Day One

So far, so good.

I found the new building, but forgot to swipe my ID when walking in. Great security... it worries me a little that any ya-hoo can get into this place. It definitely is not the Fort Knox that my old office building was. My old office building had airport security. Literally, we had to walk through metal detectors and our bags x-rayed as well. Just like at the airport... but you didn't have to take your liquids out.

I found my office, with the help of a welcome committee member. I totally forgot to look at the map before I showed up today and just hoped someone would know where to direct me.

I found the coffee station and bathroom (both very important!), with the help of my coworker Toby. It pays to show up late sometimes. Coffee is very near to my office and it's one of those Keurig machines with a few different flavors. Awesome!

I got my new printer set up and changed my voicemail. I hate making voicemail messages. I always sound like such a dork... sort of chipmunk like!

I located Matt's new office (yep, on a different floor, very far away!) He has an AWESOME view! When it's nicer outside, I'll run down and take a picture.

I unpacked everything (all ONE crate that I had - I travel light!) I have so much extra room in this office. It's a lot bigger than I expected it to be. There is a tray screwed in underneath my desk and it bothers me. I tried taking it out myself, but that was a bad idea. Cut my hand! Stupid! Found out they are going to come around and install/remove them from everyone's desks later this week.

I'm still totally lost walking around this place. I need to study the map and see everything written down on paper so I can visualize where stuff is supposed to be in my head.

Weekend in Peru

We spent the weekend in Peru, Indiana. The annual Peru Maconoquah Challenge golf tournament was today (Sunday) and Matt likes to go back and play every year in it.

He drove there on Friday morning and met up with Ryan to play golf at Wolf Run. Before I left, Matt called and said, "hey, bring some camping stuff, we are going to be sleeping in a tent!" Um, ok. The Bontragers' were doing a campout in their backyard to celebrate the grandkids' birthdays.

On Saturday, they put up a few tents. Strangely, one of the tents only had instructions on how to fold up the tent and put it in the carrying case, but there were no instructions included on how to get the tent up! So, that one was a bit of trial and error.

Matt and Dale trying to figure it all out

Chris puts on the final touches!

One of the tents collapsed due to all the wind. So, we "volunteered" to sleep in the house. : ) It was COLD out there! Of course, as part of the deal, we got to sleep in the same room as Ryan's little boy, who is 1. (Luckily, he slept through the night and we didn't have to figure out what to do with him if he woke up crying.)

We sat around the campfire and had hot dogs and chili. We also roasted marshmallows and made s'mores. I love campfires and s'mores!

On Sunday, we went up to the golf course early so Matt could get a few practice holes in before the tournament. Apparently, there are a few foxes on the course. And Kent feeds them dog biscuits so they will walk right up to you!

Kent named the fox "Muni" after the Peru Municipal Golf Course

He walked right up to me looking for more biscuits

We couldn't believe how bushy it's tail was

Matt and Kevin (another Maconaquah alum) played against Bob (the course's pro) and Scott (a Peru alum). They played best ball and were pretty close the whole day. But, Matt's team just couldn't pull ahead at the end. Even with the last minute rally jersey. They ended up down 1.

Time to rally!

There was a cookout afterwards and they announced Peru as the winner this year.

Ahh... maybe next year Braves.

Happy Birthday to Erin!

Yum!

I forgot to mention this on Friday... but, it was Erin's birthday!

We celebrated with dinner at Pete's Pizza. And Ross got the wait staff to sing to her! : )

The chocolate cake was awesome!

Oh my!

This is the big moving weekend for our office. People are moving from the North office to the South office and people from the South office are moving into the vacated spots in the North office. I'm predicting mass chaos!

I'm so glad I don't have to mess with any of it. I just get to show up on Monday at the new building and figure out where the heck my office is located and unpack my stuff (which hopefully has made it there).

There are bright orange crates lining our walkways everywhere! And thick plastic wrap covering the floors to protect the carpet from the rolling crates. I almost wiped out on the plastic wrap... my shoes stuck to it!

And by pure luck (and I mean that sarcastically, because I have no luck at all), I am seated in the cubicle next to the "command center" for the move. The company that is organizing all this stuff has their head guys in the cube next to me.

There is some sort of flag color system that determines if you are moving to the other building, moving within the same building, not going to be in the office on Friday (the "early moves"), blah, blah, blah... apparently, there is confusion as to what flags mean what and whose crates can start getting moved to the "staging area". The movers are moving things they aren't supposed to be. Big brouhaha in the cube next to me... they are trying to figure out where the stuff is and what to do about it. Sounds like the chaos is beginning! : )

We are bailing from work a little early today for happy hour in a few hours! Getting the heck outta dodge!

Tomorrow, our office closes at noon and we must leave or will be packed up in a crate and shipped away... not really.

Utah Trip

On Thursday of last week, Matt and I headed out to Salt Lake City, Utah to visit his family. Our flight got in early that morning. We met up with his Dad and stepmom, Marcia, and went to lunch at a brick oven pizza place near BYU.

On Thursday evening, we hung out at their house and enjoyed some malts, sundaes, sodas... all courtesy of Matt's Dad's soda fountain. Yum! We also checked out his Dad's train set-up.

I sat at the counter and sampled a little bit of everything! SO GOOD!

Matt made me wear the hat while I ran the trains

On Friday morning, Matt and I hiked up the Grove Creek Trailhead. Beautiful scenery!

I have lots of pictures of Matt walking in front of me!

Matt on the edge of a big drop-off

We lucked out - the leaves had changed colors and were beautiful!

That afternoon, we drove through the mountains and stopped off at Cascade Springs. We had lunch in a small town nearby (Heber).

Me hanging out in a tree

Matt and I at Cascade Springs

On Friday night, Matt's family threw us a little party to celebrate our wedding and so I could meet more of the extended family. It was great to be able to put faces with names.

As part of our wedding gift, they gave us a weekend stay at Stein Eriksen, a mountain resort outside of Park City, Utah (where the Olympics were held). We got upgraded to a luxury suite, which was bigger than my apartments in Chicago. It was awesome... 2 full bathrooms, a full kitchen, living room with a fireplace, dining area, bedroom with a fireplace, and a huge balcony with a hot tub! All with a view of the mountains! Also, as part of the deal we got dinners at their 5-star restaurant.

We had a fabulous time! On Saturday, we had lunch at the resort - best garlic cheese fries! We spent the afternoon walking around the old Main Street area in Park City. We stopped off for a few drinks along the way. The Stein has a free shuttle to Park City, so we didn't have to worry about driving!

Garlic cheese fries - so delish!

Matt enjoying a LARGE beer at O'Shuck's Bar

Dinner Saturday night was awesome! We both had the filet and we splurged on a nice bottle of red wine.    I had a chocolate peanut butter creme brulee covered in bananas for dessert. It was delicious!

Matt made a fire in the fireplace and we hung out in the hot tub. It was just chilly enough that the hot tub felt really good.

Wish we had one of these at home!

On Sunday, we got up early to do a little hiking around the area. Actually, I slept terrible... I didn't adjust too well to the altitude. I woke up about every hour all night long (and oddly, I saw the clock at 16 after at least 3 of the times I woke up!) It was SO dry and hard to get enough oxygen. I sometimes felt like I was breathing through a straw, especially when we were hiking.

We hiked around for a few hours and got some great views of the area. There were some trails and also we could walk around on the ski runs. The ski lifts weren't running, which would have been nice. We saw quite a lot of mountain bikers riding through the woods and the hills. There was even some mountain biking race going on and people were dressed up in goofy costumes. I REALLY wanted to take some pics of that, but Matt wouldn't let me.

This was like the 8th try to get a good pic!

Matt decided we would take the steepest path up the hill

Made it to the top!

A bike trail in the woods - Hi Matt!

After the hike, we had the famous Sunday brunch at the Stein. It was amazing! There was just about everything you would want... soups, meats, seafood, sushi, salads, fruits, cheeses, Belgian waffles, omelets, crepes and a whole table full of desserts!

After all that food, we veg'd out a bit and watched some football. Then we drove down to the outlet mall and did a little shopping. Sunday night, we had dinner again at the resort. I had the wild salmon and Matt had the seared ahi tuna. Very good!

It was chilly again, so Matt made a fire and we hung out in the hot tub. It would be awesome to have one of those in Chicago... but our balcony is a little too small. : (

We had a great time... check out our shutterfly site (password: mattstacia) for more pictures.

Girls' Weekend

This past weekend, I went to St. Louis for a girls' weekend with Crystal and JJ (high school friends). So Matt was a bachelor again - two weekends in a row! He better not get used to it!

In typical girls weekend fashion, we accomplished the major requirements... get a manicure/pedicure, see a chick-flick, drink fun drinks, eat great food, and of course, lots of chatting!

I knew we'd have fun when Crystal greeted us at the airport with a welcome drink... apple-tinis... in the car... luckily we didn't get pulled over! And no, she was not drinking them while driving. We hit up the nail salon and then had dinner with more martinis for dessert. This time I had something with chocolate and banana liquers = YUM! We saw Eat, Pray, Love. I haven't read the book yet, but now I want to! Oh, and more martinis at the theater... with light-up glasses! Fun!

Glow in the dark drinks!

On Saturday, we had lunch at a place called The Three Monkeys. Loved the food! It's different being in bars where people can smoke. I got used to Chicago and being smoke-free.

Now, that's a big martini!

Afterwards, we checked out the Anheuser Busch Brewery. We got there in time to take "Beer School", so we did that before the official tour. Beer School is basically a tasting of 5 different beers and they teach you how to taste beer, how to pour it, what kind of glass is best for each of the beers... and you get a diploma and a cool bottle opener! I think I'll have my diploma framed... or not. Anyway, it was fun!

They took us upstairs to the Busch Learning Center

Learning about taste buds at Beer School

My diploma

We then took the official tour and had a few more beers at the end of that. They were handing out samples of their blueberry beer, Wild Blue, so I asked for that. The old guy serving beer tells me "this is strong, 8% alcohol" like he was trying to warn me... yeah, I don't mind dude. Then, he says to me "and it has 250 calories"... not sure if that was a slam at me, like maybe he thought I should be sticking to the "lighter" products or what. But, I still had it and it was tasty! One of those was enough, though. I got the Golden Wheat for my second free beer.

After all the beer, we decided to snooze a bit before dinner. Then we hit The Hill for dinner. The Hill is the Italian area of St. Louis and has awesome restaurants. We went to Zia's for dinner. The food was so good and we were SO full afterwards!

On Sunday, we had brunch at the Soulard Coffee Garden... we sat outside in the back garden area. The weather was beautiful! The food was really good, too!

Oh, the house we stayed at (Crystal was house-sitting) has some pretty interesting stuff in it! We didn't get to meet the owners, but we loved their collection of old beer, etc.

Then it was time to get back on the plane to Chicago. The flight home went well, except that I had some annoying girl behind me that had never been on a plane before. She had to be out of college in her early 20's. And she talked SO LOUD. She kept saying how exciting it was that she was flying and kept pointing out stupid stuff (I think she even complimented one of the stewardesses on the wings pin she was wearing). She wanted to make friends with everyone around her. If she had been sitting next to me, I would have rudely put my headphones on so she would stop talking to me. At the end of the flight, she said she felt nauseous, but she wasn't going to vomit. Great, thanks for the play-by-play, honey!

(More pictures on our Shutterfly site - password = mattstacia)

Margarita!

Because I like to extend my birthday as long as possible, we went out tonight for a little Mexican food and margaritas to celebrate. We went to Uncle Julio's Hacienda. Good food, good company, good margaritas! : )

Labor Day Weekend

Erin, Brett and I spent the weekend downstate. Friday night, we went shopping and bought WAY too much stuff. Check out this receipt! It was almost as tall as me!

On Saturday, we drove over to Quincy. We spent the afternoon visiting with my grandma. The weather was beautiful so we were able to sit outside with her and enjoy the sunshine! Afterwards, Erin, Brett and I had dinner at Tower Pizza (yum!) and then saw The Expendables (ok movie, not necessarily my kind of flick).

On Sunday, we had lunch at Chuck and June's house. Lots of food... and birthday cake! Our family is loaded with September birthdays, so we celebrated them all.

Blowing out the candles!

Me, Mom, Jean and Chuck

Erin and Mom - Ladies in red!

Thanks!

Just wanted to say a big "THANK YOU" to Matt for my awesome birthday gift. I've been wanting a laptop to use at home for a while, something small that we could take with us places if we wanted to. Something that would be great for all those pictures I like to take. I'm still trying to figure it out. I haven't used a Mac in years! But it's awesome! : )