Dad's Birthday

Lauren and I headed back to Minnesota for my dad's 60th birthday party this last weekend. It was really nice to see him as well as all of the friends and family that were able to attend.

Before and After

Wedding















Bachelor Party

Honeymoon Pictures

I finally got around to posting more of the honeymoon pictures. It seems like so long ago, but it was only 8 weeks ago that we were leaving for the trip.

DU Hockey Game

We went to the DU hockey game on Friday night. It was a lot of fun. College hockey really doesn't get enough press, it's a great sport to watch. At the end of the first period it was 1-1, Wisconsin scored 3 quick goals early in the second period, however the Pioneers fought back and won 6 to 5. DU also won again on Saturday night, so they are off to a good start at 4-0.

Homecoming

I headed back to Bozeman for homecoming this last weekend. As you can see from the picture, it was COLD! It was about 30 degrees, snowing and windy. Not exactly what you expect for fall football weather. The Cats also lost unfortunately, but I still had a great time. I always enjoy heading back and catching up with many of my friends from college.

Jon Reep

We went downtown to see Jon Reep, this past weekend. You may know Jon as "the hemi guy" or the winner of Last Comic Standing. It was a good show. He did a lot of new material and didn't reuse anything from the show. If he is in your town I'd recommend checking it out.

National Archaeological Museum of Athens

Today is a gray and drizzly day in Athens. Lauren also was up much of the night and unfortunately is not feeling well. So we thought we would take it easy and took a cab over to the National Archaeological Museum. It was neat to see the items that were found in all of the sites that we saw yesterday and to learn a bit more about Greek history. Now we'll take it easy the rest of today so that Lauren can get some rest and we can get ready to head home tomorrow.

The Sites of Athens, Part ΔΥΟ (Two)

This morning (Friday) after breakfast we headed out to see the remaining sites in Athens on our multi-site ticket. We visited Keramikos (an ancient graveyard), the ancient agora, Roman agora and Hadrian's library. Some of these structures are very well maintained such as the Hephaisteion in the background of this picture and others are reduced to fields of rocks. There are many restoration efforts going on, but Italy has done a much better job of maintaining and restoring their historical sites. One of the other interesting parts of Athens is that there are a LOT of dogs that just seem to be roaming around. Many of them have collars and look to be well fed, in many cases fat, so we assume that they are pets and the culture here allows them to roam around town. Our trip has been a lot of fun but we are starting to get ready to come home. We plan to relax during our last day here tomorrow, which is especially necessary as Lauren has started to feel a bit sick today.

The sites of Athens

We arrived in Athens Wednesday afternoon. We checked in to our hotel, which is wonderful, and decided to take a walk in to the city center and towards Plaka, which is the historic district of Athens. It's a very neat part of the city and really is the tourist center of the city. Also, all the well known monuments in Athens are right around this area. We started Thursday morning with a walk to the Acropolis where we saw the Parthenon (pictured above), Erectheion and The Temple of Athena Nike. We then visited Hadrian's Arch, the Theater of Dionysus, the Temple of Olympian Zeus, Panathianiko Stadium (the stadium for the first modern Olympics in 1896), the Congress building and Parliment building. Since these sites were all so close to one another, we were finished with site seeing by lunch. At lunch we finally had some authentic Greek dessert: baklavah! I think we both enjoy the authentic Italian dessert, gelato, more. We also visited a little liqueur and ouzo bar where we both had a small class of flavored liqueur made right there in the bar. It was a really neat place because the high walls were lined in hundreds of colorful bottles of liquers. In the evening, we took a cablecar up to the top of Lycabettus Hill, the tallest hill in Athens.

Relaxing in Corfu

Monday and Tuesday we did a lot of relaxing in Corfu. With thunderstorms expected most of the week, the weather outlook wasn't looking great when we arrived. However, about mid-day Monday the sun broke through and we only had one short rain shower during our stay. The bungalow shown above was our room at the hotel and it really wasn't very nice. Though, the hotel had a very nice pool, probably the best one in the area, so we spent most of our day Tuesday just laying by the pool. We also took a couple of strolls through the town of Dassia and had a wonderful lunch and dinner there. Neither of us knew that we would enjoy Greek food so much.

Trains, Boats and Cabs

We spent all of the day on Sunday traveling. We had three different trains to get from Salerno to Brindisi where we caught a ferry to head over to Corfu. We got into our hotel in Corfu about 9:30 am on Sunday. This was just enough time to grab breakfast at the hotel which was REALLY good. Unfortunately when we arrived it was raining and the forecast didn’t look good for the next few days. However later in the day it cleared up and we were able to get out and spend some time on the beach, it turns out that our cab driver was right when he said “you see the sun today, no problem”. If the weather cooperates we’ll have one more day on the beach today and then off to Athens on Wednesday morning.

Hurricane?

After our day hiking we thought we would relax on Saturday at our hotel in Raito. We thought we would spend this day by the pool, but the weather did not cooperate. With breakfast in our stomachs we headed back to the room and started organizing for the day. We noticed that it was getting pretty dark outside the window and difficult to see. Pretty soon you couldn’t see more then about 50 feet out the window and the wind was blowing so hard that the door to our balcony was pushed back off the seal and water started coming in under the door from the rain. We stuck a towel down there and went back to looking out the window as branches went flying by. When we saw the chair from the deck two stories down go flying by UP the hill we thought maybe we should get away from the window. About this time the alarm in the hotel went off and we headed out to the stairwell where there were no windows. Once we were in the stairwell the storm had passed but it was a pretty exciting few minutes. Luckily everybody was ok, but the hotel suffered a fair amount of damage. A couple of large picture windows were broken and every one of their glass table tops were smashed along with a few of the large patio umbrellas. We spent most of the day just hanging out in the room and on our balcony, although we did make a trip up to the spa (hot tub type pool, but with cooler water, sauna, steam room).

Vesuvius

After we exited Pompeii we decided to head up to Vesuvius. Although it was more expensive we ended up hiring a driver to take us up to the top and were VERY glad we did in the end. It was nice to not have to wait on a group and also needed to be taken back down to a different train station to get back to Salerno. It was about a 20 minute drive each way up to the Vesuvius site. Once there we hiked at a pretty quick pace and were at the top in 15 minutes. We then spent some time enjoying the view of Naples and checking out the crater. We then took some pictures and leisurely strolled back down to our cab.

Pompei

On our first day in Raito (Friday) we decided to head up to Pompeii and check out the ruins. We caught a bus down to Salerno and then a train up to Pompeii. It was an easy trip and we were in Pompeii pretty early. The trains and the buses run a LOT in the mornings. Pompeii was really cool to see. Lauren and I had visited an exhibit at the Minnesota Science Museum last year that described life in Pompeii and showed us many of the traveling artifacts from the site. So with that information already in our minds, it was really neat to then be able to walk through the space and imagine what life was like when all those items were in use in that place. We also thought it was really good that we had the information from the MN Science Museum since the Pompeii site was mostly the buildings and not really any of the artifacts. I wonder if at other times they have some of those things out because much of that stuff was stacked on shelves and locked up so you could see it a bit on the way by, but it would be really neat for them to setup a home as it looked before the explosion. We both really enjoyed this day.

Internet Troubles

Sorry for the delays in posting on the blog, it’s been quite hard for us to get internet at the last couple of stops. In Raito it was supposed to be included with the room, but their internet didn’t work and we were stuck using the internet on the TV so only quickly checked e-mail. Now in Corfu it works well but it’s very expensive, about $12 for one hour. I knew this would be the case ahead of time, but it worked so well in Rome and of course we are both used to fast free internet at the hotels we stay at in the US.

Search for a straigtening iron

Planning our morning after breakfast we decided that we would visit a few sights on our way to Rome Termini where we thought we might be able to find a voltage converter. We stopped by Quirinale (Parliament), Santa Maria degli Angeli and the Piazza delia Repubblica. The church was really interesting as it was designed by Michelangelo and built into the side of a hill. After this we were quite close to Rome Termini and wandered around asking people for a voltage converter, we found a couple but they were only good to 45 watts. Finally when we were about to leave we found a straigtening iron for 30 Euro. With our staightening iron in hand we were finally ready for lunch. After lunch we rested a bit and then visited the Piazza di Spagna and Piazza Navona. On our way to the Piazzas we stoped into a bakery and Lauren had a couple of small pastieries. This was her favorite part of the trip so far, especially the "chocolate filled boat" pastry. Finally after a long day we relaxed and had a drink at the rooftop bar. Now we are off for our last dinner in Rome.

The Vatican

Today (Tuesday) we visited the Vatican and Castel Sant'Angelo. We spent most of the day at the Vatican, visiting St. Peter's square, St. Peter's Basilica, the papal tombs, and the Vatican museum which included the Sistine Chaple. Lauren's favorite part was climbing to the top of the dome at St. Peter's Basilica, despite the hot and humid climb up 320 stairs thjrough a very small and slanted stairwell. After lunch we visited Castel Sant'Angelo which was a built originally for the Emperor Hadrian and then was used as a residence and castle for medieval popes. It was very neat to walk around in, plus it offered great views of the Vatican and Rome from the top of the castle. This picture was taken atop the castle and you can see the Vatican's St. Peter's Basilica just to the right of Erik's head. And to finish the day, Lauren lost all use of her 170W straightening iron due to our electric converter only being good for 85W and less and the fuses being blown. Lauren will have to continue the trip with curly hair…OH NO! According to Erik, luckily, all of the important electronics (like computers) take 220 Volts.

Colosseum

On Monday we visited a number of the Roman empire sites. We started with the forum and palatine hill then visited the Colosseum. We ended the day by visiting a couple of churches, Saint Ignazio and San Clemente. San Clemente has been excavated below to allow you to visit an ancient christian church on the first level down and a pagan church at the lowest level. We ended the day with another nice meal on one of the side streets by the hotel and of course some gelato.

Arriving in Rome

We made it into Rome yesterday (Sunday) in the afternoon. The flight was a bit late but it was a pretty uneventful one. Both Lauren and I slept pretty well on the plane which made the trip and staying up to a "normal" bed time easier. The cab driver dropped us off on a busy street and pointed us down an allyway to the hotel which was a bit odd, but it was clearly a tourist area so we headed down the ally and found our hotel just a few feet away. Our hotel is only a couple of minutes walk to the Pantheon in one direction and Trevi Fountain in the other direction. We visited both yesterday as well as the only Gothic church in Rome, Santa Maria alla Minerva. We ended the day by eating dinner in the Piazza in front of the Pantheon and getting some Gelato on the way home. It was a great start to our Honeymoon.

21

We watched the movie 21 on Friday. The movie was good but the book was a LOT better, that's always the case though. What really surprised me was that they could even say the movie was based on the book Bringing Down the House. About the only thing from the book that was in the movie is that some kids from MIT played blackjack and had a system for counting cards, everything else was different. The entire back story of the main character, a new love interest, etc. Most of the other movies that I've seen which were based on a book I read, were still true to the book. Sure they cut out much of the detail to fit it into a 90-120 minute movie, but at least the story is the same. It makes me wonder how many movies I've seen where I haven't read the book that are totally different than the original authors version. Or even worse "based" on a true story where only one piece is the same and the rest is all made up. This is especially scary considering many of us think anything in a book, movie or on TV is true, when in reality we all need to be a bit more critical of our information sources.

New Dishwasher

Lauren has been after me to get a new dishwasher for awhile now. The old one was working but was definitely on it's last leg. So Appliance World had one of these big warehouse sales this weekend. We stopped over there late morning and it was a giant open room full of appliances and you had to wander around and pick the one that you wanted. It was pretty chaotic.

We spent a bit of time looking around and finally decided on one that we wanted, we had it tagged with our name, got the paperwork and headed over to check out. The line was 60-75 minutes long to pay and check out. We had some other errands to run and we wanted to grab lunch so we decided we would come back later.

After eating and accomplishing some other things we headed back to pick up the dishwasher. The line had died down and it was probably only 15 minutes or so to get checked out. Next we got loaded up and headed home to install this thing.

It fought us every step of the way. It was tough getting the old one out. Finally after that was done we got the new one in and almost everything connected only to realize that the copper elbow was the wrong size for our piping. So after taking the dishwasher back out and replacing the copper elbow with the one from the old dishwasher we were back in business. Finally everything was hooked up and we were ready to fire it up.

A few minutes into the initial run we realize that there is a leak. After spending a good amount of time checking all the connections finally we look at the unit itself. It looks like the leak is coming from the bottom of the dishwasher but it's hard to tell. So out the new dishwasher comes again. Once we have it out and tipped on it's back we can see that there is in fact a tiny slit in the bottom of the sump housing. Now what?

After much debate and calls to the store and GE all with no answer Lauren finally heads back over to the warehouse sale to see what they have to say. To their credit they were happy to exchange the unit. We got lucky that they had another one of the same model given how the sale worked but they were very good.

So we get back home and get dishwasher number two installed, start it running and everything looks great. No leaks but we better run the rinse cycle one more time to be sure. We had just started to celebrate victory when Lauren opened the door and realizes that the dishwasher is not draining. Now what?

Next we bail out all the water with cups and check the drain hose to make sure there are no kinks, seems like there might be one so we try again. No go; still not draining. There is no way we got two of these that are bad did we? Again checking all the connections, making sure there is no kink in the hose. Finally by some stroke of luck I notice there is a loose wire. Also there is an open blade where this wire would go that looks like it's on the solenoid that opens the sump valve. That must have been it with the wire reconnected everything runs great. The dishwasher empties and we are finally done. All in all this was probably something like 12 hours of elapsed time, so the moral of the story is: you're better off paying service people to do this work!

Sigma Chi Balfour Leadership Training Workshop 2008

I had the opportunity again this year to take a long weekend and serve as a financial management faculty member for BLTW. It really is amazing the experiences and resources that are available to our undergraduate members. I can only hope that our undergraduates realize what a tremendous opportunity they have and recruit using some of these opportunities as selling points.

This was the best workshop that I've had since I was there as an undergraduate. The group of young men who were in my discussion group were all very passionate and committed to improving the financial state of their chapters. We spent a good amount of time talking about how to lead the chapter to create a culture of accountability as well as spent time discussing the nuts and bolts of their office including the pros and cons of the tools that are available to them.

If this group of young men represents the quality of individuals whom we are admiting to our order I have a lot of confidence in a bright future for our organization. My Sigma Chi batteries are officially recharged!!!

Breckenridge

Lauren and I were up in Breckenridge again this weekend for some final wedding preparations. It was a beautiful weekend up there and we're both really excited for folks to come out and enjoy the labor day weekend with us in the mountains. For anybody who is coming out early make sure to check out the Breckenridge summer website. It provides a lot of information about all the great activities available up there in the summer to help you plan your vacation.

Fourth of July

This year for fourth the of July, Lauren and I stayed around home. It was nice to have a few days to just relax. On the fourth itself we headed to the Highlands Ranch celebration. There was a good show but also not so many people that it was hard to get around or cramped. Also the band that was playing right before the fireworks was one that we considered for our wedding, so it was interesting to hear them play. Overall it was a good relaxing fourth of July weekend.

Dad & Sandy's Wedding

This past weekend Lauren and I were back in Minnesota for my Dad and Sandy's wedding. I was the best man, this is a role that I never thought I would fill, but I'm glad that I did. Losing my mother in 2001 was difficult but I'm very glad that my dad has Sandy, I know that he is very happy. The ceremony and reception were both a lot of fun and running around Litchfield reminded me a bit of being back in Bozeman.

2008 Baja Sportfishing Fraternity Challenge

Over Memorial Day weekend I went fishing with my Dad and Uncle in Los Barriles, Baja, Mexico. This fishing trip was part of the 2008 Baja Sportfishing Fraternity Challenge. It was a fun trip and a good couple of day getaway. The resort was fishing focused, had nice meals and worked well for getting up in the morning and heading out to the boat. Photos

Twins in Town

The Twins were in town playing at Coors Field on Friday, Saturday and Sunday. We were able to go to the games on Friday and Sunday. Unfortunately the Twins lost the series. They won (4-2) on Friday and lost (6-2) on Sunday. They also lost on Saturday. I was disappointed that on Sunday neither Gomez or Mauer played. It was fun to see them come to town and I hope to be able to attend again when they make it back in 6 years.

Movies

I've been slacking off a bit updating the blog so I thought I would drop a note here on the blog about some movies that we watched over the weekend.

	This movie was pretty much what you would expect. It was a cute chick flick. If you like Runaway Bride, Wedding Planner, etc then you'll like this movie.
	The Savages was a pretty good movie, although also pretty sad. It's a dark comedy about two middle aged children dealing with their father aging. I'd recommend it but you need to be in the right mood for this one.
	I was a little disappointed by Walk Hard: The Dewey Cox Story. It had a couple of laughs in it but John C. Reilly is no Will Ferrell. Throughout this movie it felt like he was trying really hard to be just like Will Ferrell and couldn't quite pull it off.

Photography Blog

As you might have noticed, I've struggled quite a bit with the best way to post pictures to this blog and the blog has changed many times. I've finally decided to start another blog purely for pictures and try to put other content and text into this site. With this change I'm going to try and rework this blog to make it a bit more visually appealing, but I've had enough for now just getting the photography blog to a point that it's acceptable to me. I'll probably continue to tweak that one as well but I think it's pretty close to what I want. You can check it out at http://erikbostromphotography.blogspot.com

Surreal

Recent Photos

A few photos for your enjoyment if you click on the picture above, which I'm using for photofriday.com submittal of "What is that?"

Mountain

Another photofriday.com submittal.

Passage of Time

Another photofriday.com submittal.

Lauren's Birthday

Lauren's birthday was on 12/30 and we were in Minnesota for the holidays. We headed from Darwin, MN where my dad lives up to St. Cloud, MN for dinner at Mexican Village. As we were heading back to our car after dinner we spotted this fallout shelter sign on an appliance store next to the restaurant.