GregHowley.com

I'm back home in Colorado now, after a thrilling time in Lexington, Kentucky. Back above 5000 feet elevation and a near total lack of humidity. Forced to use hand lotion once again. Back in the land with no water pressure. Oh well, at least it's fairly warm here.

Early on in the vacation, while having dinner, I chipped a tooth on a piece of very hard crusty bread, and had a surprise visit to a Kentucky dentist. Exciting, I know. Anyway, the guy seemed to know what he was doing, and I got a patch which should hold me until my appointment in Colorado Springs on the 17th.

I visited the Woodford Reserve brewery with my father-in-law Nato and my brother-in-law Jeff, and it was pretty interesting. We saw how the barrels were made and how they're transported - they actually roll 500 lb. barrels of Bourbon around on rails. The ground is sloped just barely enough to keep them moving. They also use charred wood in the barrels to add color and flavor to the bourbon.

We saw a lot about the distillation process, and I've got to say that I didn't pay much attention, but when we stepped into the warehouse where they age the barrels, the smell was amazing. In the same way that coffee smells better than it tastes, the smell of hundreds of kegs of bourbon evaporating as they aged was simply amazing.

At the end we got a small sample, which was insufficient. The bourbon we bought later wasn't as good as the Woodford Reserve, but it also cost less than $50.

Linda and I also managed to get out one night for a date, where we saw I Am Legend. When we came out of the theatre I was very lukewarm on the movie and felt very unsatisfied with the ending, but upon further reflection I think I liked it. The suspense was very well done, and I enjoyed the action. Still, I wanted more somehow. Hard to put my finger on. Afterwards, Linda and I came back and attempted to watch 28 Weeks Later on her laptop, which ended up being a failure after over a half-hour of trying. This was due largely to Windows Media Player sucking, and also due to a shoddy headphone splitter. We eventually saw the movie the night we got back to Colorado, and maybe it would have been better without sound.

My brother-in-law Jeff and I took two young cousins to an arcade one day, and despite the fact that the games were almost entirely designed for 6-year-olds, the kids were 3 and 4, and as such were too young for most of the games. Emily played the stomp-a-light game that was basically just a whack-a-mole variant, and spent the entire time stomping one light while ignoring all the others that were lighting up. At the end of it all, we had a number of points left on the arcade's game cards that probably amounted to about $15, although I don't know for sure because the points are about as indecipherable as Microsoft's points for XBox 360. So I went back a few days later. Alone. Sadly, there were only two games in the whole place worth playing, so I played DDR and some halfway-decent Star Wars game for a few hours.

On New Years Eve, Linda and I went to a Lindy Hop dance we'd discovered in the local paper. We'd thought there was going to be a band, and hoped there would be some good dancers there. We were disappointed on both counts. The scene in Lexington is young, and the instructors have learned mostly from video tapes. The DJ also played mostly fifties music, although I got a request in for Splanky by Count Basie and Stormy Monday by Lou Rawls.

Lia's getting bigger now - she's passed the seven month mark, and she really seems to enjoy the solid food we're giving her, especially pears and peaches. She hates squash though. Here's a picture of Lia under the foul influence of her uncle Jeff, wearing two things which she's forbidden to wear: a New York Yankees bib, and an effing cowboy hat.