Alissa & Eric's Self-indulgent Blog

When did Dave Matthews Band Live at Red Rocks come out? I'll save you from looking. Google tells me October 28, 1997. Back then, I was in deep with DMB. So deep that I cried when I couldn't see Dave and Tim at Duke University when I was in high school. I am not ashamed to admit that. No worries! The tears have dried. My dream was realized in 2014 when Dave and Tim opened for DMB on their summer. I've gotten off topic. I'm not writing this blog as a love letter to DMB. I was just sharing the date to say that I've known of Red Rocks since 1997. In the 20 years (seriously, TWENTY?!) since that album was released, I've listened to it more times that I can count. Beyond that, I've seen friends post pictures from Red Rocks, I've watched concerts that were recorded at Red Rocks, and I've had more than one "Let's go to a show at Red Rocks!" conversation.  Let's fast forward to present day...or at least two weeks ago. Eric and I trav...

When you say you’re going on vacation, everyone immediately says, “I can’t wait to see pictures!” Then you get back from vacation and people start asking for pictures. Well...we took over 100 pictures on our Aruba vacation, and I imagine you’d be pretty bored looking at them! I’m presenting our vacation pictures in a different format. A story format. If you don’t care about the story, then you can scroll through and just look at the pictures! Either way, enjoy! Why Aruba?  Eric travels a lot for work. So he accumulates points for both airlines (mostly Southwest) and hotels (mostly SPG, now including Marriott). We compared international flight destinations for Southwest with Marriott/SPG hotel locations. Aruba was an easy-enough trip and there were several Marriott properties. We booked one Marriott property, did more research, and ultimately decided to go outside of our normal hotel comfort zone and chose Amsterdam Manor Beach Resort. Neither Eric nor I h...