Halloween is always a special day for our family. Not only is it my Mom’s birthday, but it’s all three of our kids’ favorite holiday. If it wasn’t their favorite holiday before moving to Henderson it certainly was after, as our neighborhood goes big on the decorations and trick-or-treating every year. This is an especially big birthday for my Mom, as she begins a new decade, and I can’t even begin to thank her enough for everything she does. Jessica, the kids, and I all feel very lucky to have her as a regular part of our lives and we wish her the happiest of birthdays!
While we won’t get a chance to see her today, we will get to spend the next few days with her at our house, which everyone is looking forward to. She will be coming over to our house tomorrow afternoon and staying until Sunday. I’ve got a nice birthday meal planned for Friday night, consisting of plant-based tenderloins and ribs from Juicy Marbles, baked potatoes, vegetables, and pumpkin pie (Mom’s favorite) for dessert. We don’t have specific plans during the day on Saturday but that evening Ava has another softball game and she is very excited that Nana will be there to watch her play. I know Mom always talks about what a difference it made in her life when we moved from Washington to Nevada, but it definitely goes both ways. Having her nearby has changed our lives for the better and I’m so thankful for all the memories the kids are making with her.
Tonight we’re looking forward to trick-or-treating in our neighborhood with friends. Tiko and Tina are bringing their girls over, and I’m sure we’ll gang up with a bunch of the neighbors. This is arguably the biggest night of the year for the kids and it’s always a blast watching them live their best lives as they run from door to door, then come home to sort through the night’s treasure. As far as costumes go, Elise was a cheetah today at school, but tonight she is dressing up as Gru from the Minions movies. Ava, who is a huge fan of the Japanese anime series Demon Slayer, dressed up as Mitsuri Kanroji, and Enzo has a hilarious blow up costume of a sumo wrestler. Jessica decided to honor her childhood by dressing up as one of her all-time favorite characters, Mary Poppins. I hate to be a stick in the mud, but I don’t have a costume this year. It’s just me and the cats at home all day so there wasn’t much of a reason for me to put together a costume. However, my Los Angeles Dodgers did win the World Series last night, so maybe I’ll replicate last year’s costume by wearing my Dodgers uniform.
Outside of the Halloween and birthday festivities, things are going well. Jessica is continuing to crush it in her masters program at UNLV. She is getting excellent scores on all of her tests, assignments, and group projects, so she’s feeling good about how the year is shaping up. The first quarter of school recently wrapped up for the kids and each one of them had all A’s and B’s, which we were very proud of. Enzo just finished his rock climbing class and is looking forward to signing up again as soon as possible. Elise continues to enjoy her Saturday morning boxing classes and Ava is doing better than ever in softball. She was asked to play third base in one of our recent games because our normal third baseman was going to be away, and ended up getting our team’s defensive player of the game award! I was so proud of her commitment and preparation for the opportunity. We were showing up early to practice and staying late after practice so we could drill grounders at third and the throw across the diamond to first base.
On my end of things, I’m still in the middle of a job search, as the opportunity I mentioned in last month’s post didn’t work out. That was a tough pill to swallow, mainly because I made it all the way to the final interview before they decided to go with someone else. I was feeling a bit down about it for a couple of days but eventually shook it off and started focusing on new opportunities. I was thinking about something we tell the girls all the time in softball, which is to focus on the two things that are in your control: attitude and effort.
On the attitude side, I had to remind myself that I have a skillset and resume that plenty of companies are looking for. It’s just difficult timing because we’re nearing the end of the year, and we’re in the late stages of a presidential election cycle, both of which have an effect on hiring and spending for many businesses. On the effort side, every day is a “work” day for me. I’m constantly applying for jobs, sending out my resume, talking with recruiters, and scheduling interviews. Based on all of this market research, I have a good idea of exactly what skills employers are looking for, so I purchased three different web development / computer science courses on Udemy and spend hours each day going through them.
In addition to all this job search stuff, I’m also staying busy by working on a freelance project, and doing daily work on the Cappers web application. October is a busy sports month because the NHL and NBA seasons get started, then you have college basketball starting in the first week of November. Devin is doing his best to find investors for Cappers, and if that comes through, it will be a dream come true, but in the meantime, I will continue with this headstrong job hunt approach. I’ve got plenty of irons in the fire at this point and I’m hopeful that it won’t be very long before something comes through. I had an interview yesterday and another one today, both of which went very well, so hopefully I’ll be invited for the next round of interviews in the next few days. I honestly feel like the busiest unemployed person in the world.
Earlier this month we were paid a visit by Grandma and Grandpa Martin, who spent a long weekend with us. They took the kids to a show on the strip, came to one of Ava’s softball games, and the 7 of us attended the NASCAR race that was in town that weekend. They also took us out to an outstanding sushi meal at one of our new favorite restaurants. It was a great visit and we hope to see them again soon.
November will be a big month for us, mostly because Ava will be turning 13 years old on the 25th. Jessica and I can’t believe we’re about to be parents of a teenager, but Ava is a great kid and tends to make things pretty easy on us. Additionally, Auntie Dana and Uncle Brad are coming to stay with us for Thanksgiving, so we’re looking forward to spending that long weekend with them. Another holiday season is upon us, which is crazy, but things are good and we all love this time of year.
That’s about it for now. Happy Halloween and Happy Birthday Nana!!!
2024 is about to get very busy for us! Here’s an update on school activities, sports, Superbowl events, and more.
Winter is wrapping up quickly here in the desert and we suddenly find ourselves as busy as ever with events and activities. It looks like Tuesday will be our busiest day for the next few months, especially for Elise who has choir before school, Girls On The Run immediately after school, and then acting class after that! I am an assistant coach on Ava’s softball team and we have practices on Tuesday night as well, so our whole family will be running around on those days. In addition to the Tuesday night practices, we have practice or games on Saturdays, batting cage sessions on Sunday mornings, and we will eventually be playing games on Thursday evenings as well. For myself, baseball season is just getting started and I will soon be playing games on Sundays, so it’s safe to say I’ll be spending a ton of time around a baseball field this Spring.
Regarding school activities, Elise and Enzo recently completed their annual APEX fun run. They had a blast doing it last year and were even more successful with their fundraising this year. Elise’s teacher set a very high goal for the classroom and said that there would be no more homework for the rest of the school year if they achieved this goal. Apparently, that was the right kind of motivation because they totally did achieve it! Enzo set a goal for himself on the day of the run to complete 100 obstacle courses and he ended up finishing just shy with 96. For comparison, the average number of completed courses for a kid was about 65.
With the girls being as busy as they are it means that Mr. Enzo will be running around a lot with Jessica and me from one activity to another. We’re trying to get him involved in something but haven’t had any luck so far. He loves playing football and basketball at school with his friends, plus we frequently shoot hoops at home in the backyard, but whenever we suggest getting onto a team he is totally against it. We’re not sure why he isn’t willing to put himself out there but it’s something we need to work on, otherwise he’s going to start missing out on too many things. He has already set a goal for himself to make it into the Middle School jazz band, which means he will follow Ava’s footsteps by joining the beginning band program during his first year, but that’s still a few years away so we need to focus on the nearer term for now.
Superbowl Activities
Since the Superbowl was in Las Vegas this month, we decided to take advantage as much as possible by attending some related activities. As mentioned in last month’s post, I wanted to keep up the tradition of taking Enzo to a sporting event for his birthday, so this year we attended the Superbowl’s Celebrity Flag Football game, which was held near our house at the Dollar Loan Center. Before the game, Enzo and I had dinner at Tacotarian, and he now insists that their plant-based fish tacos are one of his all-time favorite foods.
We arrived early and had fun checking out the items in the silent auction, then we ran into a couple of his buddies from school. We decided to get some candy at a concession stand and found ourselves standing next to Snooki from Jersey Shore, who was being followed by a camera crew. During the game, Enzo and his friends were standing along the railing next to the field. One of the referees kept coming over to talk to them and introduce them to various celebrities. One of the highlights of the night for Enzo was when he got to meet former NBA all-star Tracy McGrady, who was a captain of one of the teams playing that night. His other big moment that night came after the game when he got to take a picture with UFC star Justin Gaethje.
Enzo and Dad before the Celebrity Flag Football gameEnzo and Justin Gaethje
On the day before the Superbowl, I took the kids to the NFL Play Football event, which was being held at a local high school. Tickets were free if you knew how to get them, and luckily for us, Jessica was able to score four through the school district. It was a fun event filled with complimentary swag and food, plus we got to meet players, and cheerleaders from the Raiders, Chiefs, and 49ers. The cheerleaders performed and the kids got to run through some football obstacle courses. They enjoyed one of them so much that they each did it three or four times. We also got to try on some authentic NFL helmets! It was a really fun event that we were thankful to be able to attend.
The kids with a pair of Raiders cheerleadersElise and Ava with a pair of Chiefs cheerleadersElise with a pair of 49ers cheerleadersEnjoying our complimentary lunch at the NFL Play Football event
Spring Break is coming fast
In addition to all these activities, we’re also getting ready for our trip to Colorado, which is only a couple of weeks away. The plan is to head out early on the morning of Friday, March 8, and drive to Grandma and Grandpa’s house up in the mountains. We will stay the night with them, then drive down to Denver on Saturday morning. We have a hotel reserved in Downtown Denver, just a couple blocks from the concert venue. We will spend the weekend in Denver, then head back to Grandma and Grandpa’s house on Monday morning. The kids love playing in the snow at their house so our plan is to stay with them on Monday and Tuesday, then drive back to Henderson on Wednesday. We’re really excited to see Moon Taxi play live, especially in such a small venue, so I look forward to writing about it in next month’s post.
A few weeks after that, Jessica will be heading back to Iowa to spend some time with her Grandma. It’s been a few years since she has seen her and she doesn’t want to take anything for granted. The kids and I always miss her when she’s gone but it looks like my Mom will be coming over to stay with us for the weekend to help out. It will be the weekend of our 14th anniversary that she’s gone so we’ll have to find another time to celebrate. It’s all good though; I’m glad she is able to get back there and spend some quality time with Sherry.
Vegas Showbiz and Cappers Update
I forgot to mention this in last month’s post, but early in January Vegas Showbiz finally reached 1,000 subscribers on YouTube! This was a goal I had been chasing for nearly two years so it felt great to finally achieve it. This meant that the channel made it to the next tier of the YouTube Partner Program, allowing it to profit from advertisements that run before and during videos. The channel is still small, and based on our average number of daily views, it only makes about $2 per day, but it’s something and it can only go up from here.
There are other perks that come with the channel though, for instance, Jessica and I recently had the pleasure of attending the Grand Reopening of the Jersey Boys show at The Orleans. Jersey Boys used to play in Vegas between 2008 and 2016, and it was a very popular show during that time, but it’s been gone since then. The Orleans has never done a show this big before and we loved it. Before the show we got to attend a cocktail party, then we were seated in the front row for the show! We were cracking up because they were clearly giving us the VIP YouTuber treatment even though our channel isn’t big at all. These are exactly the kinds of things I was hoping would happen when creating the channel two years ago, so it felt great to be able to have them come true. We very much enjoyed the show and gave it a nice review a couple of days later.
Ready for Jersey Boys to begin!
Regarding Cappers, things have definitely picked up over the past two months. One major contributor to that has been the addition of our daily sports betting analysis video, which we post on YouTube Shorts and TikTok. It’s one minute or less and we simply highlight a play that looks attractive on the site. It’s normally a screen recording of the site with either Devin or myself talking about why we selected this particular play. We only get about 40 views per day on YouTube, but we average anywhere from 200 to 700 views per day on TikTok! This has been driving a lot more traffic to our site, resulting in more free trials and more paid subscriptions.
Recently we even got our first annual subscriber, which came from a guy in Ireland, of all places. It’s great to see that we are reaching an international audience, and it comes as no surprise that when we review our viewer analytics on TikTok, we can see that about 96% of our viewers are male, and the majority of them are between the ages of 18 and 25. Sports betting is extremely popular with young men these days, especially since new states are constantly legalizing it. While there are plenty of services out there for sports bettors, most of them are known as Touts, and they simply tell you who to bet on. These services are much more expensive than our site, so it makes sense that a younger generation of sports bettors is attracted to our platform, which focuses more on presenting relevant information for them to make their own decisions with. I am constantly working on adding new features to the site which add value for our users and I firmly believe that it’s only a matter of time before this thing really takes off.
One feature I’m really proud of is the Expected Value dashboard, which compares odds on every game from a lot of different sports books and identifies games where you can get good value by betting on a specific game at a specific sports book. One thing that makes the sports financial market much different from the stock market is the fact that the odds for games are often different from one book to another. The same kind of thing doesn’t exist in the stock market, meaning the price of a stock is the same regardless of which brokerage firm you use. When I find value in a game at a particular book, I run it through variants of the Kelly Criterion formula to determine the optimal bet size, as a percentage of your total bankroll. In many cases, no bet is recommended, but when enough value is there we display the optimal bet size and it’s doing very well. I’m always tracking the performance of our dashboards and systems, and I’m confident that our users are turning a profit if they follow along.
Another feature I recently built that I’m very proud of is related to NBA player prop bets. If you’re not familiar with prop bets, it’s like betting that a certain player will score more or less than a certain amount of points in a game. It goes well beyond points though. In the case of basketball, you can use Cappers to research how many rebounds, assists, and three-pointers they will have. Each day our site analyzes every prop bet available for every player, then examines their stats from every game of the season to determine how likely they are to go over or under the given line. We graph all of this out for the user, then compare their recent performance to how well the opposing team does at stopping players in these categories. For example, if a player has been rebounding well recently and they’re playing against a team that is at the bottom of the league in rebounding, we highlight that to the users.
We frequently recommend these types of plays in our daily videos and have been very successful in doing so. I find these types of plays much easier to beat consistently than betting on the outcome of an entire game. They’re known in the gambling world as “soft markets” while betting on games are considered “hard markets.” Not only do these types of plays appeal to sports bettors, but they also appeal to fantasy sports players, which opens up a much larger audience to us. I’m already working on adding the same type of feature for the upcoming baseball season, then will do the same thing for the next football season as well.
In order to continue building our knowledge, Devin and I are always reading books and watching videos about sports betting. Whenever we learn valuable new things, we work on adding them to Cappers. This was how Cappers originated, with me reading books about NBA betting and transferring those learnings into a website, so that trend continues to this day. Sorry for being so long-winded about Cappers but you can probably tell that it goes beyond work for me. It has become a passion that I have invested myself heavily into. I can’t wait for the day that this is my only job, but in the meantime, I’m willing to continue grinding along with two jobs as long as necessary. Again, it’s only a matter of time.
I guess that’s about it for now. It’s great to be busy again, and although it’s been a mild winter for us, it’s nice to have it already warming up. We’re going to be outside a lot this Spring, and I’m excited for everything the kids have going on. Elise and Ava have school performances coming up soon, I’m excited to be out at the baseball field regularly, and can’t wait to get to Colorado. Other than holidays, I haven’t had a day off since starting my new day job last April, so this getaway is going to be nice. Here are a few more recent family photos.
Elise looking adorable at schoolDinner at our new favorite Chinese restaurant, ShangHai Taste.Enzo and his buddies at the APEX Fun RunElise and Mom at the APEX Fun Run
April 2023 has been an amazing month, and we still have more good stuff coming up!
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.
An update on our 2023 Spring Break, including upcoming activities, preparing for a new family pet, and a few other exciting bits.
Since today is the last day of Spring Break, I wanted to give a quick update on how we’re doing and what we’ve recently been up to. We had plans to visit the Grand Canyon for Spring Break this year but unfortunately, that didn’t work out for a couple of reasons. That’s okay though; we live in a fun place with all kinds of things to do, so we decided to stay near home this year.
I don’t want to dwell on this, but part of the reason we didn’t go anywhere for Spring Break was that I ended up getting Covid-19 and had to quarantine from Jessica and the kids for about a week. That was no fun but I’m thankful that it wasn’t worse and most importantly, that I didn’t give it to Jessica and the kids. It’s possible that I got it from Jessica because she was experiencing similar symptoms about a week before me, but she never took a test so we can’t be sure.
The most disappointing part about getting Covid was the timing. Our good friends Tiko and Tina were married on Monday and I wasn’t able to join Jessica and the kids at the wedding. I also wasn’t able to attend Tiko’s bachelor party a couple of days before the wedding. I was pretty sad about this but there was nothing I could do besides stay home and rest. Luckily I was able to watch the ceremony online from a webcast provided by the chapel, so at least I can picture it, but I really wanted to be there with my family and friends. I managed to avoid Covid for three years, then it finally caught up to me at an unfortunate time, but all things considered, I can’t complain too much. I’m feeling totally fine now, and again, the kids never got it, which I’m most thankful for.
Since I was home quarantining, the kids spent several days of their Spring Break at my Mom’s house. Once again, having her help with the kids has been huge for us. She takes them on so many fun outings that Ava is now planning on writing a book about her adventures with Nana. My Mom often takes them to pet stores to view and hold various animals, but this time she took them to a full-blown farm where they were able to feed and play with all kinds of animals. She also took them to one of our favorite indoor trampoline places for a day of jumping and exercise. Ava smacked her face on a wall and has a bit of a black eye, but she’s fine.
School starts back up tomorrow, then we have several activities beginning shortly after. Unfortunately, Ava’s softball season was canceled due to not enough kids signing up. I tried to get her into another league but it was too late. We were all bummed about this, but we found some other activities to jump into. The kids are all resuming swimming lessons on Friday, plus Jessica and Elise will soon be starting a boxing class. Elise has been interested in trying out boxing for a while now and we thought doing it with Mom would make it even better.
Here’s a video the kids made for their YouTube channel taste-testing a few drinks from Starbucks.
Ready for the wedding!The wedding reception was held at the Cosmopolitan Buffet. This was their first buffet and let’s just say the kids were big fans.
Preparing for a new family pet
We’ve been taking care of Jessica and Ava’s class pet, a leopard gecko named Mochi, during Spring Break. This is Mochi’s second time staying with us and we really enjoy having a lizard at the house. I’ve been wanting a bearded dragon for well over a decade at this point and I’m now happy to say that we have decided to get one! Jessica was never into the idea of having a reptile but after caring for Mochi she has changed her tune a bit. It’s still going to be my pet and I’ll be responsible for most of its care, but I’m cool with that. I look forward to having it on my shoulder while I finish up my work days at home.
I’ve been doing a lot of research on caring for “Beardies” and today I bought a home for it. It’s a 120-gallon tank, which is 4’x2’x2’ and we’re going to put it in Enzo’s bedroom. He has a huge room and loves the idea of keeping the dragon in there. I look forward to providing more updates on this soon, but at the moment we’re just starting the process.
Ava holding her buddy Mochi
A football game with Uncle Bob
Earlier this month I had the opportunity to spend an afternoon with my Uncle Bob at the XFL football game between the Seattle Seadragons and the Las Vegas Vipers. Bob and I have had a lot of great times over the years but for a variety of reasons, we haven’t been able to spend that much time together since my family and I moved to Nevada. I reached out to him at the end of January for his birthday to see if we could set something up and he got back to me a couple of weeks later once he saw Seattle was going to be playing Vegas.
Bob is the biggest Seattle Seahawks fan I know and has gone to great lengths to prove it. His whole SUV is covered with Seahawks paraphernalia and is even painted Seahawks colors. Based on his love for Seattle he has adopted the Seadragons as his favorite XFL team, but he pulls for the Vipers as well. Once he saw Seattle was coming to Las Vegas, it seemed like the perfect opportunity for us to catch a game.
We had a great time, especially during the fourth quarter when Seattle made an incredible comeback to win the game in the final minute. Not to sound dramatic, but as we get older I try not to take experiences like these for granted. No one knows what the future has in store, but that day was just like old times. It was a day we’ll never forget and I look forward to doing more things like this in the near future. We’re already planning a Las Vegas Aviators baseball game for this Spring or Summer. Here’s a video I made for the Vegas Showbiz YouTube channel about our experience.
Ready for the game with Uncle Bob!
Starting a small business
Another piece of exciting news that I have to share is that my good friend Devin and I have decided to start a business together. Back in September, I started getting interested in sports gambling. Obviously, considering what my Dad did for a living, this was something that I had a lot of familiarity with from my childhood. I never got into gambling while living in Washington, but here in Nevada it’s hugely popular, and more states are legalizing it all the time.
What I realized very quickly was that I’m not interested in gambling large amounts (my average bet is only $10), but what I am really into is the handicapping process. I started researching sports handicapping methods and gambling systems, but what I soon found out was that handicapping a game is a time-consuming process. A lot of research is required to see how teams have been performing, then a lot of math is required to crunch all the numbers and see if an edge can be found. Based on all of my programming experience, it was immediately obvious to me that I could significantly speed up the whole process by building a website that would consume all the data for each team and run all the math formulas.
I started building the website back in November and have barely missed a day of working on it since then. Even when we were in Colorado for Christmas break I was working on it daily. I didn’t initially intend for it to be a business; I just wanted to speed up my own handicapping process, plus I love doing web development but don’t get a chance to do that type of work anymore during my day job.
It didn’t take long, however, before I started seeing the value of what I was creating. What started out as a single NBA handicapping system soon started growing into much more. I was buying books and reading articles to learn new gambling systems. Before I knew it I was adding NHL gambling systems, then getting ready for baseball season.
Devin and I are very similar in many ways, and one of those ways is that we both like small-stakes sports gambling. I was regularly sharing my progress on the site with him and soon enough we decided to sit down and talk about the idea of turning it into a business. He is the most successful entrepreneur I know and the timing was right because he was just getting ready for his next venture. He’s been a Chief Technical Officer (CTO) of two startups, so his goal as the next step of his career was to take on the CEO role for a startup. This made perfect sense to me because I’m not ready to take on that kind of role, and I really wanted to stay heavily engaged on the coding and technical side of things. Thus, we’re 50/50 partners, with Devin being the CEO and me as the CTO.
We made the official decision to start a company earlier this month and have been very busy getting things going. Obviously, I can’t leave my day job anytime soon, so I’m working day and night to make this happen, but it’s worth it for me. We haven’t finalized a name for the business yet, but we’re doing our research and should be settling on that very soon. Part of that selection process has to do with whether a name can be trademarked and incorporated, and if a website domain name is available. Devin is focusing on all that stuff while I stay busy making updates to the website. Our goal is to have a soft launch before the MLB All-Star break, then have things fully up and running by the start of the next NFL season.
There’s a ton of work to do, but we see the potential and think it will be very successful. Devin is so bright with business ideas and has already come up with some great strategies. I couldn’t be more happy or lucky to have him as a partner, but our friendship always comes first. We’ve been close for a long time and we don’t want to let any of that change. It’s going to be a fun road and I look forward to sharing more about it as things progress.
I also want to stress that Vegas Showbiz isn’t going anywhere! The girls are already asking when they can take it over, but that won’t be for several years. We’re still regularly posting videos and just today we reached 500 subscribers.
That’s about it for now. I’m looking forward to our next monthly post because I assume there will be a lot to share. We have two different families who we are friends with that will be coming for a visit in April, so that should be fun. Jessica’s birthday is coming up at the end of April and I’m taking her to see Chelsea Handler’s comedy show that night, then the next day she’s heading off to Sedona Arizona to spend a weekend with her girlfriends from Seattle. Hopefully, by the next post, I’ll have more information to share about the business, as well as our bearded dragon. Here’s a few recent photos.
An update on a very busy February, 2023 for the Pellegrini family.
Between school, sports, and various family outings, February 2023 has been a busy month for our family. I’d say the activity keeping us the busiest this month has been preparing and raising funds for the “Apex Fun Run” at school. To everyone who helped them out with a donation, thank you so much for your support; they surpassed their goals and ended up raising a total of $600 for their school! Today the kids will be working on thank you notes and pictures, so you can expect to receive those sometime soon.
The final step in their fundraising efforts took place on President’s Day when we set up a family lemonade stand at the park across the street from our neighborhood. They had done the same thing last year for a school fundraiser and did quite well, so we decided to give it another shot. We were all off that day for the holiday, so I decided to help out. We offered cookies and glasses of lemonade for $1 each.
The first hour was slow, but things picked up between noon and 1:00. Several neighbors stopped by, and we were even lucky enough to be paid a visit by 3 Henderson motorcycle police officers. I couldn’t believe the generosity of these officers; they each had a cookie and a glass of lemonade, but the first one gave us a $5 bill and said to keep the change, then the next one gave us a $10, and the final one gave us a $20! None of them would accept any change, and they were so friendly. We thanked them not only for their donations but for everything they do to keep us safe. In fact, I just saw this week that Henderson once again ranked as one of the top five safest cities in the United States. The only cities ranked ahead of us were Virginia Beach and Honolulu. I like to think of us as the safest non-beach city in the country 🙂
Again, thank you to everyone for your support. Whether you donated or not, the fact that you’re reading this indicates that you probably care about our family, and we thank you for that! Each of the kids ran around 30 laps, and even though the laps were about half the length of a standard lap on a track, they still got a lot of activity and exercise that day. They were all very proud of their fundraising achievements, and I have to admit it was a lot of fun helping out with the lemonade stand. We were all holding up signs and waving at cars. It felt good to help them out, and I was really impressed with how much they raised. I never came anywhere close to that for my own fundraisers as a kid. Here are a few photos from the whole experience.
In addition to our lemonade stand, President’s Day weekend was really fun and busy for us. That Friday night, we took the kids to the theater to see the new Ant-Man movie, then on Saturday morning, Ava had her softball tryouts. She was nervous but did great, especially in her batting evaluation. You get five pitches, and she hit solid line drives on the first four. She missed the fifth one, but it was a terrible pitch. She also did really well when fielding grounders and left excited for the upcoming season.
After that, we all headed down to the Bellagio to check out this year’s Lunar New Year display. As usual, it was beautiful and so intricately laid out. I made a video of it for the Vegas Showbiz YouTube channel, which you can see below.
After the Bellagio, we checked out a new vegan restaurant, then went on a little appliance shopping spree. Several of the appliances at our house are pretty old (perhaps even original), so we decided to upgrade our washing machine and dishwasher with brand-new, top-of-the-line G.E. appliances. Eventually, we would like to replace others as well, but these two were the most in need of a replacement for now.
As a homeowner, there are always new projects in mind, but the biggest one I’m looking at next is a cool pool deck surface out back. Currently, it’s all concrete which is painted dark brown, and it gets insanely hot during the Summer. It’s way too hot to walk around without shoes or sandals. I’ve been to people’s houses who had an epoxy pool decking surface applied, and the difference is incredible. It reduces the temperature by about 35 degrees, making it no problem to walk around barefoot. As swimming season approaches, I’m hoping to have someone out for an estimate sometime soon.
For now, however, the water is still freezing, and it feels like swimming season is a ways off. February tends to be our coldest month of the year here in Southern Nevada, but I’ll refrain from complaining because I know almost everyone else has it way worse during the winter. Our house gets really cold during the daytime, but I don’t turn on the furnace until Jessica and the kids are about to get home from school. It doesn’t make sense for me to heat the whole house, or even the whole first floor, when I’m spending almost the entire day in the office. My Mom gave me a heat lamp a few months ago, so I just have that thing pointing at me all day. The cats have fallen in love with it, and it seems like one or both of them is always lying on my lap while I’m working.
I can barely reach the keyboard with both cats in my lap!
The most extreme type of weather we get during the Winter and Spring is wind. Most people don’t realize how windy it gets here. Earlier this week, we were getting warnings on our phones about 70mph winds, and it was no joke. I thought our house was going to blow away! The next morning I came out to the backyard to assess the damage, and it looked like someone had taken a wheelbarrow full of dirt and leaves and dumped it all into our pool. As you can imagine, getting it cleaned up was not fun, but welcome to life as an outdoor pool owner.
Earlier this month, we had a fun little house guest for the weekend. Jessica’s classroom was due for a new class pet, so we went and picked up a cute fancy-tailed Gecko named Mochi. I have wanted a pet lizard since our first year of marriage, but it was always a hard no for Jessica. She’s not into reptiles and couldn’t stand the thought of feeding them live insects. I totally get it and haven’t pushed the issue, but to my surprise, she really gravitated toward Mochi. Spencer was somewhat interested, but it didn’t last long. Peach, on the other hand, was totally infatuated with Mochi and sat next to the tank staring at her for at least two hours. It sounds like Mochi will be coming back to stay with us during school breaks, and I have regained hope that maybe someday I’ll finally get my bearded dragon.
Spencer and Mochi getting acquainted.Peach enjoying some rare backyard time.
On the night before the Superbowl, Jessica and I met up with friends for dinner at our favorite Indian restaurant, then we all went to the Black Crowes concert at the Palms. I’ve been a fan of theirs for a long time but didn’t think I’d ever get the chance to see them live due to their breakup many years ago. Luckily, the Robinson brothers seem to have worked out their issues and started touring again last year. The show was outstanding, and the video I made for Vegas Showbiz was our quickest to reach 2,000 views.
Speaking of Vegas Showbiz, we are now just shy of 500 subscribers. The only remaining requirement for us to qualify for the YouTube partner program is to have 1,000 subscribers. I never thought it would be so difficult to get 1,000 subscribers, but the good news is that our videos are getting plenty of views and hours watched. The channel turned a year old earlier this month, and during that time, our videos have gotten over 5,600 hours of view time!
You only need 4,000 hours of view time during the previous 12 months to qualify for the partner program, so we’re looking good on that end. I’m hoping it won’t take another year to get to 1,000 subscribers, but even if it does, I’m fine with it because I know we will get there eventually, and there’s a market for the content we produce. Once we get into the partner program, we will finally be able to start profiting from our videos. At this point, I have a good idea of what’s going to get views and what won’t, so I look forward to using the money we make from the channel to go out and do more fun stuff to document.
Regarding school, the kids have all been staying busy. Ava and Elise have been especially busy, however; they’re still doing choir before school every Tuesday morning, and now they’re both involved in the sign language club. “Girls on the Run” is about to get started for the second time this school year, which they’re excited about, and Elise is enjoying being a part of the school drama club. I always loved doing school drama as a kid, so it makes me proud and excited to see her doing the same thing.
As I write this, it’s the final weekend of February, and it’s a relatively quiet one for us. The main highlight was yesterday when I took the kids to the women’s UNLV basketball game versus San Diego State. It’s funny because we used to live less than 10 minutes from the SDSU campus when Ava was a baby, and now we’re so close to UNLV. It was the first time Ava or Elise attended a basketball game, and we all had a nice time. Jessica was able to get four free tickets through the school district, and this was the final home game of the season. UNLV ended up winning by 6 points, and everyone left happy. I’m hoping to take the kids to see our WNBA champion Las Vegas Aces play this season, as well as check out the NBA Summer Hoops, which happens every Summer here in Vegas. We still love hockey, but watching and going to basketball games has been a nice addition for us this year. Here’s a photo of the kids at the game.
Go Lady Rebels!
I guess that’s about it for now. As you can tell, February has been a busy month for us. Combine that with the fact that everyone in our house except Enzo has had a cold this month. It seems like there’s always something going on or something to deal with. Spring Break is coming up next month, and we’ve talked about making a trip to the Grand Canyon, but so far, no planning has taken place, so I’m not sure how that’s going to turn out. I’m sure we’ll do something one way or the other.
As always, thanks for checking in on us! If anyone wants to make a visit this Spring or Summer and soak up some hot weather and sunshine, just let us know. I’ll have the pool ready for you 😉
An update on everything we have going on as Summer 2022 transitions into Autumn.
Happy Fall Equinox! The beginning of Fall is my favorite time of year, mainly because the weather in September is so nice, football season is back, baseball is getting interesting, and the basketball and hockey seasons are right around the corner. This is “cooking season” for me as well; I frequently begin my Sunday morning in the kitchen, working on something that will slow cook all day and make the house smell so good.
There’s a big rumor going around that the NBA will soon be announcing an expansion to the league by adding two teams, and the lucky cities are Seattle and Las Vegas! I’d love to see Seattle get the Sonics back, and having our own pro basketball team here in Vegas would be awesome. We’re already the fight capital of the world, we have pro football and hockey, and Formula One will start doing a Las Vegas street race, part of which is on the strip, in November 2023. Rumors about the Oakland A’s moving here have also been circulating for years, so I can’t wait to see how it all plays out.
Family Update
Regarding our family, everyone is doing well, and as the name of this post implies, the lazy days of Summer are behind us, and we’re back to having full schedules. Ava has decided not to return to hockey, and we respected her decision. She is now part of a Volleyball class that meets every Tuesday evening and seems to be enjoying it. She’s tall for her age, so volleyball would be a great sport for her to stick with, but I expect her to join another softball team in the Spring as well.
School has also been going very well for Ava. She is now in Jessica’s class and is thriving for the first time in her academic career. Although she is brand new to the school, she became the most popular kid in her class on day 1. People are naturally attracted to Ava, and seeing her thrive at school is so nice. She just went on the 5th-grade camping trip to Pali Adventures in Southern California; it was a great time for her and a chance to meet more kids from the new school. Obviously, Ava deserves a ton of credit for her newfound success at school, but so does Jessica. She worked very hard to make this happen, and seeing it all start to pay off makes me happy.
Ava on the bus for her school camping trip
Elise is also doing well at her new school. She makes friends so quickly and easily that it seems like every week, we’re taking her to another birthday party. One of the areas she has improved in the most is spelling. This was a subject that she struggled with in previous years, but now she is regularly getting A’s on her spelling tests and has set a goal of winning the class spelling bee.
As far as activities for Elise go, she is very excited to be joining an all-girls running club, which is put on by the school. There are several runners on Jessica’s Mom’s side of the family, so it appears Elise (and Enzo, I think) has gotten those genes. She is surprisingly fast and can run longer distances than any of her friends. I recently took her out to get a nice pair of running shoes, which is no easy task because Elise has wide feet and is very particular about how they fit. Luckily, she can wear a women’s size now, so I was able to find a pair of Asics that worked perfectly for her. I’m really excited for her to get started and can’t wait to come to watch her run!
Elise sharpening her baking skills at homeAnd here’s Elise having fun at a jumping place
Enzo is also doing very well at his new school. He’s our little math wiz and regularly scores around the 90th percentile nationally for his age group in math. He takes after Grandpa Elmer and myself in that sense. He’s doing well in other subjects too, but it’s clear that math is his strongest subject, so we want to cultivate that as much as possible. He says he wants to be a software engineer when he grows up so he can “work a lot and make a lot of money.” I wonder where he gets that from…
A few weeks ago, Enzo joined a new swimming program through the city of Henderson. We were lucky enough to get a spot at the Green Valley community center, which is less than 10 minutes from our house. At this point, he has already surpassed me in formal swimming instruction. Although he has expressed an interest in running when he gets older, for now, it seems to be all about swimming. I always assumed it would be BMX racing for Enzo, but I love that he’s so into swimming.
Fun at the arcade with EnzoEnzo chilling at home with his tablet
At this point, all three of the kids are strong swimmers. Between all the lessons they have taken, and all the time we spend swimming at home, I have little to worry about them in the water. We still take water safety very seriously, though; the kids know about my good friend Spencer who drowned in Lake Washington many years ago. Swimming was a life skill that Jessica and I insisted on, and I love the fact that it has become the activity that the kids and I do together the most.
Things have also been going well for Jessica. Summer flew by, but she loves her job, especially now that the kids are with her all day. Her dedication to her job has impressed me; it’s not uncommon for her to work on school-related things at home during her free time. The school is extremely lucky to have her in this position, and they know it too. They keep asking her if she wants to move up into another role, but at least for now, she is quite happy where she is.
Our days are extremely busy, but we have a nice routine going. Every morning I help prepare the kids for school, then I start my workday once they head out the door. I usually wrap up my workday an hour or two after they get home from school, then Jessica and I team up to help the kids with homework and make dinner. The school they went to last year assigned literally zero homework, but now at this new school, homework is a daily thing. It seems strange considering that both schools are part of the same district and teach the same grades, but it’s clear that the kids are doing better in school because of the homework.
By the time homework and dinner are finished, we’re all pretty spent. We tend to hang out and watch a little TV at night, then we’re off to bed early and ready to do it all over again the next day.
Vegas Showbiz Update
If you follow the Vegas Showbiz YouTube channel, you may have noticed that our video production volume has recently slowed down. This is by design, but it’s only a temporary thing. Allow me to explain.
When I started Vegas Showbiz last October, my original plan was based on a website allowing you to search for Las Vegas events and shows. I worked extremely hard on it for three months and still consider it my crowning achievement as a software engineer, but the problem was that I quickly realized a couple of things:
Running a site like that is expensive due to all the background operations running to gather event data.
It was too much work for one person to handle as a side hustle, and I wasn’t in a position to hire employees.
It’s nearly impossible to compete with Google when it comes to any kind of web search business.
Based on this, I switched gears and started focusing on content production. I built a new website for VegasShow.biz that would be much more focused on blog articles and search engine optimization and created the YouTube channel.
At first, I was pulling double duty by writing blog articles and making videos, but it soon became too much work to keep up with, especially considering how busy I already am with work and family commitments. I was enjoying the process of making YouTube videos more than writing blog articles, so I made a conscious decision to take a break from the blog and focus entirely on YouTube videos.
About four months went by, and I was so focused on video production that I basically forgot all about the website. Then, one day in August, I randomly decided to log in to the back end of the website and was surprised to see that even though I had done zero work on the site for four months, the site had made a little money due to the Google advertisements that run all over it. It was less than $10, so we’re not talking about anything significant here, but it was enough for me to realize how profitable a blog can be.
The site was (and still is) getting very few hits, but this article I wrote about the Rio Hotel was getting most of the traffic. Soon enough, I realized that if you search for something similar to “is Rio Las Vegas closing,” my article is the number one search result on Google! This was exciting to see and somewhat reinvigorated me to start writing more Las Vegas blog posts. I have since written three new blog posts for VegasShow.biz and will soon be starting another one.
On the YouTube side of things, we have now produced 65 videos, 15 of which have over 1,000 views. Not bad for a channel that’s only six or seven months old. When you look at those 15 most-watched videos, it becomes clear that our most successful videos fall into one of the following categories:
Las Vegas Shows
Las Vegas Concerts
Las Vegas Hotels
Las Vegas Restaurants
Everything else we do seems to get minimal views, so it’s clear to me that I’m wasting my time producing a video unrelated to those four categories. There’s one small problem, though; to make a video about any of those things means you have to spend money to do the thing first. It was getting a little expensive going to all these shows, concerts, hotels, and restaurants. Luckily, however, I think I have found the perfect solution. Enter HouseSeats.com.
My Mom and friend Devin had both told me about HouseSeats a while ago, but I didn’t get serious about it until recently. The idea is that HouseSeats runs in a handful of cities throughout the country; you pay a relatively small fee to sign up for a membership, then you monitor their site to see what tickets are available. As Devin put it, the Vegas B-rate shows always offer free tickets on HouseSeats, and at least once a year, you will score free tickets to a show or concert that you would have gladly paid to see anyway.
It seems to me that Las Vegas would be the best city to have a HouseSeats membership in due to all the ticketed shows that are constantly happening. I really want to see those b-rate shows, too, because people search for things like that when planning their vacation. I haven’t yet signed up for a HouseSeats membership, only because it’s good for one year, and I already have things planned for Vegas Showbiz videos during the next two weekends. After that, however, I’m definitely going to sign up and can’t wait to start attending more shows!
I expect the Vegas Showbiz YouTube channel to be back in high gear very soon. My goal is to qualify for the YouTube partner program by the middle of 2023. In the meantime, another goal of mine is to write a VegasShow.biz blog article for every successful video we have produced so far. It’s clear to me that I need more balance between Vegas Showbiz videos and blog articles going forward, so that’s how I plan to operate from now on.
Pellegrini Guitar
Since I thrive on being busy and love the content creation process, I recently decided to start another blog and YouTube channel. This time, it’s all dedicated to my love of the guitar. Since then, I have been writing blog articles on PellegriniGuitar.com and adding videos to the Pellegrini Guitar YouTube channel. If you could help me out by subscribing to the YouTube channel, I would greatly appreciate it!
My love of the guitar is much older than my love for content creation, and I still practice daily, but over the past few years, I have found myself trying to figure out what’s next for me musically. Playing in a band doesn’t suit my lifestyle these days, so I had mainly been focusing on recording my own songs and posting them to my SoundCloud account. The problem is that practically no one was hearing my songs, so I frequently questioned why I still practice every day. I’ve always loved playing, but that alone wasn’t enough.
I needed a new sense of musical purpose, which is exactly what this blog and channel provided. Now I know what I’m practicing for; the next video! Playing on camera can be a little bit nerve-wracking, and I still don’t think I’ve played my best on any of the videos, but I’m getting better. Most importantly, though, I’m enjoying it so much! I have a passion for the instrument, which I hope shines through in my videos and articles, even when my playing isn’t quite up to par.
Based on all the guitar gear I’ve been collecting over the years, my main video focus for Pellegrini Guitar so far has been doing demos of different guitars. Once those are out of the way, I will probably demo some of my amplifiers and effects pedals, but I also want to start creating my own guitar lesson series. I’m still working out the details, but I plan to provide free lessons on YouTube as my little way of giving back to the guitar community.
While there is certainly no shortage of free guitar lessons on YouTube, I still think I have something to offer. I’m trying to develop a unique approach to teaching the instrument to beginners and look forward to actually creating the lessons. For now, it’s all conceptual, but I’m getting more comfortable playing on video, plus learning how to create the best possible sound quality in my videos.
My new Gibson SG. This was my first guitar purchase since the Japan trip, which was almost exactly three years ago.
It’s become clear to me that content creation can be a very lucrative business model if you’re willing to put in the work. Assuming you’re not already famous or well-known for a particular thing, it’s going to take a lot of time to build up the kind of traffic you need to be profitable. It’s not the kind of thing I would recommend to someone trying to figure out how they’re going to pay the bills next month, but if you’re patient and you have a passion for the content you’re creating, success can happen.
I’m in it for the long haul and am not particularly worried about how much traffic I’m getting in this first year. My goal is to do another 10-15 years in the tech industry while building up Vegas Showbiz and Pellegrini Guitar. Hopefully, I can retire from tech in my early to mid-50s and then focus on my content platforms.
It’s possible that one platform will take off and require all of my attention, but we’ll see. I could see either (or both) of them doing really well; E-Learning is one of the hottest industries in the world now, raking in billions of dollars annually. Based on this, I could see Pellegrini Guitar taking off, but on the other hand, Las Vegas is quickly transforming into Hollywood 2.0. Tons of people from Hollywood are moving here regularly. Even A-List stars like Mark Whalberg are relocating here. As more and more people flock to Las Vegas and the entertainment scene here jumps up to the next level, it seems very possible that Vegas Showbiz could ride that wave to success.
I have no concerns at all because I know that as long as I keep putting in the work with these platforms and my day job, everything will be fine. Probably more than fine. I think there’s going to be even more exciting news coming up over the next few months, but we’ll have to wait and see how things play out. For now, we couldn’t be better. Everyone is thriving and happy, which is all I care about.
That’s about it for now. Thanks for sticking with me on this long post. Here are a few recent photos.
Family fun at the Las Vegas Aviators baseball gameAva and Elise playing at the parkSending Ava off to camp at PaliElise and Enzo playing with Mom’s phone on the way to school
There’s so many exciting new things going on for our family that I almost don’t even know where to start. Well, that’s not entirely true, because obviously I’m going to start with Mr Enzo’s birthday! That said, we do have quite a few exciting things going on, so let’s get to it.
Today is Enzo’s birthday, but it’s a Friday and they had some fun activities planned for the 100th day of school, so Enzo and his sisters went to school just like any other day. Before that he was up early to open presents, but after that it’s been a pretty normal day. He’s really happy with all the various cars, magic sets, and toys he received, but there’s more to look forward to.
Tomorrow afternoon we will be holding Enzo’s birthday party at our house. Over the past couple months our family has gotten really into the TV show ‘Survivor’, so based on his request, that will be the theme for Enzo’s party. There’s going to be various challenges for the kids to take part in before getting into cake and treats. Jessica has been doing an awesome job preparing activities, decorations, and challenges for the party. I, on the other hand, am looking forward to doing lots of filming for the kids’ YouTube channel, and working on my best Jeff Probst impressions.
In addition to the party tomorrow, we’ve got one more related activity to look forward to. A week from tonight the 5 of us are going to see the Jabbawockeez show at MGM Grand. I’ve read it’s one of the most popular Vegas shows for families, plus I have some friends who went with their kids and said it was awesome. All of the kids are excited to go, but Jessica and I are as well, so it should be a fun night. If you’re not familiar with Jabbawockeez, they will be performing at halftime of the NFL Pro Bowl, which is happening here in Las Vegas just a couple days after we’ll be seeing them.
Speaking of Vegas shows, we all had an amazing time going to our first shows earlier this month. Jessica had the pleasure of taking Elise and Ava to see Katy Perry at the new Resorts World Theatre. As expected, the show was amazing and they had the best time ever. It’s the biggest stage in Las Vegas and the production was over the top. The girls were screaming, singing, and dancing the night away. They will always remember this as their first concert and I’m so glad it turned out the way it did.
Things didn’t quite go as planned for Enzo and I, but we still had a great night as well. The plan was for me to take him to see David Copperfield that same night that the girls were seeing Katy Perry, and I was really happy with the seats we got, but unfortunately the show was canceled at the last minute. I’m still not sure why it was canceled but these days you almost have to assume it’s Covid-related.
Enzo was really bummed but I promised him we would see David Copperfield another time. So, we ended up going to see The Mentalist instead, which is a mind reading show by Gerry McCambridge. It wasn’t a big production show like Copperfield but it was still very entertaining and exciting. We ended up making a full night of it by leaving the house early that day, walking around on the strip for a while, then having dinner at Nacho Daddy. After dinner we walked over to Bellagio to watch the fountain show, then we went inside and walked through their whole shopping and dining area. The show was across the street in the Miracle Mile shops at Planet Hollywood, so we walked all through there as well. We definitely got our steps in that night, and stopping for ice cream was a must. Leaving the house that day Enzo couldn’t help but express concern because he was sad about our show being canceled. However, by the time we were heading home he was calling it the best day of his life and couldn’t stop thanking me. If only he understood how happy it made me to see him living his best life.
Okay, more big news to share… Jessica just got a job working at a nearby school! She’s been wanting to find something since moving to Henderson, but it had to make sense and work with our family’s schedule. Also, for the first time since before Ava was born, Jessica and I will once again be working the same hours. Obviously this was never the case when she was working nights in a restaurant and I was working days at Microsoft / Amazon. I’ve definitely gotten used to being home with her everyday over the past couple years, so it’s going to be an adjustment for all of us having her gone more, but we’re really happy for her, and she’s so excited about the opportunity.
The way this all came together is really interesting; it basically traces back to Ava’s dyslexia diagnosis from a couple years ago. It was that diagnosis that set Jessica off onto a journey of learning and self exploration. If you ask her, she’ll tell you that she also has dyslexia, although she was never tested or officially diagnosed. It’s been this journey to learn more about Ava and how we can teach her that has led to so much self discovery for Jessica over the past couple years.
Getting involved with teaching the Barton program to our kids to help with reading was a major step in this direction. Then taking on the huge task of homeschooling our girls for the entire school year last year was also very much related. Jessica is a natural teacher and great with kids, especially the young ones. She’s going to be working as an assistant in a special education classroom at Vanderberg Elementary School, which is less than 10 minutes from our school. It’s such a perfect fit; they even teach the same Barton reading program that Jessica has been using with our kids for the past couple years.
The plan is for all 3 of our kids to switch schools in the Fall and go to Vanderberg for the remainder of their elementary school years. This isn’t the easiest decision to make, mostly because we feel a lot of guilt for them switching schools so many times over the past few years. Some of it was out of our control, like when we got re-zoned by the Everett school district, or that whole pandemic thing which caused everyone to stay home for a year, but regardless the reality is that Ava hasn’t had (and won’t have) two consecutive years at the same elementary school since Kindergarten and first grade.
This isn’t something that we take lightly, but as a parent you have to make decisions, and of course we’re going to do whatever we feel is best for our children. Initially we were really excited about them going to school at Glen Taylor Elementary, but unfortunately some things haven’t gone the way we hoped. I don’t want to get into all of the details on it, but again as parents we have to do our best to make the right decisions for our kids, and there’s no doubt in our mind that Vanderberg will be a better fit. We just feel bad about them having to leave their friends, but they all live nearby and most likely will be rejoining in middle school anyway.
For now the plan is for Jessica to start work in February, but the kids will be finishing the year at Glen Taylor, then transitioning to Vanderberg next school year. I’m sure we’ll have a lot more updates about this in the future, but for now we’re just really happy for Jessica. It’s been great watching this all unfold for her and she’s so excited for this new chapter in our lives. We keep joking about how much we always seem to have going on. It’s always something with us but we keep it interesting.
Another big thing for us this month was the installation of our solar energy system! There’s now over 40 solar panels on the roof of our house, and we’ve got the final inspection coming up next week. I had been thinking about going solar since buying the house, and after learning more about it, I felt like it was an easy decision. You can think of it like renting a house versus owning a house; when you get your electricity from the power company (like I have my entire life until now), you’re just renting energy from them, and you pay whatever they charge. On average the cost of electricity goes up 4% per year too.
On the other hand, by purchasing your own solar system you’re no longer renting your electricity. You’re the owner of a system that produces its own electricity, meaning you’re no longer subject to variable costs from month to month, and the overall annual cost increases. Based on the weather here, and the size of our house, the electric bill used to vary drastically, which was a little shocking in the Summer. Now, however, the only thing we pay to the power company is the $12.50 per month fee to connect to their grid. We bought a solar system big enough to produce 112% of the normal usage of this house, based on historical records. We went with a larger system so we have room to grow. Someday there will be an electric vehicle in the garage, and this larger system will be enough to charge that as well.
Based on the net metering laws in Nevada, we don’t need a big Tesla wall (or equivalent battery) on premises because NV Energy is required to store our unused energy for us. Basically for every kilowatt of unused energy we produce, we get 0.75 kilowatts in credit. 75% is the current rate based on the net metering laws in Nevada, and it’s going down over time. Had we bought this system a couple years ago, hypothetically speaking, we would have gotten somewhere in the 90% credit range. Whatever percent you get when you purchase the system is the amount that you’re grandfathered in at, so even though it’s going to continue dropping, our house will always get 75% credit.
Since we got the system installed in January, we have several months ahead of us where we can build up extra credits for unused energy. Once the Summer comes around and you’re consuming more energy than you’re producing, those extra credits will cover you and keep you from having a separate bill from NV Energy. From a cost perspective, if you’re staying put long-term it’s a no-brainer to go solar here. Although I don’t love taking on debt, the reality is that I’m going to be making a monthly payment either way, and at least now I know exactly how much it will be, plus the solar system is a huge investment in the house. Our neighborhood is 20 years old now and lots of people are making upgrades to their houses. Adding a nice solar system is the single biggest thing you can do in our area to modernize your house, and it’s one of the most impactful things you can do for the good of the planet, so we’re all for it!
In other family news, the kids have been taking swimming lessons through the city of Henderson and they’re loving it. Water safety is very important to our family for obvious reasons, but it looks like Elise and Enzo really want to stick with swimming and eventually get onto a swim team. They’re taking lessons on Saturday mornings and each month they move onto something new.
Unfortunately Ava has decided to take a break from hockey, but I really don’t blame her. I didn’t realize how early the season started here, so by the time I tried to register her the only option was to get on a tournament team. They combined the 10u’s and 12u’s for practice, and the coach was really intense. She played D1 hockey for the University of Minnesota, which is the hockey mecca of the United States, and it was all just too much for Ava. She simply doesn’t take it as seriously as some of the other kids do, and it got to a point where she was dreading it.
I definitely feel responsible for this, and I can’t help but wonder if she’d still be playing had we not left Washington. There’s no way of knowing for sure, and it’s quite possible that she will join a co-ed house team in the Fall, but we’ll have to wait and see. For now we’ve got her signed up to play Softball in the Spring and she’s really excited about that. Once hockey season comes back around we’ll have to make a decision, but we’ll support her regardless. Our only requirement is that each of the kids has some type of athletic activity to be involved in. We don’t care how good they are, or if they decide to try other things, they just have to do something.
Last but not least, I’ve been busier than ever lately because I decided to officially start my own business. I’m not quitting my job or anything like that, but I am working constantly between the two. The name of the business is Vegas Showbiz and earlier this month I filed Vegas Showbiz, LLC with the state of Nevada. The concept and strategy for the business has grown recently, and I’ll get to that shortly, but the original idea that sparked it came right after moving here.
After arriving in Las Vegas Jessica and I found ourselves in a position where we suddenly had so much help with the kids. My Mom wanted as much time with them as possible, and we were eager to explore Las Vegas together, so we started going out more. I’d be looking for things to do on my phone, but found it surprisingly difficult to get an accurate idea of what the options were. You could find various event calendars, but it required a lot of jumping around from site to site. Some of these sites are slow, or don’t work well on phones, and overall I found the experience to be surprisingly poor.
Since I tend to think in terms of websites and databases, the wheels started turning on how I could create my own site and database dedicated to the entire Las Vegas entertainment and nightlife scene. I had designs on becoming that 3rd party source of truth that seemed to be missing. I was aware of sites live vegas.com and visitlasvegas.com, but those felt so much broader to me. They’re trying to sell you on everything from renting a hotel to getting married, and everything in between. That’s all fine and good, but I’m not trying to be that. I want to make a site that a local would want to use. One that doesn’t feel so marketing-heavy; it just gets you the information you want without having to jump around. It’s fast, super clean looking, and works well on any device. That was my goal.
I started coding the week before Thanksgiving and I’ve probably only had 2 or 3 days since then where I wasn’t working on the computer, either for my day job or VegasShow.biz (usually both). It’s been fun, exciting, and fast-paced. What started back in November as just an idea is now live to the world, as of last weekend, at https://vegasshow.biz
The work is nowhere near done, I just felt like the site had reached a level where it made sense to expose it to the world. It’s barely getting any traffic at the moment, but it’s more than ready when the time comes. I’ve never built something so heavy duty for a personal project before, but the exercise of doing so entirely on my own has been an incredible learning opportunity.
Every day there’s something new and exciting going on. Earlier this week my company was accepted into the StubHub affiliate program. This allowed me to start posting links to buy tickets to different events on StubHub. If someone clicks through my link and makes a purchase, my company earns a commission. This is standard affiliate marketing practice and just one example of the things I’ll be doing on the site. The plan is to get hooked up with a couple more ticket companies and put links for all of them on my event pages. This would allow my users to price shop all from one location, and I get credit regardless of which one they choose.
I recently had a logo design competition going on via a website called DesignHill.com. Designers from around the world read my briefing and submitted logo design ideas for Vegas Showbiz. I chose my top 10, then conducted a poll on the site, asking friends and family to vote on their favorite designs. 30 people ended up voting, which I appreciate so much, and it was a very tight race between two logos. The one I ultimately chose was the winner of the poll, but it was in 2nd place all the way until the last vote of the poll, which pushed it into first. I didn’t select it because it won the poll, but it was funny the way that worked out in the end.
This week I made what appears to be an important connection earlier this week with a VIP host at the Hakkasan Group, which is the largest nightclub group in Las Vegas. They run all the big clubs like Zouk, Omnia, Hakkasan, and more. I found him on Twitter, introduced my company/website, and asked if I could help him promote his events on my site. A lot of conversation followed and by the time I went to bed that night I had added all of his events to the site and started featuring one of them on the home page. Now I’m taking it a step further by building a guest list form on the site. When someone comes to the event page for one of our events (of which there are many), they can fill out a form to get on the club’s guest list for that night. This means I’m going to start collecting a database of users, which will be valuable, and I can’t believe that in less than a week since going live, I’m already working with a group like this. It’s really exciting.
I’ve also been fortunate enough to start getting a lot of support from my sister Dana regarding company vision and strategy. As I said before, I tend to think a little more on the technical side of things, mainly because I’m 100% responsible for keeping the site running, so having Dana onboard has really helped me expand the vision for the human side of the business. Jessica and my Mom have also been very vocal in this area. I need more than just a Las Vegas search engine. That alone will certainly draw people to the site, but adding fresh relevant content via blog posts and videos is a great way to build up your search engine optimization and get people on your site. It also keeps people on the site for longer, which is an important metric. Since I’m already hooked up with various affiliate relationships, these blog posts and videos can become a great place to drop some ads. Don’t be surprised if you start seeing them here on PellegriniPage too. I’ve always been happy to pay the hosting costs to keep this site running, but if I could recoup those costs simply by adding a couple advertisements to the site, it almost seems silly not to. I’ve just never really been clued into that world because it wasn’t something we ever did at work.
I’m thinking the Jabbawockeez show next week will be the first thing I review for VegasShowbiz. I’m hoping to start doing them regularly so that will be the first one. It’s going to take a lot of marketing to get this business off the ground, and I have to be willing to put myself out there much more than ever before. Honestly that’s a little bit daunting, but I feel like I have a lot of inspiration, a vision of what it can be, and a unique combination of skills to be able to run it as a sole proprietor. If you haven’t yet checked it out, please have a look at https://vegasshow.biz and help me spread the word. It’s constantly growing and I look forward to adding the blog and vlog sections soon. As is, I’m hooked up with the Ticketmaster API and am pulling 95% of my event data from them. On any given day my custom Las Vegas events database contains over 10,000 records, yet you can search/filter them in milliseconds. There is not another site in this market that can truthfully say that. I’m extremely proud of what’s been done so far, and how quickly it’s gone from idea to reality, but the hard work has only just begun. I expect this to be a fun journey, but we’ll see how it turns out. I’m certainly not going to make any rash major changes in my life, but I’m putting everything I have into this. It’s already been a learning experience and it’s barely even begun.
That’s it for now. Once again, wishing my favorite little boy in the whole world a very happy 7th birthday! I love you beyond words and could not be more proud to be your Dad. Here’s some recent pics.
Enzo meeting The Mentalist, Gerry McCambridge, after the showElise or Hippo, who wore it best?Ava carries Peach while riding Enzo’s hoverboard near furniture. Don’t try this at home.Ready for a big night out with my little manThe girls had a fun night with Mom before the show, including dinner at one of our favorite Las Vegas hangouts, The PeppermillAva and Elise are ready to rock!Happy Birthday buddy
Yesterday we celebrated our first Christmas in our new home, but this whole month has been full of holiday activities for our family. Although the weather here in Southern Nevada may not align with traditional views of the holiday season, there’s still a lot of activities to do and plenty of Christmas spirit all around. Most importantly, we’ve been lucky enough to spend time with several family members (some of whom don’t live here) this holiday season, so things don’t feel too different after all.
I know I talked about it in my last post, but having Kristy, Beto, and Madi here for Thanksgiving and Ava’s 10th birthday was a great way to kick off the holiday season. We did a lot of fun and memorable stuff that weekend, then a week or so later Grandma Amy and Grandpa Tom made a bit of a surprise visit. Tom surprised Amy for her birthday by taking her to a couple shows in Vegas, so we met up with them one night and had an excellent dinner at Border Grill in Mandalay Bay. Jessica and I were excited to eat there because we’re big Top Chef nerds and the two chefs who created that restaurant were on multiple seasons of Top Chef Masters. The food was excellent and luckily for Jessica and I they had a Vegan Relleno on the menu so we didn’t even have to cheat. Elise then knocked it out of the park by ordering dessert for the table to share.
Another fun activity for us this month was our visit to Enchant at Las Vegas Ballpark. We actually had the pleasure of visiting Enchant in Seattle a few years ago, so we knew what to expect, but it was still really fun. We brought my Mom along and enjoyed checking out all the lights, displays, and finding all of Santa’s reindeer. Oddly enough we ran into our neighbors there, and they’re one of the families we’ve become closest with since moving, so that was a nice unexpected surprise.
Speaking of neighbors, there have been a couple of neighborhood gatherings this month and we continue to feel so lucky to have landed in such an awesome neighborhood! There’s so many friendly people around, the kids have made friends, and overall the little community we landed in is great. You never know how that’s going to turn out as a home buyer, so it’s a bit of a gamble, but things have worked out better than we ever expected.
Devin has also hosted a couple get-togethers this month, and luckily his brother Brian, along with his new fiance Jane, were able to come out here from Europe for a visit. They’ve been living in Berlin for several years but are currently in the process of moving to England, so it’s been cool to catch up and hear about that whole process. We’re planning on hosting a dinner at our house before they take off in January.
Last weekend Jessica and Elise ran the Henderson Holiday 5k race. They had been training for it by running in the neighborhood, and the rest of us came to watch and cheer them on. It was really fun and Elise was so proud of herself; she carried her medal around the entire next week.
The kids had a holiday fundraiser event at their school this month, which they enjoyed very much. I wasn’t able to make it but Jessica took them and of course ran into so many other families from the neighborhood. Apparently Enzo didn’t stop dancing the whole time, and he’s got his little red leather jacket on so he looks like Michael Jackson. I wish I could have seen it but Jessica said it was amazing. We’re trying to get him to check out a dance class and he’s not sure but I think he’s willing to try at least once. Hopefully soon…
The kids have been enjoying their 17 day break from school via various activities. Yesterday for Christmas Ava received a softball glove, bat, and ball, so we went out to the park in the middle of the day as a family to play catch and practice hitting. Ava actually commented at one point, gesturing up towards the beautiful sunny blue sky, saying “can you believe this is Christmas Dad?” There was a foot of snow at our old house in Snohomish, so 60 degrees and sunny is a pretty big change for us.
Earlier this week we took the kids to see “Sing 2” in the theater, which was our first family trip to the movie theater in about 2 years. Then on Christmas Eve we went over to my Mom’s house for dinner, presents, and a movie. She surprised us by having Chef Kenny’s delivered for dinner, which was amazing, but there was so much food that I literally haven’t had a non Chef Kenny’s meal since then. It’s really nice to be able to regularly spend holidays with Nana again so hopefully Christmas Eve at her house can be a tradition.
Christmas morning started early for us – the kids rudely awakened us at 6:30am and the madness ensued moments later. As they get older it becomes more difficult to shop for them, but I think they were all happy with how Christmas turned out. Some of the bigger presents include:
A new mountain bike for Elise
A hoverboard for Enzo
A new bed for Ava – she will get to pick it out
Additionally, we finally got to break the news to the kids about some shows they will be going to in a couple weeks. Before even moving to Nevada, we found out about Katy Perry’s upcoming Las Vegas residency at Resorts World, and Jessica was able to get tickets. We’ve been holding onto them for 6 months now, but Saturday January 8 is the day. The theater at Resorts World just opened a month ago and it’s the biggest stage in Las Vegas. It’s supposed to be an amazing show and I’m so excited for Jessica to be able to take Ava and Elise to see it. Talk about a memorable first concert!
Since the girls already had plans for Saturday, January 8, I figured Enzo and I could go out and do something fun that same night. There’s obviously no shortage of options here, and he said he wanted to see a magic show, so I got tickets to David Copperfield. It’s the biggest magic show in Vegas, and I still have great memories of my Mom taking me to see Copperfield at the Paramount Theater in Seattle when I was a kid. I feel like it’s coming full circle now with me taking Enzo to see him.
We’re looking forward to the shows big time, but before that (actually in the next hour or so), our niece and nephew Anna and Kallan are coming for a short visit. They were in Southern California for Christmas visiting with Dana and Brad, but wanted to make the drive over to Vegas for a couple days. Anna turned 21 this month so it makes sense that they would want to come check things out. Kallan just made his first trip ever to Las Vegas about 4 months ago, so it’s nice to have him back so quickly.
I’m working on heating up the swimming pool so we can all do a little Christmas swim. I figure if I’m going to maintain the pool all year long, then I might as well heat it up a couple times in the off season. As long as you’re in the water you’re fine, it just takes forever to get it warm enough. It’s fairly chilly here right now, but when I look at weather around most of the rest of the country it puts things in perspective.
Although the kids are missing snow a bit, it’s still been a great holiday season, and the first of many in our new home. We’re really thankful for how things have turned out in our lives this year and looking forward to seeing what 2022 has in store. Wishing all of our friends and family a very happy holiday season and new year! Here’s some recent pics.
Visiting Santa at the school’s holiday eventPosing with our first ever fake Christmas tree! Get used to it…The star wouldn’t actually stick on top of the tree, but Elise still insisted on posing for the photo.Staying warm with Nana at EnchantOur little holiday racers!Enzo’s face is healing nicely after his latest accident. His smile still kills me.From our visit to the Santa ExperienceMerry Christmas, 2021
Getting into the Fall spirit, making friends, meeting neighbors, and getting settled.
October has already been a great month for us, on multiple levels, and we haven’t even gotten to Halloween yet. Halloween is big for us this year; it’s my Mom’s birthday, and the first one since we moved here. Plus our neighborhood goes big for Halloween with tons of decorations. Apparently we can expect hundreds of kids roaming our streets, meaning we need to make sure someone is always at our door to hand out candy, even if the rest of us are out trick or treating.
We’re turning this into a family event by having my Mom, Bob, Sandy and Terry out to the house to hang out that afternoon for dinner before we hit the streets. Then afterwards we can have birthday cake with Nana. Luckily all of our local friends are able to come over and join us for trick or treating as well. We’re going to have a big group and I’m expecting a fun night. My Mom will be staying a night with us for the first time as well, so we get to host her for her birthday. Looking forward to sharing more about it next month.
In the meantime the kids have been staying busy, mostly with Nana, doing all kinds of Halloween activities. There’s been a variety of Halloween-themed attractions they’ve been going to on the weekends. Last Sunday we picked them up early from Nana’s and met our friends at Gilcrease Orchard. We got a box of donuts, picked out our perfect pumpkins in the patch, made our way through a corn maze, and got to check out some live animals.
We’ve also got a couple neighborhood Halloween events coming up this week. There’s going to be an outdoor movie night with drinks and snacks, which is for the whole family. Then on Friday night Jessica and I were invited to the adults only neighborhood Halloween party. We thought that would be a fun way to get to know our neighbors a bit more so the kids will be with Nana that night.
Now that the weather has cooled down we’re seeing people out so much more in the neighborhood, and suddenly the kids find themselves with way more kids to play with than we ever had at our last house. There’s definitely no replacing our good friend Avery from Washington, but there’s about a dozen kids near us that are frequently outside now. I always expected it would be in Fall that we would start meeting a lot more neighbors because people aren’t out and about here in the Summer. Fall here is like Summer in Seattle – sunny everyday with temperatures in the 70’s and 80’s.
Once Halloween is behind us we’ve got a lot to look forward to in November. For the first time in her life, Ava’s birthday falls on Thanksgiving Day, and it just so happens to be her 10th birthday, so it’s a big one. Luckily we’ve got Kristy, Beto, and Madi coming out to spend the long holiday weekend with us! We’re really looking forward to having them out and still finalizing plans on how to coordinate birthday and holiday celebrations.
Speaking of family visitors, we just had our first visitors staying at our house. Dana and Brad did a road trip from their place in Fallbrook, CA to come and see us. It was only a 24 hour visit because they had plans for their anniversary, but we packed a lot in while they were here and it was a blast. It was so nice seeing them and we look forward to paying the visit back on the CA side via a road trip of our own sometime soon.
One thing that’s really cool about living in the Las Vegas / Henderson area is that you never know who it’s going to be, but there’s pretty much always someone in town. It was never like that in Seattle but Vegas is so much more of a travel destination. Last weekend, for example, we were out Friday night for dinner with my good friend Shawn, whom I became friends with 20 years ago when we were busboys at El Gaucho, and stayed close with ever since. He and his wife live in Nashville but came to Vegas for his birthday weekend. Then the very next night on Saturday we met up with Jessica’s good friend Summer, whom she met 20 years ago working in a restaurant in Cedar Rapids. She was in town with family celebrating a 21st birthday. Strange coincidence that they were both friends of ours made in restaurants 20 years ago, who both happened to be in Vegas for a birthday on the same weekend, but the point remains, someone is always in Vegas for the weekend. The best part to go along with that is suddenly now we have a full-time babysitter! It’s been really cool catching up with friends from all over the place, and you never know who’s going to be next.
Beyond all the Halloween stuff everything has been great. School is going well for the kids, and they recently started riding bikes to school. It’s not a daily thing, and Jessica or myself needs to be with them, but we’ve started doing that a bit and they love it. We’ve been doing regular family bike rides on various trails near the house, and getting out for some hiking in nearby desert mountains. These are the kinds of activities we were looking forward to doing once it cooled down.
Ava was able to join the 4th grade robotics club and has been attending those sessions before school on Tuesdays. She is also playing hockey twice a week after school, so she is definitely the most busy of the kids at the moment. She also lost a tooth this week, which hasn’t happened in a long time for her, so that was exciting. Elise and Enzo are both doing great. We’re working on getting activities sorted out for them, and not surprisingly, there are so many options here. I’ve been meaning to take Enzo to the BMX track here in Henderson but we haven’t made it happen quite yet. Elise has made a good friend in our new neighborhood so they have been spending a lot of time together.
Now that we’re totally settled into the new house Jessica is focusing on her next step. She’s considering a job but also considering starting her own business, so it will be fun to see how it turns out.
Railing update
I feel like until this project is 100% done I need to give updates on it. It’s been in progress since July, so I can barely imagine what life will be like once the railing project is no longer a part of it. Since my last post I finished installing all the iron bars below the railing, stained the rail, and finished it with a heavy gloss. We’re really happy with how it looks, and it means our project is down to the painting work that needs to be done on the exposed wood parts. Here’s a recent pic:
I was supposed to have a painter out this past week to estimate on it, but he no-showed twice, so it’s back to square one. We’ve thought about doing the painting but considering this is the main entry of our house, we want it to look as good as possible. I’m planning on doing another video tour of the house but I’m not doing it until this paint work is complete. Hopefully we can wrap it up soon.
That’s about it for now. We’ve got a lot of new photos to share. Happy Halloween!
The coolest thing about losing this tooth is the fact that she pulled it herself in the school bathroom!Elise & Spencer getting some quality outdoor timeHis teacher says he’ll do anything for a laugh
Referring to any recent time period as the “best ever” feels a little weird, mostly because that pandemic thing is still, well, a thing. However, I think it’s warranted for me to call Summer 2021 as the best Summer of my life. Before this I definitely would have called Summer 2001 as the best ever because that’s when my Mom took me on a 3 week trip to Europe, which included a visit with our relatives in Italy, followed by a trip with her and Uncle Bob to Las Vegas for my 21st birthday. That will always be a really special memory for me, but everything that went down this Summer is much bigger than me and I still can’t believe how it has all worked out.
Obviously buying our new house was the biggest individual thing that happened this Summer, but some other things that really stand out to me include:
My Mom and the kids so much regular time together
Jessica and I having the most free time together since becoming parents
New school for the kids
More time hanging out with friends
Swimming, swimming, swimming!
Home improvement projects
It’s been such an incredible, life changing year, and it all came together so quickly. It was only 6 months ago that the idea of us moving to Nevada even became a thing, and as I write this, we’ve already been here for 3 months. It’s been a whirlwind but I’m proud of us for sticking with the plan and following through.
School update
As expected the kids are making friends at school, and some of them have turned out to be our neighbors, so we’re starting to meet more people. Now that the 100+ degree days are behind us, people are starting to get outside more and more. It’s weird to think of Summer as the season where you stay inside, but the rules are a bit skewed here in the desert.
Each of the kids really likes their teacher and classroom, but when I ask them about their day, they tend to respond about lunch, recess, and P.E. more than anything else. Regardless, we’ve been impressed with the school and it’s obvious that our kids are enjoying being around other kids again.
Visitors
One of the cool things about living in the Vegas area is that people are always coming here for quick vacations, so you never know who you’re going to get as a visitor. Just recently we’ve started getting visitors regularly; I had dinner last weekend with a friend from Microsoft and his wife, then Kallan made his first visit to Las Vegas with friends that weekend, so he came to the house on Monday and spent the day with us. This weekend Jessica has several friends in town for a birthday celebration, so she’s been out spending time with them, and we just found out we’re getting a visit from Grandma and Grandpa Martin next week. Hopefully we can get some more visits on the calendar soon.
Railing update
Now that our family room is complete, the railing project is the only one remaining. At this point the sanding is done (we finished that part a couple weeks ago), and we’re focused on installing all the metal bars. We started upstairs at the end next to our bedroom and worked down towards the entry of the house. There were 52 posts in the railing needing to be replaced, and as of today we are down to 13. The process became more complicated today though, because I’ve reached the section where the staircase begins to curve, and the downward angle of the railing becomes more severe.
The metal shoes that go at each end of the bar normally just need to be glued with epoxy, but now in addition to fabrication work on the bar to get it exactly the right length, I also have fabrication work needed on the top shoe. I’m basically boring the shoe out from the inside to give the bar some more room to maneuver. This makes it easier to align the shoe with the railing while still keeping the bar vertically straight.
Once these next 13 bars are done we can start focusing on what we’re going to do with staining and painting. Here’s a pic of how it was looking today.
MP Work Update
Back on August 30th I started working with my new team at Microsoft, which is the Teams Experimentation team. I’ve now survived three full weeks on the team and I’m really enjoying it. It’s also been challenging because it’s an area of software engineering that I’m not as familiar with. My background has always been based on web development, but the work I’m doing now is all about big data analysis, statistics, and machine learning.
There have been times where it’s felt overwhelming because there’s so much new stuff to learn, but I’m still glad I made the switch and feel like it’s definitely a better fit for me at this point in my career. This is a rapidly growing space in the tech industry so it’s a good area to build expertise, and I’m humbled to be a part of Teams development.
Coming soon
The kids are very excited to see Grandma and Grandpa next week, and overall we’re always happy to get visitors. We’ve got room so please, if you’re thinking about coming for a visit, do so. In the meantime, we’re very excited for Halloween, and already even have our costumes ready to go (thank you Nana). Ava’s 10th birthday is on Thanksgiving this year so it’s definitely a big one for our family. Hopefully I don’t screw anything up for Thanksgiving dinner…
