Winter update

So it's been a rather busy winter. The biggest story for us has been several ski trips. I'm likely to clock 15 days this season. That may be chump change for those living near the hill, but for some one that came into the season with four days lifetime, I think i'm doing pretty well.

I'm heading out this weekend for Timberline, OR to ski with Zach. Kirsten's gotta work. Otherwise Kirsten and I have done all the other trips together. Peter also was able to get a couple days in with us as well.

We started out at Big Bear, Sunday, the day after one of the biggest snow dumps in 20 years. Epic, for Big Bear.

Next we headed up to Tahoe. Northstar, Alpine Meadows, Homewood, and the photo is on Sunday from the slopes of Homewood looking out onto the lake. Yeah it feels like your going to ski right into the water.

Next we went to Colorado. Breck, Vail, A-Basin. 3-6 inches of freshies each morning. I set back my bindings 3/4 an inch, and adjusted the angle + a couple degrees to max out the pow. Sometimes it was so fresh I would just keep riding, and sinking, and riding, and finally lose speed cause it was over my knees. Wish we could have spent more time in Blue Ski Basin at Vail, but with the fresh snow, runs like steep and deep were no fun for Kirsten on her racer ski's. Also at Breck I took my first double black. Fun, but I take all the terrain so slow still, a hard blue or easier black still my favorite for now.

Three days at Timberline this weekend, all for $109, thats the cost of the spring season pass. I guess the snow was not the best so far this year. Still a 130" + base and fresh snow fall in the last 2 days, I'm ready!

Were back to Tahoe again in a couple weeks, likely same locations. We like those places!

And finally, back to Big bear to close things out. We have some discounts for the day pass we need to use.

Boston trip

More of a log to help me remember the trip. We sure did a lot of stuff and had a great time.
+++++++++
-walk along the Charles river
-leaf peeping
-Walk the Freedom Trail, Faneuil Hall, Old State house, Old North Church, Paul Revere's house, walked by USS Constitution, more old buildings...
-Grave yards, including the granary and Cobb's hill. Sam Adam's grave, John Adam's..ahem..headstone..also later on in the week a scary late night haunted grave tour, which I would highly recommend
-Both Mike's and Modern pastry for cannolis, I prefer Mike's slightly, both great.
-How many amazing dinners? Legal Seafood twice at the wharf, Helmand for Afghan in Cambridge, Limoncello for Italian in the North end, LoLa for swishy American/Asian fusion on Nantucket, Brotherhood of thieves on Nantucket for some great seafood, Brasserie Jo in the middle of Boston for some hearty French
-Pretty legit Irish pub complete with an Irish band, drunk dancers doing a jig, a shot of Jameson followed by a pint of Guinness
-ridiculous view from mother in laws downtown building, overlooking the Boston commons, Charles river, beacon hill, the state house, and a view downtown. Spectacular!
-High speed fairy out to Nantucket for the night, hit the only brewery/winery on the island for some tastings, decent stuff, bought a bottle of syrah.
-stayed in quaint bed and breakfast, seven seas, chatted with the other people, pretty much everyone on the island is 40+
-road bikes around 2/3 of the island, pretty much everything is just straight off a postcard or calender. Very calm, quiet, isolated, unique.
-Museum of Fine Arts, saw some great American art, Coppely, etc
-some shopping, picked up some cold weather clothes, boots, jeans.
-visited some of the fine schools in the area, Emerson, Umass, Harvard, MIT
-rooted for the Red Sox to win on Sunday, so we could catch the next game on Monday...didn't happen...
-Saw a play at the Cutler Majestic, theater amazing, the play...well the theater was amazing.
-JFK presidential library, first time to one of those, would highly suggest visiting.
-still made time to watch USC beat the Irish
-hmm feels like i'm missing stuff...was a busy week...

speakers

Intimus 4T Hybrid SD - modified

Front Speakers: 2 Intimus 4T Tower Speaker

2 Intimus 4B Satellite Speaker

1 Bravus 8D - Dual 8" Powered Subwoofer

Intimus 5C Center Channel Speaker

powered by PioneerVSX-1019AH-K

Well Ive had these set up for about a month now, but let me just say there is 0 buyers remorse.

Kirsten made sure I stayed close on budget, but I was still able to set up a high quality, and high volume system that can make my neighbors complain.

Having high def speakers is actually a really dramatic change. It's very similar to that feeling you got when seeing HD TV for the first time. It's like "Wow, I didn't know there was so much more out there."

However, if you ever find yourself complaining about lack of HD content for your TV, wait till you start checking the audio compression rates on the back of the blue ray box. Yeah... 96k is quite common, and never sounded so bad. It's like watching a non HD Chanel on the HD TV, just looks even worse.

Anyway, in the rare case where you find both inputs in high quality, the output is a remarkable experience.

Lake of the Ozarks

So Kirsten and I went out to Lake of the Ozarks the weekend past with her parents and extened family. Record setting low temps left us wanting a little more, as it was cooler at the lake then back home in LBC.

As you can see, its a long stretch of water, I heard 1200 miles of shore front. Mainly a local weekend get away from KS and St. Louis, I was not sure what to expect.

let me asure you, there was none of this happening at all.

drive by snaps - fresh on the scene

Progressive on the scene asap! LOL. Notice how the small sedan is pretty deep under that heavy truck, and pushing it out of the lane? Yeah that means the blue car was going too fast at time of impact.

Why would you sit like this???

Why not, looks comfortable enough.

Man the AA guns!

This is from the Naval museum in San Pedro.