Trying to keep up

I just can't seem to keep up with this thing! The night is the best time to post because I've just finished the day and its fresh in my mind, but it's also the worst because I'm so dog tired all I want to do is go to sleep. So I'm afraid that this is going to be a continuing pattern. :(

Last weekend I went home so Kaitlynn and I could celebrate Valentine's Day. We ate dinner at the Breadline and exchanged gifts. Check out what she made me! :) While we were at the restaurant there was a group of kids (I'd say in the 13-14 year old range) that were goofing off. I first ran into them in the men's room. They ended every sentence with "please."
-Hi please.
-Hi.
-How's it goin please.
-I'm doing well you?
-Good please.
-etc.

They kept at it for quite awhile while I was waiting for Kaitlynn so we could hit the bread bar. Then they even visited us at our table... twice! hahaha Kids are so funny. Then at the end of the meal a new couple got seated across from us with a - we later found out - 15 month old son. A second mother in the restaurant was following her toddling 13 month old son. The second toddler discovered the first toddler in his high chair. It was a very cute episode.

After dinner I hung out at Kaitlynn's house till 10:30pm and then went to Poker at Michael's. He was back in town for a few days on break from school at the University of Utah. Out of the nine of us I got 5th, so no winnings for Ian, but I was mostly there for the socialization.

Sunday I lounged around the house, installed the new wireless router (which I now believe did not need replacing, but oh well), fixed the internet twice, and then grudgingly returned to Spokane. I was not looking forward to the coming week seeing was the previous one had been like.

The week so far has not been as bad as the previous, but I still wouldn't call it a good week. The homework was less, the Physics lab ended 10 minutes early (instead of an hour late), and I feel good about the Spanish test I took. However, I completely spaced one of my homework assignments. 0_o Good thing its Calculus and there are tons of them to make up for it. On Tuesday I had my first Live Lab. It's the lab associated with my Spanish class and is a half-hour each week where you just get together and do fun/interesting things and converse in Spanish. This semester there are only 3 people in the lab (including me) and the lab leader. She's a really nice gal, a Spanish major in her Senior year. We introduced ourselves and listened to some music and sang along. :P It's going to be a lot of fun I think.

Wednesday I went to JB's. When I got out of my car at her apartment I realized I had forgotten her birthday present at my dorm. lol Kelsie had to work that evening, so JB and I watched Donnie Darko... What a movie! While watching it I wasn't sure if I was going to like it or not, but at the end it all came together nicely and now I love it. After the movie she followed me back to campus, I introduced her to my roomies, and gave her her present. It was a My Little Pony doll. :P She loved it. hahahaha

Last Week

Last week was pretty stressful. None of my classes are hard and none of them homework is hard, its just trying to squeeze everything into the day that can be difficult. For some reason all the little things bothered me last week. Plus, my IT band and hipflexors are preventing me from enjoying my running.

Monday decided to run outside and headed down to the track. However, I forgot that it takes exponentially more energy to run outside as opposed to on a treadmill and overdid it a bit. By the time I finished my half an hour I felt like I was going soooo slow, but in actuality averaged 7:37/mile over the workout. Afterwards all I wanted to do was go to sleep (after dinner of course) but then remembered I had band until 9:30. Luckily we got out a little early, but I was out like a light before my head hit the pillow.

Tuesday I had to rush to get several homework assignments done and then relaxed the rest of the afternoon. I decided that I would do an easy, long and slow workout on the exercise bike in the gym, nurse my IT band, and catch up on some reading. About a half an hour in though, I remembered that I had Physics Lab to go to. I barely made it, and in the process missed dinner. The damn lab was 4 hours long, so I couldn't go eat until 10:30pm. The cafeteria was closed by then so I went out to Jack in the Box. I was not a happy camper.

Wednesday was fine. There was a quiz in my Calculus class which I thought I did really well on. That afternoon I did a repeat exercise at the gym, this time actually achieving the hour mark with ease. I almost finished my book. Its really good.

Thursday was nice too. I discovered that two homework assignments that I thought were due before the end of the week were now postponed until next week. :D After two days on the bike I thought I would try running outside again. I know from experience that the best way to make running pains go away is to run. (Of course you could always overdo it and injure yourself.) As I was heading down to the track I noticed that some hurdles were set up and a group of people in shorts were standing around. I figured it was the track team and didn't want to get in their way, so I decided to see what the roads were like off-campus. (On campus they were all rather nice.) Parts of them were runnable and others were not. Thanks to my handy-dandy Christmas gift though I was able to mozy through some residential areas and run on the plowed streets without really keeping track of were I was going until my Nike+ told me to turn around. :D I was sore while running, but I kept my pace down (remembering Monday). When I got back to campus I stretched really well and hoped that would make me feel better tomorrow. I was wrong. Friday's run was a disaster. I accomplished a mile before giving up. Now my shins hurt too. I took the weekend off. UGH!

On Friday I got my quiz back, 49/50. The only point I lost was on a pair of numbers I dyslexicized. But then after yoga was an example of one of those little things that kept bothering me last week. The class is held in the dance loft of the Fieldhouse (read: basketball stadium). After yoga I have ten minute to walk to the other side of campus to get to Spanish and on Wednesday I had been a little late, so I was in a bit of a rush. On the way to the stairs there was a gaggle of girls conversing and matching my pace. I looked over to the lead girl to see which one of use would go first. She didn't look back so I figured she would pause and I would go first. However, she just kept walking so I ended up cutting her off. I murmured an "excuse me," but she didn't say anything. So then I was mad the whole way to Spanish because I had just made an ass of myself. Something which normally wouldn't have happened if I hadn't been in a rush. The weekend was a nice break for sure!

On the way out of town I grabbed some Jack in the Box and went a little out of my way for a giant Jamba Juice comfort smoothy. :P The Reardan on to Wilbur there were giant snow flakes falling, I hope Spokane didn't get much. On the road I talked with Drew and Darrick to keep me awake and was relieved to find that Drew is finally getting over being sick.

Last Weekend

So I've finally found time to catch you all up on whats been going on.

Last weekend ... jeez I hope I can remember what happened! Saturday I went to the caucus. It was very crazy. There were about 20 precincts all meeting in a middle school cafeteria each with 30+ people, several with 50+. Ours was the largest with 80 or so; I'd say over half were from campus. We had 5 delegates from our precinct, 4 went for Obama and 1 for Hillary. Of our 4 delegate we sent for Obama two were adults and two were college kids, 2 men and 2 women. I think it was a fair representation of our precinct and I don't think any of them will be changing their vote. The county caucus if I remember correctly is the 2nd weekend in April.

I knew that the caucus system was cockamainy, but actually being involved in it really ground the fact that it really freaking sucks! Politics can make me feel so sick! Thats the main reason I voted for Obama. When compared with Hillary he's not so much of a politician as a devoted civil servant. I learned a cool term last month "servant leadership." A servant leader really wants to serve his community and realizes that he can best do so through leading others. While I don't doubt that Hillary would do a good job as President (and wouldn't it be awesome for her to break that gender barrier?) I think that Obama would change more of the things I want changed: in this example namely screwy politics. And hey, he would break the racial barrier, a real win-win.

Saturday evening I went to the gym to work out on the bike. Friday's exercise had really messed up my IT band and hip flexors. After 30 minutes or so on the bike some other guys from my hall asked I wanted to join them in "8 Minute Abs." I agreed... Doing ab exercises for 8 minutes straight wasn't bad since I'd been doing a lot of them during Weight Training in January, but the specific exercises we were doing were "old school?" (i.e. curls, sit-ups, reach-throughs, obliques crunches, etc.) and they really worked my neck. When I finished I couldn't twist it. So I stretched it out to the point of having full range of motion back (albeit it sore motion), cursing myself thinking I would wake up tomorrow in soooooooooooo much pain. It wasn't what I thought it would be. Maybe it's because I did such a good job stretching it out, but the next morning I still had full motion. It was very sore, but at least I could move it. It has continued to get better over the past few days, but today it still hurts to stretch out to limits of my range of motion. I think I'll do that workout again next week, this time mindful of my neck, to help strengthen it some more. But really, I can do much better ab workouts on the roman chair.

Not much went happened Sunday during the day. The gym's not open on Sunday so I took a recovery day. If I remember right the sun was shining so I opened up the blinds (not a common occurrence this winter) and turned off the overhead lights. One of the fluorescent bulbs has been on the blinks for about a month now. I probably should put in a work order for that... Anyway my roommate had left Thursday for a ultimate frisbee tournament in Las Vegas, so I took the opportunity to rearrange some furniture.

Now that I have math homework to do I once again lamented my lack of desk space. My laptop takes up half of it and I have various papers, books, magazines, a lamp, a tea pot, etc, on the other half. So I pulled my dresser out from under the bed (putting my tiny bookcase in its place) and put it next to my desk doubling the available area. So I now have space to put an open text book or space to write at. Now all I need is a REAL bookcase and a comfortable desk chair and I'll be perfect! :D

Sunday night I decided to try Halo 3 on Legendary (hardest difficulty setting) to see how far I would get... Lets put it this way: I started around 6pm and went to bed at 1:30am after beating only the first two levels. Normally I could beat the game twice in that amount of time. Oh, and a fire alarm went off around 8pm. Luckily it wasn't during an intense fire fight because it made me jump. :P I grabbed my coat and headed outside. Jeff had been hanging out down in the lobby and only had a pair of shorts on, no shirt, no socks, no shoes. Someone loaned him a coat and kicked off a shoe for him to stand on, while they stood on the other. Stupid fire drill. :P

so... tired...

will... post... later...

The Weekend Is Here!

And I am so ready for it!

I had my first yoga class today, I really liked it. I could feel that it was working my muscles and stretching things out and it ended up being very relaxing. :) The prof is really knowledgeable about not only yoga, but physiology as well. She kept pointing out the wrong way to do things and why they're bad for you, so we can avoid them. So no worrying allowed from mommy dearest.

After Spanish I went to the gym and decided to just do another easy three miles. I figured that the yoga had subtly tired my muscles behind my back, I was correct. Also, after several previous treadmill sessions my knees were a little sore. So I started out at 7:41 pace, but at two miles decided to finish strong and bumped it up to 7:30 pace with the intention of running the last lap on the highest setting - 6:00 minutes/mile. (That is actually really frustrating! Only 6:00 min/mi? Its infuriating to have a machine slow me down.) Anyway, I decided that to accompany my finish I would turn my iPod to Through The Fire And The Flames by DragonForce - a very fast paced (~200bpm), guitar lick intensive (hardest song on Guitar Hero III), lyrically inspiring song by a British power metal band.

Tonight we fly ever free
We're free before the thunderstorm
On towards the wilderness our quest carries on
Far beyond the sundown, far beyond the moonlight
Deep inside our hearts and all our souls

So far away we wait for the day
For the light source so wasted and gone
We feel the pain of a lifetime lost in a thousand days
Through the fire and the flames we carry on
(full lyrics)

It inspired me to continue past my three mile mark, still on the highest setting, for an additional half a mile. :D I was so high on endorphins when I finished I decided to go the gym and lift weights! (Truthfully that had been my intention beginning the workout, but given the amount of effort I ended up putting in to it... maybe not my brightest.) So I did a bunch of work with dumbbells and situps & backups on the roman chair. After that, still high as a kite I walked over to the track for reasons not really clear to me. Perhaps it was the track team I saw assembling at the gym that jarred my subconscious to wonder what kind of workouts they were doing. Anyway, to my great wonderment and excitement THE DAMN THING WAS PLOWED! All eight lanes! That really pushed me over the edge... I ran all the way back to my dorm.

Tonight was another Star Trek night. The group of people watching keeps growing. We also were informed that the school technically isn't supposed to rent their rooms out to non-school sanctioned clubs. So we talked about becoming official. There was enough consent to get the ball rolling, which I think will be loads of fun. As a school club we get something on the order of $100 a year for activities, plus we get to fundraise and host events. We watched Star Trek VI: The Undiscovered Country.

P.S. As of writing this my back muscles feel tight from the back ups and my shoulders are sore from the arm movement from running, but no real pain... Ask me again tomorrow though! Maybe I'll take my own advice and do an EASY workout tomorrow.

New Post is New ... and Late

Man I'm behind again!

Wednesday I had the first session of some more of my classes: Physics II and Spanish. The Physics prof is really cool. He's Indian and is a rocket scientist! How cool is that? I think I might do some research with him one summer, we talked about it the possibility last semester when I was enrolling. Speaking of research my Calculus professor has also offered to get me involved in some Mathematica research. Mathematica is a Computer Algebra System, that means its a really smart math computer program. I think that would be fun, but I'm taking 17 credits (more info on that in a second) so I told him I want to wait a week to see how the stress load is going to be from my homework and running.

When I went to go to my Spanish class I accidentally went to the wrong building. I had looked at my schedule to see what building and room number I was supposed to go to and saw: Hawthorne, but read: Hendrick. Hendrick was were it was last semester.... this semester it is The French Revolution... Luckily someone else had done a similar thing. He also went to where it was last semester, but knew the name of the building he was supposed to go to was Hawthorne. So we realized our mistake and walked over to class. It was a pretty lame first session. We talked a little bit with our table-mates and then went of the syllabus before we were excused. We were only there for 20 minutes tops. O well, I know the work will come... Speaking of which I still need to do my homework for that class! lol

Sometime Wednesday (I can't remember exactly when) I went to the Registrar's Office to pick up my $75 check for getting third at the talent show and while I was there I checked to see which scholarships had come in. Only the Senior Citizen's one had been added. So I called Doug Sklar to see what the deal was with the Rotary Scholarship. He put me in touch with the club treasurer who assured me the check had been mailed last Friday. So I wasn't worried about that (the Registrar's Office is kinda slow). However, I wasn't able to get a hold of Donna Howe to get the number for the Booster Club Treasurer. I guess I'll handle that today.

After Spanish I didn't go to the gym as per my Spring plan because I was so tired! When I went to JB's that night we decided not to go ice skating either, but to stay and watch a movie instead. We watch 50 First Dates, which is a great movie! It reaches two audiences really, the high school idiot comedy and the helpless romantic. I wish they had settled on making it just a romance movie (or a romantic comedy) and left out all the middle school humor. I'm talking about the things that "yeah, that's funny," but it makes no sense in the plot line and/or dialog and its something no one would actually do or its something that actually wouldn't exist. *sigh* Overall though the movie was well worth watching, it just could have been better.

On Thursday I almost didn't wake up in time! I had set my alarm on my computer for an hour before class (which is an hour later than M T W F) and had turned off my duplicate alarm on my cell phone because its harder to change and I didn't want to hassle with changing it back for Friday. Of course I did this on the day when the duplicate alarm was needed! I turned off the first and rolled over (I actually had to get out of bed, turn it off, and get back in, but whatever I "rolled over"). Luckily it had woken me up to enough to jar some synapse into slow fire mode. I woke up half an hour later when my brain had finally connected all the dots in its groggy state, saying "OH SH..!" But as I said I still had half an hour. Whew!

The best part about Thursday was the sun! It shined all day long! I didn't even miss my sweatshirt! (I generally wear a sweatshirt and a jacket.) The grounds crew was using the opportunity to chip up some of the crap on the roads, since it was loosened by the heat. They seemed to stop around 1pm, which made no sense because the sun was still shining, things were loosening up even more, and there was lots of crap left to be removed! Ugh! What were they thinking? Its just going to freeze again tonight and then who knows when they'll be able to remove it! I did freeze again by the way. So know there is lots of ice from the melt off... *grumble, grumble*

After my Ethics class there was Convocation before my Career and Vocational Studies class. So I took the opportunity to head to the gym thinking there wouldn't be very many people there. Lots of people ended up having that idea. I got the last open treadmill (which had been Out of Order on Tuesday). I was able to run at a faster clip thanks to the day of rest (and probably because I'm getting my body back in the habit), it felt good knowing I'm quickly returning to my previous level of fitness. I did 3 miles in 22:08.

I had my last chiropractic appointment today that was covered by my insurance for the fender bender. So know I'll just be in monthly to maintain my alignment.

Thursday evening I got an email from the registrar. Saying I had been enrolled in my wait-listed class, Yoga. It was the only class I wanted to take I wasn't able to get into and the wait-list had been pretty long, but now I'm in. Hurray!

Thursday did not end as well as it started. Dinner at the cafeteria was some special event they had planned to "celebrate" Holywood. The food was really good, they had Mongolian beef or chicken and California rolls with lots of wasabi. :) But the lines were sooooooooooooo long (I think everyone came at the same time to dinner). They were also doing movie trivia where they would say a line from a movie and the first person to get the name of the movie would get a prize. The quote was: "Hasta la vista baby." Which wasn't from The Terminator as the first person guessed, but from Terminator 2. So I got a t-shirt. Sadly though, they played rap music the whole rest of the time. I find rap frustratingly intolerable. Not only do I hate it, but the beat is so strong I can't help but tap my foot sometimes. AH! No, that's not worthy of foot-tapping!

Then I came back to my room played a round of Halo 3 and then watched Jeopardy and Wheel of Fortune and then headed to the library to do some Calculus III homework. Part of the course is learning to use Mathematica (see above) so we get regular pen-and-paper homework and Mathematica homework. The professor wants us to use the latest version (understandable) which is currently only on the library computers. It will be much easier for me to do once it gets put on the Computer Science lab computers. So I went to the library, got on a computer, downloaded the assignment, and... it referred me to pages in my textbook - which was back in my dorm room. UGH! So I walked back, got my textbook, went BACK to the library, and did the FOUR questions in less time than it took to walk there originally. Then when I got back to my dorm room I realized I had forgotten to email it myself... I was so frustrated. I said "screw it, I'll go back and print it in the morning." While lying in bed though I remembered that now that my network connection works properly I could probably access my folder on the server and print it from my dorm room. Cha-ching! Thank you cybertechnology! And I was able to sleep peacefully... after I got that crappy rap music out of my head.

Spring Semester

Spring Semester has begun!

Monday I drove back to Spokane after spending some time visiting with my grandparents. Samantha rode back with me. That night evening classes began and I went to the first band rehearsal. Should prove to be just like last semester. :D I got a guy from down the hall to join. He plays trumpet.

Today day classes started. This semester I am taking:

Calculus III
Physics II
Advanced Spanish Grammar and Composition through Literature
Social and Ethical Issues in Computer Science
Career and Vocational Studies
Concert Band
(update) and now Yoga!

Today I had Calculus and Ethics. They both went well. My calculus teacher is the same from last semester, so I know exactly how the class is going to go. I really like him. And my ethics teacher is a great guy too. I went and listened to him talk about his dissertation one time last semester. He worked at Microsoft for 8 years before becoming a prof. He's a pretty funny guy.

On Monday night at dinner I went to check my mailbox and was surprised to find so much mail! Two letters from Kaitlynn, one from Nana, a statement of interested earnings from my bank, two Time magazines, and THREE package slips. Jeez! I left the package slips because the post office was closed, but today I went back and collected them. Two of the three slips were for meds that had come and the other was my TI-89! Hurray shiny new calculator! I sure did miss a good 'ol 89 last semester. The prescription company or Family Health Centers screwed up big time. :P They were only supposed to send me one bottle of allergy meds, they sent two. And they weren't even identical! One was 180 pills with 3 refils and the other was 60 pills with 5 refils. When taking the number I still have left over in my old bottle, that gives me almost 9 months of medication! Guess I would be refilling that prescription anytime soon. :P

At 3pm I went to the gym for a run in what I plan on making a daily habit. However, that gym was packed! Every single machine was occupied except for 2 old school stationary bikes, the kind with the resistance pads. So I did that for 10 minutes until a treadmill opened up. This could prove to be problematic if the gym continues to be packed at 3pm. Although, I do plan on using the old gym (read: basketball court) to start doing sprints probably next week.

Oh yeah... it snowed again... /wrists

Polar Bear

Friday I got up and perused the net till noon at which point I realized I should pack for Polar Bear Camp. So I rushed to shower and get everything ready so I could get into town in time to run (I did 3 miles in 20:58) and meet the Scouts at the church at 4:15pm. I was 2 minutes early! :D But just barely. lol

I bought gas and dinner and then headed up the hill. Polar Bear this year was well attended! 5 troops totaling about 50 people! It was great! Sadly, not every troop stayed the second night (pansies). I got to see Matt Slagle again though! He's a friend of mine from Bonaparte. His troop, Troop 61, ran Polar Bear this year and he was the head honcho. I helped out by running the fire building program. I also got to see Dustin, another friend from Bonaparte and from school. Dustin is from the LDS Troop 52 out of Omak and is going to also join Troop 60. 52 is a nice troop and he wants to stay involved for religious reasons, but they don't do as much camping as 60 does or as he would like. So he's going to join 60 for the camping and the fun! :D

Friday night I was pretty uncomfortable. Not that I was cold, I have a great sleeping bag, but I slept in the back of my car. I didn't bring a tent and I'm not allowed to share a tent with the boys now that I'm 18. The back seats in my car fold down to extend the cargo area, but they don't fold flat. So I was sleeping on a weird angle and tossed and turned all night. James and his dad had made a snow cave. It was huge! It probably could have slept four. They made it in about four hours too, not bad time. The snow conditions were perfect. Some of the best snow we've had at Polar Bear.

Breakfast as always was served in the lodge by Gus and Wayne and was the traditional Jimmy Dean sausage and biscuit sandwiches with hashbrowns and cocoa. The fire building program I ran went pretty well. I built a second fire out in front of our camp site and cleared a spot for the troops to build theres. Their goal was to build a fire from all natural material (no accelerants, paper, or dryer lint, etc), but they could use wood pilfered from their campsites and use knives and axes to make smaller pieces. Every troop except for the first succeeded. The first troop was a bunch of young guys. They had some great material, including a bird's nest which made for great tinder, but they lacked the knowledge to put it together properly. I think their Scoutmasters planned a fire building workshop for later. :P

Being an adult in the troop sure has its perks! I get fed the good food! and cookies! I didn't have to cook or do KP either. Although I did end up cooking the boy's dinner on Saturday. Kielbasa and ramen noodles. I didn't get as much reading in as I had hoped, but I did finish one Time magazine.

After dinner was the skit competition. Troop 60 decided to not do their cool Action 60 Scouter (a motion variation on the original) (probably because they're lazy), and instead did the He Followed the Tracks skit. Needless to say we lost. Troop 61 took the Snowball Award (the best skit) and Troop 24 took the Polar Bear Award (best program points).

At first when I got up to camp I wasn't optimistic about how much fun I would have, seeing as almost none of my old crew was there, but it ended up being a lot of fun. More proof that change isn't all bad. :D

Thursday

Today was pretty short, or at least it felt so. I woke up at 11:30am and browsed the net for most of the afternoon. At 3pm I picked Ryan up from school and brought him home. On the way we stopped by Arby's to grab dinner for Ryan since Mom wouldn't be home till around 6 o'clock. Joel was working the window, he almost didn't recognize me because I was wearing sunglasses. :P After dropping Ryan off I turned back around and headed back into town to meet Kaitlynn for a run.

We went to East Side Park and did 3 miles. I used the opportunity to calibrate my Nike+ sensor. After the run we went back to her house and stretched before we went to Arby's for dinner. Joel was still working and got off work right after we got our food. He sat in the booth in front of us and chatted. At first I was annoyed because I wanted to just be with Kaitlynn, but it was nice to catch up with him. I'll have other dinners to spend with Kaitlynn.

After dinner we went back to her house and played some more Rock Band. Woo hoo! That game is so awesome. The last time I was home Kaitlynn and I had started our own band and were playing through career mode, but Brian deleted it to save space on his memory card. Yesterday when we played we started another one which was still there today. We've pleaded with Brian not to delete this one as we're getting well along on it. I think I'm going to buy a small memory card for the Xbox 360 so that our band doesn't take up space on his. Plus, that will give our data security. :P

I saw a GameFly commercial today advertising $8 per month membership fees. I thought, hey thats a pretty inexpensive way to get some fun games to play. But on further investigation, the $8 deal is only for the first month. Its $15 after that, making just buying games cheaper. I'm really tempted to buy Guitar Hero III because I love the game so much, but I don't own a game console. I could buy it and play it off of my quad mate's Xbox 360, but that only gives me gaming security till the end of the year. What if next year none of my roomies have a 360? Then I'm out $100 with no way to play. *sigh*

All of this would be simpler if I had enough money to justify spending it on an Xbox 360 or a Wii... but I don't. Money may not bring happiness, but it sure would help. Thank god for a college education and double earning power! :D

Ian Tries Snowboarding - Hilarity Ensues

Tuesday:

The last day of Jan Term! Weight Lifting was standard. I've realized that working out has really helped my back pain. So I plan on continuing to lift weights, except I'll do it twice a week instead of every day. :P In Marriage, Sex, and Gender we listened to the last group's presentation (on Domestic Abuse and the Church) and took our last test. We got out early at around 3:00pm. I then proceeded to finish packing, brush more snow off of my car, and pack everything in while trying leave enough room for two other peoples' stuff. Jeez! Will it ever stop snowing! There must be almost 2.5 feet on the ground already and its expected to snow everyday till Sunday!

Samantha and her friend Erin (from Pateros) rode back with me. We left Spokane at 4:30pm and arrived in Omak at 9:00pm. It was such a LONG drive! There was fog all the way from Reardan to Grand Coulee that I couldn't drive more than 30mph in. Plus, the inside of my car has developed a nasty habit of collecting moisture on the windows and freezing! So we stopped in Davenport for some deicer (and some munchies). We were in line at the check out stand and were reading the backside of the deicer can, because we were going to be using it in close proximity to ourselves. We discovered that it causes: blindness, cancer, birth defects, and death without warning... OK so no way are we going to be using that inside the car... The solution? Windex! Apparently it prevents ice from forming. It did a pretty decent job too. :P

Wednesday:

Doug was heading to the Loup and offered to teach me how to snowboard. I've never boarded before so I thought I would give it a try. Its a lot harder than it looks and a lot harder than skiing. After four or five runs on the rope tow (it took me 3 shots to make it up the rope tow in the first place) we headed over to the poma. It also took me 3 tries to get all the way up. :P I fell a bunch and bruised myself a bunch and by lunch time was starting to get the hang of some basic turns. The hardest thing to get used to (I never did fully) is putting most of your weight forward and using your forward foot to initiate most of the turns. I'm right footed which for some stupid reason means I should have my left foot forward! Oh well, I had fun (painful, wet fun). After lunch I switched in my board for some skiis and Doug and I went up the mountain for eight or ten runs before calling it a day. They gave me some new fangled shaped skiis which are a lot nicer than my old pair. They're shorter so they were much easier to maneuver around. I really want a pair like that. I asked Dustin how much they ran for and he said around $400 with the boots. So I guess I'll look into that again when I get a job. :P

After spending the day on the hill I showered at Doug' house (Doug doesn't own a comb! So I had to use a lady's hair brush that was in one of the drawers) and spent the evening with Kaitlynn. We played Rock Band for awhile and then then her family fed me dinner (spaghetti). I helped make the garlic toast. It needed a lot more time in the oven than we anticipated.