A Look Back At 2004

After reading Dan's Blog I was inspired by his year in review and thought I should take a look back myself...

February - The first weekend started off the Badger State Winter Games. I joined up with a group of hockey players through email and by some improbable fate of the gods I was joined up by three other players from my High School team. As things went we were crushed at the games but still had an absolute blast!

May - Shannon and I are graced with wonderful parents who baby-sat Jasmine for a week while we head down to Utah to visit Dan. The week is filled with many sites like Bryce Canyon, Zion’s, and Arches National Parks then finished off with some river rafting down the Colorado!

July - A friend of mine just happens to be a professional pyro who shoots the city's fireworks off every year and I was fortunate enough to be invited to help. The whole day was miserable as it rained from 6am to 1am the next morning. Quite the long day but you will never see a more beautiful site then fireworks exploding directly over your head!

September - Shannon, Jasmine, and I head back to Rhinelander to celebrate Jaz's first birthday. The day of her party she surprises us with her first few steps! Shannon turns 26!

October - Shannon and I decided to take a week off to visit our buddy Shaun in River Falls, we had a great time relaxing and hecking out an apple orchard and corn maze!

November - This is the month we announce to friends and family that we are expecting our second child! Also this month I am fortunate enough to shoot another 8 pointer during deer season.

December - And here we are... We headed up to Rhinelander to celebrate the holidays with the family; I was surprised with a snowboard for Christmas unfortunately the 40 below weather killed the idea of trying it out. On the 27th I turned 25, getting old now ;)

Its Not My Money!

This last weekend while my buddy Shaun was in town we decided to go blow a few dollars at the casino playing blackjack. To give you a little background we each decided to play with a hundred dollars and just have a good time. Now statistically speaking the odds are in the casinos favor and for most of the night we worked in a see-saw like fashion where one of us would go ahead and the other would be down. About the time we started to debate leaving I was sitting with close to $200 while Shaun was around $60. Now call it Christmas spirit or maybe it was just the full moon but we decided $5.00 a hand just didn't cut it, why not make it house maximum at $50.00 a hand, of course as it goes I ended up with a 11 which almost mandates that I need to double down making my bet an even $100. This is the christmas spirit right? Of course as my luck goes I pull a 2 which leaves me with 13 needless to say I lost my $100 and was now sitting around where I started. As it went we both still had money so we continued to play $50 a hand. This continued for a few more hands until Shaun ran out of cash and I decided to stop with around $60 to my name. So as we head for the door with my $60 we decide in one more show of Christmas spirit to go all or nothing, so I handed the cash to Shaun and we pulled over to the new table. He puts down a $50 bet and keeps playing for about 5 minutes or so until he turns around to me and says we are sitting around $300 are we ready to leave. We left the other two players on the table we so kindly interupted with our freekish betting stratigies staring as we walked out the door laughing! Quite the night of fun!