Avalanche!

This weekend, Andrew, Tim and I took an AIARE level 1 avalanche course that turned out to be very useful and a lot of fun! We planned to snow camp for free rather than pay for lodging, so we had to pack a lot of stuff! We had to pack food for three days, water, warm clothing, the tent, sleeping bags, sleeping mats, ski poles, snowboarding boots, hiking boots, goggles, helmets, sunglasses, sunscreen, our gps, and so much other stuff! I always have a terrible feeling that I am forgetting something important, but after a while I exhausted my brain and figured I had everything I needed most! We somehow got all of our stuff into the car, the dog to our friend's house, and headed off!

The first day of the course was spent mostly in the classroom. We discussed the type of terrain that was most safe or unsafe during avalanches. We discussed the avalanche forecast, and how to better understand it in order to utilize it as a safety tool. We discussed terrain traps, what to do and what not to do, and what exactly it is that causes avalanches. After a long day in the classroom, we learned how to use avalanche beacons. We went outside into the parking lot and did some drills to help us get used to how to search for a buried victim with our avalanche beacons. That night, we were pretty tired. We had woken up very early to drive to Bear Valley, arrived just in time for class, and been hard at work all day. When class was dismissed, the three of us drove to a nearby snow camp, trudged out into the woods, and found a nice place to set up the tent. We huddled around making camp and making dinner. I fell asleep right after we ate dinner!

The next morning, we packed up camp and trudged back to the car. We got to the car later than expected, so rather than making oatmeal for breakfast we just ate granola bars and went to class. The second day of class was much more exciting! We spent a few hours in the classroom discussing snowpits, rescue digging, and other such things. Then we headed out into the snow with snowshoes and trekked a little ways up to the top of a cornice. We had lunch at the top, and then we tried to cause an avalanche by making the cornice fall. We had something called a "backcountry bomb" and its just a long wire that you can try to cut a cornice with. We didn't have much luck because the snowpack was so stable that day. After a few failed attempts at dropping the cornice, our instructor had us dig snowpits! We dug the snowpits as if it was a rescue from a burial, so there was a group of two people, and another group of Andrew, Tim, and I. We had to have two people digging at a time, and you rotate every minute. So you are digging furiously for two minutes, and then you get a one minute rest. It is very tiring! I hope I never have to dig anyone out from an avalanche. Our instructor helped us with our digging technique. After we had dug out the snowpit, we used it to evaluate the snowpack. There are all sorts of compression tests where you isolate a snow column and then see what happens when you put pressure on the top! It was very interesting. After learning about a few different tests, we climbed back to the top of the ridge only to discover that our instructor had a surprise for us! We had to "rescue" someone! He had thrown an avalanche beacon off the top of the mountain earlier, and now it was up to us to find it! We all assessed the situation together, and worked together to find the avalanche beacon. We found it quickly, and learned a lot of valuable lessons along the way. After this, we all headed back to our cars, and class was over for the day. We headed back to the snowpark, and asked the instructor if we could borrow the snowshoes overnight. He didn't mind! We stopped at a grocery store to pick up food for lunch the next day, and we had dinner at a subway. Then we drove back to the snow park and snowshoed to our campsite. We played with the avalanche beacons while setting up the tent; one person would go out and hide two, and then someone else would have to find them! Each of us got to search for the "victims" in a multi burial, and it was a lot of fun! Practice makes perfect, and perfect is good because it might save one of us someday. After we set up the tent, I snuggled into my sleeping bag, only to discover that we were all awake! We laid in the tent and chatted for a while and eventually drifted off to sleep.

The third day, we had enough time to make oatmeal and hot chocolate for breakfast! Those are two delicious ways to start a day. For the last day of class, we went out on a snowshoeing tour around Poison Canyon. Our instructor brought us to several types of obstacles and taught us to think our way through and problem solve how to best get around the obstacles. It was very useful, and quite invaluable. After we got back to our cars, we were so tired. We packed up and drove all the way home. When we got home, we barely managed to hang everything up to dry before falling asleep!

Ice Cream and Greek Food!

My friend Britt and I have been trying to meet up to grab ice cream for a few weeks now and it seems that our schedules are polar opposites; during the week, I'm at work until 4p every day, and Britt is free until 4p every day! The one weekend I was in town, she wasn't. Today we found an opening in our schedules and decided to squeeze a bite of ice cream in! At first I was appalled that we were getting ice cream directly before dinner, but Britt scolded me that my mindset was "only for conservatives." Properly chastened, Tim and I headed over to downtown Berkeley and sat waiting for her. A few minutes passed, and we weren't sure where she was. Suddenly, a girl in a bright green fleece jacket bursts out of a Honda fit at a traffic light shouting, "Tim! Perry! Get in the car while I look for a parking spot!" We scrambled into the car just before the light turned green and chatted while searching for a parking spot. After a squealing u-turn and a dash to the last parking spot available, we headed to a wonderful place called John's One Dollar Scoop. Three dollars later, we emerged with three delicious ice cream cones. Britt got some "birthday cake" ice cream that looked and tasted just like funfetti cake with bright dots of color smeared around in white ice cream. It was yummy, but the best part was how we felt five years old again when we took a bite.

We had plans to eat dinner with a large group of friends because George's mom, Lydia, was in town. We munched on our cones while walking to the restaurant. Lydia has been in San Francisco for the American Chemistry Society conference, and she came to Berkeley for the night to see George and meet his friends. She is from Cyprus, so she decided we would eat at a Greek restaurant! The restaurant was supposed to be closed, but George had gone by earlier to make a reservation and they decided they'd stay open late for us! The chef and the waitress were both Greek, and the environment in the restaurant was more like a family reunion than anything else. When the food came, I was astonished at how large the servings were; the amount of food was astronomical. I ate until I was about to pop. Just when I was about to stop eating, Lydia informed us that it is an insult in Greece to not finish all the food on your plate! Our eyes bulged in the strain to finish all the food on our plates. Just when we finished, the chef brought over plates and plates of more food, on the house! I was so full and I could barely have another bite. Even Garbage Disposal Timmy was about to explode good food all over the room. Then the chef brought over dessert, also on the house! Then coffee! It was all delicious food, so it was well worth it. After dinner, to my shock, Ben said that his dessert stomach still had room for ice cream. He wanted Tim and I to head to get some ice cream with him, but I could not stand the thought of eating another morsel! Tim and I headed home, and fell into food comas.

Dinner!

When I got home from work today with a few goodies from the grocery store, I discovered Tim unhappily sealing the seams of our new tent. I asked if he needed any help and when he said no, I proceeded to be unhelpful and went into the kitchen to start cleaning up the mess and making an appetizer. Yoko, our landlord's dog, was wandering around the garden and came into our kitchen to chill for a while. I started making some thai lettuce cups, which is a mixture of pork, sausage, red pepper, spring onions, mint, sesame oil, sesame seeds, soy sauce, and lemongrass that you serve inside of a little lettuce leaf! George came over to do some work on the bottom bracket of his bike, and I gave him some strawberries and fresh french bread that I had bought at the store. After he repaired his bottom bracket, he headed home and I started making the biscuits for strawberry shortcake. They came out of the oven at the perfect time, and I whipped them onto a plate, grabbed the ingredients for whipped cream, strawberries, the thai lettuce cups, and Tim and I headed over to Andrew's for dinner!

Jay was home, too, so I had a lot of fun talking to him. We talked about algae, he gave Tim some algae to drink, he tried to get me to drink algae, and then he left to go run some errands. Andrew was making a white bean and leek salad on the stove that smelled and looked really yummy. He also grilled lots of vegetables and made steak on the grill! When everything was ready, I was starting to drool! I don't have a grill, so I really miss grilled steak. I think I will have to start making kabobs and bringing them to Andrew's so that he can grill them up and have dinner with us! We had the steak with blue cheese, which is a pairing I'm new to, but it was delicious! Absolutely delicious! My stomach was happy.

Jay came home, and started making himself dinner as we were eating. We ate some strawberry shortcake after dinner, and as the four of us were talking, we came upon the realization that the four of us would make a pretty good team for an adventure race. We browsed on the internet for adventure races this spring and early summer, and it looks like we might sign up for one and try it out! I had a lot of fun in my last 24 hour adventure race, although you really experience a roller coaster of emotions when you're working out for 24 hours without any sleep. After a while, it got late and Tim and I headed home, where I promptly passed out!

Silly Badminton!

After work, I drove home to pick up the dog and then headed over to 805. When I arrived, Vince informed me that he had destroyed Tim in a wii sports tournament and that it had been embarrassing. I had a sudden urge to play badminton, and I knew that there were old badminton racquets at 805. When I proposed the idea, everyone seemed interested and we ran around finding a birdie, and something to make a net with. Sarah, Pam, Vince, Tim and I trekked over to the acquatics park with Navi and Penny (Sarah's pomeranian) and we wandered around in search of some good trees. It was hard to find two trees close to each other with flat land in between, so when we saw one tree in the middle of a flat area, we decided that one person could hold up the rope with the other end tied to the tree, since we did have 5 people. Then we saw a picnic table, and decided to carry that over and use it as the base of the second post for the "net" (rope). After 5 or 10 minutes, we had rigged up a rope at an appropriate level using two extension cords, a tree, lots of tree bark, a stick, and the picnic table. So we started playing! It was really windy, so it was pretty difficult, but we had fun anyway! A woman was walking through the park with her spunky little mutt dog and he chased Navi around for a good amount of time. We were pretty amused by watching this spectacle because this little dog was beating Navi up. Whenever she rolled on the ground, he would pounce all over her! Penny hid in her little dog bag, because she is so shy. After a while, we had destroyed the only birdie we had, and we were just standing around watching the dogs play. A disc golfer came over and yelled at us for having moved the picnic table "into" their course (it was pretty far away) so after he stormed off, we entertained thoughts of revenge where we would stack up all the picnic tables in the park right near the disc golf basket, but move the one table he demanded we move away. At this point we packed up and started walking back to 805, and I decided that since it was windy, Pam, Tim and I should go fly a kite. We invited Ashley, but she didn't want to go. So we headed over to the marina, and the wind was actually great for learning to do tricks with our kite! I can now make my kite do circles!! After a while, I got tired of running through pricker bushes and tall grass to relaunch the kite, so we packed up and I decided to treat my two best friends to indian food at Ajanta. We happily ate delicious indian food on a quiet monday night, and then we all headed home for the night. Yay!

The Week!

This week was wonderful! On Monday, Tim and I met in Emeryville. We went to Fossil to get a link put back in his new watch so that it fit better. We stopped at Williams-Sonoma because I can't resist poking around. Then we wandered over to Marmot Mountain in Berkeley to return the ski equipment we had rented over the weekend. I really like the people at Marmot Mountain; I was undecided between whether I wanted 175 Joules or 165 Joules. I felt like I would be happier on 165s but I wasn't sure if I'd be limiting myself by not going for 175s. The guy in the store agreed that I was a better fit for the 165s and he liked my choice of ski, so I left the shop feeling much more confident in the ski that I had decided to buy. I think we buy so many things offline nowadays that we forget how nice it is to go into a shop and talk to people with experience. You can get a good vibe about the person you're talking to and see whether or not you really trust his words. We chatted with someone about skis for a while and then we headed over to campus to grab a slice of pizza. After that, I went home to play with the dog for the night, and Tim went to play with his music group.

Tuesday had even more gorgeous weather, so after work, I hooked the dog trailer to my bike, and took Navi to the beach. Pam and Tim met me at the beach, and we played with Navi for a long time. She wasn't doing well with fetch on the beach, so I let her play with other dogs. When Tim and Pam arrived, we went for a walk on the peninsula. We found a big block of wood and threw it in the water, and Navi suddenly became a fetching machine. I don't know if she liked the location, or the block of wood or what, but I've never had such success with her bringing the block of wood back to us so we could throw it again. That tired her out! After wandering around some more, Tim went to Target, and Pam and I biked home to make fresh pasta for penne with vodka sauce! The bike home with Navi in the trailer is always slow and grueling, but such a good workout!

Wednesday was St. Patrick's day, and once again the weather was amazing! I headed home after work to pick up Navi, and then drove with her to Pam's. Navi stuck her head out the window the entire drive. When I got to 805, Sarah said that she'd watch Navi for a while, so Pam and I headed to 4th street to wander. I got some key lime sorbet on top of a chocolate cookie. We wandered around kitchen stores, glass stores, and cheese shops. I found some cumin gouda, and I bought some to take home. After a while, we headed back to Pam's and gathered Navi to take her for a nice walk at the Aquatics Park. We walked by the new Vik's, and I can't wait to eat there. Navi met lots of disc golfers who liked her a lot. I've been teaching her to shake water off on command so that I can get her to shake without shaking water all over me. She doesn't quite understand it yet, so a few guys at the park had a great laugh while watching Pam and I run away from Navi desperately trying to get Navi to shake the water off while not getting us wet and dirty!

Thursday, Tim and I met up with Jordan to go for a nice swim. The pool is so nice. We made it to 2800 yards, which is a nice step up from 2200 yards. Next time, we'll go even farther!

On Friday, I biked into work. I decided to take a different route, and I got pretty lost. Instead of biking down the hill to the water, and then biking to work along the water, I decided to bike along the ridge of the hills, and drop down the southern side of Oakland into Alameda. I biked along Grizzly Peak, Skyline Boulevard, and then I dropped down Shepards Canyon. When I got to Mountain Boulevard, I realized that maybe I hadn't looked at the maps well enough before I left. I wasn't sure where to go, and there were a lot of cars trying to get onto 13. I took the path of least resistance (fewest cars) and I ended up getting stuck because I couldn't cross the highway and I needed to. I had to go so far North to cross the highway that I ended up on Broadway. I'm really good at city biking and keeping up with traffic, so it wasn't a problem, but I was annoyed because Broadway took the wrong direction. Instead of going southwest through the city on Fruitvale, I was going northwest. So I finally got into the city and found a nice road to cut south on, and I hit Lake Merrit. You can't bike through a lake, so I had to bike east to get around the lake, and then west again. Then I kept cutting south through the city, and eventually I turned west again. I got under 580, but I had a lot of trouble getting across 880, because all the roads just ended at 880. I couldn't find any roads that went over or under 880 for the longest time. Then I finally found a road, and I had gone north again...so I was dumped on Embarcadero. At this point I knew exactly where I was and how to get to work, but I had taken a really inefficient route into work. I got to work and looked at the map and I know how to bike it now, but I'm pretty sure I added 10 miles to my ride! After work, I took the ferry into san francisco with Nathaniel and Jon, and met up with Tim. Tim and I went to Chinatown, and met up with Tim's friend Dirk. Tim and Dirk worked together at Dupont, and Dirk had been wanting to move back out to the bay area for a while. He had gotten his masters at Stanford and had a lot of friends in the area. He just moved out, so we met up for dinner! We had a delicious dinner in Chinatown, and the girl that Dirk brought along, Juju, knew mandarin. She spoke pretty fluently, and the woman running the restaurant adored her. After dinner, we parted ways, and Tim and I headed back to Berkeley by bart. When we got back, we got Tim's bike, and biked home to get the dog. We fed Navi, and then drove with the dog over to 805 where a bunch of guys were hanging out watching a terrible sci fi movie from the 1960's.

On Saturday, George, Marina, Ben, Vince, Tim, Jared, and I met up and went into the city to help George's mom with a program held by ACS (american chemistry society?). George's mom is from Michigan, but she works with ACS and they were having a conference in San Francisco. On Saturday, they held a chemistry program for kids at the California Academy of Sciences, and George's mom recruited a bunch of the mechanical engineers to help out. They had a whole bunch of tables with experiments set up, and I think the kids had a lot of fun. Tim and I worked at a table called "Iron for Breakfast" where we showed kids that there was iron in their cereal. We used coco wheaties, and we had the kids stir a magnet in a bag of cereal. Then we'd take the magnet and put the iron fillings onto a plate, and let the kids move the magnet under the plate (to move the iron fillings). When they saw the iron move, their eyes just popped out of their head in astonishment. There were lots of cool experiments like that, and it was a pretty fun day!

Yesterday, I went into work so that I can take this Friday off for the Avalanche course. On the way home, I saw a mexican guy selling strawberries out of a truck. I went over and asked how much it was for an entire box of 12 pints of strawberries. He was speaking a mix of spanish and english, so I had a hard time understanding him. I thought he said 4 dollars, so I replied in disbelief, "four dollars?" He waved his hand and said, "sure!" I was pretty surprised, but then another woman walked up and he sold a box to her for 12 dollars. So I basically managed to accidentally barter down from 12 dollars to 4 dollars! Sometimes it pays to be deaf; that is a lot of strawberries for 4 dollars! On the way home, I met up with Tim in Emeryville to go to home depot. While waiting for Tim, I went into a pet store and found a lot of bones for a really good deal for the dog. On the way home, we stopped at REI to pick up a new jacket that I had purchased. I always wore random layers of fleece that I had laying around while skiing, but its annoying to have three or four jackets on. I really liked a fleece jacket that Tim had, so I bought the woman's version. It is very nice, and for cold weather, I can now wear only this fleece underneath my goretex shell. It is a very warm, thick fleece, so it replaces all three fleece jackets I used to wear for cold weather. So now I have more options as to what to wear, which is great. We ate a late lunch at Chipotle, and then wandered around a little more. We stopped at a ski store and the North Face outlet, but were unimpressed with what we saw and headed home. When we got home, Pam came over and we made lemon poppyseed cake and strawberry shortcake!

Snowcamping Adventure!

This weekend was a lot of fun. On Saturday morning, Tim and I woke up and started packing up for our trip. We made lots of ham and cheese sandwiches, filled every bottle and camelback bladder we own with water, packed the dog's saddlebags, packed our backpacking packs, and took a lot longer to get ready than usual. We were a tiny bit late, but we finally got all three of us packed into the car and we headed to Andrew's. When we arrived, we discovered that we had luckily all had late mornings on the same day. Andrew had woken up 5 minutes before we arrived, still drunk from the night before. We hung out in his apartment while he got ready and Navi stood outside the door looking in. After a bit, we packed up the car with all the skis, boots, poles, skins, and backpacking packs, and lots of food. Then we headed out for our grand weekend!

Chain control started pretty early since the mountains had 1-3 feet of powder dumped on them on Friday night, so it took us longer to get to the mountain. When we arrived, we let Navi out, and she immediately bolted to run into the snow. She's never played in fresh powder before, so she was a little confused when the snow was as deep as she is tall! She leaped around in the snow and had a blast. We changed into our gear, left her in the car with a little shade canopy made out of my fleece blanket, and started skiing! We skied all day at the resort, and around 4 we left and drove to a nearby snow parking lot. We packed up our gear, put Navi's saddlebags on, put the climbing skins on the skis, and started skiing in search of a campsite before sunset! We skied for a while and found a really nice opening in the middle of a bunch of trees that we all felt was safe. We tried to pack down a nice big circle with our skis, but as soon as we hopped off the skis we sunk into the powder. Thankfully, we didn't sink as deep as we would have without packing the snow down, so it was easier to walk around. Navi was having a blast, but her feet were really cold. Her booties didn't stay on very well, so Tim and I will have to redesign them to work a little better. We already have lots of ideas! She is such a trooper though so she is easy to take care of. We set up the tent, made dinner, and after looking at the stars for a while we headed to bed. Navi was wet, so even though she had a thermal insulation mat and a fleece blanket, she was a little cold. It took Tim and I a while to find all of the locations she was losing heat and figure out how to keep her warm, but she was a real trooper. She doesn't give us problems and realizes that we are trying to help her. Eventually she understood that she needed to sleep on top of her insulation mat so that the cold ground didn't steal her warmth. We put her legs on top of Tim so that they didn't fall off the sides of the mat. Then I opened my sleeping bag and covered her up too. I couldn't figure out why she was still shivering, so I felt every part of her body and I discovered that her tail was practically a brick of ice. She was holding it against her stomach, so it was hard for me to find and it was leeching all of her warmth. I moved it to a better location, got all the snow off, warmed it up, and after a while she stopped shivering and fell asleep. Tim and I snuggled on either side of her and we drifted off to sleep.

Morning came, and the four of us dosed for a while. When Navi realized that I was awake, she dived into my face to say good morning! She snuggled for a while, until she realized that Andrew was awake, too! She jumped over Timmy and shoved her nose into Andrew's face, giving him cold good morning licks! She really loves Andrew. Andrew slept on her for a while, and after a while we all decided to wake up. We put all our gear back on, made oatmeal and hot chocolate for breakfast, packed up, and started skiing around again! Navi's feet were hurting from the snow, so Tim left to put her back in the car for a while. Andrew and I skied around for a while, but I had a hard time on the downhills with the pack I was wearing. I got tired, so when Timmy returned, I decided to head to the car while Andrew and Tim skied, and take care of the dog's feet. I skied back and met a few other people with dogs along the way, which was fun. When I got back to the parking lot, I let Navi out of the car, and she wandered around meeting everyone who was in the lot. There were three guys in a pick up truck nearby who had just returned from backcountry skiing. They loved Navi and gave her lots of belly rubs and cheese. After a while, Andrew and Tim returned to the car, and the three men showed us their backcountry bindings and we chatted for a while. We dried the tent and fly off in the sun, and slowly packed the car up while Navi made lots of friends. Eventually, we headed off and drove home! I made chicken tortilla soup which really hit the spot, and after laying everything out to dry and cleaning up the kitchen, I passed out! It was a really fun weekend.

AT skis!

After work, I went home for a while to take the dog for a walk. Tim and Andrew IMed me to say they were done with work, so I drove to campus to pick them up and we headed over to Marmot Mountain to rent some alpine touring skis for the weekend. When we got into the store, we wandered around looking at skis for a while and eventually someone came to help us out. He was really nice, and he had a wonderful australian cattledog named Alice. The dog was super nice and I fell in love with her immediately. She would lean on you and sit on your feet once she realized that you would pet her. We went over to the rental desk and started trying on ski boots. Tim and I quickly found boots that we liked, and we petted Alice while Andrew tried on every boot in the store. He eventually found boots he liked, and we were fitted for skis. The skis were much longer than we were all used to, and the bindings were interesting because they were designed for alpine touring. You can have the heel locked in for downhill skiing, or loose for touring around the backcountry. The other weird thing is that you have to line up two pins at the toe and then push to become locked in...and its a lot harder to get used to than normal ski bindings. They are really small and light, though, which is a big advantage in backcountry skiing.

After we got our poles, boots, skis, and climbing skins all sorted out, we paid and left. Ben called us around that time, and told us that a lot of people were going out to get dinner. We left the ski equipment at Andrew's place, and then headed over to meet the gang. Tim and I shared a falafel wrap. At 7:40, Tim walked me to Zellerbach Hall, where I met up with Pam, Debbie, and another friend to go to a performance by the Alvin Ailey American Dance Theatre. The show had three sections with different themes of dancing. The first had oldies music and fun swirly dancing. The girls had really swirly skirts which was really cool because the skirts swished all around and spun beautifully. The second act was really weird. Pam said it had high pitched weird music that she wished she had never heard. There was a guy in a blue spandex suit with a feather on top of his head. Every time he took a bow, he would jiggle his head so the feather waved all over the place. I didn't like that show very much. I was a little disappointed, but the third show really made up for it. It was a lot of fun! After the show, I headed home and passed out because we had an early morning!

Eggplant?!

After work, I got home and I cleaned up the apartment. I put the dog out in the garden and mopped the kitchen floor. The plan was to take the dog for a walk while the floor was drying, but after I mopped myself out the kitchen door I realized that I forgot to get a dog bag, and that I'd forgotten to feed the dog. So I had to walk all over my nicely mopped floor, let the dog run all over my nicely mopped floor with muddy feet from the garden, feed her, and grab a doggy bag. Then I re-mopped myself out the door and we went for a walk. After returning to a nicely clean and dry kitchen floor, I worked at picking up the rest of the apartment. I realized that our shelving system for the computer nicely fits two snowboards on the top, so that's two snowboards that are now out of the way! Score! After a while, I headed over to campus to meet my friend Jordan from my ultimate frisbee team to swim a workout. It was a lot of fun, and the pool was wonderful. We decided to try meeting once or twice a week to swim, so our next swim workout is on Thursday! Our goal is at least 3500 yards.

I pedaled home with dripping wet hair, and started prepping to make chicken curry! Andrew came home with Tim and he brought a dip called Baba Ghanoush and an apple crumble with vanilla ice cream for dessert! We were all too hungry to wait for dinner, so I made a salad and Andrew started toasting some pitas to eat with the baba ghanoush. When the pitas were ready, he cut them up, and we started eating the dip! It looked a lot like humus, so I ate some right away only to discover that it didn't quite taste like humus and that it was very tasty. I inquired as to what I was eating and Andrew started listing ingredients: eggplant, garlic, cumin...wait, what? Eggplant?! When Andrew said that Tim commented, "you are so lucky you snuck that by her." I was mortified because it was absolutely delicious! I couldn't stop eating it, even after dinner and dessert. We munched our way through some food while I made the chicken curry. When dinner was ready, we ate it while watching comical episodes of 30 Rock. After dinner came dessert, which was fantastic! We were all very full on very yummy food! It was a great night.

Cooking Frenzy!

When I got home, it was really cold and windy out, so my plans of going for a run slowly faded into nothingness. After moping around for a bit, I started browsing the internet. I came across a recipe for soft pretzels, and I made the dough! The dough had to rise for an hour, and in my boredom I realized that I had two overripe bananas! I whipped up some banana muffins with those. When the pretzel dough finished rising, I made eight pretzels and covered some with salt and the rest with cinnamon sugar. Those went into the oven and came out 15 minutes later. The salted pretzels were really good, but the cinnamon sugar burned. I suppose I should have realized that would happen. Next time I'll bake them and dunk them in water and then cinnamon sugar after or something like that. I still have to figure that out. Then I made dinner, which was chicken pesto mozzarella panini sandwiches! Yummy. After all this was done, it was only 7:33p! I spent the rest of the night reading books, looking at cookbooks, and daydreaming about skiing.

Avalanche!!

Tim, Roo, and I are now all signed up for an avalanche course on March 26th - 28th! I'm really excited!

Skiing!!

I felt like switching things up today, so I skied instead of snowboarded! It was a lot of fun. Andrew drove up with Tim and I and at the mountain, we met up with my coworker Jon and his roommate Eric. Andrew has skied for a long time, and is really good. Jon skied a lot when he was younger, and he was skiing today. Eric had skied seven times. For the morning, Andrew and Tim switched skis and snowboards, and I rented skis for the day. We taught Andrew how to snowboard and Tim and I relearned how to ski. Before I went up any lifts, Andrew, Jon and I walked up the hill a little bit so that I could practice on a small slope and make sure I didn't need more practice before going up a lift. I snowplowed down, and got a few turns in, and felt fine for going up an easy lift. We spent a few hours going on some easy runs. After a while, Tim and Andrew switched back to their own skis/snowboard, and I skied with Jon and Eric on the backside while Tim and Andrew went to the wall. Jon was really nice about giving me tips throughout the day on how to improve. I didn't really like the whole snowplow/pizza stop deal, so he ended up just showing me the real way to stop. He taught me the way skiers learn to turn, and then once I had gotten decent at it he told me to just work on keeping my skis parallel rather than angled. It was pretty easy to pick up skiing after snowboarding for so many years since a lot of the principals are the same. The only real difference is that on a snowboard you pay attention to your weight dispersion across the board, while with skis you pay more attention to which ski has the brunt of your weight. When you are turning one of your skis takes almost all of your weight. You almost have to be weightless on one ski in order for it to follow through on the turn so that your skis are parallel. Once I figured that out, it was all about practicing until I could make some pretty smooth turns and handle some pretty steep slopes. I had a lot of fun!! I get bored really easily, so I think I'm going to buy skis, and just ski or snowboard whenever I want based on my mood that day. I don't think I enjoy snowboarding every single weekend, nor would I enjoy skiing every single weekend, but if I have both options available and just do whatever strikes me that day, I'll be happy.

City Day!!

Tim and I went into the city today so that I could check out a bike store. After walking the dog, we rode to the BART station, secured our bikes in a bike locker, and then hopped on the train. We got off at the first stop in the city so that I could roam around the crafts fair and farmers market near the Ferry Building because we all know I love that so much. I found a nifty fused glass bead for a necklace. Then I found some nifty fused glass bead earrings. Then I found some flavored olive oils that looked pretty cool, and I got some basil flavored olive oil. I want to see if I can incorporate it into fresh pasta dough for a little extra flavor. Then we wandered down Market Street for a while and eventually veered off onto a road filled with the sort of people that make you suddenly realize that you're not in the best part of town. It smelled like pee, and I was ever thankful for Tim's companionship as we hurried down to the end of the block to take another road. We walked up and down lots of San Francisco hills, and after a while I realized that I should have looked at the map a little better. So out comes my new handy GPS and it straightens me out in a jiffy. We walked and walked and walked until an ice cream parlor caught my eye! I now had a dilemma. It is treason to walk by an ice cream parlor where they make the ice cream in house and not get any, but it is also a terrible thing to eat ice cream before lunch. I decided that not getting ice cream was the bigger act of treason. Since Timmy didn't want any, I got chocolate orange chip ice cream because Timmy is silly and doesn't like orange flavored chocolate. It was delicious! Note to self: Swensen's Ice Cream at the intersection of Hyde and Union. I still need to try Fenton's Creamery in Oakland, which is the ice cream parlor that the little boy and old man get ice cream from at the end of UP. Anyway, my ice cream obsession aside, we kept walking and eventually arrived at City Cycles, where I asked about titanium bikes, steel bikes, and all other sorts of bike questions. The people in the store were very nice, and I got a bit of good information to think about. After a while, we wandered back to the BART station and stopped for some thai food on the way. When we biked up the hill home, I decided that I wanted to take Navi to Cesar Chavez park and fly a kite again! So as soon as we had gotten home, we were rushing out the door trying to beat the sunset to pick up Pam and go fly the kite! We arrived at the park with Pam in tow right before sunset and I was very excited to see 3 or 4 kites flying in the park. We grabbed the kite, wandered over to the water and...the wind just completely died. We tried to launch the kite anyway hoping that there would be more wind higher up above us, but after Pam and I tried several times to throw the kite while Tim ran down a path with the kite strings...we admitted forfeit. Pam invited us over to her house to have chicken schnitzel and spatzle, so we all trooped back to 805. Tim went to the back of the house to hang out with Vince and some of the visiting prospective students while Pam and I stayed in the front of the house cooking dinner while the dog cleaned the floor of any messes we made. Dinner was really yummy. After dinner, it was 9 pm so we went home, packed up for snowboarding and fell asleep.

Swimmy Swim!

Today, I raced home after work and took the dog for a nice walk. I then hopped onto my trusty bike with its snazzy new tire, and pedaled to campus to meet Timmy. We wandered around downtown Berkeley and went into a few eyeglass shops. I finally found a pair of sunglasses that I could tolerate. I've been looking for a long time, but I don't really like "fashionable" sunglasses. I really needed sunglasses though since I drive to work facing the sunrise, I bike on sunny days, I go for walks on sunny days, we like to hike in the snow and there is always glare...and it was time to own a pair of sunglasses. So now I do! Then we went to a bike shop, and I tried out a Jamis aurora steel bike. It was funny because I was having a hard time getting over the idea of owning a bike named "aurora" because it gave me bad thoughts because of work. I avoided trying it out and looked at a different bike, and complained that I felt really stretched out. A really nice woman in the store told me, "I know you don't like the name, but try the Aurora. I find that people with your body type end up liking it a lot." So I got over it, tried it out, and I ended up liking it a lot. However, since Jamis only sells fully assembled bikes, you can't buy the frame alone, which really irritates me. On Saturday, Tim and I are going to go to some bike stores in the city, so I will try out more and decide later what I want to do. I also dropped into the half price bookstore and found two old williams-sonoma cookbooks that looked like they had some amazing recipes in them. I really like the williams-sonoma cookbooks; they have photos of all the recipes, they have a lot of good quality recipes, and then there are enough recipes within my comfort zone as well as good recipes to work on stepping out of my comfort zone with. I also picked up another fantasy novel that I can't find in the library. I've been slacking off in the reading department because I've been in the mood for a fantasy and all I had were non-fiction books laying around. Libraries also don't really carry the entire series of fantasy epics, so if you want to read an entire series you end up needing to buy the books. So I buy them used, and give them to the library afterwards so that other people don't have to buy them.

Then we went swimming! I haven't been swimming lately because I thought it would be unpleasant with the cold rainy weather. Last week, Jordan, a girl from my ultimate frisbee team, and I were talking about swimming. She said that she preferred swimming in this weather because they kept the water a little warmer. She called it "charming", so yesterday I found myself standing on the edge of the pool hesitating to jump in. Another swimmer told me, "hop in, the water is wonderful" and I finally took the plunge. It was so nice! It was warm, but not so warm that you ended up getting hot while swimming laps. The air was so fresh when you took in a breath. It definitely was charming. Now I think I'm going to start swimming a lot more!!

Mud Run!

Navi was really stinky today, and it had just rained. So I decided to go for another fantastic mud run so that she could have another romp in the mud before I gave her a shower. We went out for a 4 mile long run. I slipped and slid all over the trail and ran through calf deep water. I wiped out several times. Navi rolled in the mud and galloped around. When we got home, I gave her a shower and towel dried her. She was very mad. Then I decided I was going to make a quick sandwich for dinner, and Navi got upset that I wasn't paying any attention to her. So I played some tug of war, and then started trying to make dinner again.

When Navi wants Tim's attention, she will sit behind him with a squeaky toy, and keep squeaking it insistently. She knows I don't respond to that but last night she realized that I notice when she drops a bone. She decided to sit behind me with a pile of bones and kept dropping them one after the other after the other. It was so annoying that I almost picked her up, put her in the garbage can, and wheeled her outside for garbage collection.

Kite!

I've really wanted to fly a kite lately. Timmy gave me one, and I never got around to using it. I never thought it was windy enough, but on Sunday when we walked to the water I realized that it is always windy by the water. It inspired me to fly the kite and today was the day! I stopped by at home after work to pick up the dog and the kite, picked up Pam, and went to Cesar Chavez park! We walked far out onto the peninsula so that we could let the dog off leash, and then we tried to fly the kite! The kite is one with two strings, so you can control it...but Pam and I never had much success with kites before. We giggled ourselves silly as we tried to launch the kite into the air unsuccessfully. Navi had to leap away from the kite dive-bombing to the ground several times after flights lasting less than a second. We even had some spectacular crashes where parts of the kite went flying. My tummy hurt from laughing. We'd hunt the missing kite parts down in the tall grass, put the kite back together again, and try, try again. Perseverance proved to have delightful results as we got pretty darn good with the kite. Navi would watch in wonder as the kite swooped to the left, to the right, and to the left again. We traded off flying and launching, and we stared at the kite in amazement as we got better and better with it. After a while, Navi rolled in the mud and we decided to call it quits, agreeing to come back another day!