The Day After ... licking my wounds

I slept poorly after the Vikings ugly defeat. I’ll bet I didn’t get 3 hours of shut eye, and when I did sleep it was broken up into several intervals. Without trying, I woke numerous times to a mind still mulling over the Vikings final possession and everything that went wrong. It was difficult for me to swallow the loss. I can only imagine how the players felt. I was up at 530am despite being tired. I had to get beyond it. I did my exercises then poured coffee. I was careful not to poke around the Yahoo! Sports, purposefully avoiding any articles related to my team’s unfortunate demise. Butting staring at me from their splash page was a picture of Brett Favre and a “were they robbed?” article. Mindy asked how I was feeling when I delivered her coffee. Tired and still a little shell shocked. After meditation and stretching I felt a whole lot better. I had things, at least temporarily, in their proper perspective. I ran four miles without incident. It was warm – almost 40 degrees. Mindy had fried eggs waiting for me at home. We talked about the game some. I shared this: no matter what, no one can deny that Brett Favre was an incredible warrior fighting through several malicious hits. I was still proud to be a Viking fan. Mindy soon left for work leaving me to shower and see the kids onto the school bus. We prepared to head out at our usual time – 7:55am. After the kids were on the bus I spent a few minutes on the PC looking at the HV weather to see if it was still raining or changing to snow as predicted. It was still raining. It wasn’t expected to change back to snow until Monday night. I could only imagine Bob & M.A’s disappointment. That only added to my reservations about planning another HV trip for late February. I’d be devastated if we booked five days only to have it rain on us. I was beginning to lean more favorably to an Oregon ski trip, especially after stumbling upon numerous 3bd rm luxury condos available at the beautiful Lake Collins Resort in Government Camp (at the foot of Ski Bowl & Timberline ski resorts). Not only that, but the prices were less expensive than HV accommodations, too. I had some things to sort out. I left for work. At some point in the first hour or so of my day my boss stopped in to talk about the Viking game. He jokingly said he half expected me to call off. He found himself rooting staunchly for the Vikings, and like many others, felt they were robbed. However, we both agreed the turnovers truly killed us, especially the two inside their 5 yard line, and then the one at our own 10. True that! I relived the loss several times while talking with my team. As the day wore on I tried to lose myself in my work and forget about the football game. At lunchtime, I decided to seriously price out an Oregon trip: flights, lodging, and rental car. I was able to put together a package for just a few hundred more than the condo alone at HV. That fact alone was almost enough to sway my decision. Of course, Mindy would hold some major sway, too. Wasn’t sure what she’d think. For the time being, I kept my change of heart to myself. The work day was busy. I didn’t get out of the office until almost 630pm. Mindy and the kids were busy at home preparing for our dinner – leftover beef noodles. I was OK with that. They’re one of my favorites. After dinner Jake and Makayla came over to play with Jacob & Bella. I bounced the idea of skiing Oregon versus HV off of Mindy. She seemed warm to it. I told her that I would explore it more thoroughly. But truth be told, I wasn’t 100% on board with such a significant change yet either. Plus, I’d feel bad about backing out on Bob and Mary Ann, Scott & Zach. I spent the evening hours searching for video converter freeware. I found several via CNET, a reliable download site. My objective being to convert AVI movie files to MP4 for viewing on my iTouch. I downloaded Movavi first, but quickly deinstalled it after learning it wasn’t really a free version after all. Instead, it was a free trial version that left a watermark super imposed over all converted videos until a full license is purchased. Nope. That’s a slimy tactic! Finally, I found a true freeware version – Any Video converter. It wasn’t as pretty as the prior but did the job I needed. I converted a handful of recent AVI files as a test then moved them to iTunes and ultimately to my iTouch. Worked flawlessly. Excellent! Mindy went to bed early – about 930pm. I advised that I was staying up for a while longer. I used the time to update my blog. I headed to bed around 1030pm.