fixed my image problem and my theme looks like it should again....
at some point within the next month or so i hope to have a new blog site designed and built on my own url jonbroom.com. if you would like to temporarily subscribe to this blog i'll post up when the new one is ready.
thanks!
in no particular order:
Family
my family is great, and the time we spend together is something i look forward to. We have a bond and common interests that most families don't have.
Career
I have a pretty good job. I enjoy what i do, and who i do it with. I think i have a bright future to look forward to and a little more job security than a lot of other american's have at the moment.
Ayden
He's a kick ass little dude and i look forward to us growing up together. I hope that i can provide him with everything he needs to become a successful young man.
Friends
I have some great friends that i know i can count on. sometimes I forget that some people don't have the support system and bond that i have with the people close to my life.
Racing
its a great outlet and an amazing way for me to spend time with my family, be active, meet new friends and have something to strive for and look forward to.
USofA
Its obvious that we all take what we have for granted in the US. just a look through some of the photo sets on the big picture make it quite obvious that we're very lucky to have what we have and live where we live. check out these pictures from the gaza strip, the Congo or Mumbai to see what i mean. I'm also amazed and greatful that someone like Obama has come around and brought new life and a sense of unity to the US and the world as a whole. His face is probably on every newspaper in the world today. that doesn't happen often.
Health
I'm very thankful that as of now, I have my health and so do most of the people closest to me. I know how easy it is to fall ill or have something tragic happen to you or someone you're close to. I can only hope this continues to be the case and that my own body holds up to the abuse i put it through. For my friends that haven't been so lucky, stay tough and let me know how i can help.
theres plenty more to be thankful for in my life, but these are the things that have been sticking out in my mind over the past couple of weeks. my family and i had a pretty good 2008 (especialy compared to the average), and we're looking forward to 2009.
I've been back from peru for a good month now, and i finally got through the 1,800 pictures that i took and finished uploading them all to flickr. The trip was amazing. We saw lots of beautiful country, met some amazing people and got to push ourselves mentally and physically.
we began our trip in Arequipa. This is a beautiful city situated at the base of several snow capped volcanoes in a high altitude desert type of climate. We really enjoyed our time here. We took a two day trip into the Colca Canyon region as well. i wasn't real impressed with this trip, but it was still nice. we did a bus tour. i think i might have enjoyed it more if we had hiked it, but thats ok.
we then took an overnight bus to Cusco and quickly fell in love with this city. you get harrassed a lot more in the streets to buy and eat stuff due to its higher level of tourism, but if you get away from the plaza de armes then its not so bad. while in cusco we went horseback riding, and generally explored the city. this is where we started our real adventure: the Inca Jungle Trek.
The Inca Jungle Trek was amazing. it was much harder than i expected it to be, but thats partially due to me getting a stomach bug the morning the trek began. hiking through the rainforest with low energy levels due to not eating and worrying about crapping your pants will definety put a damper on your good time, but i still loved it. i can't wait to do more trekking and backpacking in the near future. we rode mountain bikes for one day, hiked the 2nd, then took a train to aguas calientes before making our way up to Machu Picchu to explore.
one of the highlights of the trip for me was climbing Wayna Picchu. i'm not sure what it was about it that i enjoyed so much, but i really felt a sense of adventure and accomplishment. it wasn't particularly hard, but the view was amazing.
Overall it was a great trip and penny and i had a good time. I'm really looking forward to more adventures to other countries. I've got my eye on china, and anywhere south of there, as well as alaska, canada, mexico, and other more local adventures.
In two weeks i will be exploring and aclimating myself to the 7,000-12,000 feet elevation of Peru. to be exact, i'll be in Arequipa (pictured). I can't wait. I was totally expecting this month to drag by at an unbelievably slow pace, but so far its been going by pretty quickly. I've been really busy at work and preparing for the trip. being busy helps.
we've got our hiking shoes, packs, travel alarm clock, typhoid and hepatitis A shots, spanish dictionary, and a rough itinerary that involves at least two flights within peru and 4 cities including Lima, Arequipa, Puno and Cusco and the surrounding areas. Recent talks have thrown in the idea of a quick trip over to Bolivia for a stay at La Paz.
Some of the key sights and activities on the list include:
Sorry i haven't been blogging. i hope no one had any nervous breakdowns due to my sudden disinterest in blogging here... heh... I got a random idea last night though. a new blog should be in the works soon, and that always spawns new inspiration to write.
for now, i'll leave you with a list of adventures that i hope to complete on a motorcycle. this is something i've been thinking about a lot latley since picking up an old DR350 and making it street legal. as of now i have no official plans to make these things happen other than doing smaller weekend trips and getting more experience on the bike, but if you're interested let me know and we can actually make plans.
1. Ride Yellowstone National Park
2. Ride from the east coast to the west coast on nothing but dirt roads on the Trans-America Trail (or at least a decent section of it)
3. Ride from California or the Pacific North West to Alaska and back with my dad and brother.
thats it for now.
Steve and I went to see Les Savy Fav on friday night at the Palladium Ballroom in downtown dallas. I've seen them twice at Rubber Gloves in Denton. The first time was amazing, and the second time was pretty good too, but a bit of a let down in comparison. They more than made up for it with this show though. What a fun, rockin' show. The picts i managed to get with my cell phone above only represent maybe a 10th of the antics.
Other than coming pretty close to duking it out with some kids up in front of the stage, it was a great night. It was kinda wierd though, I've always been the kind of guy that avoided confrontation. Its not my thing, but that night I was ready to go. I wasn't starting trouble, or looking for trouble, but these kids were being dicks and i wasn't going to put up with it.
It's been 2 full weeks since i went to NYC, so, lucky for you, the details are getting a little fuzzy. Back to where i left off...
Friday morning steve and I hit the town on a mission to get all our tourist sight seeing and shopping out of the way so we could do other stuff with anthony and crew on saturday. We get a slow start by going the wrong way on the subway. We figured it out before we got too far and eventually made it to the tip of Manhattan to get a look at the statue of liberty. after that we walked north to see Ground Zero where the twin towers use to stand. I didn't see any memorial or anything, just a big NYC block with no huge building occupying it. its kind of a weird sight. I thought by now they would have already been well under way constructing a new building, but it looked like they were still taking out the remaining structure of the original buildings.
We took the subway towards SOHO, walked a little bit of China Town, visited a few stores that we wanted to check out and killed time until it was time to meet up with Anthony, his co-worker Nick, and Greg Battle and Bill Robertson from Global Grind for lunch. They were on the top floor of a 45 story building off 7th and 38th street were a lot of Russell Simmons' companies are located. We briefly met him before heading up to the roof where they take their smoke breaks. The view up there was amazing.
Afterwards, steve and i were on our own again. We headed back down to SOHO to finish our shopping agenda and tried to stay dry in the 40ยบ rain. Later that afternoon was when i found out that Bank of America canceled my ATM card. The banks were closed already, and most places in NYC don't take credit cards. I only had so much cash on me so i was screwed until the morning. I guess you could say that it worked out to my advantage to some extent since i was able to drink till 4am without spending a dime. We all hit the town (i have no idea where we were) for some bar hopping fun. After some food at a diner that our new NYC friend Nater took us to we were done for the night. We found our way onto the subway and dozed off till we found ourselves back in brooklyn. 
Saturday we did some more running around, shopping, etc. We visited Saint Patricks Cathedral, a huge 3 story H&M, kid robot and ate street vendor hot dogs before we decided that Manhattan was just too intense and crowded to hang out in on a saturday afternoon. We took the train back to Smith Street in Brooklyn and checked out the little boutique stores before getting our last dinner in NY. Once again my bank card issue got me out of paying for dinner, even though steve and I had fully intended on paying for dinner with our credit cards. they only took american express. We were worn out by now and decided to just get some wine and head back to Anthony's place for a night of hanging out and playing Wii Sports.
Early Sunday morning we took a car up to LaGuardia and headed back to dallas. I was ready to go home and get some rest, but sad to leave.
Thanks to Anthony, Matt, Natalie and Anna for putting us up for the week. It was great seeing you guys.
Ok, i gotta get all this stuff out before i forget the trip entirely. Its been crazy at work so its been really hard to find the time to blog about anything. Of course i keep getting all these ideas and things that i want to write about when i can't find the time to write. Anyways, i'll try to keep this NYC recap short and sweet.
Steve and i made it to NYC without issue. we had separate flights separated by an hour or so. Steve was already in Manhattan with Anthony eating dinner, so i was on my own. My first ever NYC experience is a car service guy trying to hustle me. I manage to get away from him, grab a taxi and head to the nearest train station so i can ride it in to the city to meet up with everybody. It was pretty exciting to be on my own trying to figure out what i needed to do in this new place. I like traveling on my own sometimes. I found them without any problems, we ate, and headed to anthony's place in brooklyn to drink beer, play wii, and get some sleep.
The next day, wednesday, we headed out at about 7am to go to the Future of Web Design (FOWD) Conference in the city, and I got to experience a bit of NYC rush hour (pictured here). I love all that energy. The conference was pretty cool. Joshua Davis was interesting, and very entertaining, but i enjoyed Ryan Singer the most. He is part of the 37 Signals Team (best known for their online app, basecamp), and in general just a very smart, cool dude.
After a full day of speakers it was time for the afterparty at a club called Rebel hosted by Media Temple. It started at 7:30 and was open bar all night, so i'm sure you can guess how that evening went.
The next day I slept in until about 10, and rode the train back into Manhattan with anthony to check out his work. after that i was off on my own again since steve was in workshops all day and everyone else was working. I started off by eating an authentic street vendor lunch and taking the train to Times Square. I walked from the times square/42nd st stop all the way to central park before taking the train back down south to SOHO. I can't tell you enough how much i enjoyed being on my own for a day to explore... it was great. eventually i was glad to meet up with steve and the gang and head out to a pub called McSorley's. Its the oldest bar in New York, has the best cheeseburgers in town, and an awesome old school new york atmosphere. they brew their own beer and thats all the carry. we all ordered a beer and the dude comes back with 16 beer filled mugs and plops them down, giving the seemingly 100 year old table a nice coating of beer... it was great.
to be continued....
Last weekend was the first ever race on the newly expanded track in Katy, TX. It had some issues, but overall it was a lot of fun and a great weekend of racing. I raced with Marc and Jeff in the endurance on Marc's DRZ110. It's a well sorted out bike and a lot of fun. We ended up with 2nd place in the Lightweight expert class 1 lap behind first. Our fastest lap was around 55 seconds I think.
On Sunday i raced sprints on my yxr100 and did really well. I managed to get my 2nd ever 1st place in sprints. It was in the MiniGP Expert class, and a great, hard fought battle. I got lucky when Frank, 1st place, crashed and gave me first, but i still had a tough battle against Gilles. He passed me, i passed him back, he passed me back... we had a great battle until he tried to creep up on the inside of me in a left hander. I didnt' know he was down there and came down on him. we got together, leaving tire marks on my leathers, and he had to get on the brakes landing him in 3rd.
We were running 16:45 gearing i think. it felt pretty good except that i was topping out between the first new turn and the chicane. a 44 on the rear might be better. the sweet spot for the tire pressure seamed to be about 21 front 22 rear hot.
This weekend was Ayden's second soccer game. He did really well considering he wouldn't play at all his first game.
He went out 3 or 4 times durring the 30 minute game and took control of the ball several times. Only problem was that he never took it towards the goal. what ever direction he was headed when he found himself with the ball was the direction he went until he was out of bounce. He did a great job though and we both had fun.
I just made an impulse buy (something i don't do often). Plane tickets to NYC to go to the Future of Web Design conference with Steve. I've been wanting to go to New York for 10 years, and i'm finally doing it. I'll get to visit my good friend anthony, and hopefully get a chance to hang out with some of my buddies at Global Grind. Its going to be fan-freakin'-tastic. i better start saving, cause i have a feeling we're going to be whippin' out fliff like a sultan.
On another note, the Wii is perfect for a night of pizza, beer and kicking your friend's ass.
/hillbilly voice
Its been long, loooong overdue. After almost 5 summers of no AC and being at least a little embarrased by the couple of "Dave Ramsey Specials" i've been driving, i finally got a new truck. well... new to me. I just picked it up last night, and so far i freaking love it. with some new dark wheels (maybe something like this or this with no lift) wrapped with some BFGoodrich all terrain tires... mmm.... and maybe even blacked out emblems it'll look bad ass. for now its great as is. i can't wait to load up all my gear and head to the race track this weekend.
On friday we had a team building outing at DFW Adventure Park in Roanoke. We all showed up at 10am in our various states of ready-ness for the day. some in full army fatigues, some in their hunting gear, and many others, like me, in t-shirt and jeans. The mood is mellow, and the faces look sleepy.
Now its time to get our gear together for the battles to come. you can feel the energy levels rise a little. We split up the 30-40 telligenti into 2 teams: team 0 and team 1 (dev. geeks.. haha), and head out for our first game.
Finally we are ready. Team 0 and team 1 line up on opposite ends of a 100 yard field scattered with huge wooden spools and various barricades. The refs give the signal and we're off. Suddenly these mild mannered developers are running, jumping, diving, yelling out enemy positions and plotting their demise. Paint is flying everywhere and the place literally sounds like a battle field, sans large explosions and airplanes. People are screaming in pain, others are laughing and some are just trying to catch their breath under their masks.
When our little 10 minute battle was over there was nothing but smiles and war stories. A little blood hear, some torn clothing there and even a painfull looking shot to the neck. This went on until we had exhausted ourselves at about 3pm. Dirty, sweaty and sore we packed it up and went home to heal our wounds and treat our soon to be discovered chigger bites. My count is 9 or 10 paintball bruises, and about 20-25 chigger bites. Some were much higher than that!
Today was our first day back at work since our little adventure and I haven't heard a single complaint about the day. I think it was a great success. I feel like i know my fellow telligenti better, and i hope they feel the same about me.
Big thanks to JasonA and Rob Howard for a kick ass day.
The HOW Conference in Atlanta was amazing. I don't even know where to start. I met so many fun people, and learned so much in all my sessions... how do i even begin to write a blog about it without it becoming a 2000 word mess of stories and experiences?
The speakers and conference as a whole were great. I got so many great ideas on how to keep the creativity going, tips on how to deal with clients, exercises to keep you fresh and much more. I took one session about drawing, and i decided to make it a habit to do at least one drawing a day. I might start a blog or flickr account to keep record of them (i am a nerd after all), but i haven't decided yet.
Congrats to the HOW staff for putting on a great conference. I've worked plenty of large events before, and i know what kind of work goes into a show like this.
I've met so many kick ass people in the past few days. I can't think of a single person that i met that wasn't happy to stand around and shoot the shit. I think the experiences i had with the people i met were even better than the conference itself. off the top of my head i'd like to thank Sonya, John, Quyen and Trent from Southwest Airlines, Kelly from Richmond, Rebecca and Carmen from Ohio, Cassandra from Oregon, Luther and Hailey from Atlanta and the hundreds of other people that i met. I can only remember so many people from the blur of events this past week. Of course i gotta thank my co-workers Sean and Dana for making this a great trip.
I really wasn't expecting much from Atlanta, but it was really a cool place. It was a lot like Dallas, but seemed like it had more culture. Dallas has some culture, but its overrun with superficial crap. On tuesday we went to the Aquarium for the "Descenders Ball". it was a very nice aquarium equipped with the biggest sea life exhibit in the world. After they kicked us out of there we all took cabs over to the Star Bar in Little 5 Points for some fun. It was very interesting to see a club full of such a big mix of people. there was the bartender with tattoos and a foot long beard, there were black kids mingling and dancing, there were hipsters, rollers, movers and shakers. Dallas is much more segregated than that. everyone was very friendly, and one local girl grabbed me as i was walking by, wrapped her arms around me and started talking in my ear about how life is too short to drink cheap beer ($2 pabst baby!)... great night.
Before heading to the airport on wednesday we went to the Coca-Cola museum. we had planned to tour the CNN center, but i guess we changed our mind. It was a pretty neat place. I liked the art and architecture/design of the building more than most of the contents itself. oh! i almost forgot... the coke museum sends web pages to your phone. its kinda creepy. i was standing by the entrance of the Aquarium taking the picture you see here, and as soon as i took the pict i was sent info about the museum!
I finally finished my house in the colony. Its listed and i'm just awaiting an offer. Only problem is that no one is looking at it. Its been listed for about a week and a half and, that i know of, has only had one showing. I'm getting the feeling that its priced too high. I'm not in a hurry though, so we'll see what my Realtors do. I think if people see how nice it is inside it will be worth what i'm asking.
Now i actually have to figure out where i'm going to move when it does sell. I haven't lived in an apartment in about 5 years, and the thought of going back makes my stomach turn a little. Especially now that i'm in my nice, finished home. It looks like that may be my only option though. My main goal was to get closer to ayden so that i could help out nadine (especially since john just got officially deployed and is on his way to Iraq), and to spend more time with ayden other than just my weekends. I want to be able to pick him up from school and take him to karate or whatever. The problem is that there are NO rent houses where they live. Theres a couple of crappy apartment complexes, and a couple of nice ones, but no rent houses. In fact, there isn't anything even close enough in near by cities to help with my situation either.... this whole thing is becoming very frustrating.
Another thing thats bothering me is that I was also hoping to save some money on rent, but all of the decent apartments cost just as much or more than what i'm paying for a 3 bedroom house! So i'm moving into a housing situation that i don't like, and i'm paying more. Kind of makes me go back to the debate on if its more beneficial to be close to ayden and commute to work, or to live closer to work and commute to ayden (which would give me way more housing options). It makes sense at first to commute to ayden since i'll be driving to work more than i'll be driving to him, but a lot of the times will be more spur of the moment things where nadine needs help or i could come by for dinner, etc., so it would be nice to be close. It's also a pain if i have to drive all the way to grapevine to pick him up, drive all the way home, then drive all the way back to grapevine in the morning to take him to school and back again to work.... ugh. i'm getting a headache, and right now addison is sounding pretty good. even though i'd much rather just be in east dallas. unfortunately that makes for a long drive to work and to ayden.
Last night i got back from Crystal Beach with my old buddy April and her family. I love going down there. April and her family are awesome people, and its nothing but a good time. We drink, eat, drink, eat, party, drink and eat. everyone is happy.
we got there friday night, and of couse started drinking. we took a walk down to the beach and got attacked by hundreds of mosquitoes the second we hit the sand. thank god for topical Benadryl. i had my doubts about it, but it actually worked really well. took almost all the swelling and itching away in a matter of minutes.
Saturday we wait until about 11am before hitting the bottle. we swam, walked the beach, ate crawfish and eventually found our way to the Crab Festival that they put on every mothersday weekend. Basically you eat lots of food and drink lots of beer. combine that with some live music, dancing and good people watching and it makes for a fun night. I even got my friend Brian from houston to come down with his wife brandy and his little sister. they seemed to enjoy themselves, but the two of us were itching to leave because he had his 4-Wheeler out in the truck and we wanted to go roost some sand with it. we got that 700cc beast on the beach at about midnight and proceeded to scar that poor beach for a couple of hours. we decided to quit before we got too comfortable and killed our selves on that thing. April came back after her ride "I was going 60 mph down the beach!!"
Sunday consisted of more drinking and cruising the beach looking for firewood for that night. we dug a nice pit and waited for the sun to go down, but no matter how much off we poured on ourselves the mosquitoes were relentless, and eventually drove us indoors. it was really disapointed since we had been looking foward to building a nice big bonfire since we got there.
I can't thank april and her family enough for another kick ass weekend at the beach house. hope to see everyone again soon.
I decided that it was time for a new phone. I was afraid that my old phone was going to die any day, and i wanted something that i could sync up to iCal and maybe even check email with. since the 50 dollar camera i bought off craig's list kinda sucks and is as big as a brick, a decent camera phone was also on the list of features i wanted.
I did a fair amount of research, and after talking myself out of the Blackberry Pearl and the Blackjack, I decided on the Sony Ericsson W810i Walkman phone. I really wanted to get one of the smart phones, and probably could have got a free one with some digging, but they are more than i probably need. I've only had the W810i for a couple of days now, but i love it. it seems to have just the right amount of features for me. It syncs up wirelessly via bluetooth to my imac to mesh my calender and address book together which is awesome. I didn't even really have to set anything up. iSync just handles it all for me. It came with a USB data cable, so i can hook it up and transfer pictures, files and MP3's back and forth easily, or i can just insert the memory stick into a card reader and do it that way. The phone came with a nice set of head phones, and they are the exact style headphones that i like, and it can receive FM radio, so i can listen to the radio if i want as well (something that i miss on my ipod). I haven't been as impressed with the 2 mega pixel camera as i'd hoped. the pictures i've taken so far have come out pretty grainy, but i think it'll be fine in some better lighting situations. i didn't figure out how to use the "flash" until yesterday (after i took those pictures), so i think that would have helped. I say "flash" because its not actually a flash, its a light that stays on. kind of weird, but might be cool because you won't have as many unwanted affects that a flash can cause.
During my phone research i learned that you don't have to get your phone from your provider to get the "new contract" or "renewed contract" phone discount. you can get your phone from the manufacturer, or from another source like amazon.com (where i got mine). their deals are much better than cingular, and you still choose your plan and all the options right there on that site. pretty cool. if i had checked out the pearl or blackjack on amazon i bet i could have got one of those free too, so its a good thing i didnt' look, cuase i dont' need one of those phones and i probably would have got one.
I'm off to the beach for the weekend. see ya!
My parents came up this weekend to help me paint the house. i bought an airless paint gun and we painted the entire house. now i have to go through and paint all the trim and cabinets, then the bathrooms and most of the ceiling.... ugh, its never ending.
On saturday night i went to sunshine to see last of the interceptors play. It was john's last show before going to iraq, so there was a lot of people there 
and it was a good night. There was even a crazy chick fight with about 8 girls attacking each other in the middle of the bar... like icing on the cake... except that half the people i was with got kicked out.
I use to be pretty good friends with a guy named corey a few years back. He since moved away to santa fe, and then back to his home town of Oklahoma City. We talk hear and there, and he even came down to visit and to see a Ted Leo and the Pharmacists show once, but his girlfriends car got vandalized in deep ellum and i haven't really kept in touch with him since... deep ellum can do that i guess (bad ass show though).
He has since started making a bunch of noise about Radio Free OKC and i never looked into it to find out what it was. i think i was expecting some political talk show that he liked or something, but today i discovered that its actually a podcast that he has been doing. I've been listening to the last couple of installments today and its actually really good. Aparently its the most listened to podcast from oklahoma city.
Upon checking out the myspace page i realised that a couple more of my one time good friends are also a part of the project, jamie and geoff. i say one time becuase everyone has moved away from dallas... except for geoff. he just has a girlfriend.
I really began to dig into my remodeling projects this weekend. i bought almost $700 worth of paint, a new airless paint gun and tons of odds and ends to get my house in shape to put on the market next month. on thursday night I patched up various dings and holes in the walls among other small repairs. Saturday morning i was planing on mowing the yard then finishing the last of my grout work on my new tile in one of the bathrooms, but the yard work turned into an all weekend project.
I realised that since the grass was so long when i cut it last time that the ground was covered with grass cuttings and dead crab grass (or whatever that stuff is called). so after mowing i gave it all a good raking and ended up with about 8 huge trashbags of grass and weeds. Hopefully that will allow some nice new grass to grow. i also filled the back of my truck up with branches that i cut off one of the trees and tackled the insane rose bush that was begining to take over my house.
Now thats all taken care of, i can get back to finishing up the tile and get to painting. if all goes to plan i can get new carpet installed by the first and get it listed the first week of may.
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