Author: bryan

We got into denver without incident. The airline (Frontier) was cool, in that it had little TVs in every seat, but uncool in that you had to pay $5 to watch. They also get bonus points for handing out Sun Chips as snacks and giving you the whole can of Coke with your little plastic cup of ice. I read and dozed as I always do on planes.

We met my parents in their rented Oldsmobile and drove the hour and a half out to (not Breckenridge, but) Winter Park. I guess technically we’re in a suburb of Winter Park called “Tabernash.” Monday we went out to do some cross-country skiing, which was interesting, as most new things are, but eventually just exhausting and vaguely frustrating. I’m sure people who really like hiking (ick) could get into it. I’m glad we all got to do it together as a family, though, because it had been too long since we’d done something like that.

We decided to move our plane tickets back to a return date of the 30th instead of the 1st. Doing so cost us, net, about $220 each. Yeowch. But I think the extra couple of days will benefit Les’s preperations for school greatly, and I won’t mind it either. Also it means we don’t have to be here when everyone is cleaning up the cabin to leave. Hee.

Tuesday we hit the slopes of Winter Park, for one of the most crowded skiing days of the year. Renting stuff took a while, but it was tolerable. Once we got up on the slopes, things were actually great. Practically no lift lines, not too many people in your way as you skied, my brother picking up the technique just like I did two years ago after 15 years of disuse. At the end of the day I crunched my knee, so we called it quits. Today’s doctor visit and x-rays confirm that there’s nothing really wrong with me.

Tomorrow we head back home. I’ve started to feel that longing at the end of a trip to be back in my own space again. To ignore other people, to not do things, and bury myself in my private world. This vacation seems like it’s been so long. But full.

We’ve been in Dallas a few days now, having a grand time of it. Food has been consumed, movies have been enjoyed (or not), and much slacking generally accomplished. Last night I had genuine crab legs, which if you’re not familiar are in fact the greatest substance to have been placed on earth for human consumption by the intelligent designer who has just as much of a right to play time in our science classrooms as any other alien invader. Leslie and I gave Cam an early present of World of Warcraft (the first one is always free), and as a pair of cows we’ve been gallavanting about the country side, cursing, skinning, and riddling with bullets all recalcitrant bundles of pixels we happen across.

Today, in Texas, it began to snow. At first tentative, wet and flighty. Then with confidence, big hulking chunks of uniqueness smacking you in the face and momentarily blinding you. We hopped–there exists video evidence of this will I will shortly point you to–and I can say with confidence that never has bouncing been more justified.

On the docket for the coming days is more of the same sort of blatant, selfish loafing, with an eventual sojourn to Colorado for some even colder weather and potentially some skiing. Overt has been hit with more comment spam, with over 200 interesting and informative posts about gambling online. I’m not quite miffed enough to resort to a technical solution, but when I do, so help me, I’ll make those inanimate programs wish that they’d never been set to work in the basement of a rich suburban spammer.

Just returned from “Trek to Tahoe” ’04. Fun as always. Leslie took off school on Friday and we drove up early, grilled some steaks, sat beside a crackling fire, talked. The next day we skied/snowboarded in gorgeous weather on mediocre snow. I snubbed the SSX-style high jumps and bars this time in favor of the company of others who are not as insane. We wore ourselves out by early afternoon, napped, I cooked up a pasta dinner, enlightened the 9 women I roomed with on the evils of the male psyche, played a half-assed round of King’s Cup, and then slept. Today was absorbed by the drive back, studded with fast-food sins and the smell of snicker-doodle coffee from Truckee.

What a wonderfully lazy holiday. I kicked things off on Tuesday by purchasing “World of Warcraft,” a video game I’ve been waiting on for some time and participated in the beta test of. I spent most of the rest of the day wasting time with that, and on Wednesday we headed off to Sebastopol for Thanksgiving festivities with Johanna and her family.

Wednesday night we spent with some good pizza, and then a trek out to “Old Main,” one of three bars in Sebastopol, which had approximately 2000 people stuffed into it, all of who’d just gotten in for the holidays. I met a wide array of high-school friends of Johanna, had some bad beer, and eventually retreated with Les and Peanut around 11:30 to home and bed. Thanksgiving was classic: buying food, fixing food, eating food, with all the nooks and crannies filled in with board games. Huge quantities of board games, including Lord of the Rings monopoly (Park Place / Boardwalk become Mount Doom and Barad Dur) and “Loaded Questions,” a suprisingly fun get-to-know-you game that will hopefully be converted into a drinking game for our upcoming ski trip.

Nothing was accomplished for the rest of the weekend other than slaughtering virtual wolves and human zealots with flaming bolts of death from my undead warlock (disarmingly named “Arla”) and her trusty imp Grimnar (he prances).