each day pulling together all of the paperwork for the new house that I'm buying (that my mother will live in). I just finished faxing another 18 pages worth of tax returns and credit history. I think this is the last of it though. We close next Thursday, and hopefully my mother can start meeting with contractors immediately about getting the work done.

Avs game on Thursday!! Tune in or be square.

TIVO! We got TiVo! As my friend Joe said, Welcome to the Cult. It's pretty cool - and kind of ironic that Alex bought one yesterday w/out saying anything to me...I was just mentioning to Joe two days ago how much I wanted one. I've already set it up with a season pass for all of my favorite shows - "Alias", "The Sopranos", "CSI" and "Mythbusters" - and of course, the obligatory motorcycle races. We're already arguing about whose shows will get deleted first when we run out of room.

Next big purchase is patio furniture. Target has a set of wrought iron - round table & four chairs for $299. That's the best price I've seen, and I've been looking for a while now. I know I can get a better deal if I wait until the end of summer, but I want to have it for the summer. It's pretty pleasant on our back deck in the summer, would be nice to be able to sit out there on weekend mornings and after work.

Looking forward to this weekend - I'm exhausted! The only big thing I might have going on is that work is giving away tickets to the Avs game on Saturday - hopefully it will be my name drawn!

Paperwork and more paperwork. This buying property stuff sucks. At least it's almost over. I spend a couple of hours every morning making copies, faxing documents, preparing FedEx packages, making calls re: insurance and inspections. Ugg. It's like having another job.

Speaking of jobs, mine is really starting to bite. I've got an HR department that doesn't want to do HR stuff, so it's now my job (no extra pay or credit for doing the work, thank you very much). Plus, because I was a "bad seed" last year, I have to go through some special written review process this year to make sure that I'm behaving myself. This despite the fact that I rebutted their comments (in writing) last year, took issue with both my review and the manner in which it was conducted. Do you think I got any response???? NO! Not a peep. So much for give and take.

When can I quit?

Looks like I'll be on my own this weekend - I had entertained the idea of going to Topeka with Alex - but there's so much I need to do this weekend, and it will be such a fast trip that I think I will probably stay home. Plus, we're going to need plenty of dog-sitting help later in the season, so I don't want to use up all the goodwill now. I also don't want to miss baby swim class on Saturday morning - or happy hour with my friend Michele on Friday night, or my shift at the shelter on Saturday, or my movie with Joni on Sunday, etc. I may try and do the MAM (Mid America Motorplex) race in Omaha on the 26th - that should be interesting, since we close on the new house the next day!

I finally got moved to a new cell phone service (only took two weeks) - but I kept my number, have a better plan for less money, and a new phone. Pretty cool. I'll have to see how it does on the road in all of these strange places we end up racing, but so far, so good.

Off to Target at lunch - it's like giving yourself a present.

Friday, Friday, Friday is my favorite day....and a very good Friday it is! We're going to a local sports bar tonight to watch Game 2 in the Avalanche/Stars series, hoping to see another stomping by the Avs. Our neighbors, who we don't get to spend much time with, love the Lazy Dog Sports Bar, so we're hoping that they'll join us - even though they're Canadian and probably hate the Avs just on principle. We've also been invited to a couple of parties on Sunday, and I think I'll try to make it to one of them - my friends Frank & Julie are having people over, and that's always fun. They're transplanted Californians, too, and even though they're northerners, I try to forgive them and enjoy commiserating over the loss of Trader Joe's and IKEA.

After raining for two solid days, it's started to snow. We're expected to get nearly a foot tonight, although less down here near Denver. Lord knows we can use it - I'd hate to go through another summer drought like two years ago, and the fire danger that goes with it. This storm system has, I think, finally helped to put out the Picnic Rock fire up near Ft. Collins.

One last thing - I stumbled onto a cool site today - it's Books for Soldiers - soldiers or their friends/families post messages about books or magazines that are wanted by soldiers, and you get to send them an email or a care package. I'm thinking about posting a notice on the Intranet at work and offering to ship whatever people would like to donate. The only hard part is picking which message to respond to - there are so many.

Happy Easter, everyone!

Yesterday my department from work did an offsite activity at the Culinary School of the Rockies. For four hours, 21 of us worked to prepare the following:

Shrimp w/ mint & rum

Vegetable empanadas

Jerk chicken

Coconut rice

Mango salsa

Pecan corn bread

Chocolate banana sin cake

Needless to say, I did not eat again that day. I basically went home and fell into a food coma. We had a blast though.

We meet with the accountant this afternoon to do the corporate returns, and also get some advice on setting up a new corporation. Hopefully it will be quick, painless and not too expensive. While a refund would be nice, I would just be happy not to owe anything.

I'm looking forward to going home and relaxing tonight. I have a project to work on - am installing Linux on my old IBM ThinkPad - and then I plan to move my office downstairs to our basement. It's very nice down there, and will be especially pleasant in the summer because it stays so cool.

Not much news to report. The whole house-buying process is going smoothly. We had the inspection over the weekend, and the only thing of note is that it needs a new furnace, so I'll talk to the broker about having an estimate on replacement, etc. There are a few other little things, but nothing else major. The good news was that we determined that there are no obstructions in the ceiling/attic that would prevent us from raising the ceiling and putting in a couple of skylights. Plus, we have a good guy for fencing, I need to call him today.

It's going to be a busy month. Alex has 3 races in 3 different states within the next 4 weeks, plus he has to go to DC for business somewhere in there, and we're closing on the house in LA on 4/20 and the Boulder house on 4/29. I'm leaving town straightaway after the 29th to go to Brainerd for a race. There will be 2 extra dogs and an extra cat staying with us for about a month. I have finals in 4 weeks. I don't know how we'll do it. I should be allowed to take off the month of May just to rest.

One piece of "new" news is that my little brother got engaged this weekend! He and his girlfriend (Kimberly) have been together for a while, and they seems to get along really well. They're planning to move to Denver at the end of summer, I think Kimberly has some work/school lined up for herself, and my brother may be able to continue to do his current job and just work from home. However that works out, it will be nice to have them around, and to get back to the family tradition of Sunday dinner at Mom's.