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April 2023 has been a pretty amazing month for us, and we still have some good stuff to look forward to before moving into May. Most notably, Jessica’s birthday is coming up on Friday and she has a lot going on. We’re going to see Chelsea Handler’s comedy show that night at The Mirage, then early the next morning she is flying to Tucson, Arizona to spend the weekend with her girlfriends from Seattle. I mistakenly said she was going to Sedona in last month’s post, but it’s definitely Tucson. They’re going to do some hiking and some chilling, but she wants to get as much training in as possible because this is the same group she’s going with to hike Mt. Whitney, the highest mountain in the contiguous United States, in October. I’ll have details on Jessica’s birthday and weekend getaway in next month’s post.

As for April, there’s been a ton of stuff going on, so let’s start at the beginning of the month. Monday, April 3rd was our 13th anniversary and we celebrated in a very memorable way. Our good friends and ex-neighbors, the Browns, were in Vegas for Spring Break, so they came over to our house for dinner that night. Ava and Elise still talk to Avery regularly online, and they’re always sending each other little gifts in the mail, so it was a pleasure to spend an evening hanging out with them. We actually had so much fun that we ended up meeting up with them again the following night at an arcade in Vegas. We love their family and had such a nice time catching up. Christy is from Vegas and her Mom still lives here, not too far from my Mom, so hopefully they will start making regular visits once again.

Dinner with the Browns on our anniversary. We love them so much.

Ava, Avery, and Elise. BFF’s forever.

More fun with Avery

Road Trip with Nana

We spent the evening of Tuesday, April 4th at the arcade with the Browns, then I was up and out the door early the next morning, on April 5th, to pick up my Mom for a road trip to southern Arizona. As I mentioned in last month’s post, we recently made the decision to get a bearded dragon as a pet, and after doing my research online, I decided that I wanted to purchase one from the Atomic Lizard Ranch, located very near the Mexican border in Bisbee, Arizona. It’s about an eight-hour drive from my Mom’s house, and we had to meet them at 3:00 pm, so we were on the road by sunrise. 

We ended up driving all the way down the state of Arizona, from top to bottom. I’d never done a road trip in, or through, Arizona before, and here are my observations. The desert in northern Arizona is much greener than the Mojave desert stretching through California and Nevada. They get a lot more rain during their wet season than we do, and consequently, they have those picturesque cacti, like the ones you see in drawings and cartoons, growing wild everywhere. It’s not uncommon for them to be 20 feet tall, and some are even closer to 30! There are beautiful wildflowers growing near the side of the road, and the vastness of empty space is incredible. It never fails to amaze me when driving through states like Nevada, Utah, and Arizona, just how much wide open empty space there is. It definitely puts the size of our country into perspective.

My only complaint about driving through northern Arizona is the quality of their roads. I’ve never seen so many potholes in my life and I felt like I was dodging them for hours. I think we get a little spoiled from the high quality of our infrastructure in Nevada because of all the tourism revenue to pay for it, but once you cross over into this remote part of Arizona, there’s clearly very little revenue to help pay for road maintenance, and you’ve got to pay attention. Having been through it now, I’m glad Jessica is flying to Tucson, rather than driving through this area alone. A blown-out tire out in the middle of the desert with no town for 50 miles would be a really bad situation to deal with.

Eventually, the road quality improves, and by the time you’re getting close to Glendale and Phoenix, there are no issues. The cacti that I mentioned are native to northern Arizona specifically, so you’re only seeing them for a couple of hours, but they were definitely my favorite part of the scenery. There are also plenty of beautiful rock mountains and other natural rock formations, but those cacti are so unique looking that I’m really glad we got to see them in person. Here’s an example of what I’m talking about.

As we approached Phoenix from the Northwest, my Mom and I couldn’t believe how much it reminded us of South Seattle. The layout of the buildings and railroad tracks was eerily similar to the area she grew up in, and that trend continued as we passed through Phoenix. It felt like the desert version of Seattle. We didn’t get off the freeway, but from the look of the buildings, we both agreed that it had a strong resemblance to Seattle, without the water of course.

Once Phoenix is behind you, there isn’t much until reaching Tucson about 90 minutes later. It’s just wide open, except now, there are no more of those beautiful cacti growing in the wild. It’s just desert, although we did see the longest police funeral procession I’ve ever witnessed. It had to be two miles long. I’ve never seen so many police vehicles and motorcycles in my life. As we passed through Tucson, it felt very similar to the Spokane Valley in Eastern Washington. Had I not known where I was, based on the scenery alone, I would have sworn I was close to Spokane. We were getting hungry around this time, and I saw a sign on the southern edge of Tucson for Rita Road. It had food options and felt fitting that we would stop there, so we took a break there for a quick lunch at Subway. 

Bisbee is located another couple of hours south of Tucson, and to get there you have to pass through Tombstone, the classic old-west town. We ended up staying the night in Tombstone, but first, we had to get to Bisbee on time. There’s an enormous copper mine right off the freeway in Bisbee and we got a pretty good look at it from the freeway. The town now has a kitschy old hippy vibe to it, and it was actually pretty cool. Apparently, Johnny Depp owns a house there. 

We arrived literally at 3:00 on the dot and picked up our little guy. I had been struggling during the week before the trip with deciding what to name him. I had a few ideas, and the kids were throwing ideas at me non-stop, but nothing was sticking. Then one night while dreaming, I remembered a nickname my Dad used to call me as a little boy. He used to call me Shorty, but only for a few years because it soon became obvious that I was going to be much taller than him, so the nickname was relatively ‘short’ lived. 

It’s been at least 35 years since he, or anyone, called me Shorty, but it came back to me during this dream, and decided that had to be the name of our dragon. The inner workings of the human brain are fascinating. My Mom decided that his middle name should be Bisbee, after his birthplace, and I agreed. I frequently find myself calling him Shorty B. 

After picking Shorty up in Bisbee, we turned around and made our way back to Tombstone for the evening. We checked into our room at the Allen St. Inn and I decided to hold Shorty for the first time. It was probably too soon and he freaked out, jumping out of my hands and falling at least four feet to the floor. He was fine though and we haven’t had any more issues like that since. This is me holding him right after our first crazy encounter.

Check out more photos of Shorty at the end of this post.

An Evening in Tombstone

When planning out this road trip, I was originally planning on going alone, but it was Jessica’s idea that I ask my Mom to join me. I’m so glad she thought of this because my Mom and I haven’t been on an overnight trip together since visiting Europe in the Summer of 2001! We’ve been on family trips together since then, but not just the two of us. I was originally thinking we would just get a hotel in Tucson, but once I realized Tucson was about 2 hours north of Bisbee, I decided to look for something closer. That’s how I stumbled on Tombstone. My Mom has been to all the major spots in Arizona but had never been to Tombstone. My only reference was the movie from the early 1990s with Kurt Russel and Val Kilmer. I have always loved that movie and watched it several times with my Dad before his passing in 1995. 
When I asked my Mom if she would be interested in staying the night there she thought it was a great idea. It’s a tiny town that still leans heavily into its wild west heritage. Shops close up early in Tombstone, so we didn’t have much time to explore after getting checked into our hotel, but we were still able to check most of it out. I bought souvenirs for the kids at the O.K. Corral and even ended up buying a beautiful pair of brown boots at a Western clothing store. I love wearing boots, mostly because I got into them when riding motorcycles regularly, and I’ve been wanting something a bit dressier for at least a year. I could never find the right ones because I didn’t want traditional cowboy boots and I didn’t want work boots, but while looking for a Western hat at one of the stores, I unexpectedly found the perfect pair of boots. I’ve been wearing them constantly ever since. I love the fact that I got them with my Mom on our road trip to Tombstone.

After our shopping was complete, we had dinner at The Longhorn restaurant, which was decent, then grabbed an after-dinner drink at Big Nose Kate’s Saloon. Big Nose Kate was Doc Holiday’s girlfriend, and the saloon is epic. It’s everything I could have ever wanted in an old west saloon. It was a long day and we were exhausted, so we had one drink and decided to call it a night. The next morning we were up early and ready to get Shorty to his new home. I made a video for Vegas Showbiz about our experience in Tombstone, which you can check out below.

During our drive home the next day, my Mom held Shorty (in his Tupperware container) the entire way. She was reading all kinds of interesting facts on her phone about bearded dragons, and really fell in love with him. She would hold him up near the window so he could get natural light, which was exhausting for her arms, but we could tell he liked it. He’s so alert and present, which isn’t how most other types of lizards are. Every time a semi-truck was next to us he would perk way up to watch it go by. For some reason, he loved watching the trucks, and overall, did excellent on his first road trip.

I’m so thankful for this experience with my Mom. As previously mentioned, it’s been a very long time since the two of us had done anything even remotely similar to this. I love her so much and even though this was a quick trip, it was something neither of us will ever forget. Thank you, Mom.

Getting Shorty Home

I was very busy in the weeks leading up to this road trip with putting together a beautiful habitat for Shorty. I purchased a 120-gallon tank from Toad Ranch Cages, then outfitted it with a ceramic tile floor, a heat lamp, a UVB lamp, and one more light for brightness. I got a variety of rock and (fake) plant decorations, including a beautiful piece of African wood, for him to climb on. The plants have to be fake because he would try to eat real ones and that wouldn’t be good. 

Plenty of people at pet stores will tell you that a 40-gallon tank is big enough for a bearded dragon, but if you do your research, you’ll learn that if you want to do it the right way, you need a 120-gallon tank. In all honesty, it was pretty expensive getting everything set up, but I plan on keeping Shorty for many years, so giving him a proper home was important to me. He’s been living with us for about 2.5 weeks now and is doing great. I feed him live roaches for breakfast and dinner plus a salad for lunch. His diet will switch to predominantly salads once he reaches 18 months old, but for now, I have to be very comfortable with live roaches. I started ordering them online from DubiaRoaches.com because they’re so much cheaper compared to the local reptile store.

His tank is located in Enzo’s bedroom, which may sound strange, but Enzo’s room is huge and there was plenty of space in there. I didn’t like the idea of putting the tank in any of the rooms on our first floor, and Enzo loved the idea of having a dragon as a roommate. Part of the reason I selected Shorty, amongst all the other options from the Atomic Lizard Ranch, was that he was born on January 28th, which is also Enzo’s birthday. I like to joke that both of my sons were born on January 28th. There was a long stretch during the pandemic when Enzo didn’t like to sleep alone in his room. This went back to our days in Washington, but those days seem to be well behind us by now, and I told him that he never has to be scared again now that he has a dragon in his room to protect him. Here are some recent photos of Shorty.

My Mom got some amazing photos of Shorty on her iPhone while staying with us this weekend. I think I’m going to switch back to an iPhone sometime in the next year or so.

You can see his neck beard well in this shot. That’s why they’re called Bearded Dragons.

Easter Weekend With Friends

Literally, the day after getting home with Shorty, Jessica’s good friend Jody, and her family, came to stay with us for Easter weekend. Jessica and Jody worked together at a restaurant in Cedar Rapids, Iowa over 20 years ago and have remained close friends ever since. I remember when we first started dating, Jessica traveled back to Iowa for Jody and Dave’s wedding. They also came to our wedding a few years later, but until recently, our families had never spent much time together.

Jody and Dave live in Minneapolis with their 12-year-old son Leo, and their 9-year-old daughter June. They flew to Vegas for vacation recently, rented a car, and spent several days in Utah hiking Bryce Canyon, then came back to Vegas to hang out with us for a few days before heading home. Apparently, they had a brutal winter in Minnesota this year, accumulating 84 inches of snow, so they were definitely ready for some warmth and sunshine.

As expected, our families hit it off instantly. Ava and Leo were inseparable, as were Elise and June, but what was probably the most funny was how close Dave and I became. The similarities between us were uncanny and it got to a point where our wives would just roll their eyes when another one was uncovered. We both work in tech, we both play guitar, we both drive a German sport wagon, we both have a tattoo of a lion on our right shoulder, we both carry a switchblade, we both love a fine whiskey, we have similar tastes in music, movies, and food. We have the same political ideals. It just kept going on and on. By the time they were leaving, I gave him a big hug and said “Sorry Dave, but you’re stuck with me.”

They were only with us for two nights, but it was a blast. We took them to two of our favorite restaurants, plus we all went to the Farrel Dillion Comedy Magic show on Saturday night. Jessica and I had already been to that show once before, and we loved it, so we thought it would be a great time for our families to go together. Like myself at the first show, Leo got pulled up on stage to participate. After the magic show, we took them to the Bellagio to see the Spring garden display and the fountain show.

On Easter morning the kids had fun doing an egg hunt both inside and outside the house, then I made a big brunch for everyone. Afterward, we had time for a nice little walk around the neighborhood before they had to get to the airport. In addition to hitting it off with Dave, I also really enjoyed hanging out with Leo. He’s super into music and playing guitar, so I let him play all of my guitars and amps. We even jammed together a few times and I taught him a few new tricks. I think he had a field day playing with all my stuff, but honestly, the pleasure was all mine. I really hope we get to spend more time with their family again soon. We were so simpatico it was crazy. Here are a few photos from their visit.

The kids on Easter morning

Easter morning brunch

Jessica and Jody

Everyone together before heading out

Activities Galore!

Now that the weather is perfect again, we’ve transitioned into a variety of activities, and everyone seems to be loving them. Jessica, Elise, and Enzo are taking a boxing class on Saturday mornings with an ex-professional boxer who now runs his own gym. He trains professional fighters but also trains anyone else looking to learn the sweet science, as well as get a great workout, improve coordination, and learn some quality self-defense. 

Jessica initially signed up just to keep Elise company, because it was Elise who most wanted to try it out. As it turned out, Jessica loved it and convinced Enzo to give it a shot. He now loves it as well, and the whole thing makes me so happy. 

Additionally, Ava and Elise have been participating in a rock climbing class at the local rec center and they are really enjoying it. We just signed them up for another session, and at that point, Enzo will be joining them. Enzo has also recently gotten back into swimming lessons, so he’s staying busy. Soon Ava and Elise will also be joining a dance class. It’s important to us that the kids stay busy with a variety of fun and healthy activities, and the enjoyment they’re having is quite obvious. They just seem happier when they have fun things like this to do, even though it can often be a struggle getting them out the door when all they want to do is chill with their iPad.

Elise is loving her new boxing class

Wrapping Up The School Year

Wrapping Up The School Year

We’re only a few weeks away from closing out another year at school. It’s hard to believe how quickly the years fly by, but there is no question that this has been Ava’s best year in elementary school. The timing is perfect too because this is her last year before heading off to middle school. The improvement she has shown in her test scores this year has been nothing short of amazing, and no one (besides Ava) deserves to take more pride in this than Jessica. After receiving the accommodations she needed in school, the results came quickly. She has teachers who believe in her and the numbers are there to back it up.

In all honesty, this year has been an academic struggle for Elise, but once again, Jessica went to bat for her in a big way, and we are now receiving special accommodations for her as well. We’ve had some heart-to-heart talks with Elise lately about school and we can already see the change in her motivation and work ethic. Her teachers are seeing it as well, so we’re hoping for a strong 5th grade for Elise, just like we saw for Ava.

Enzo has been thriving in second grade and his scores are there to prove it. He’s constantly bringing home tests with 100% scores, but more importantly, I love his work ethic. He’s just like me in the sense that he can’t chill until he gets all of his work completed. Every day after school he’s allowed to relax before doing homework, but he always opts to do his homework immediately. Once everything is complete (and perfect), he can sit down and relax.

This year has been a bit more of a challenge for Jessica, simply because she has to be a teacher, and also a Mom, in her classroom, but it’s going well. She absolutely loves her job and plans on staying put for a long time. It makes me so happy to see her doing something she loves, and it’s still crazy to me how our lives have turned out since moving to Henderson.

Changes At Work

Last month I wrote about how my good friend Devin and I recently decided to start a business. If you’re not already familiar with that, I encourage you to check out the post. Since then, we’ve made a lot of progress and are now close to completing our LLC filing. We decided on the name Cappers, which is short for handicappers and have registered the domain name cappers.ai. Considering the popularity of artificial intelligence, we have decided to brand our business as the AI sports handicapping site. I’ve been hard at work building out a huge database of sports stats for our AI models to consume. Devin has been doing a lot of market research and financial modeling. Everything continues to look good and we’re very bullish on our business model. It’s going to take time before we’re production-ready, but we’re definitely on track and I look forward to providing more updates on this in the near future.

In addition to all the Cappers work I’m doing, I also decided to make a change to my day job. Friday, March 31st was my last day at Microsoft! After eight years I decided it was time for a change, mainly because during my last two years in Teams I was moving further and further into data science, which is an area that I’m simply not passionate about. Due to the Microsoft hiring freeze, I wasn’t able to find a different internal role related to web development, which is my (work) passion, but I did find an excellent opportunity with a company called eviCore, which is a subsidiary of Cigna, in the healthcare industry.

As I’ve learned, the healthcare industry is pretty much recession-proof, which is nice considering how topsy-turvy big tech has been over the past year. There are so many layoffs going on, so when you combine that stress with the stress of not liking the work you’re doing, it gets really tough. I’ve never really prioritized my own mental health because I’ve always been focused on the well-being of my family, but it got to a point where it was destroying me, and those effects were clearly trickling down to my loved ones.

The main reason I started building the website that would become the basis for Cappers was that I missed web development and didn’t want to lose those skills. The main reason I took this new role at eviCore was that the C# and .NET web development work they were hiring me for were extremely similar to the work Devin and I are doing. I knew working with a new group of talented engineers in this space would make me stronger, and consequently, I’m already loving it. I’ve only been there a couple of weeks, but I was lucky enough to land on an awesome team and the company culture is amazing. It’s way less stressful than I’m used to, and we basically only work a 4.5-day workweek. We have something called “Flex Fridays” where, as long as you’re caught up with your work, you get to spend the second half of each Friday learning or working on anything you like.

As far as the work we do, it’s basically all based around providing portals for hospitals and doctor’s offices to use in making determinations on whether medical procedures should be approved or denied. We process millions of these requests from various medical providers each day, and working in the medical industry has already proven to be quite interesting to me. Again, it’s recession-proof, and not having the pressure of meeting Wall Street’s expectations each quarter, and not having to keep up with the pace of consumer innovation has been a huge relief.

The company is based in Nashville, meaning they are two hours ahead of me. My team has a daily meeting at 9:00 am central time, which is 7:00 am for me, but I love it because I work from home, so all I have to do is get on the computer each morning by 7:00, and I’m able to wrap up my work day between 3:30 and 4:00. Jessica and the kids get home from school each day around 3:30, so it’s perfect.

After spending over a decade working at two of the biggest companies in the world, I kinda felt like a free agent. I was ready for a change and going to a smaller company with less stress was extremely appealing. eviCore has over 2,500 employees, so it’s not like they’re a small company, but Microsoft has a quarter million employees, so this is literally 99% smaller. Anything would feel small after all these years at Microsoft and Amazon, and I feel like I’ve earned it. My stress is down and my quality of life is up, and again, this all trickles down to my family.

Summary

I know this was a very long post, so if you’ve made it this far, thank you for sticking with me. Again, we’ve got a lot more good stuff to look forward to, so I’m already looking forward to next month’s post. This Thursday night, the Vanderburg school choir, which Ava and Elise have been a part of this whole year, will be singing the National Anthem at the Las Vegas Aviators baseball game. Nana will be joining us for the game, then the next day is Jessica’s birthday. 

I’m so thankful for all the good stuff we’ve had going on lately, and equally as excited for what’s to come. Here are a few more recent photos from this awesome month. See you in May!

Ava with her new “pan hat”

The kids recently had a “Career Day” at school. Elise was a Real Estate agent, Enzo was a basketball player, and Ava was a scientist.

Last weekend we had a blast taking the kids to see the new Super Mario Bros movie in the theater.

Ava’s special 5th-grade photo. I can’t believe she’s about to move on to middle school.