Jess & Neal-ville

Since it’s been a few days, we aren’t very sure of where to start!  So I suppose we will start with today.

Since it has been BEAUTIFUL here (FINALLY) with only a little of that WY wind everyone likes to hate, we have been spending the majority of our free time outside.  Of course, that means the projects around the house have been…postponed…but we are sure it will snow or rain again sometime soon and drive us indoors again.

Today is Jess’s normal day off.  We started it relatively early since the sun was shining so brightly outside, and in our window.  Jess had her personal training session, and then we went bike riding.  Most of it was mountain biking, and the terrain was gorgeous!

We took the doggies to the park, as they are probably suffering from Spring Fever as well.  Then Jess had to go into work for training.  The clinic has brought in an outside consultant to evaluate how the clinic works, and to hopefully make it run more smoothly and efficiently.  We are hopeful.  Afterward, we spent some quality time with Gryffindor and finally enjoyed a nice Mexican meal out.

We are currently researching getting our MBA.  We will ideally be getting them, or at least working towards them, together.  We are planning on doing the distance program through Colorado State, where most of the classes can be done online.  That way if there IS a problem, we only have to travel 3 hours to get to CSU, so not much to worry about.  Neal is looking at getting one specifically for Computer Information systems, so that would work out perfectly.  Unfortunately, he will have to take the GRE again since it’s been over 5 years. Poor Neal. Jess is excused because she luckily has a professional degree.

Otherwise, life has been pretty calm here.  We are looking forward to our vacation in May and our families visiting in June.  Otherwise, just another fun day here at the farm.

Yours,

MBA Hopefully Bound Neal and Jess

Bike Ride

So we are training for our 1/2 marathon of 2010! We have done one every year for the past 2 years or so, why not make it a tradition?!  That is…if Jess is able t get off work for the only scheduled 1/2 marathon in Casper on June 6th. We shall see! We ran 2.5 miles today, and will hopefully run 6 or 7 this weekend. We aim high.

Also this weekend, we are hoping to make a trip up to Devil’s tower. It is one of the Wonders of Wyoming, and we have not yet seen it.  Hopefully the weather will be nice since we have heard far too often from our friends and family in the South how Spring/Summer has arrived with beautiful weather.  The past couple days have been nice temperatures, up in the 60s, but that wonderful Wyoming wind (20-30mph with gusts to 50) has kept it from being really nice.  It is kind of scary when you can feel the house moving and shaking with those big gusts of wind!

Since we aren’t sure if we’ll actually get some real Spring weather, we’ve started planning a trip to Austin, TX for the Memorial Day weekend.  We figure it should be pretty warm there and we’ve got our fingers crossed that it won’t be raining the whole time!  Neither of us has ever been to Austin, but we hear that it is a fun place to visit and shouldn’t really be counted as part of Texas  We’re trying to figure out what to do and are waiting on our visitors guide to arrive, but if you have any suggestions, let us know!

Your can’t wait for nice weather friends,

Jess and Neal

So although it JUST snowed Friday afternoon…and a hailstorm Thursday…this weekend has been the closest thing to Spring we have gotten to experience!  And believe me…we definitely capitalized on that fact!

Friday Jess worked all day, but celebrated the coming of the weekend with margaritas at a local Mexican restaurant.  When she and her friends were ordering, the waiter told them to put their IDs away because he knew who we were.  So quaint.   I have a weakness, what can I say?!

Saturday we slept in just a little bit, as it was still in the 30s before 11.  We took a nice walk to get a soda, then laid some tile while Neal worked on electricity.  When I had all the tile I could take, we took a nice 5 mile jog by the river.  Then we headed to spend some time with Gryffindor, our four legged giant son. (He’s our horse, fyi!).  Didn’t ride on Saturday, but his former owner put some miles on him.  We enjoyed Mongolian Grill for dinner and then watched an informative program about Galileo at our local Planetarium.  We spent what was left of the evening at a friends’ house.

Sunday we took a walk together in the morning.  Running just WASN’T gonna happen.  After wards we went to church.  We are pretty excited about the new church that we found, and are hopeful that we perhaps found a new church home.  They are very open and inviting about their views, and preach ideas of understanding and acceptance rather than how you should think.  We are both pretty excited about it.  (www.casperucc.com). We took some time to play with the dogs after church too.

We joined up with Gen and Casey after that for a nice picnic lunch in one of the local parks.  There are SO many parks in Casper…that’s one thing I love about this city.  We enjoyed the local delicacies of Subway. Yum!  Feeling like we needed to be outside as much as possible, we then donned our tennis gear and went to another local park.  We enjoyed an hour or so of the sport.  When all was said and done on the court, we headed out to the horses once again.  Gryffindor was ready to go!  Jess was able to get him outta the round corral, and even loped him a little bit.  The two of them are doing rather well together, despite minor set-backs that have occurred in the past that ended with Jess on the ground!

Jess and Gryffin

We headed to the gym after that to do about a 1/2 mile of swimming.  We have both improved with our swimming I think.  Then, to end the day, we took the dogs to the dog park like we promised.

Dinner was a nice pre-made rotisserie chicken while watching Criminal Minds (season 2, Elle just shot someone…gasp!).  And then we updated you all with our lives. How fun!

Signed,

Exhausted Neal and Jess

Today Jess got out of the clinic while it was still light outside, which is no normal occurrence!  It was a nice day, except for the wind of vengeance.  Apparently in WY, it’s always a high wind advisory.  Jess was still sore from her personal training session on Tuesday, so we skipped the gym and took the dogs to the dog park instead.  We managed to not get blown away!

Jess laid about 2 tiles with the aid of a flashlight because Neal is still working on the electricity downstairs.  She then ran out of mortar.  She took that as a sign that the laying of the tile was done for the evening, but we still went to Home Depot for a 5 gallon bucket of mortar…the biggest one they got!

Then we settled in to watch random pairing of clips from the Daily Show. Sadly….Hulu is no longer carrying the show, so we are forced to piece together clips from Comedy Central. Such a tragedy, we know…but we keep pushing onwards…

Jess’s work has also hired an outside consultant to work on the business and management part of things.  We are both very hopefully that when all is said and done, her frustrations will be significantly decreased.  We are optimistic, but not naive!

In other news, we are trying to decide whether we really NEED a new dryer.  It IS true that we often have to run our loads more than once to get our clothes completely dry.  Financially, we should probably wait…but ah, the idea of that new red dryer that actually dries the first time through. Frivolous?  We are still deciding…

Since we have subjected you to our dryer debate, that must mean we are out of GOOD and interesting material with our lives for the evening!

Over and Out…

Dryer Pondering Neal and Jess

We hosted a belated Easter dinner yesterday and had a few friends over.  We had some ham, scalloped potatoes, an asparagus and crab salad, deviled eggs, and boiled cabbage, almost all of it thanks to Jess’s fabulous cooking!  Some friends from Jess’s clinic came over and a good time was had by all   We introduced the Wyoming folks to some Eddie Izzard with mixed results.  A couple of them appreciated his “executive” transvestite sense of humor at least.  The Rock Band we played afterwards on the Wii was enjoyed a little more by everyone, I think.

We both missed having a real Easter that we could spend with family.  I think this is the first year that either of us have spent where we didn’t get to see some of our family (at least near the official holiday).  Plus it snowed on Saturday (and again yesterday) with very little evidence of Spring anywhere to be found around here.  Add to that the fact that Jess was on call, and while she didn’t get any emergency calls, she did have to check on a patient at the clinic.  I actually had some work to do at the clinic as well because I’m doing some technology consulting for them and helping to make their new digital radiography displays usable, so I kept us there longer than we should have been.  All in all, it wasn’t the best Easter we’ve ever had, but we did the best we could!

We started tiling the basement yesterday on Jess’s day off!  Well, when I say we, I mean Jess.  I’m actually still working on running some electricity to add another light switch that will let us turn on some lights right when we walk in from the garage!  This house can be frustrating at times because of the way it was setup, but I guess that’s probably true of most any house.  I like our house a lot, don’t get me wrong!  It just makes me wonder sometimes what they were thinking when they built it (or remodeled it)!  Anyway, Jess got the tiling started and it is looking great already!  Pretty soon we might have a finished room down there to enjoy!

Yours,

Missing Spring Neal and Jess

Monday nights, when Jess isn’t on call, are our favorites especially after a weekend she works.  She has Tuesday off, so it’s a nice break in the beginning of the week.

We have recently gotten into Criminal Minds. Watching season 2 currently.  We had to take time off Dexter and NCIS.

Tomorrow we are planning on cooking an Easter dinner a few days late.  We bought the ham, but didn’t have the energy to cook it Sunday.  So hopefully a few people will be able to come over and help us eat it!  Jess also has her first session with her personal trainer tomorrow, so we are hoping it goes well!

Had a nice and pleasant hail storm today between the snow, rain and sunshine.  Luckily the car wasn’t hurt, and it didn’t last long enough for Jess to get out of some of her horse appointments for the day.

We’re a little boring today.  Hopefully tomorrow will be a little more exciting…

Love,

Lazy Neal and Jess

So we have decided to start a blog together, the Neal and Jess blog, as neither of us are all too exceptional at keeping up with our own personal blog. Perhaps between the two of us, we will be able to keep the world updated with our lives…for those of you who are incredibly bored or just find us amazingly interesting people. Either way…we don’t judge.

Most of you know we are in Casper, WY.  I guess you could say we have mixed reviews about our current situation.  Casper itself is a wonderful little town.  It is BEAUTIFUL. Nestled next to the foothills of the Rockies, with rolling plains and acres of nothing. Exactly what we wanted when we dreamed our dreams of the west.  However, like most things of beauty, it has its downsides.  While the summers are amazing except for the occasional wind, they only last about 2 months. The rest of the year? Apparently winter.  The first snow came in September.  We just had snow today, Easter Sunday.  Seasonal depression seems to hit hard out here as there are 9 months of gray and white.  Otherwise, we enjoyed our winter.  We discovered cross country skiing and ‘perfected’ our downhill skiing.  Jess took a snowboarding lesson, but Neal has been the braver one and snowboards more often.   We visited Yellowstone to enjoy a new take on the winter fauna….and lack of flora.   All very new and exciting things.

In other news, house project 2010 has commenced.  We ripped up the carpet in the downstairs…which was a disgusting and eye opening experience.  We may never lay on carpet again…or even walk barefoot on it!  Neal put down the wood floors and Jess did the tiling by the doors.  We finally finished painting the bedroom, which seemed to take forever due to distractions and minor inconveniences like using running out of paint as an excuse to take a break for the evening…or the month.  We are currently working on the unfinished basement.  Neal is doing all the electrical work, and Jess did drywall for the first time.  There were plenty of angry words said by both parties!  The painting is almost done now, and the next step is putting tile down on the cement!  That may be next weekend’s project…which we hopefully get there.  Home ownership is excessively expensive, and all the renovations have reeked havoc on their budget!  (Thankfully they have had some donations to their cause…thanks Jess’s mom and dad! The door to the basement has done WONDERS to keep down the sound of barking!)

Neal is still working for Mississippi State…obviously via computer and telephone.  He is enjoying it and keeping busy with the new website (http://www.ssrc.msstate.edu/) which he did an AMAZING job building (Can you tell Jess is writing this part?) and other important social type projects as well.  Jess is keeping (too) busy at work and spends the majority of time at the clinic.  The new website for the clinic, which we built together, is up and running as well.  Feel free to check us out!  www.caspervets.com

That may be TMI for the first post…so we will save more for our later posts.  Thanks for visiting. Hopefully we can remember to keep you entertained with this blog!

Holla…

Casper Neal and Jess