Hodgepodge

Here it is February 25th, 2 months after Christmas and well over a month since my birthday and I have not mailed a single thank you note. Shame on me. What am I doing about it? Updating my blog about how I feel guilty for not writing the notes and mailing them in a timely fashion.

Rules of Etiquette (or so I hear - I should ask one Emily Post) dictate that one has a full year to write thank you notes. By that time line I have plenty of time. I wonder how long that rule has been around? I'm guessing it has been around since the days of Pony Express. I imagine delivering letters took a long time when the postal services transportation system was fueled by hay.

I had vowed to write my thank you notes this weekend but alas, here it is Sunday night and I have a full evening of drying my hair and watching some TV.

This has been a relaxing weekend for me. Quite vexing for Ryan. He is trying to set up our CAT 5, high speed wireless cabling blah, blah, blah. He spent over 2 hours on the phone with Sun Rocket's tech support only to learn their gizmo is not compatible with the wiring stuff he did. So if we want online we have to unplug the whatchamacallit and plug in the dohickey. Then when we log off we have to unplug the dohickey and plug the whatchamacallit back in so we can have phone service.

Yesterday morning I had my 6th rowing lesson and it was only our second time out on the water. The coach said we were her prodigy class because we were doing in our second week what they normally don't get to until the third week. It felt good to know that what felt akward and clumsy to us was actually good for beginers. Hearing accolades was the only warming thing about the experience. It was cold and raining. It wasn't just cold it was c-c-c-c-o-o-l-l-d-d. To top it off my knees started to hurt. Rowing is a lower body sport. Your arms are there to hold the oars and guide them through the water but your legs do the lionshare of the work. Rowing is like doing squats sitting down; I don't do squats - even on a good day. I thought I could power through the pain but it became too much. I finished the practice since my only other option was to jump out of the boat and swim back to the boathouse.

I could have jumped out and swam back since I still left practice soaked to the bone. Once back at the dock we lifted the boat out of the water and hoisted it overhead and tilted it from side to side to empty out the water that accumulated during practice. BRRR!!! Gallons of water poured over us. Cold, nasty Lake Union water drenched us. I stopped at Starbucks on the way home to get a hot coco and I noticed I left a small puddle of water on the counter after I reached my hand across to give the cashier my gift card. When I got home I peeled my clothes off - all three layers were wet enough to wring water out of - and soaked in a nice hot bath until I felt my bones warm.

Maybe I'll try kayaking in the Spring.

Superbowl Sunday

This is going to be a short sad post.

What a difference a year can make.

Last year Superbowl Sunday was a holiday in Seattle. Everywhere you went there was blue and green and silver as far as the eye could see. The city was on cloud nine - not for the whole day but still...

Then the game began and it seemed the world was out to get us. The spots they did on the Steelers and Seahawks were slanted towards the Steelers as it seemed there were many more photos of the Steelers holding the Superbowl trophy thingie than the Seahawks. Then there were the refs whose salaries were obviously paid by the Steelers. Of course, some will argue that the Seahawks played horribly. Whatever. Lame calls by the refs can really put the kibosh on any momentum the team was building.

So, this year it was the Colts and Da Bears. Yippee. I wanted the Bears to win until I started watching the game. The Colts deserved to win the game as much as the Bears deserved to lose the way they played. It's just so sad that I really could have cared less about the game. I don't think I yelled at the TV, not even once. I laughed at the fumbles and not the commercials.

And about the commercials: Who was it that thought a suicide commercial would make a great advertisement for a car? That marketing whiz should be fired. These companies are paying $2.5 million for 30 seconds? You would think the commercials would be mini-Hollywood epic productions. What duds. I did like the uber-cheesy map/monster commercial though. They went low budget and didn't try to hide it.

Here is a kind of stat that makes me happy. At the beginning of football season I saw that losing team of the Superbowl for the last umpteen years always finished last in their division the following year. Fortunately the Seahawks division sucked so we weren't last! We broke the curse! : )

Whistler Part II


If you want to see more photos from Whistler go to the link at the bottom of the post. I hope that link works. I'm new to Picasa and am not having an easy time playing with it.

After a delicious breakfast of Malt-O-Meal (for me - no one else liked it) on our second morning in Whistler we were ready to hit the slopes - er - wide open golf course to go cross country skiing. I called around to find a place to rent cross country skis. The guy I spoke to on the phone told me where his shop was located and gave me really detailed directions on how to get there. I asked him for the address and he repeated the directions. I said, thanks, but can I have the address? "Sure thing," he said, then proceeded to REPEAT directions. Not wanting to sound like a rude American I rephrased my question and tried my best to not sound as annoyed as I was: "Can I get your physical address so I can Mapquest directions from my place to you?" Finally he gave me his address and I was able to get driving directions from the chalet to the golf course. I didn't use Mapquest - I hate Mapquest. Mapquest sucks; it has told me to take exits that don't exist. Once, I needed to go some place in downtown Bellevue and ended up in a residential neighborhood. So I googled his address and got directions.

I left the directions, address and name of the golf course on the dining room table.

Fortunately the guy repeating the directions to me three times drove home one thing: it was a five minute drive north of the village off of 99. So we all piled in Helen's SUV and headed north on 99. Sure enough, about 5 minutes north was the Jack Nicklaus golf club. We started out as a party of five. Hmm, if I had watched Party of Five growing up I could probably make a lame joke here... We soon became a party of three. Nichole didn't take to cross country skiing. She decided half way around our first loop that she was going to go hang out in the club house and Abbotts decided to join her. It was just Ryan, Megan and I from that point on. We spent about an hour and a half going around the golf course. I only fell once on the course and it wasn't on the one downhill part. Megan turned into the pack mule as she had the backpack. We would stop for water and start to peel layers off. Megan graciously offered up her backpack space but wouldn't let us carry it. We took her up on the offer, of course. She had the water and two winter coats stuffed in her pack.

At one point we stopped to make a snowman. Megan and I only had knit gloves so we used our bare hands. Yowza. Playing in the snow with your bare hands kinda hurts. Ryan debated on whether or not to make it a boy or girl snowman. We decided to keep it a gender-neutral snowbeing seeing as how it was a family friendly place.

We decided that we would like to try the more difficult trails and ski to Lost Lake. That was where the real work began. There were hills that we had to ski UP. Skiing up a hill is not that easy. You're standing on the snow, strapped onto very narrow waxed little boards that want to take you make you obey gravity and take you down the hill. As we were going up and up and up I realized that at some point I would have to go down the hills, too.

I fell on EVERY substantial hill. I liked the little hills that dipped down then straightened out and maybe went back up a little hill. Those were fun but the big hills, the ones where you couldn't see around the corner and the ones that just kept going and going and going... they freaked me out. At one point I was hunched down like I was told to do and I felt myself losing control and fell backwards, like I was told to do (better than falling on your face) and slid down on my back and got snow up my shirt. Good times.

Fortunately there was a kind ski instructor who took pity on me and stopped to give me lessons every time she lapped me. She taught us how to go slow down the hills and she taught me how to snowplow. At one point she told me to take my skis off and just walk down the really big hills. : ) Learning how to snowplow gave me enough of a boost of confidence that I think I'll give downhill skiing a try. Ryan was pleased to see me snowplow and it gave him hope that I'm not a lost cause.

We eventually got to Lost Lake and it looked like an open field because it was covered with snow and ice. Eh. Ryan and Megan seemed really excited to see the lake. I pretended to be excited as to not be a wet rag on the experience. So, Ryan and Megan if you are reading this now: I am glad you enjoyed it and I am not sorry that I was there. By time we got back to the club house to turn in our skis we were gone for over four hours.

That evening after we cleaned up all eight of us walked out the chalet, down the snowy road to the mountain and walked down the hillside to the village. It was so cool; we walked to the village from the chalet. That's when the drama occurred. There were two camps. There was the camp that wanted to eat at Earl's and the camp that wanted to eat at Mongolian Grill. I was planted firmly in the camp of Earl. Why would I want to spend my one dining experience in Whistler at Mongolian Grill? I can eat at Mongolian Grill in many a fine strip malls at home. Unfortunately there was a 45-60 minute wait at Earl's; whatever- every restaurant was going to have a huge wait for a party of 8 on a Saturday night. I suggested we hang out at Starbucks but that didn't go over. We ended up going down to an arcade to play games but the change machine was broken, besides, we didn't have cash with us. We splintered off into little groups and I ended up window shopping with Helen.

We stopped in a cool shop with imports from Thailand when I saw Ryan staring in at Helen through the front window. Helen was looking at something and didn't see Ryan boring a hole in her skull with his eyes. I came up next to Helen and whispered in a mildly freaked out tone, "There is a really creepy guy at the window." She looked up and screamed when she saw Ryan. I'm glad Helen has a sense of humor.

The people at Earl's under-estimated our wait time by 45 minutes. We kind of had a fit. That was just not cool. We ended up splitting into two groups of four. There was so much food and I just had to clean my plate. Then we had to walk back to the chalet. It hurt hauling my tired, sore, full self up the mountain back to the cabin. I just wanted to go to bed when we got back but that was out of the question. We ended up playing games until past midnight. Jason was disgusted that some of us were tired and wanting to sleep. He said we were not so old that we couldn't stay up til midnight. Ah, I remember when staying up 'til midnight was routine and only 'old' people were in bed by 10...

So, that's about it for Whistler. We had fun.

If you want to see more photos go to: http://picasaweb.google.com/apriljahns/Whistler02?authkey=NI29MNSOepM