Finally Updating! - Utah 2009

I haven't taken the time to sit down and make an update in a while, though I have tried to keep it from getting too stagnant by at least posting the occasional picture (even if I can't get the tagging feature to work properly). I looked back through my blog to see what I was missing, and in actuality there hasn't really been that much to blog about anyway. I was wrapping up the semester and getting a lot of work done in the office while we figured out our wedding venue and started working on wedding stuff. Since MC took care of the wedding venue post, I will just make this post about the family ski trip. This year it was Park City, UT!

Usually the Tallahassee Airport is pretty dull and not very busy. Our flight was leaving at like 6 in the morning, so we figured the combination of those two things would mean we wouldn't have to deal with crowds too much and showing up 45 minutes before our flight would be plenty. Boy were we wrong! The lines were ridiculous and by the time we actually got to the counter the lady had to do an override because it was less than 30 minutes until our flight was supposed to take off. Not exactly a relaxing way to start the morning! While it was a little hectic, we (and MCs checked bag) actually made it to Atlanta ok. We met up with the rest of the fam and were on our way!

Park City hadn't had a lot of snow before we left to head out there, but the forecast looked promising. The first day it was snowy, but the amount of residual snow was unimpressive.We were very glad to be getting snow, but it definitely was a little sloppy for the first day of skiing, especially for MC (her 3rd time out!).By the second morning, I think we had gotten over 20 inches of snow. Definitely an improvement in the scenery!One of my favorite parts of going on family vacations, especially out west, is the beer! Dad and I love to sample all the local brews, and Park City had several BrewPubs, which typically means samplers!It also means you occasionally stumble upon some pretty cool decorations, like this snazzy christmas tree!After a day of skiing and some beer, rest usually came pretty easy! Luckily, after snowing the first few days (I think we got like 28" total), the weather cleared up so I got to have some nice lift rides with my fiancee...and some action shots of my sweetie in action!Usually, after a hard day on the mountain, we'd come home, relax for a bit, then head downtown to explore some shops before finding a place to refuel (dinner and beer!)Occasionally, we'd run into some risque bears...or some bears who just wanted the accompaniment of a beautiful lady...or just confusing signage about the accomplishments of the local transit system.One really great thing about being out west is that you are surrounded by beautiful scenery, whether it be from your bedroom window...or just looking out from the slopes.I was excited about some of the scenery shots this trip because I actually brought my nice D90. It was a little cumbersome to snowboard with some of the times, but mostly it wasn't too much of a hassle and I think that some of the pics I got during the trip were definitely worth it. I only wish I had been in better shape because I could really have gotten some awesome action shots! Fortunately I still got some ok ones (Photo credit to Lauren Fincher for the ones of me).

Ramping over the barrel	Throwing a grab next to the slider
Actually hitting the slider	Backside Backslide
Mom tearing it up	MC following suit in a very active manner
Dad shredding	And Lauren on the harder stuff.

We even got some videos while we were out on the slopes! My camera will do video, but it is a little cumbersome so Dad and I just used our phones whenever we wanted to capture something. Dad caught a nice one of me on a sliderAnd I got a good one of MC and Dad tearing down the slopes.While Dad and I enjoyed the beer, the girls tended towards enjoying the food side of things a little more. You know, things like tiny little bowls of soup at the Margariteria.Or edible treats you have to build yourself, like super snazzy gingerbread trains!All-in-all it was a pretty awesome trip. Good snow, good weather, good beer and good company. As pointed out by my mom, it was also the last ski trip where we aren't all Finchers! I can't wait for next year!

As an additional note, speaking of all being Finchers, as we were filing through the craziness that was the Salt Lake City Airport, trying to get to the Medallion line, the guy looked at us and asked my dad "These all with you?" He replied yes, then he pointed at MC and said "Even this one?!" Haha, it was quite funny and my favorite brownie turned noticeably pink. Just had to share :-)

Up and At'm Turkey Trot 5k

The whole family did this one! It was low 40s with a light breeze, and I'm pretty sure it was the exact same course as last year. Plenty of rolling hills, but no huge ones that really destroyed us. Being sick the past two weeks, my training regimen was negligible, but I just did my best to keep up with Lauren and Mom (even if it almost killed me!). We found out later that mom actually won her age group! Woohoo!

It took us about 30 seconds to reach the start line, so I adjusted all the times accordingly.

30:57

Mom - 30:41
Lauren - 30:46
Dad - 37:36

Sender: Fishel This one was made of wood!

Sender: Fishel

Sender: Corey

Sender: Mom and Dad

Sender: Matt and Lynn

My Motorolla Droid!

As I was one of those folks anxious to get an Android phone as soon as I could swing it on Verizon, I thought I would do a little post about how it has been working out for me. So here it is, my new phone!One key thing I've enjoyed is the ability to get a widget for putting my calendar events on my home screen. I never found a good way to do this and it was one of the most useful features for me on phones I've had in the past. I have been using the Blackberry Storm, which hasn't gotten very good reviews, but I have definitely gotten used to. I did a mobile programming course over the summer where we programmed exclusively for Android so I was excited about the possibility of having a phone that I could write applications for. Anyhoo, more about the Droid. One of they key selling points for me was the fact that it was almost the same dimensions as my Storm, yet had a slide-out keyboard.
Having to use a software keyboard was one of my biggest gripes with the Storm. Even with its tactile feedback, I really liked the feel of an actual keyboard. So combine that with a similar size and I was pretty stoked! One thing I don't understand about this design of this phone is its "underbite." See any similarities?I don't really understand the need for the lip when they could have just made the screen a little larger or reduce the keyboard a little (I mean, do I really need a control pad?) Anyway, that is pretty minor, but still a little odd. Another design issue is the inclination of the phone to go from
to
without much effort at all. I've not had it a week and the back has come off as I pull it out of my pocket at least 3 times. Again, it's minor, but still worth mentioning. As I mentioned previously, this isn't my first experience with Android and they seem to be continually improving it. Currently my favorite feature is having 3 "home" screens to make my common things more accessible.Pretty snazzy! Thus far it has been very responsive and everything seems to be working great. I'm not sure if it is possible, but I haven't found a way to set a sound for individual txt messages (I can only change people's ringtones), but otherwise I'm extremely satisfied. Everything works well and sync's with Google pretty easily. I've heard that Verizon is kinda being an ass about nickel-and-diming people for little things (now a tethering charge is 30 dollars a month? Screw you Verizon), but it is still nice to have a really good smartphone with Verizon's network coverage. Oh, and here is another little video clip of the dock for applications (for those less familiar with Android). Pretty simple and clean.I may have more to come, but there are my initial impressions!

Home Project - Spice Rack

Ok, so I may not be the best at updating this lately, but at least I am better about throwing in a mobile post every once in a while so it doesn't get completely stagnant ;-) The weekend before last was pretty chill and I'm totally gonna mooch off MC's post about last weekend once we get it together. Anyhoo, as we just finished up this project I wanted to post to document the process!

As MC and I have both been cooking at decent amount in our new place, we knew we'd need a method of organization for spices and such. We saw some cool things, but none really suited our needs as well as we had hoped (or it was close but ridiculously expensive). So what better way to remedy than for me to just build us one!

I pulled some ideas about how to do it from what I had seen, but I would say a good portion of it was original creation. So first things first I had to get my tools "in order."After a few trips to Lowe's, I finally had the drill bits I needed and I started going to town!Unfortunately, I needed the holes to be a size that was between the standard steps between drill bit sizes. So then it became time to get creative! Something tells me you won't see this in "Carpentry for Dummies."So yeah, I essentially wrapped the drill bit in sandpaper (giving it just about the perfect amount of extra thickness) and "sanded" the holes to a slightly larger dimension. It actually worked better than I thought, except there were a few times that the sandpaper started smoking and I had second thoughts about the degree to which my new technique constituted a fire hazard. Luckily I made it through with no combustion occurring, though I did get the drill stuck a few times.Once I had all the holes drilled it was time to start priming!This was no ordinary primer. We had actually seen something similar used in a makeover-type show on television and I thought I would try it out...That's right, magnetic paint! I thought it would be super cool to be able to decorate it and attach things to it just like the fridge. I put on about 4 coats, but, unfortunately, it needs somewhere between 20 and 200 coats to be effective (my educated guesses). So we ended up with VERY slight magnetism, but not really enough to be useful. Oh well. So since all our appliances are white, I decided to go ahead and paint the spice rack to match then did the appropriate labeling.While it did match the appliances, it seemed a little "sterile" and we decided it needed a little something extra. We'll get to that in a minute.

On a side note, last year's christmas trip included an old Fincher family past time, putting together puzzles. I can't recall a single time that we visited Dad's parents where there wasn't a puzzle being worked on. So MC and I decided to take that idea and use our fairly new (to us anyway) kitchen table to put together our first puzzle in the new apartment! Don't puzzles always look a little daunting when you first lay everything out?I like putting together puzzles, but it became a serious challenge to MC. I think she may have even dreamt about the next piece she could fit together. She definitely caught some puzzle-mania! Anyhoo, as I think is fairly standard we started out trying to get the border together.Then we continued whenever we had a free moment! Getting a little closer...And done!Now you may be wondering "why is he telling me a random story about a puzzle? Wasn't this supposed to be about a spice rack!?" Don't worry, it will all make sense in a minute. So as I mentioned earlier, the spice rack looked a little bare. It's a pretty large item and having it be completely white was just too dull and bland, especially for OUR kitchen! So I had the idea that we could get a puzzle with an appropriate theme (in our case fruits and vegetables) and we could piece together some decoration (pun intended). I thought it was a cool idea because we had some fairly large blank spaces that would lend perfectly to larger completed portions of the puzzle, and then we could use appropriately sized sections to fill any spaces we wanted to fill. I did an initial template, then MC finalized the layout of the pieces. It is a little busy, but I still think it turned out pretty snazzy and definitely unique! Here she is in her entirety.And here's a close up of the measuring spoon sectionWhile it took a while from start to finish, I think it is definitely worth it to not only have the customization aspect, but also to know you made it yourself! This handyman stuff is turning out to be pretty fun! :-)