Company Golf

During one of my first meetings with my new boss, I was asked "Do I play golf?". The answer, of course, if yes, but I am not very good. Well, he invites me to this Company Sponsored golf tournament which was held on Monday. Oh boy.

First things first, when my 1st meeting with my new boss involves an invitation for golf, I just KNOW it's going to be a great new job for me.

Then, there's the actual golf tourney. Pretty much the entire company was there at the Kingwood Country Club. I saw the founder as I was warming up, I saw Head Ops and Supply Chain Management guys throughout the day, and I even had the CEO of the company make small talk with me just before the cocktail hour. Needless to say, it was a great place to meet the people in power.

As for the golfing, I did a LOT better than I originally had hoped. I was money with my irons, especially the 5 & 6, as well as with my pitching wedge, where I hit a few shots from 100 yards out that got within a few yards of the hole. Even my drives were behaving. I still have a slight slice on my drives off the tee, but they were very manageable and only a couple really got away from me. Where I completely failed was my putting. I was just plain awful on the greens. It's not that I wasn't getting close, but I was missing on 8 foot putts, and 6 foot putts, and 12 foot putts, and pretty much every birdie attempt our team had was thwarted by poor putting.

It wasn't about the score though. With our 5 player, Par is your friend, scramble format, we ended up shooting a 1-under 71. The winner? They shot a 52. Yeah, 20 under par on 18 holes. Frikkin ridiculous. Not a big deal though. I got to hang out with my new boss and co-worker, drink some beer, play some golf and schmooze with the higher ups. All in all, that's pretty darn good for a Monday workday. I am definitely looking forward to more days like that.

Birthday Weekend!

So, this past Saturday I turned 27. And yes, I realize that now puts me one step closer to 30. I am not happy about it. However, I was able to spend the weekend with the old gang from A&M, so it was definitely worth it. We stayed at Tyler's condo on Sam Rayburn Lake, which is near Jasper, Tx. I never knew places like this existed in the middle of East Texas, but apparently they do. There was a beach, and some nice wakeboarding spots. Very fun. Here are a few pictures:

Molly and I chillin' on the beach.

Chris taking the opportunity to eat, drink, and PEE all at the same time.

The group at the beach, preparing to do a birthday shotgun.

And....SHOTGUN!

Chris & Tehina on the Jetski

Willie wakeboarding. He was decent and got a little air.

Molly spent much of the day tearing around on the jetski.

Like I said, it was a fun weekend with sun, boat, friends and beer. I couldn't have asked for a better birthday. Compounding the celebration were two other major accomplishments for me, all in a couple weeks time.

1st off, I will be graduating from my MBA form the University of Houston on May 14. 2 1/2 years and 48 credit hours completed. Lots of work and time, but I am hoping it will pay off. So glad to be done!

Secondly, I got a raise at work and a new position. When I first joined my company, I came into the Accounting department even though I had never done accounting. I did so to help my new boss, former co-worker, to set up a new department at the company. She knew I didn't like accounting, but promised that if I helped her with this opening, she would help get me to a better position in the company later. And it happened. I was actually offered 2 jobs last week. One in Forecasting and One with the Corporate Development (Acquisitions) group. Anyone who has seen my MBA coursework, or has heard me talk about what I want to do, knows this was an easy decision. I am now the newest, and ONLY manager in the Corporate Development department. I am excited because I'll be involved with buying businesses, deal negotiations, business strategy and tons of other really interesting parts of business and finance.

So, needless to say, it has been a most excellent couple of weeks for me. With our China trip coming up at the end of May, it's looking like May will turn out to be an absolutely incredible month. Here's hoping things continue to look up for The Vega's!

Sigh, we are getting so old...

So, this weekend is the first time that Molly has felt like she is truly turning into an adult. On Saturday, we "slept in" until about 8:30 Am, and then decided to start doing things. Molly went to go work out, and I watched day 3 of the NFL Draft. After Molly got back and got cleaned up, we decided to go to Buffalo Wild Wings to use the gift card I won in my office Superbowl Pool (I Was the ONLY one who picked the Saints to win!!).Yeah, we didn't eat that much, but we did have a lot of food. 2 Dozen wings, and order of Pulled Pork Slider and Molly's Salad....I was VERY bloated after that.

On our way back, we decided to stop by World Market. We browsed, but nothing jumped out at us, not even in the wine section! Since we have now been to wine tours in both Napa Valley and in Washington, we've become something of a set of wine snobs. We are constantly looking for a certain type of wine that we both fell in love with: Cabernet Franc.
See, there are plenty of places that carry Cabernet Sauvignon, but very few places that carry Cab Franc, so we are always on the lookout.

On Sunday, we decided to finally find a Church in our area. Since Molly is Episcopalian and I am Catholic, we've decided to alternate between hers and mine each week. Since this week was week 1, I decided we would go to her church. We tried out St. Dunstan's near Spring. It was nice, but Molly is looking for a Church with a young community that I do not know if we'll find. Not many church's are stocked with 20 & 30-somethings...
Then we went to PetCo for dog food, and we were at HEB for grocery shopping before 10:30 Am. We were there so early that we couldn't even buy wine yet, since Texas has the Blue Law that states you cannot buy alcohol before noon on Sundays. How sad is that? We were there too early to buy wine...

Then we cleaned house, did the dishes and hung out around the house the rest of the day. Molly made a Paella! But still, THIS was the normal weekend for OLD PEOPLE! We didn't see friends or go out anywhere exciting. We just had a relaxing weekend.

We are getting so old....

UnBelizeable

I waited WAY too long to make this blog update. Sorry about that.

Let me tell you about our recent trip to Belize.
Belize, for those who do not know, is a small country just South of Mexico, and just East of Guatemala. It has an ancient history in the Mayan culture and parts of it were once major ports for the Mayan civilization.

When we first got to Belize, we flew into Belize City and stayed one night on the mainland. After that, we took a boat to the resort island of Ambergris Caye. Everything was very laid back on the island. There were cars, but most people drove golf carts around. In fact, one of the first people we met on a golf cart was a guy from Michigan.

He owned a restaurant on the island called Sunset Grill. As we were trying to make the long walk from out hotel to the "downtown" area, he offered to give us a ride into town on his golf cart. Being the trusting folks we are, we accepted. As he took us into town, he gave us a tour and told us a little about the history of the town and how he had found himself living here after so long in the US. The tour ended, of course, at his restaurant. We had lunch here, mostly as a courtesy to him, but also because it was lunch time. One of the neat things about the restaurant is the location. It was right on the water. Not only that, but the place had a group of Tarpon that basically hung out around the restaurant and waited to get fed. BY HAND!

Molly and I both tried it out.
But the owner was much more comfortable feeding and grabbing the fish right out the water. Very cool!
The next day we took a LONG boat ride back to the mainland, and up a river to the Mayan ruins at Lamanai. This place was on the river, and was a major trading port for the Mayans to trade jade and other goods. It consisted of a bunch of temples (Jaguar Temple, Mask Temple, High Temple) and also a ball court, courtyard and other ruins. The cool thing is that most of the site had not even been excavated yet. There were still lots of ruins which were covered by trees and earth. So in 20 years, we could go back and get to see, basically, a whole new set of ruins.

The next day it was back out on the boat to go snorkeling. I can't do scuba diving, so snorkeling is our only option to explore the sea. We saw lots of fish, some nurse sharks and even a sea turtle. My 1st time seeing a sea turtle! (Thanks to Cap'n Ron over at Reef Adventures for setting up our excursions)

All in all we had a great time. We love traveling to new countries and experiencing new cultures. We picked up a great Habanero Hot Sauce that we've been putting on everything called Marie Sharps. For under $1200 (2 round-trip flights, hotel & excursions) in total, the trip was easily one of the cheapest we have been on, and was well worth the money.

Here are some other photos from our trip:

My 1st Belikin Beer (The Beer of Belize!)

Molly enjoying a fruity island beverage.

The Jaguar Temple at the Lamanai Ruins.

Me on the steps of the Jaguar Temple.

The steps up/down the High Temple.

Molly and I at the top of the High Temple.

A ball court at the ruins. (Sometimes they would kill the winners as a sacrifice to the Gods. Other times, they would kill the losers. Not my kind of game).

Molly outside our hotel (Banana Beach Resort in San Pedro)

Just Us.

Widget