Team Vacation

Last year, Mark and I vacation with Scott and Julie in Zihuatenjo, Mexico. It was an amazing vacation - but it was a bit too hot for the boys. This year we opted to stay closer to home (in the states) and we rented a posh house on Shadow Lake between Winter Park and Estes Park, Colorado. This meant we got to bring our dogs!

Scott and Julie did all of our grocery shopping - and because we were on vacation Julie let Scott put all types of yummy vacation food (licorice, chips, lucky charms, ice cream, breakfast danish... the list went on and on) in the cart!

We found Scott many mornings on the deck, wrapped up in his blankets with his laptop - but not working, just reading.

We lazed around, read lots of books (Congratulations to Julie for finishing her biography of John Adams!) and took naps. Everyday around 3:00 the walk police (Julie) would start hounding us to get our walk clothes on - anyone who knows julie knows that she hates hiking, what a mom does for her dog!

Sadly even well behaved baby dogs aren't allowed in the National Park, only National Forest - so we had to search to find some trails that we could use. Our first day, we encountered a scary man in the woods (with no baby dog) - fortunately the walk police let us turn around.

Lola and Sumo had a blast - Lola was the leader and they would run back and forth about 20 yards off the trail and then bound back across - they definitely got their workout.

Scott, Lola and Sumo were the only brave souls to get in the frigid water. It was so cold, that instead of a swimming sign, it was a wading sign (no one in their right mind, except scott and the dogs) would swim without a wet suit. BRRR. Here is a picture of Lola retrieving her tennis ball ring.

I was hoping the lake was floatable, so I got us some floaters - they came in handy for reading/sunning - and dog playing. Lola and Sumo got along great (as always) - Sumo is a tough one and uses his body to push lola around. They played keep away with the chewy of the moment for hours, and hours, and hours.

We decided to travel home through Estes Park hoping to see a Moose - but all we saw was a bunch of elk. Dang!

We made it back to our house with time to head to dinner and see the Illusionist, which was pretty good. We had a fabulous time (as always) and can't wait for next year! :)

Happy Birthday Josh!!

This is a double shout out:
One to Josh - Happy Birthday!! Josh and Amy were in Ohio this weekend, but are on their way home to celebrate tonight.

Two to the broncos for pulling out a win in OT yesterday. With 1 minute left in the game I decided to get my bronco's shirt on and my orange pom poms (which drove lola insane and quickly were put away) clearly it helped. I am in good position to win the football pool this week - if pittsburg wins, otherwise Chris will take the lead. Go Steelers!!

Antique Roadshow!

A couple of months ago we moved my grandma Jan into an assisted living facility - its a great place, but much smaller than her current house. Now many of you know my grandma loved to collect antiques and she and my grandpa collected for over 50 years. Her house (which we are also selling) is just over 5000 square feet and it was filled to the brim with collectibles.

My parents decided we needed to have an estate sale and they looked into the services that would do this for you and realized "Hey maybe we can do it ourselves." My mom jumped in and began collecting helpers - Uncle Greg, Cousin Ben, Aunt Debbie, even Mark and Josh and I were up for a long weekend. She also found a couple of key helpers - Sue D (an avid collecter/artist), Sue M. and Helen (works for a local estate sale company). My mom and dad spent the whole summer weeding out, organizing, researching and displaying most of my grandma's collection (don't worry my grandma made sure to note down her favorite and most prized possesions which we family was able to keep - I am the new proud owner of some japanese china and Josh and Amy have a new player piano!!)

I headed up to Montana last wednesday to help with the actual sale which was to run thursday 4-7, Friday 9-3 and Saturday 9-3. I brought with me some orange aprons that I fabric dyed to match my mom's keen shoes for all the workers. We had 18 workers total and quite a system.


Here we are kicking off the sale with a collection of old bells. Here you see me, helen, annette (she is my dad's cousin), Ben, and Sue D. We got a lot of advice from Sue M. on how to run the sale including getting an armed security guard to make sure collectibles weren't pocketed. Many of our workers would collect items from shoppers and then deliver them to the cashiers (Me, Mom and Shelley) until they wanted to check out. Every room in the house was filled with stuff.

We ran the ad starting thursday - so no early notice, and by 3:00 people were lining the street to come in - our line wrapped around the block. The Richau name is definitely known around Billings in the antique community.


Here are the aprons after day one. :)

Day one and two we held firm on prices and then on day three we had a very difficult system - all items under $10 were 50% off and anything over was 20% off unless marked firm or if it had a blue stamp on it. Whew - we were flustered all day!

Here's dad after loading up some good...

And Ben with ayden bringing one of grandma's carts around.

Greg loading up some gothic windows

I took some pictures to give you a flavor of the rooms - they were packed!!

Well now for the best part... how much did we make. For three day's of sales we made just over $25,000. We even had a few people ask for our business cards - they thought we were a professional business. :) It was a hard weekend because this really was my grandparents life - but we were so happy to see how the treasures that we have grown up attributing to my grandparents found great homes with people who will also treasure them.

Watching the antique road show will never be the same!

Swimming

We have discovered a great little dog park in Louisville that has a big grassy yard and a pond for dogs to swim in. Lola was pretty hesitant at first just getting wet up to her tummy - but after watching a few dogs she was perfecting her launch dive.

Here she is on her way in....



Successfully grabbing the ball...


View of the pond... yes its pretty skanky, but the dogs don'g seem to care.



Do they make a dog olympics?

Visiting from California

In June I convinced some friends from Mercury to come out to Colorado. Keren (who is normally based in israel) was over in the states for a few months and I wanted her to come and see Colorado before she went home. Keren, Vikram, Laarni and Justin (her husband that works at apple!) arrived late Friday night for the weekend. In my grand plan to convince people to move to colorado - I have started to put together a list of fun things to do. Its actually a plan to make me and Mark get out and do some colorado activities.



We got up Saturday and decided our first activity would be to head to Golden to the Coors brewery tour. Its free to the public and runs monday through saturday. It took us about 40 minutes to drive to golden and 20 minutes to locate the secret entrance to the brewery. We took a shuttle from the parking lot to the entrance and along the ride our driver gave us some history on Adolf Coors and the town of golden. The brewery looks like a ginormous factory and I was imagining the McKenzie Brothers in Strange Brew...



When we arrived in the main lobby we were all given beer labels that would put us into our group - We lucked out and got Keystone (key-light-baby!).

The tour was very cool - they show you how the hops are processed, the kettles that brew the beer and the packaging plant. When the tour is done they lead you into the tasting room where you get your 3 free drinks.

I like the Blue Moon the best - so did Laarni. Here we are giving a toast to coors.

We also headed to the gift shop where I thought about buying this makeshift hat - but instead I settled on a Beer-Babe shirt! :)

Day two we decided to head up to Rocky Mountain National Park and take a hike. We met up with Greg and Steven Loewy. We attempted to go to Bridal Veil Falls but they didn't have parking and sure enough they have a ranger on site making sure we follow the rules. We drover around some more and ended up at the hike to Gem Lake.

It was a short hike (4 miles round trip) but it was definitely a steep one - especially for my non-aclimatized friends. Here we are on the trail...

We did make it to the top, only to realize that it was in fact a pond, not a lake - and it was only about 12 inches deep. The rock formations were pretty impressive.


After a short rest at the top, we headed back down - but first we needed some posed shots with the group and with the girls.





By this time we were starving (for a drink) so we headed downtown Boulder to BJ's for lunch.

It was a relaxing but very fun weekend - now if I can just convince them to move here!!

Lola and Sumo (a perfect pair)

geez, I have not been a very good blogger but I have lots to blog about!



In May Chris arranged for an all boys camping trip in Colorado - Julie and I decided this was the perfect opportunity for a girls spa weekend with dogs. Everyone arrived on Thursday and popped over for a BBQ to celebrate Lola's first birthday. Sumo is a professional traveler and was right at home in colorado!



Julie and I had an amazing relaxing weekend celebrating Julie's recovery from breast cancer - we had lunch (with yummy cocktails) at Jills and went over to the St. Julian Spa for facials. We spent an entire day in our jammies, but we had the most fun with our dogs.

I think we have blogged about Sumo before - but he is Scott and Julie's cutest little pug. He gets to do all the cool things like snuggle on the couch and sleep with scott and julie (with the white noise machine to cover up his cute little snores). Here is sumo with uncle mark.

At first Lola was extremely territorial - especially not wanting to share her new birthday toys from Sumo. Lola decided to show Sumo how a destructive Dog behaves...



I happened upon both dogs - Lola's toy, both dogs, and our floor was covered in dirt. This was something new for Lola - so I assumed that sumo must have put her up to it.



It became pretty clear who the ring leader was...

The dogs had a great weekend, we went for walks in the open space where sumo showed lola how to swim (he learned at the beach in florida). Lola showed Sumo how tough she was by chewing up the kiddie pool.



much of the time was spent wrestling around... Sumo, while a bit smaller, could definitely give Lola a run for her money using his body mass to push her around and then pull her down by her collar - GO SUMO!










Of course Mom was there just in case...



The trip was a success - we realized that Lola and Sumo are great playmates - and I was extremely happy that lots of playing leads to a loooong nap. (sumo made good use of crickets bumper bed).





I think this weekend should be a tradition!

Happy Mother's Day

This post is a little late... :) Last weekend we brought my mom down from Montana to spend the weekend with us. We spent Saturday morning golfing at Indian Peaks - it was a beautiful day, about 72 degrees with a slight breeze. Josh and I showed up without sunscreen - somehow mark helped remind my mom, but not me. We were screwed, but didn't realize it until later that night. I have quite a farmers tan that I will be working to correct.

We play a game called Bingo, Bango, Bongo (I have no idea what it means), but basically each hole you can collect up to 5 points (Longest Drive, First On the Green, Closest to the Pin, Longest Put and overall score). So even if your overall score is poor you can still make some money. Amy met us with Beers on hole 6 (she was out doing yard work). This shot is of my mom on Hole 18 - the money shot - it looks like she is doing some product placement for Corona.

Sunday we had breakfast at the Huckleberry Cafe and then headed to see Poseidon, which was pretty entertaining. :) We topped our night off with pizza and the last episode of Survivor.

We love you Mom! :)

Old Wykehamists in London

I recently went over to the UK on business and took the weekend before to see family and friends. I spent the weekend with Patsy and Anthony and got to hang out with Jonathan and Selena and take a ride in Richmond park as well!

One highlight of the weekend was seeing my old friends from Winchester (we're known as Wykehamists after the founder William of Wykeham). I haven't seen most of them since I left school almost 15 years ago, so I was somewhat apprehensive about seeing them all. It turned out that everyone looked much the same and had very much the same sense of humor. So it was one of those nights when you just laughed until your belly hurt!

Between discussing how everyone was doing (4 out of six married, one with 2 kids etc.) and what other people not present were doing, there was much reminiscing about old days and studying and the trouble we got into. My favorite quote of the night (at least for opening up memories that have long been dormant) was regarding our Latin exams that included translating passages from the Aeniad. We ended up memorizing a translation of the relevant passages rather than taking a chance on trying to translate the text directly. But some of the phrasing seemed so much more elegant in latin than english. Case in point: undique oppugnabatur - meaning "being attacked from all sides" (this was the end of the trojan war after all). Yes were were dorks back then too.

It was so refreshing to see everyone is doing well and few are taking conventional routes to success. I was lucky enought to see my Dad and Alison wednesday night before I left as they had just returned from New Zealand by way of Hong Kong. My dad even managed to bring back 4 bottles of wine that we had left in nelson, so those bottles have travelled about three-quarters of the way around the world!

Farewell Mercury! (sort of)

Well I did it, after seven years I decided to leave Mercury. It was a sad day for me yesterday as I headed to the airport after saying good bye (I managed to hold it together until I got to my car).

It has been quite a journey for me... I started as an intern in the Marketing Department (Yay Chris Smith). During this time, Raj put together a Geekend [1] and since all of my roomies were going I went as well. This weekend I worked on a splash tutorial for Solution Express (soon to be Contori) with Chris Morace. After that Chris brought me into R&D as an interface designer.

Through my seven years I got to work with a ton of great developers and I really started to understand (with lots-o-help from Chris and Scott) where I could provide value for a web application. I went through a role naming crisis over the years [2] - Graphic Designer (nope) --> Visual Owner aka V.O. (cute, but maybe too cute?) --> Interaction Designer (Yup, its all the rage!).

Chain Link became Kintana - Kintana was purchased by Mercury - and I continued to work on ITG. I learned a lot... here are a few highlights

1. A picture really is worth a thousand words - when in doubt mock it up!
2. Being nice to people will get you more (Josh and Mark this one is for you) - you don't know how many additions I got put into the product by asking nicely [3]
3. Validation is the key to making me do anything - I pretty much work for validation (and a paycheck I suppose)
4. Working with friends is hard at times, but it is so worth it, especially if you get to have beers after work
5. There are some crazy talented people out there - I was privileged to work with them
6. There is no better way to bond than over a few beers!

So what's next for me?
Well I am going to be working part time for JotSpot (its all the rage too!) and then I am going to do some contracting work (for Mercury for a while). I am excited for the move to Jot to be in a smaller company and to have a consumer audience (Good Bye IT!)

Why did I do it?
Many reasons, but really I was hoping for diversity of work and more time to do my Mandy projects. I realized that I needed to actually build time into my schedule instead of trying to work on the weekends - so I now have the best of both worlds.

I won't miss Mercury the company, but I will miss Mercury the people - I will continue to woo you all to Boulder! So be prepared. :)



[1]: A Geekend is a weekend where you woo developers to work all day and night by giving them caffeine and snacks (and beer, which is why I went) - it works surprisingly well.

[2]: Don't all great artists go through this?

[3]: those little smileys in your emails work wonders as well! :)

London weather

I came over to the UK for a business trip and have spent a lovely couple of days with my aunt Patsy and Anthony and Jonathan. But, one thing I don't miss about England is the weather. Despite promising a few sunny days, yahoo weather now has a more accurate appraisal of the weather. Notice the fine gradations between showers and light rain.